Friday, April 4th, 2008...8:36 am
My 26 best link building tricks
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One of the things most SEO’s are afraid to share, are they secret link building techniques. I could understand that you don’t want to give away your most secret tricks for succeeding in the industry, but hey – making good lists is good for link baiting, so I’m still going to give it a go. Here I’ve made a list over some of my best link baiting techniques. Do you have any good techniques not in my list, feel free to share them.
- Find out who your competitors are. Then do a search for their domain name and a link:competitordomain.com to see where they’ve been linked and talked about. Is there any of these sites you might be able to get your link into?
- Find blogs, forums and other places in your niche where you can leave your links trough comments. Check if they are nofollowed or not.
- Go to digg.com and search for keywords related to your niche. See if you can find any good linkbait ideas to submit other places than dig (you would of course want to try digg to, just incase they forgot about the original one).
- Run a competition. Have bloggers write posts containing links with relevant anchor text to your site. Make it something easy, so as many people as possible will go for it.
- Donate time/money/product to someone else, in return for a link on their site or a review.
- Create a blog where you trade reviews with other. Make sure they mention your sites in their reviews.
- If you like a product, write a review about it. Then email the seller of the product and say that they can use your text as a testimonial.
- Keep an eye on expiring domains. If someone related to your niche expires, buy them, go to archive.org and find it’s old content, get it up again (on a different host than your main site). If you don’t want to steal the old content, just write of garbage pages and put it up. Make sure to link to your main site.
- Find out if any of your competitors have any 404 sites being linked to. Notify whoever links them that it’s a 404 link and tell them that there is an replacement on your site.
- If you’re a university student, try getting a page on the university domain. Tell them you want to make an info page about your studies.
- Become a DMOZ editor. Start out with a small category no one really cares about and work your way up to the relevant ones.
- Upload the pictures you use in your site to flickr. Make sure to link to your site (deep links preferred) in the description area on flickr.
- If you have a old site that you’ve built before you’ve learned about SEO and link building, go through your old pages and archives. Start making some internal links around your site.
- A good way to get links for blogs is to link to others. People do actually very often link you back.
- Find places like Yahoo Answers where people ask questions about your industry. Answer them!
- Some of the big and trusted sites have a page where they list press releases. Find out what press releases they like and write one to put on your site.
- Be the very first to comment something going on. This works especially great for smaller niches or local sites. Comment things happening in the news and politics and make comments about it on blogs, forums etc. That might make other people making comments about it after you link to your site.
- They advantage of the holidays. Make something funny out of it. If it’s 1th of April, make a really good April fools. People tend to link to the best April fools jokes on the 2th of April.
- Be a guest poster. Write for other blogs and magazines.
- If someone tries to link bait you, go for it. A lot of the link baiters often make posts linking to those who fell for their little tricks.
- Take advantage of blogs with threaded comments. Always comment the first comments.
- Try getting into Wikipedia. Yeah, I know its nofollow, but do you have any idea how many people copy and scrape the Wikipedia content around the world?
- If you’re in a retail business, try asking your provider for some links on their sites.
- Again, if you’re in the business of selling things online, try sending some free stuff to bloggers for them to review. Require a link.
Some of the more sneaky tricks
- Find a site you want a link from. Shout them an email about whatever (don’t ask for a link). When you get a reply, snatch their IP address and serve up a special site that only serves to their IP. This is of course a site containing a very good link to their site or maybe even an article. Then ask for a link back.
- Make a new page and put up a link on your site to someone you would like a link from. Autos generate heaps of traffic going from the link on your site to their site. Then request a link back saying that you’ve already had their link up for a while. When they then check their stats they think they’ve received lots of hits from you and are more likely to link you back. Remember to ask for a link to the main site, not just the site created to scam them.
And most importantly
It doesn’t matter how good you are with building links and traffic to your site, the very best link building strategy will always be building good content to your site.
Buy me a beer! It's better than donating.
47 Comments
April 4th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Hi there,
I saw your thread in DP so I’ve decided to pop in to have a look.
I’ve been using some of the methods and I must admit, its working good. Quite a few points were new to me and I will definitely be saving them down. Thanks!
Edwin
April 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Hi Edwin,
It’s great to hear you like my tips! Check out my feed to if you like them, I’ll try coming up with a few quality tips a month
April 4th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Thanks for the great tips. I never even thought about the scraping possibilities with a link on Wikipedia.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Nice information!
Please let me add one thing to your list. Directory submissions. With a good free form filler like roboform.com, you can get a hold of a good directory list and submit away!
April 5th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Great to hear that you guys like my post!
Mr. Backlinks,
I’ve never really been that big a fan of directory submissions. For the last years I’ve noticed that it doesn’t really make any difference, so the x amount of hours I spend submitting to directories feels just wasted. Even though I still submit to DMOZ and a couple of norwegians ones when I make norwegian sites..
April 5th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Try getting into Wikipedia? And how do you do that my i ask?
Yellowberry.org DP
April 5th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Nice info, thanks for sharing.
-DH
Learn to Dance
April 5th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Nice article although I do agree that directory submission can work and does work although it takes a *lot* or hard work for what seems like little results but given time, can help a lot.
I would love to get my site in Wiki!
Cheers
April 5th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I got into wikipedia by building myself a reputable user before I started putting in my links. I spent a few days editing everything I know more than average about. And I made some damn good ones to.
So after a while, I started adding links to the wikisites relevant to my sites. I did of course not only add the link, I always added some useful information to go with it. AND, most importantly, the site you link to must look legit. Dont have it overloaded with ads and other kinds of crap.
Thats it, the getting into wiki how-to.
April 5th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Kenneth, I would really like to share with you some of the results I have obtained for clients with directory submissions.
Just over a month ago, I provided a 1000 submission service to a client trying to rank for a Hawaii keyword. In Google, he was at position 110 when I started the submissions. After one month, his position was number 19. His site was not even in Live/MSN when I started the submission service, but ended up at number 6 after a month. For every client I submit for, I always do a post one month check for them (and for me). The results are always very positive.
The key to getting results with directory submissions is to not chase high pr directories. Of those high pr directories that accept free links, many will never review free listings. To get the best results, submit to new free directories. They will review and post your links quickly.
I operate a large free directory list, which focuses on new directories. And honestly, most of the new free directories will become pr 3+ before existing high pr directories ever review our submissions. After a pr update, nearly 20% of these free directories become paid, so it is cost effective to get in while it’s free.
April 5th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
davcheong here from dp, just bump on the link post you’ve mentioned there.
All the best of luck.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Hello, I come from DP. [quote]Keep an eye on expiring domains. If someone related to your niche expires, buy them, go to archive.org and find it’s old content, get it up again (on a different host than your main site). If you don’t want to steal the old content, just write of garbage pages and put it up. Make sure to link to your main site. [/quote]
How can I get up the old webpages? Need I do it manually by HTML? It will cost much more time. I think.
But it is a very very good way to get good backlinks that I have never heard before.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Hi Jon,
It the site has been stored in archive.org you can just copy it from there. If not, well, make your own site with some simple content
April 6th, 2008 at 10:35 am
I’ve tried the directory submissions in the past and it just seems like a lot of work for a very small return. I just don’t think many people visit directories anymore. I notice even the directories in DMOZ rarely changes. Good list.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Very nice ideas and thank you for sharing.
The way you finished is impressive that do seo work and don’t forget regarding good content.
Yes content and seo makes you popular.
April 6th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I like your site. I find this article very intresting. I see it is on Digipoint too…
Here I left you another link
http://law9.com/index.php/topic,161.0.html
April 6th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Thanks for sharing your idea
directory submissions is worth to do as well
April 6th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
just read your post on DP. Thanks for sharing
Wish I wasn’t that lazy to do all these things.. I would definitely be the richiest person in the world
April 6th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Wow, really helpful tips. I just started a new site and I’ll be using most of these to help me. Thanks Again.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:20 am
Hey Kenneth,
Really great tips here. Thanks heaps!
April 7th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Thanks for all the great comments! Really appriciate that you like my work!
April 7th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Some good ideas Kenneth - I would love to see some analysis of the ones that work fastest. I always feel that the real problem is that we all do so may different things that we rarely know which has been the kicker
April 7th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I read your tricks and i must admit, there’s a lot of time to spend for doing this kind of stuff but i guess it’s worth it.
Good luck!
April 7th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Good link building tips man, will write also something like this
April 7th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Thanks, but no something new for me
April 7th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Thanks for really useful advice. I have already emailed about 50 sites found through using number 1 tip above.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Great list. Thanks for sharing it with us.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Thanks, those are good link building tricks!
I allready knew a lot of them but some are new to me, thanks!
April 9th, 2008 at 4:22 am
Thanks,
This list are good link building tricks. Thank you so much.
April 9th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Thanks for the nice tricks. I followed the link from DP but I do not agree with some of you who find directory submission is useless. I have a video at the following URL to explain why I think directory submission is still beneficial in term of link building.
http://www.howtorankhigh.com/FDS/
April 10th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Guerrilla techniques, I must say.
There are more decent ways to do link buildings and you missed a number of other techniques as well.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Why don’t use give us your tips then, SEO?
April 11th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Thanks for sharing
I usually do your points 1, 2 and 3 (I’m listed in a lot of social bookmarking sites) and then look for partners to exchange links with proper anchors.
Keep up the good work
S.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Hi Kenneth,
If I didn’t overlooked you missed the Article writing and inserting links in them?
Same for news/PR.
Above are some traditional techniques but effective and imagine the plenty of other websites scrapping news/article/pr websites….
I’ll share in details later right now i’m hurry to wind up Friday
Cheers
April 11th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Wow, aren’t you just a SEO rockstar? is that what you offer your clients - article writing?
If you didn’t notice it, this is a personal blog and my purpose of this post was never to list all the link building tricks in the world. To be honest, I have plenty more tricks up the sleeve, but I will of course not share all of them here! What would be left for me to sell then?
I’m not really a big fan of article submiting. The same goes for directories.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
SEO Rockstar! No I don’t say that.
Article writing is just one little part of the whole package which I offer and take my advice add in your package too and it is very effective.
I assume on your personal blog you just wanted to hear Thanks, Great, Wow, Amazing … only and not any critics?
April 11th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Your critic is that I haven’t listed all possible tricks and that there are more decent way - feel free to lecture us on what tricks are better? I mean, article and directory submiting is something EVERYONE knows about and writes about, so why should I bother wasting my time writing about it?
April 11th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
That explains, I would settle with it.
Have a good weekend its gonna rain here
April 11th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
When is it not raining in the UK? ;p Have a good weekend!
April 11th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
lol…first let me tell you how i come to your website. I was searching on google for keyword one way link building methods and then from there i went your thread On DP forum. and from there i come to your website.
Here in your website, i got answers to my questions. I thank you a lot for posting this methods of one way link building. Some of the nethods i already know and some of these methods are new for me.
Overall, i am positive on visiting your blog as it has lots of good info for a newbie as well as experiences internet marketer. So, thanks for these post and keep up the good work. Two thumbs up for you men.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Nice one Ken, lovely tips mate.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Those are good tips. I’m currently working on building traffic to our new social news site Subbmit.com We are a new social news / blogging site available in both English and Spanish.
Our site defaults to the queue, so all articles make it to the frontpage unlike on sites like Digg where no one will probably even see articles you post.
Traffic from social news sites like ours and Digg, Reddit, etc. are very valuable and send inbound links for years to come because they also get added into the major search engines.
Subbmitt.com is free and you can submit links to articles, videos, fotos, etc. and even write an article as original content directly on the site.
You help us by submitting content and that helps you out too.
Todd
April 15th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
freeadlists, I agree most directories send little to no traffic. However, directories are useful for increasing search engine rankings by using proper anchor text.
As I noted above, my client went from position 110 to position 19 in Google. That movement was from directory submissions alone…
April 15th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Thanks for the tips, much apreciated. Never thought of your #15. I’ll just subscribe to your feed and enjoy the ride
April 15th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Hi kenneth,
Found your blog via DP
Your list is pretty impressive! You have some tricks there I didn’t know about! The one I liked the most was “… Go to digg.com and search for keywords related to your niche… “ (I’m doing that right now xD)
I also wrote something about it not long ago and it could be an addition to what you posted here
Here’s the link: Link Building - How? | Rauru.com
Thanks for sharing this!
Cheers!
April 16th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Hey, I’m just getting a bit deeper into the SEO game and wanted to take a second to say thanks for the thoughts. Been reading and watching a ton of stuff today and this fits right in.
Good alternative viewpoints as well…I like it!
April 17th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
One of your commenters mentioned directory submissions, but I do not see the benefit of using them. Sure, you might get a backlink and you might get some traffic, but I prefer measures that produce a steady flow to my site.
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