Link building is rarely a favorite task for a webmaster to perform but it is certainly one of the most important. There are many ways to obtain backlinks, some of which take a lot of time and patience before seeing any benefits of all your hard work. The good news is that some link building techniques help you grow your network and gain traffic too.
Make the Most of Your Efforts
Given that almost all link building tasks take a lot of your valuable time, it makes sense to try and get the most out of any effort you do put in. One excellent way of getting much more than a link is to create Squidoo lenses. Not only does a Squidoo lens get you followed links back to your site, they are a potential revenue stream and could also send traffic to your website.
If you’ve never set up a Squidoo lens before it could seem like it will be very time consuming. However, the Squidoo interface is quite self-explanatory and therefore it doesn’t take that long to master. Any link building strategies you plan out should include a variety of tactics, so don’t rely solely on links from lenses no matter how lightning fast at building them you become!
Blog Commenting
Another common way to get backlinks is by commenting on relevant blogs and in forums that offer followed links. This is a good way of obtaining links as it can also increase your chances of gaining traffic. By offering your opinion and advice in relevant online communities, people will want to get to know more about you and will start visiting your site.
Never comment on blogs and hang around forums purely for links. Instead, become a valuable member of the community who attracts positive attention and eventually you’ll gain natural links.
Guest Posting
Writing guest posts for other webmasters in exchange for a link or two in your author bio not only means you gain a link but you also build your network and bring traffic to your site. If you offer quality articles there’s a good chance you’ll be invited back as a guest author again. Many sites actively recruit for guest authors but each will have their own set of guidelines so read them carefully before you submit your article.
The Holy Grail
The holy grail of gaining links is of course when other webmasters naturally link to your site. If you’re publishing content that is highly useful, controversial or even just downright funny, people will want to tell others about it. You need to get the word out about your content of course, and one way of doing that is via social media sites such as Stumbleupon, Twitter and Digg.
Stay Focused
Although you need to actively build links don’t let it distract you completely from the main game of your business offering. If you focus on publishing useful content and or delivering excellent products and services, you will eventually attract natural links and be rewarded with higher rankings in the search engines.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Gain More from Your Link Building
