Link Building Sources That Are Important
Everyone keeps telling us links are very important for our ongoing search engine optimization efforts. Some of these types of inbound links are obvious but some are not so obvious and could still generate both power and visitors to your website. It is important to understand all the variety of different types of relevant links that you are capable of achieving over time.
Here are some of the most important types of links to build to your website:
1. Press Releases: Press releases are a very important ingredient to any online marketing campaign. Links embedded into the press release can generate very useful links for your website from other industry related sites. If it is a really newsworthy topic and other websites pick up the information it will be even more beneficial in generating new pathways to your website.
2. Articles: Articles used to have a bit more weight to them but they are still very important. The right types of articles could very easily get picked up on other industry leading websites leading to very good links and a steady stream of highly targeted website traffic.
3. Profiles: Website profiles usually only give you one link but that one link is a very important link. Whether it is from Facebook or LinkedIn the links let the search engines know that you are serious about growing your business in many different areas online.
4. Forums: Most forums are very old so the links you could get from them will help your business in a great way. Not to mention the traffic you could generate from being active in a forum is sometimes very surprising. Many of the older forums have a great deal of activity and if it’s a forum dedicated towards your industry than you should be there regardless.
5. Local Profiles: Don’t think because you want to take your business international that listing yourself in the local places and directories isn’t important. The links will let the search engines know that you have a physical address connected with your business helping grow your trust factor.
6. Blog Comments: Leaving intelligent related comments behind on your targeted industry blogs is very helpful. Many of the links appear in Google webmaster tools all while driving highly relevant traffic to your website.
7. Industry Associations: Local online and offline industry associations are a great way to build trust with your website visitors. Often many times association memberships include the opportunity to have profiles and links to your website. This not only helps with link building but builds highly relevant visitors to your website.
These are some of the most important link sources you should have as part of your long term link building efforts. Remember it is important to diversify your approach so you never want to be top heavy on any of these efforts. Keeping your links balanced and growing is the name of the game.
26 Responses to “Link Building Sources That Are Important”
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I have implemented almost all of this approach and I find them very effective. However, without the engaging work on my part, all my link-building strategies will fail.
Hi Walter,
Very true, engaging work and hard work and patience is a much when it comes to the execution of a link building campaign. Thanks for stopping by and for your comment!
An interesting list that, I can only assume is in no particular order of merit, since for most companies, the 7th (which you gave as the second number 6) suggestion will be their best chance for a highly reputable and valuable link, where Forum (4) and Blog comments (6) generally have little if any value in SEO at all and are usually prevented from passing any link juice.
What you seem to have is a link of the easiest links to build. The ones anyone can create without much effort or thought. The common ones with no intrinsic value due to how extremely common and easy they are.
The best links are those that are rarest and most difficult to get. Anyone can put a press release on any of the thousands of worthless sites that are really mere link farms masquerading as press release sites. But get a press release of yours actually used, links intact, by an actual news site and it suddenly has value. But unless it gets picked up, by virtue of the value of the actual newsworthiness you create, then yes, you may as well just be spamming blog comments for all the good it will do.
However, it takes a very minimal amount of thought to get featured in your local press. Run a charity event. Organise an unusual competition for local people. Start a programme for local employees. Anything that is local news. Anything that would get you in the local newspaper and thus in their online website too. Read your local papers to see what they cover.
The same goes for all things on the list. Putting an artice on an articles site is totally worthless. Nobody reads those site apart from people looking to *submit* articles. There’s no value to being there, and search engines that increasingly use real usage data know it. Your article needs, vitally needs, to be published by a more popular and credible site. Something with an actual readership and credibility for publishing good stuff.
Unless you find the rarity, the scarcity that adds value, you could be spending time on links that are effectively worth less than asking your mother to say something nice about your company on her facebook page.
Hi Nick,
You listed some excellent sources of building backlinks. Here are 5 more:
1. Directories. Industry directories (similar to what you call Industry Associations) are more beneficial than general directories because they are more relevant and are still crawled by bots.
2. RSS Feeds. These are an excellent way to quickly post a large number of backlinks across the internet.
3. Social Media sites. You mentioned social media profiles, but even more important are posts on social media sites (especially Facebook and Twitter). This is because Google and Bing have both established relationships with these sites and posts on these sites show up at the top of search results VERY quickly (often within 30 minutes). The downside is they fall off relatively quickly as the search engines are always looking for the most recent posts, but they can help build links to your other links.
4. Relevant websites. Getting custom backlinks from other websites can be difficult, but it is worth the effort to target high PR websites and try to get backlinks from them (even if they are reciprocal).
5. Videos. With most video sites, you can include a description with backlinks when you post the video. As a result, posting videos on the top 30 media websites is an excellent method of generating lots of backlinks to your site relatively quickly.
I hope this helps.
Take care,
Tom
I am trying very hard to get a ranking on the top page on Google but my links are not even being seen. I will try more press releases and see what happens
Nick,
This is a great must-do list. I find it to be time-consuming to a degree. Is there a service or platform available out there that helps manage seo efforts like these?
Sometimes I feel a bit scattered if you know what I mean…
Hi Nick, greetings from Greece! Well, I think all these sources are very important and want to thank you for reminding to us. If I could add another one it would be Yahoo answers. I have also a question: Is there a number of inbound links that are enough for a website and if there is one which is it? Please let us know what do you think about.
These are all great sources for links. As the other commenter pointed out, this is all a lot of work! Compare that to the screaming headlines about getting 10,000 backlinks in 10 minutes.
I had wondered about the value of directories, especially local directories. There are so many of them and most of them want a fee that probably is not worth it. I question how much traffic those directories get. It seems like they are trying to use the yellow pages business model online and I do not think that will work in the long run. I also wondered if search engines gave them much weight since they are often paid listings.
Thanks Nick! You always have the best seo info online.
Hi Nick. Excellent article as usual. What are your thoughts on developing relationships for B2B link building?
Hi Nick, nice blog btw.
What do you think of paid directories? Do these still have a valuable SEO effect in your opinion?
I work as a self employed Tiler and have built my website myself to promote my business. Thanks for the Useful information and tips on link building.
How long does it take to see results. I have made comments, written an article, active in forums. I have only seen a few hits from this.
Morning Nick. I subscribe to quite a few newsletters to pick up juicy info but none comes close to yours. Again, thanks for making important points simple and for re-motivating me to keep chipping away. I too do most of these though not as often and I’d like. Please keep the tips coming. You do a great job.
Thanks
Interesting post and covering lots of areas where quality links ca be made. Thanks Nick.
I specially like the press releases which allow you to include your keywords as anchor text within your copy. This is extremely helpful for your link popularity.
Hi Ammon,
Thanks for reading and pointing out the typo (which has been fixed). Excellent additional points!
Hi Lorraine,
Yes, directories are rapidly becoming much less effective and many local directories are good to help your local search efforts more than for link building (such as Google Maps, Yahoo! Local), because at the end of the day, it is about visitor generation! Thanks for reading
Hi Anita,
Thanks for reading and the kind words
Everyone else, I am happy to help out
This article has been very helpful! I recently made and published a website for my parent’s construction company, because until recently they have always done business by word-of-mouth. The frustrating part is, the site is hosted by “Yahoo” and when I search for the site using Yahoo, it’s not showing up at all! I’ve been listing it everywhere I possibly can! So, I will try your tips, and hopefully see some better results!
Thank you!
I still don’t “get it” on how to link pages other than a Links Page. Anyone have any advice on this? I wouldn’t want the links to show on my product pages. How do you avoid that?
Thanks for the tips.
Many of our competitors have bought into link exchanges we thought were link farms… pay $299 per year and your url appears in 49 directories, $99 a year for 12 directories… etc etc.
And these competitors are at the top of the searches for real estate in our market. Our site being new is obviously a drawback, but to compete, would you suggest buying into a reals.com subscription like them?
Thanks
I´m doing a linking building without a hurry… but I do not see much at my web site result… I do not believe in Black or Gray Hats Technics… but my concurrents are doing it…
When do you talk about links… do you mean all links or just rel=”dofollow” links?
Hi Nick.
I have started my new website.But I am not being able to do link building for my website.
Please help how can I start.
I have done the SEO well but lack in link building please help and reply..
Very nice insight Nick,
We all learn that we should do all that you have stated here. Most of us stop at learning and working out a plan and fail to implement. Thanks for the eye opened.
Regards
Srinath
I am on a lot of local directories which rank highly with google and My business is on the first page on a few keywords.
Strangely, my articles on ehow, don’t register on Google. Maybe article sites aren’t as useful as what everyone thinks.
Hi Barbara Bruce,
I do not recommend link exchanges, as a white hat (or by the book) SEO professional, I recommend that you start with the SEO starter guide by Google that contains great information for you that might help:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Hi The Better Brokers,
Thanks for the great question, you may consider doing some link building competitive research before you put together your monthly link building strategy. Here is a recent blog post that I wrote that contains some good competitive research tools:
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2010/01/15/competition-tools/
Hi Ruben,
“do follow” links are important, but build your links naturally by marketing your website. You would be surprised how many “no follow” links show up in Google Webmaster Tools!
Hi Charles,
Please look at the comment above by another reader and SEO expert, Ammon Johns, he has some good additional information for you. Thanks for reading!
I agree with Ammon.He gives me some good ideas about getting links through local newspapers. The internet is bombarded with so many articles that say the same thing over and over. Unless you get some breaking discovery in your field, whatever you write has been written many times before. Of course anything will help, but a lot of of articles, press releases, blogs are just a waste.
Nick–good job.
I will certainly do some of these things.
Hi Pierremarie,
Thanks for reading and your comment. Agreed, most companies who have not engaged in link building before or very little can actually get value from these types of activities of course the higher profile type activities are better but take more resources, effort and if you don’t have the basics down then start there.