Analyzing the 9 Most Common Link Building Strategies

As a website creator, you've already been told that backlinks from external sources are paramount to high rankings in search engines. Unfortunately, many online marketers fail to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to pursuing links.
The following is a detailed breakdown of all link major link building tactics, accompanied by an analysis of return on time investment in addition to the possibility of incurring a penalty from a search engine.
1. Internal Links
Internal links occur within the site itself and offer webmasters two major advantages:

• The ability to help search engine spiders find new content.
  
  
• The ability to pass PageRank and develop silos of authority within the hierarchy of a website.

Cost/Benefit: Internal links are the low hanging fruit of link building and this tactic is frequently overlooked by webmasters. The most effective internal links are blended seamlessly within article, are not navigational, and are not clustered at the end of the content.
Penalty Risk Level: None.

2. SEO Directories
By and large, web directories are the telephone pages of the Internet. No relevance, no ranking, and no human input.

Cost/Benefit: With the exception of Yahoo and DMOZ, directories are an enormous waste of time and resources. They're essentially a paid link that passes rank. I've done SEO directory tests on several domains and the results were a bit startling. Of the three sites tested, none improved rankings and two dropped to the third page for top rankings.
Penalty Risk level: Moderate/high.

3. Comment Links
The concept is simple, right? Find a bunch of article/blog posts that are thematically relevant and start posting links with your keywords in the anchor text.

Cost/Benefit: In terms of increasing rankings, this no longer works. The vast majority of blogs are some variation of Wordpress or Blogspot, which set comment links by default to "nofollow," meaning your website won't receive the link juice. Simply put, it's not worth the time.
Penalty Risk Level: Moderate. Depending on the depth of your link portfolio, too many of these links can crush your link variance ratio. Dropping a URL in a comment isn't a big deal, but mixing in some anchor text in the "Name:" section is a spammy signal.

4. Paid Links/Sponsored posts
Paid links are the most common form of traditional link building. This is the process of finding potential link partners and offering them cash in exchange for a dofollow link with the anchor text of the webmaster's choices.

Cost/Benefit: I'm not endorsing paid links, which are against Google's Webmaster Guidelines, but they can be one of the most effective methods of building links.
Penalty Risk Level: Depends. Using a text link broker is like stamping a "kick me" sign to Google. Whether or not they penalize your site, the link networks of these brokerage firms often get uncovered and their links are seriously de-weighted (or removed from the index entirely). If you get caught in one of these schemes, it might be time to dust off the old résumé.

5. .Gov/.Edu Extensions
Quite simply, these are the holy grail of links and have a massive impact in helping a page or website rank for targeted keywords.

Cost/Benefit: I wouldn't recommend a concerted effort in achieving these links. Political connections can go a long way, but a campaign dedicated to obtaining these links isn't the best use of time and resources.
Penalty Risk Level: None.

6. Social Media
These links are fairly easy to disseminate through channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube; however, these links are all nofollowed.

Cost/Benefit: While these links might not pass PageRank, the ancillary benefits can be tremendous. One powerful tweet can generate dozens of high-quality backlinks across the blogosphere, which will pass PageRank. In all likelihood, Google will become more active in monitoring and using these social signals as supporting evidence for sites that have suddenly increased their link portfolios.
Penalty Risk Level: None. Just don't turn your Twitter account into a spam zombie.

7. Link Baiting
The process of generating incoming links through the creation of engaging content and tools.

Cost/Benefit: Link baiting is the most reliable long-term strategy for developing a high performance domain in search engines. Famous examples of link baiting include the subservient chicken, Radiohead remixes, and Office Max's "Elf Yourself." When creating link bait, follow one simple rule: make your content something an audience will want to share with others.
Penalty Risk Level: None. In fact, Matt Cutts of Google has encouraged link baiting.

8. Press Release Links
Using a press release firm such as PR Web or PR Newswire in the hopes of generating incoming links.

Cost/Benefit: This strategy is fine, so long as the press release is useful. When done well, releases can drive quality backlinks from reputable news sources. Tip: be sure to link deep within the site when relevant.
Penalty Risk Level: None.

9. Reciprocal Links
My inbox is constantly flooded with endless requests from webmasters requesting link exchange. To be clear: building an example.com/link.html pages will do nothing for your rankings. Google discounts these outbound links and seriously de-weights incoming links.

Cost/Benefit: Don't engage in this strategy and don't play the fool's game of quickly unlinking to make them appear as one-way links; it's another spammy signal that won't get your far. Instead, develop relationships with other savvy webmasters and trade links deep within pages when there's semantic relevance. News portals frequently sign these types of partnership deals.
Penalty Risk Level: Low.

Remember, link building is a constant growing process. One of the reasons to like link baiting is because it's fun and creative. Find something you enjoy creating and use it as a method to drive incoming links. That way, link building will be a part of your daily routine, not another unrealistic marketing resolution.

source:http://searchenginewatch.com/3640146

An Introduction to Linkbaiting

Linkbaiting (link baiting, linkbait, link bait etc) is a term that has increasingly being used around the blogosphere. 

You can see in the following technorati graph the increase in its use (this one is for the term ‘link bait’) in the blogs that they track over the past 360 days

As the term is used more and more I’ve also noticed an interesting debate emerge among bloggers (and search engine optimization types) over the idea of ‘link baiting’ and whether it’s a good thing or not. Some SEO companies have started to offer link baiting services while others are against the idea and believe that the benefits of link baiting are the same benefits of good web practices. 

As the term’s crept into blogging more and more over the past months I thought it might be a good topic for a series. 

Over the next few days I’ll be writing a series of posts covering:

• What is Link Baiting?
• Is Link Bait bad?
• What are the Benefits of Linkbaiting?
• What types of Linkbait are there?
• Techniques and strategies for Good link baiting

I’m sure I’ll cover more ground as we go along – but lets start with the first couple.

‘What is Link Baiting?’

A lot could (and has been) said about it. So I’ll make just a few basic points to keep things simple. 

The term linkbaiting is a one that seems to have surfaced over the past 12 or so months and that is used by webmasters to describe a variety of practices – all of which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other sites. 

It is actually a difficult term to be definative about as it covers a lot of different practices ranging from running awards or competitions, through to writing attacking posts on high profile bloggers in the hope of them biting back and linking to you, through to providing other bloggers or site owners with tools (with embedded links back to your own site) that they can put on their blogs (we’ll run through more linkbaiting techniques in one of my next posts in this series).

In reality the term ‘linkbaiting’ is a new term for something that webmasters have been doing for many years. From my earliest days of blogging four years ago I know I saw people doing lots of things to get links (even though the term was never used).

Is Linkbaiting Good or Bad?

Linkbaiting is often written about in negative terms. I regularly see people writing off a post that others have written or a comment others have left as ‘just being linkbait’. 

I personally don’t like the term ‘linkbaiting’ on some levels as it does seem to have negative connotations. ‘Baiting’ has a sense of trying to trick or trap an unsuspecting person or thing into doing something that they don’t really want to do. While this is accurate with some forms of linkbaiting it is not true with others. 

There is a lot of debate around both the term ‘linkbaiting’ and some of the practices that people talk about it incorporating. Some argue strongly that it is just a by-product of quality content, others argue that many linkbaiting strategies border on spam, others seem to talk about linkbait as being the answer to all web promotional problems (increasingly SEO companies are offering linkbaiting services). 

My own opinion on whether link bait is good or bad is that it depends upon the type of link baiting that you’re talking about. I think some techniques that people use are just good standard blogging techniques – while other things that people do in the pursuit of links are destructive to the blogging community and I’d argue against them. 

Like almost anything online, people use linkbaiting strategies for good and healthy purposes but also for dubious and ‘evil’. I guess in part we each need to think about our priorities, values and even ethics as we go about our blogging and explore this topic.

Have Your Say

• How would you define link baiting?
• What has been your experience of it?
• Would you consider it to be good, bad or some combination of each?

Courtesy :  http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/09/19/an-introduction-to-linkbaiting/

Effective Link Building Tips

These link building techniques are potential to assure that you will receive free links from already established websites. These are different from the content-oriented development strategies and provide one-way organic links.

Case 1

Submit your site to Web Directories - This monotonous process can be helpful to get you several back-links.

Submit Press Releases to PR Sites – A good way to get a free link; several PR websites will distribute your website/product/service/event/much-more….lunching details to various online news outlets.

Reciprocal Links with Similar Websites - Reciprocal linking can be useful from the beginning; it’s important to choose highly relevant websites to bring not only back-links but traffic also.

Web 2.0 Pages - It’s help you to insert a bunch of anchor text links to your website along with your feed content. E.g. Squidoo lens, Hubpages

Article Submissions – Create an article using rich content on your niche topic & submit it to article directories to generate back-link as well as traffic.

Social Media Profiles - There a whole bunch of social websites online which allow you to insert a link to your website on the profile page. Social sites online profile page, that you have a link on its website a whole bunch of permits out there. Sign up for some of them, preferably with a username and an avatar that your company, brand. It comes in handy if you could in the future through social sites to promote your site to decide. E.g. Twitter, Facebook

Social Bookmarking Websites - Social bookmarking websites are often crawled by search engines and their links can help to get a website indexed soon. E.g. Netscape or Digg

Forum Signatures - Sign up for some forums in your niche and start contributing to ongoing discussions & insert the homepage or some inner page’s link of your site as a signature.

CASE 2

Create a Tool, Theme or Widget - Make an add-on application or template related to social networking website or platform & include a credit link that points back to your designated website.

Blogs on Other Blog Platforms – Set up your blog on different blog networks which link to specific WebPages on your website like WordPress.com, Blogger and Xanga.

Comment on Other Blogs - Start commenting on relevant and popular sites in your niche and try to avoid keyword names or signature links.

Guest posting on other blogs – Send your article and press releases to certain blogs in your niche which will help you to get relevant links and traffic.

Hold Contests - Some websites often offer contests in a bid to attract anchor text links from bloggers. The contests allow you to establish the specific anchor text.

Collaborative Projects - Originate an article specifically for a writing project, or blog carnival; and depends on the number and generousness of the participants involved; it will give you a couple of back-links.

Offer your Expertise – Use your specific skill such as web design, copywriting, translation or SEO and offers excellent branding and take credit link for your Webpage.

10 Important Steps in Online Marketing

Posting this article , is a nice method for me to show you that SEO is very important for many other things , not just for SERPs.So , in this article,I will demonstrate that SEO is very important for Online Marketing.In just 10 simple steps you’ll see that SEO is important for Online Marketing.Let’s begin :

1. Directory Submission -It is one of the most effective ways of online marketing.There are thousands of directories that are dofollow or nofollow(you should use dofollow directorie so you could get some “juice” from that directory).Just choose the right category,insert your details and submit your website.That’s all!
2. Article Marketing – Article marketing is a very crucial step that you should take for increasing your site’s visibility on the Internet.You shoul write some itneresting articles , with very informative content and with a relevant title and just spread it throught relevant article directories.
3. Blog Marketing – If you have your own blog then fine enough.If not,create your own blog first.Write useful and relevant content and submit your blog to well known blog directories,after doing this , search engines must bring to you some nice traffic and relevant visitors that could be transformed into subscribers.
4. Link Building – This is an effective way to get ranked in search engine’s results.There are five steps in link building : Link Exchange,Buying Links,Guest Posts,Article Marketing and forum postings.You could read more about those steps in one of my previous articles : 5 Steps in Link Building for Beginners.
5. Email Marketing – You should start creating your own mailing list , so you can get in touch very easily with your custommers.You must send them an Email with informations at leats once a week.You could use this mailing list to lauch your products or services or for organizing a contest or event.
6. Press Release - Is very important for you and for your website or blog to reach media websites and online publications,that could bring to you a good popularity.It is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website.
7. PPC Advertising – PPC is a nice way to attract relevant visitors for your blog,but this is not a free service.You need to pay the search engine for every click, but PPC offers good return on investment.
8. Social Bookmarking – About this point you can read more in one of my previous articles : Build linking strategies using Social Networking Blogging and Distribution Websites
9. Video Marketing – I’ve also posted a list with 10 dofollow video sharing sites , that could be used to get visitors and links in the same time.This is an effective way to promote yout products or services throught commercials.
10. Social Networking – If you want to be a popular blogger, create a profile on various social networks,add your profile to relevant categories and create groups.This way you can get promoted very fast and you may be put you in contact with millions of people you wouldn’t have reached otherwise.

source: niceblogger