More and more conventional link building methods, like directory submission are of less and less value, Google does not even recommend high quality paid directories any more. In fact soon we’ll see a situation where all artificial ways of link building will be frowned upon.
On the other hand former SEOptimise writer and renowned UK search marketing blogger Patrick Altoft reported a few days ago about companies which spend thousands on link buying budgets per month. This way of link acquisition is not allowed by Google for a long time by now and many high profile sites have been penalized already.
While the urge of spending money on links comes as no surprise it is met by an often low quality shady part of the SEO industry. Getting links naturally requires also an investment, an allocation of time and resources combined with know how in some Internet industries like web design or development but not solely.
The money gets spend not on the links directly but on a web venture that gets links naturally and sustainably over time. The allure of “free” is in most cases the key to get links but also altruism leads to a direct ROI in terms of links. So think twice before spending money directly on low quality links.
Stop link building artificially and use one or several of the following 30 ways to get links naturally:
- Create a timeless or regularly updated resource list, example Web developer’s Handbook
- Program a free tool or software everybody needs in a particular niche but not everybody offers yet (compare the query font tester vs color picker)
- Develop a high quality theme or template for a well known platform like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla that gets updated along the software
- Program a WordPress or other popular blog platform plugin, in the best case a platform independent one like Akismet
- Develop a Firefox plugin for a recurring task or dealing with a widely spread annoyance like BugMeNot
- Organize a genuine yearly recurring competition like the Web 2.0 awards
- Organize a Recurring charitable event like the Blog Action Day
- Forge a lasting partnership with a similar service provider, like a graphic design agency joining forces with a PSD2XHTML provider
- Build a community like 9Rules where people “proudly” are part of and display on it on their sites
- Support artists with free or cheaper web hosting (or anything else they need) like MediaTemple does
- Mirror a high traffic site, for instance an open source software or an activist site
- Offer a rebate for a particular group, especially students but also workers class families, veterans or whatever disadvantaged group
- Offer free music or other audio downloads. or at least a way to listen to the audio online, that’s the secret of success of MySpace
- Offer free ebook or better free ebooks (more than one) like O’Reilly for instance
- Maintain a business blog updated regularly with high value resources, best example is Inside CRM
- Get your content translated and republished in multiple languages and countries
- Join a community and become one of the most valuable members like Maki of DoshDosh did on Sphinn and Digg
- Offer high quality free icons for download and free use
- Offer background patterns for free for web designers
- Offer free wallpapers for download and invite artist to modify them
- Create a Facebook application and maintain it over time
- Create a CSS solutions for common tasks or CSS problems or even better are whole set of solutions
- Offer free scripts and “chunks code” (like CSS as it’s not a script) for webmasters to use freely
- Create a highly useful and visually appealing Flash application like SimpleViewer
- Give away images using a creative commons license on your website
- Publish recipes for healthy, Italian, French, Chinese or any other kind of desirable food not everybody can buy
- Offer fundamental self improvement advice like hackyourself does
- Start a green initiative, whatever it might be, there are thousands of ways to do that, carbon free websites is great example
- Educate children, especially from poor families be it in the West or down in the “global south”, e.g. the 100 Dollar laptop gained huge recognition
- Help animals and boast about it displaying images of them you don’t have to as obnoxious as PETA
As you see many of these ways of getting links naturally are projects based on market forces or in other words on what many or most people need. The best thing on the Web is additionally that even free things normally not provided by the market can be offered in a profitable way as by gaining links the investment is made profitable at last.
Of course all these ways of getting links also get you reputation and fans and thus traction in social media too. People hate companies and businesses overselling but they love free stuff and those who offer it. When everybody loves you also those who are willing to spend money will find you.
In case you wonder now “how can I achieve that, I’m no programmer, designer, content creator, artist, activist” you don’t need to be, there are plenty out there are they’re short on money especially those from India. Sometimes even 100$ are enough.
I couldn’t agree more about artificial link building.
Creativity will be key. I can’t stand this term but “thinking outside the box” really will give you the edge over competitors.
Some really creative ideas there on link building, but don’t you think that giving out sponsored wordpress, joomla or drupal themes is one of the not recommended link building schemes by Matt Cutts.
Love the 9rules.com in the list heheeh now that most have left heheehe..
Mark: Yeah, you don’t have to be a prophet to foresee that. Thanks for the feedback Mark!
Amit: Good question! I don’t actually think about simple sponsorship and low quality footer links. Let a designer create a template for you, a premium one, and then host it on your site and get the links from the “best WordPress themes” lists as well as the footer links (but put them elsewehere) ;-)
gabs: So tell us more about that. I still see plenty of great bloggers and designers displaying hat “proud” badge.
Ok and what should the rest of the world do?
The problem with most of these tips is that they do not work for most organizations and businesses.
For example what should a company that sells snail repellents do? All I can think of is youtube videos of exploding snails.
I agree – be careful with themes and even widgets. Very good list though.
Absolutely agree… thing have to move forward…
Things are definitly changing in the world of link building..It really is all about value offered to aquire links naturally. Bloggers, content writers are about to see a huge increase in demand!
Great ideas– creativity is this field is always the hardest part. And then there’s the challenge of convincing management why spending $5k to develop some freebie Firefox tool has a positive ROI.
Only criticism is that these are all linkbait ideas… I’d love to see a similar post on 30 ways to request a link.
Sorry, clarification… “request a link” should be promote linkbait.
I agree with Andreas above. This list doesn’t really help most ordinary businesses. I do agree with the theme of the post however about thinking outside the box and creating something worth linking to. So many sites want links but offer zero worth linking to.
d
31. Make lists
Facebook only allows nofollow links the last time I heard.
Great collection of advice, I especially like the one about wordpress plugins, because plugins have huge “backlink-potential”.
I’m not sure though about who really could build a community. I guess you should already have numerous links out there and be slightly famous to have success with that.
For the blogs and sites I think the first choice is to post in online forums and comment on other more successful blogs.
Hello Everybody,
thanks for the huge feedback. I can’t address all of you personally but I will reply to the most common concerns:
“This does not work for ‘snails’ or other boring subjects.”
That’s not true. I debunked this myth in a post over at SEO 2.0:
http://seo2.0.onreact.com/how-can-websites-about-boring-topics-succeed-on-social-media
You can create link worthy content in all areas of expertise. I could come with at least 5 ideas for snails right now in an instant, but you got to pay me ;-)
You can’t do this due to Google not liking it, nofollow, being to new to the Web. Come on, adapt the idea in a way it works. It’s not one size fits all so you got to invest some brain power of your own.
Of course I know that you can do things that are linkworthy even about snails but the point was the list do not as it is presented work for most companies.
If you were to do a list as the SEOblog post(which I have already ready in my feebly =) about plumbers that would be even more linkworthy than this list.
I can’t say that I condone trying to find cheap labor for programmers. If you seriously want something developed for your site, it’s worth it to pay somebody what they’re worth. Other than that this is a pretty good list.
Yeah I had some sites penalised thanks to wordpress themes. It was my own fault for pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable though.
If you do go down that route don’t sponsor a theme with 3 other sponsor links on the page, that is just asking for trouble.
Don’t sponsor themes publicly on DP etc
Try and get a design to create a bespoke theme on your niche. Not sure if this would actually help much but it would improve the chances of blogs in your niche using your theme
Mix up you anchor text, 100,000 links pointing to one page with the text SEO is asking for trouble. Also try more natural text, or less optimised for the term, so “seoptimise internet marketing” rather than just “internet marketing”
Do it sparingly, and mix up your link building techniques. This is where I went wrong with a couple of sites, a large % of the links were wordpress themes.
Obviously anything perceived as artificial link building can cause issues but if you are sensible it will protect you from any penalties as much as possible
Great points you have made. I’m a firm believer in the “pay it forward” mindset, whereby people of lesser means are helped including that programmer from India.
So basicly you’re saying (in 30 examples) ‘create valuable content’? Amen to that! :)
Tad –
While I think “stop link building” is going a bit overboard, your overall point is well taken. And the list is fabulous!
I’ve worked with clients on “doing well by doing good.” Anything that involves giving back to the community is viewed positively in social media circles and builds links naturally.
PR (properly done, not just a post a release on PRweb and forget about it) is also a great way to generate links from high-quality sites without specifically asking for them.
#28: The “green plague” is getting really annoying, and what the heck is a “carbon free website” exactly? :-)
Very good list with a lot of creative ideas! Someone should tell that Angela Edwards female this. She keeps ranting about Free PR’X’ backlinks. It’s time people earned their backlinks!
Some of the tips here are not effective. The others are well written and very understandable.
Article marketing is another great way to build links, it also does not cost a dime.
I too agree with Andreas, many of the idea are great but there is only 1-2 I can actually do for my business.
Great list, whether or not the ideas are effective will be down to the site you’re link building for, how good you are at developing/writing the app/wordpress theme/ebook/etc… and how good you are at promoting whatever you have built/written.
But at least a list like this gets the brain moving in the right direction.
It’s becoming more natural. A case of seducing rather than being a aggresive. Humans should make
the choice, not an algo. But here’s the thing about humans, they are predictable and follow patterns, just like a search engine algo.
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Kyle
Link Building
This article was very good it sure can get people to thinking of better ways to do there link building.and the comments were equaly as good i’m allways looking for better ways an yet stay within googles guide lines.
Joe,
Great post,
Writing informative lists always prove a good way to generate links!
Rich
Nice list. And you are doing the same thing by creating this resource article. Am I right? I mean you have 6 trackbacks for this page. But what all you covered in this post is called Link-Baiting, nothing else.
Thanks for the post. For those smaller companies with less budget or time what you recommend? I’ve found that by taking a socially responsible approach to what you do and what you say that you do, not only gives you warm glowing feeling, but also encourages others to take you seriously and review your site recommend you or provide a link when asked. We’re a website that sells condoms in the UK, but it is our efforts in promoting safe sex in the 16-25 year age group by promoting the idea that “safe sex is fun”, that promotes the business, while having (we hope) an impact in an important area.
p.s. we recycle too :-)
Great Post. I will try to follow some of the ways listed above.
I love your ideas, but most of them will only work if you already have quite a bit of traffic to your site. Viral content can only go viral if lots of people are finding it to begin with.
Great post picked up a few tips.. THANKS
Yeh couldn’t agree more about paid links, I would pay anyone for a link that they can remove soon as they’ve got the doe!
Just the other week, somebody used a new link building method. He placed a comment on my blog and when I clicked to his site which was supposed to be about music, I was directed to a real estate site. I was told this method is called forwarding though I don’t know exactly how this is done.
Nice list! My favorite is number 1 and 14. I’m going to add free ebooks for download and publish a new blog post on article marketing directories and regularly update it. Thanks a bunch!
I have this really great page but no skills in blogging or social networking sites. So, how do I contact bloggers to let them know ? Is there a list of blogger emails around ? Is there a site where you can just put the URL and people check it out ?
The page is a Paypal fee calculator, actually just a tool in a Paypal simulator, but very useful to the general public as it has been made ultra easy to use.
It is also unique as it is deadly accurate, complete and up to date. (we are paypal developers) You may have a look at:
http://alphapal.net/fee-calculator.php
Thanks for your advices, and feel free to blog, hub, stumble, digg, etc… about it, you’ll be the first as we just published it.
Jo
Great Ideas on link building naturally without forcing it. My favorite is the one about giving away images using a creative commons license on your website and to offer free ebook or better free ebooks (more than one) like O’Reilly for instance.
These are worth a ton of money if sold. Thanks seoptimise for sharing it :)
This is the biggest list of backlink tips I have ever seen. Thanks for putting all these together!
all that I have to say after reading this list – the person who has written it is wise. Thanks for the good pointers. Of course we were able to see them all at work here and there so gathered in one place as a list of suggestions – my compliments!
Hi. Thanks for the suggestions. I have to agree with one of the early replies (think it’s Andreas) that a lot of these are hardly relevant for a lot of businesses. Many of the suggestions ‘program a…’ involve IT related expertise. If I could ‘program….’ a lot of the things you suggest I wouldn’t need a website and I certainly wouldn’t be googling ways of promoting it! No disrespect intended. I do agree with your overall point that creativity is needed. It would be nice to see a few suggestions that maybe relate to those of us who are on the web and don’t have a lot of technical expertise. There are a lot of people online these days and I’m sure the VAST majority have little if any technical expertise. Thanks again.
Like the handbook example but most of taken ages to build?
nice list, wordpress plugins spread like wild fire.
Great list. Some interesting ideas, and some food for thought on some of the link sites. Well done.
It still amazes me how people think just a few directory submissions will get them decent positions within the search engines. Your list doesn’t mention the use of Squidoo lenses and hub pages and linking to these via bookmarking and other means to increase their popularity so that link juice will be passed on to your main website from the page or hub. Good post keep it up.
I believe in creating a useful app, plugin or widget…
I have found that competitions can generate a large number of back links, it’s just the case of finding a prize that people are interested in and then getting your message out – people will link to it so that their friends can take part.
YEH! it’s great for sharing this information and you are absolutely right. It’s true that we all tried to take only geniune steps for building links or get good resouces for the promotion of our sites. Google already penalized many websites who was follow the fuck tech., so be aware about it and tried to follow the right way.
This article was very good it sure can get people to thinking of better ways to do there link building.and the comments were equaly as good i’m allways looking for better ways an yet stay within googles guide lines.
Do everything for SEO except old activities done by most of the seo’s. Now everything is changed. We need to follow quality guidelines set by google…