Link Building Techniques That Still Work

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Link building is one of those areas that can be quite perplexing, but like anything in life it requires knowledge, experience, and an open mind to tackle properly. Unfortunately, there are many bogus link building services that promise all of the gold in Fort Knox and fail to deliver, leaving weary business owners tainted about the whole process. Link building requires some of the obvious, some of the quality, and a whole lot of the unique to deliver the power needed to get most websites ranking properly.

Let’s go over some of the different types of link building techniques that still work:

General Free Directories: There are many different free directories out there, but only a small fraction are actually worth really seeking out. Don’t think that 1,000 bogus directories are going to do much for you. There are a handful of older free directories like DMOZ or Jayde that are worth paying attention to.

Niche Directories: Most industries have some sort of niche directories where a business can list their information for that specific industry. Some are free and some cost money, but a niche directory can oftentimes give off a great deal of link juice to your website. We all know how powerful good quality link juice can be in getting websites to move around.

Business Listings: There are numerous locations online dedicated to listing your business. Most of these locations offer nice descriptions, logos, and areas to submit a link. Some of these business listings sometimes offer multiple links along with the use of anchor text, which is great for SEO. Sure, some are only no follow links but they still show up in Google Webmaster tools which give them some search engine optimization power.

Local Directories: Is your business located near a metropolitan area? Chances are there are plenty of local town and city websites where you can list your business. These locations are also great because they tend to rank very well for your company name, which brings a variety of other benefits to the table.

Social Media Profiles: Some will argue that free social media website links bring no link value, but I strongly disagree. A no follow link can bring link power to a website if you have an open mind. Oftentimes these links still register as one way links which still have their search engine optimization benefits, not to mention delivering traffic.

Press Releases: If you have something newsworthy to say you will get picked up by other bloggers and websites, spreading those PR links further across your industry.

Article Distribution: Article distribution works great when you write a timeless piece that can be re-used over the years. I still have articles that I distributed years ago being picked up by bloggers and websites still to this day. A good article can get picked up over and over for years to come. Always make sure to include a nice link or two in your author bio section which most article distribution sites offer.

Blogger Outreach: Blogger outreach can work great once you have somewhat established your brand online and you are capable of building a relationship with some of the bloggers in your industry. You have to be careful with your process of reaching out and how you do it so that you don’t get on their bad side. They could just as easily write a negative post on your business due to the way you approached them to write something positive.

Online Videos: Sure, a professional online video might cost a great deal of money, but sites like Animoto have allowed smaller businesses to be able to produce their own company videos which they can distribute through sites like YouTube and Vimeo to acquire some nice links. Not only can you have a very nice profile with a link, but your video descriptions will typically allow you to place a link, which will deliver traffic over time to your website.

Partner Websites: Are you one of those websites that tends to develop lots of different partners with similar websites? Encourage those partners to place a link to your website on their site. This will not violate any guidelines because there is a relationship there and the links make business sense to be on either website. For instance, linking to a business partner (that you actually know) is totally fine and vice versa, if there is a reason to. Don’t trade links for the sake of trading links for no reason other than to boost link popularity.

Make sure to follow guidelines very closely when you start to market your business online and develop links pointing to it. It is very important that you don’t push the boundaries too hard with your link building because you could find yourself in quite a pickle with the search engines.