Search engines depend on link building to tell them what is hot and what is not. Even with all of the recent updates, that has not changed. However, the way we should build links has changed. It is no longer a task that can be accomplished by putting our link on as many sites as possible.
The best thing you can do when it comes to link building is to be smart about it. In other words, if it feels wrong, then don’t do it. Buying 100,000 links for $5 on Fiverr is probably not a good idea! Shady tactics will only hurt your business in the end, as algorithms get better at weeding out the good from the bad.
Keep Your Link Building Looking Natural
Everyone has their own conclusions on what SEO strategy works the best, but I think everyone can agree that natural looking is best. The consensus is that the more natural your links look, the better. In order to make your links look natural, you need to do natural things!
Utilizing only one method of link building does not look natural. For example, if you leave thousands of comments on high PR dofollow blogs, but never leave them on high PR nofollow blogs, then your link building will not look natural since blogs use both dofollow and nofollow.
Another example is abusing forums. Getting a thousand back links on different forums in one day is not natural! It is an obvious ploy to build up the links, and it will hurt you in the eyes of search engines like Google.
Link exchanging is another unnatural looking method of building links. Your link sitting on a bunch of sites sidebars or ‘recommended sites’ list does not look as natural. Especially when we can easily recommend links through social media and don’t need to depend on our sidebars to do so anymore.
Remember, natural link building is about getting your links in many different places in a natural amount of time. It shows that you are putting effort into building your blog or website and the search engines are more likely to reward you for your efforts.
You may be avoiding certain places like forums or directories because you think they hold little value when it comes to links, but what we think has little value now may have a ton of value in the future. Who is to say that search engines won’t look at links in a completely different way in the future?
What does that mean for you? It means that you need to cover all areas of link building so that you are not left in the dust if the search engine algorithms ever change (which they will) and go in a completely new direction.
Link Building Strategies That Require Less Attention
Even though you need to spread your links around, you only have so much time in a day to do so. Therefore, you might as well focus your energy in the places that give you the biggest benefit right now. Devote less attention to places that don’t give you results and more attention to the places that do.
For example, while article directories used to be the big thing to submit to, you can no longer submit the same article to a ton of different directories and expect big results. In short, gone are the days where you could submit hundreds of articles to hundreds of article directories and receive a huge benefit from doing so.
Now, it would be better to submit to one or two really good article directories like EzineArticles.com and then focus your attention elsewhere.
Forums profile links are another example of links you don’t need to waste too much time on. Forum profile links are worth very little these days. You can get a back link from them, but it is very hard to get a decent one with the right keywords on a high PR page.
Social media is huge, there is no doubt about that. To think that it doesn’t affect our SEO strategy would be ridiculous, but as far as back links go, you are not going to get a huge benefit from focusing all of your attention on social media sharing.
Link Building Strategies That Require More Attention
1. Leaving Really Good Comments
A really good, detailed comment on a high PR blog can earn you a good back link. Especially on a blog that allows you to put keywords with your link. Also commenting on blogs that utilize the CommentLuv plugin is a great idea because you can get links back to both your home page and a link to one of your recent blog posts.
A great resource to find blogs to comment on is Drop My Link. There you’ll be able to search for all types of blogs to comment on including CommentLuv blogs, dofollow blogs, etc.
2. Guest Posting
Guest posting on a reputable blog is the absolute best way to get a do-follow link with a lot of juice. If you think you don’t have time for guest posting, then you may not have time for your business at all. Guest posting is absolutely essential to your business nowadays if you want to earn a credible back link that helps your blog or website.
You can search out sites to guest post on yourself or you can join a blogging group. Or you can use one of the sites below:
Either way, it is going to benefit you. If you feel as though you don’t have time to write guest posts, then hire people to write them for you. This is one link-building tactic that you just can’t ignore.
Guest posting always has been and still is one of the biggest payoffs when it comes to link building. With guest posting, you do need to find blogs that match your niche. A contextual link should match the content of the blog.
For instance, if your niche is online dating, then it makes sense to find a blog that already has a lot of content and links regarding online dating. If you post your article on a blog about making money online, then your contextual link about online dating will not match the content and links surrounding it and it will not hold as much weight.
It is important to note that high PR blogs only accept the best of the best. They have worked hard to get where they are and they don’t want to jeopardize their sites with crap content. They also receive many requests for guest posting and it can be hard to stand out amongst the crowd.
Therefore, you need to have a strategy in order to submit a guest post on a high PR blog. Saying something like, “I like your blog and I would like to write a guest post for it,” is not good enough.
Start off by showing some interest in their blog by leaving comments and interacting with their posts. This will help you get your name known by the owner of the blog and create a relationship. After they get to know you, and decide that you will provide value to their readers, then they will be more likely to take a guest post from you.
One Tactic You Should Include in Your Strategy
Stalk your competition! If you understand how your competition is building their links, then you can try to replicate what they are doing and keep up with them (or even surpass them). It gives you a direction to go that you know is working for someone else.
You can check out what kind of relationships they are making online and attempt to make the same relationships. For instance, they may be getting back links from a well-known blog that you didn’t think accepted guest posts.
In the end, link building is essential to your business as it helps search engines decide how relevant your content is and how popular it is. However, unnatural link building is no longer a tactic that you can do as algorithm changes are penalizing that kind of behavior.
Instead, use all white-hat methods of building links to ensure that you are always covered in case algorithms change and focus the majority of your energy on the methods that produce the biggest results such as blog commenting and guest posting.
Kevin, sorry but I don’t agree with “Even though forums, social media [...] don’t provide a lot of great SEO benefits right now”. Search on Google for a very unique keyword… KOMARKETER… and see the results. Your site isn’t no.1! Social media profiles rock in Google’s opinion. Forums are also great for SEO but only if you comply with the “requirement” I posted on your article about forum marketing and only if you post on real forums (for example Warrior Forum)
Adrian Jock recently posted…15 Reasons Why I Won’t Open Some Solo Ads
You are completely right Adrian… that part of the article has been axed
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…Social Marketing Resources To Get You More Twitter Followers, Retweets, Likes And +1′s
I wouldn’t necessarily call the Warrior Forum a good place to put links. That place is full of spam and crap and a bunch of scam artists trying to sell their wares online.
It’s a good post. In the past nine months that I have been blogging I used to really focus on link building a lot. Now that I have built the blog to a nice following I find that I don’t really care about building links. The most important thing that you can build for your blog is “relationships”. That will help you succeed.
Wade recently posted…3 Social Media Marketing Tips for Bloggers
Relationships are without a doubt extremely important. In the beginning, you have to do most, if not all, of the link building for your blog or site. However, once you have a nice following like you currently do, those people you’ve built relationships with will be building the links for you. They’ll be linking to your posts from their blogs, retweeting your content, etc. So while you’re not focusing on link building yourself anymore, it still plays a role in the success of your blog.
Thanks for stopping by Wade and taking the time to comment
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…Your Go To List of Outsourcing Resources!
Link Building needs to be natural. Nowadays you don’t need 1 thousand links to rank high. You just need the right links. Even if those are 1-10 links only, if they’re the right ones (high PR and naturally built), then you’ll rank high.
Servando Silva recently posted…7 important SEO Mistakes you can’t forget in 2013
That’s true Servando, but it also depends on the keyword(s) you’re targeting
Thank you for your comment!
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…Five Tips To Help You Write Better Affiliate Product Reviews
You are so right about stalking your competition…I wish I had more time to do that right now. I’m doing a lot of posting, commenting, more posting, more commenting, tweeting, retweeting, more commenting…but you’re right, Kevin, I need to really keep an eye on my competition
D. Dixon recently posted…6 Simple Farming Concepts That Apply To Blogging
I know the feeling Dianne… blogging is definitely a full-time job lol. I think keeping an eye on your competition is not only great for finding places to build links and relationships, it can also spark an idea or two that you can implement in your blog or business.
Appreciate the comment
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…4 Simple Ways to Create Content on a Shoe String Budget
In guest posting on blogs, if you’re a guest does does the comment you leave will need to be reviewed by the blog owner, before it’s put up?
I think that all depends on the specific blog you’re guest posting on.
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…14 Email Marketing Autoresponder Resources
I think we shouldn’t forget that building links isn’t just all about getting SEO juice and search engine love.
When your link is sitting there (even on a no-follow forum or in your bio in an article bank) other users might actually click it and visit your website.
Inside my Rocket recently posted…Cool Responsive Design Testing Tool
G’day Kevin – This is one of the better fundamental link building articles I have come across. I can’t say enough about the power of guest posting in 2013 as a link building strategy. This is an area I’m dedicating a lot of time to as generally the articles you post on other sites are of higher or equal quality to your own site
Kapil Jekishan recently posted…Graph Search – Are You Ready?
Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment Kapil
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…5 Things To Avoid With Email Marketing
Hey Kevin,
I think the point about how no one really naturally uses sidebar links in the age of social media is point well made. I think by nature sidebar links look suspicious to Google. This is why I stick to guest posting, it’s as natural as it gets.
Great post BTW
Mark Trueman recently posted…How To Write Guest Posts With No Connections or Authority
Thanks Mark for stopping by and commenting
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…4 Mistakes to Avoid When Forum Marketing
“Also commenting on blogs that utilize the CommentLuv plugin is a great idea because you can get links back to both your home page and a link to one of your recent blog posts.”
I heard that this isn’t very helpful any more. The person I was reading said that because there are soooo many people commenting on those blogs and every comment is technically getting multiple links to their sites, that it greatly decreases the value of that page. So basically, the link juice is getting spread out so thin that it doesn’t really matter any more.
Do you have any different info on that?
Hi Jessi,
Any blog you comment on (ones using CommentLuv and ones not) that have lots of links linking out to a lot of sites will have the problem of the link juice they’re passing being diluted. Trying to comment on posts with a lower comment count can help with this sometimes.
Personally, I don’t always care how many comments there are in a post. I’ll still make a comment if I feel I have something valuable to contribute to the conversation.
Also, one positive “side-effect” that commenting on a post with lots of comments can sometimes have is that you get people clicking on your link in your comment. So it’s not always just about getting a link for SEO purposes.
Hope this helps and I appreciate you taking the time to stop by and comment
Kevin Ocasio recently posted…How to Choose an Affiliate Program That Sells
True. Quality of your comments and posts is very important. I still think ensuring quality of your posts is the best strategy to build up your links.
Hi Kevin,
Great tips my friend. I’ve be doing some article marketing to build links to my websites but the strategy that I’ve found out works the best for me is commenting on other blogs. I’m not only looking for CommentLuv blogs, I comment on big blogs that don’t have the plugin.
You can still get referral traffic from your comments if they’re helpful and you manage to attract the attention of the blog owner with your comment.
I haven’t done any guest posting so far mostly because I don’t have enough time to produce that much content but I’m thinking of outsourcing this.
Have a great day Kevin.Cheers.
~Philip
Philip recently posted…WordPress SEO: The Ultimate Guide
I’m very grateful that it’s much more difficult now to scam the system to get first page ranking. It’s more work for us marketers but creating and growing a business is supposed to be about hard work. And relatively speaking, we work a lot, but it isn’t hard at all. Very useful tips, thank you.
A well balanced article, which explains the benefits of Link Building and offers good advice on how to go about it.
These are some great tips. When it comes to linking, it has to look natural or else you will find yourself in hot water with Google. However, backlinking done right can really boost the SEO value of your page. Well done and great tips. Thanks for sharing your insights.
Moving forward, I think a lot of importance are going to be put on social links and social signals. However, I do agree that blog commenting and guest blogging have become two premiere ways to get links. Also, mixing up links and developing them naturally can become very important.
Corey Frankosky recently posted…What is Copywriting for SEO