Link Building Practices You’ll Want To Learn

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

I’m glad someone else is writing about inbound links.

It isn’t hard. Every now and then a small business owner will come along and ask, “What’s the best source of inbound links?” Well, there are several, actually. There is no ONE source that is better than all others. There are several sources that are good. An article in SEO-News.com lists 10 of them:

• Blog Comments
• Blog Trackbacks
• Forums
• Off-site Web Pages
• Wikis
• Social Networking
• Social Bookmarking
• Organized Surfing Sites
• Link Begging

Most of these don’t need any explanation. They’ve been talked about enough that every webmaster should know about them by now. But there are a few here that beg an explanation.

Off-Site Web Pages – Some websites now, like Squidoo and MySpace allow users to build content around a theme. You can link to your website from these pages, which amounts to a relevant inbound link. In the case of both Squidoo and MySpace, that link is from a high PR website.

Wiki - You can usually pay someone a fair price to edit content for you to make it sound like a third-party piece of content rather than write about yourself and attempt to make it sound objective.

Organize Surfing Sites – These sites are almost like social bookmarking sites. Two of the most popular are Digg and StumbleUpon. They allow searchers to find information online more easily through surfing and “tag hopping.”

Link Begging – Just like it sounds. This is perhaps the oldest form of link building and it still works, but it is time consuming. You find sites like yours and ask for links. Sometimes you have to promise a link in return, and that’s OK.

Other legitimate link building practices include:

• Article Marketing
• Article Exchanging
• Banner and Display Advertising
• Directory Listings
• Social Community Listings

Whatever you do for link building, make sure you do something. It’s one of the most important factors to building your online reputation.