What’s On My Link Building Laundry List
Your link building should always be methodical and planned out correctly to acquire a diverse group of one way links pointing to your website. Social media activity is starting to show up in Google webmaster tools so having a focus on branding your business in the social space will be just as important as anything else. Your in-bound link structure should be diverse and robust.
Here my typical link building laundry list:
1. Press releases (PRleap, 888 press release, PRWeb, etc…)
2. Article directories (Associated Content, Ezine Articles, etc…)
3. Niche business directories. (Do your research!)
4. Wiki’s (Aboutus.org, wikispaces, etc…)
5. Business related profiles (Business.com, Merchant Circle, etc…)
6. Social networking profiles (Twitter, Facebook, etc…)
7. Location Targeting Profiles (Foursqaure, Gowalla, Loopt, etc…)
8. Product reviews (Crowdstorm, Buzzillions, etc…)
9. Video sharing profiles (YouTube, Break, Dailymotion, etc…)
10. Blog comments (Industry related specific blogs)
11. Forum comments (Niche forum communities with links in signature)
12. Chambers of commerce (Go local!)
13. Industry organization websites (It costs some money but it is worth it!)
14. Industry event websites (Become active to build business offline too!)
15. Other niche natural spots (Where are your competitors? Should you be there too?)
Your links should be well rounded and have a strong combination of the above list. Your links should also be targeted so a link sitting on a completely unrelated website will not give you any link building benefit. It will most likely just hurt your websites power if you attempt to connect with an unrelated website simply to acquire a link pointing to your website. Building up your website links is very important to the overall success of a business online. Treat each link as an actual pathway that could deliver a website visitor and not as much as a link to help you increase your rankings. The rankings will happen over time and you can’t speed up the process or you will find yourself cutting corners to get the job done. The search engines need to see a natural type of growth for things to work exactly how they are supposed to. Take a tasteful business branding approach to your link building and you will grow as a business online with a very strong foundation in place.
12 Responses to “What’s On My Link Building Laundry List”
SEO Journal is Written by
Brick Marketing Founder,
Nick Stamoulis:
Nick Stamoulis - SEO Bio.
Tel. - 877-295-0620
nick@brickmarketing.com
Connect with Nick Stamoulis
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
This is a great article Nick – all 15 points are essential to a successful strategy.
I’ve noticed that PR and article submissions provide the most instant results in the SERPS, but i have to say i’m still not convinced by social media. Everyone seems to be so single-minded – there really isnt a community ‘spirit’ that is crucial to directing traffic to a specific website.
But of course with Twitter and Fascebook having such high page ranks, they really can’t be ignored.
Hi Warren,
Thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts! Agreed, Facebook and Twitter are essential parts of a long term link building strategy (they would be under the social networking category above).
Amazing. Link strategy only makes sense if you actually put some thought into how you are going to go about it. Most people just start building links, setting up profiles without thinking about where they are going, how to get there etc.
A couple of caveats: only set up social media profiles if they are going to actually get some use. Wouldn’t surprise me if dead accounts on twitter with you link in the profile count against you. Forums are a similar situation, you must participate.
We do SEO for a lot of small-business type clients (plumbers, contractors, restaurants, caterers etc.) and some clients with more competitive search terms. For the lower order much of social media is overkill that I wouldn’t recommend.
Hi Kyle,
So very true, many companies do often just start setting up profiles, etc without a clear strategy or planned out direction. Also, it makes sense creating profiles and using them and I agree that it could be overkill for certain types of businesses…
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Nick, I get your newsletters, but have dismissed them in the past if I’m being honest. BUT, that will change. This is a great article and I appreciate reading the comments. I know I have been guilty of setting up profiles in the past and not getting the most of those opportunities. Thanks for great article!
Nick,
You have officially become my answer man! This article is just what I needed to assist a client!
Thank you and keep up the great posts!
What a great list!! I’m going to amend my own “laundry list” to include things you’ve thought of here! Thanks so much.
Traci
Hi Robby,
Glad to hear it has changed! Thanks for reading and your comment!
Hi Traci,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I am glad it helped!
Hi Nick.
A pearler of an article…fantastic! I have been getting my marketing plan together lately (in preparation for next summer here in Australia) this has just prioritised my focus. I really do appreciate your views and always ‘click on the bricks’ newsletter. All the best and thanks again.
A.
Thanks Anita! Thanks for clicking on our Brick emails
Take Care!
Nick
Hey Nick, Nice laundry list! This list could turn into a 15 part series- taking each item to a deeper (cleaner perhaps?) level. For example, the first on the list- Press Releases- could have a great description of a sample plan for writing and submitting a press release…
That would be bad *ss!
Hi Reid,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts! Great idea! Although, I have talked about most of these link building items in details in separate posts over the years on this blog
Thanks!
Nick