Building backlink in a post Penguin era is a big challenge. As far as Google is concerned, the only way your website can continue to rank high on their search engine result page is the total number of backlinks that your domain has. Google takes backlinks as authority stamp and therefore believes that the more backlinks you have the more relevant, interesting and important your website is. Therefore Google takes its time to analyze your backlinks and then rank you accordingly although in their SERP. No singular factor determines ranking but you can be pretty sure that backlinks holds a lot of weight in getting high ranking.

So to get high ranking on any search engine SERP, you must have more backlinks than your competitors.

Before we learn how to build backlinks, we must first learn three very important factors that should determine the type of links Google likes and then we go ahead to link building strategies that you can use anytime.

Factors that affect Link Building:

Quantity

The quantity of your backlinks matter a lot. The more backlinks you have, the more Google places you above your competitors but in this post penguin era getting backlinks too fast might hurt your ranking. Endeavor to build your link slowly. Building a 1000 links in a day because you got a method to achieve it might hurt your ranking so go slow but at a steady pace.

Quality :

As much as the quantity of your backlinks matter, what matters more is the quality of it. 100 quality links is far more valuable than 1000 low quality backlinks. Getting a quality backlink is difficult but not impossible. So targeting to build quality backlink is the only way to go.

Relevancy:

How relevant are your links? Relevancy of your link counts it is an important factor when building links. Google takes note of

1.   Placement of the link- how is it mentioned?
2.  The location of the link- on what site is it mentioned?

Also note that your link must appear as natural as possible and can also appear on mother companies to be considered relevant by Google.

Now that we know what factors to consider when pursuing our links, let’s move straight to

strategies that you can use to build links

.

Forum comments

Forum comments are a great way to build links as long as you can avoid spamming. Forums are a community dedicated to sharing information. The best way to make use of forum as a link building strategy is to see it as a link bait. First you need to find forum that are relevant to your niche. You can do this by making a simple search on Google using the formula:

Keyword (phrase that describe your industry) forum.

e.g you could run a search on Google or your favorite search engine  for a list of forum for your keyword

“SEO forums”

This will return a list of SEO forums. Find one that is closely related to your business idea and start participating in it. Open new threads to lead the way in discussion or simply join on-going conversation. If you have blog post on your website, you can also share some small segment of the post on a new thread and then give the link to the full post on your website. The more you take part, the higher authority you have on the forum board and the more people begin to listen to what you say. Simply put, you become a though leader in the community. The Yahoo Answer community is a great place to start.

Social Media:

The new hype is social media. Social media affords website an opportunity to connect to millions of people. To use social media in building links, you must share your blog post via links on these microblogging website . The idea of a social media as a link bait is to create more content on your page that interest people. People can then go further to check your website, make comment and even share your post on them. The more shares, comments or re-tweet you get, the higher the probability of you picking up links along the way. Social media that is good for link baiting is twitter, facebook and even linkedIn.

Guest blogging :

Guest blogging is one of the biggest white-hat technique that can be done on a large scale. It gives you an opportunity to get your website in front of potential people that may not otherwise see your blog. First when guest posting, you have to be careful to pick websites that are related to your website or where website that talks about your services. Get in touch with the webmaster that allows guest post on their website and ask to submit your post.

It is essential to build a relationship with the webmaster by first making yourself relevant to their website. Make comment on their website, re-tweet them on twitter or join their discussion on Facebook. Some people don’t mind all these as long as your article is relevant while some like to see their ego boosted before allowing you to guest post on their site. Either way ,study the webmaster to know what they like.

One way to get blog post opportunity is to leverage on your friends website or people already have a relationship with ,who niche is closely related to yours.

Apart from using these methods, you can also search on Google for a list of related blogs that allows guest posting on their website. You can use search operators like those listed below to find such opportunities

• “submit post” Keyword
• “write for us” Keyword
• “suggest guest post” keyword

Directory submission :

A fast , cheap but not very effectively way to build backlink especially when you are starting out with increasing your backlink profile is to use directory submission.  Directories like all other link building methods are still very relevant. All you need to do is to choose carefully your list where you want to submit to. There are paid directories like Yahoo and the free version like DMOZ.

When submitting to directory, pick your appropriate category. If you don’t know how, first run a search on them to find out where your competitors are dropping their link, then submit yours to the same category.

Here is a free list of directories you can start submitting your website to:

• Dmoz.org
• Ezilon.com
• Yahoo! Directory
• Gimpsy.com
• Wowdirectory.com
• Alivedirectory.com
• Goguides.com
• Joeant.com
• Skaffe.com

Press Release :

Press Release is a method to build good PR for your brand. You want more people to be aware of you and what you do. In doing so, they can write about your services, contact you for an interview or simply educate people about you.

Press Release are good when you launched a new website, got a big client or when you just chasing publicity. One way to leverage Press Release is to use good PR website like Prweb to run your release . There are lot of rules guiding what a good Press Release is and what it is not. My advise, give it to the professionals.

Examples of places for Press Release

• PRweb
• PRfree
• I-Newswire
• PRlog
• PR
• PRurgent
• TheOpenPress
• PRleap
• PR9

Link exchange :

Building links through a link exchange is another method. Try to pick a local link partner or a mother company to exchange your links with. Just make sure the link partner is related to your niche.

Few web forums where you can search for Link Exchange:

• DigitalPoint Forums
• v7n Webmaster Forums
• SEO 1 Forums
• Webmaster Talk Forums
• Web Talk Forums

Interview :

Interviews are great link building bait. You can give interview or getting a professional featured on your website. When you get people interviewed on your website, they are more likely to link to it, tweet about it or simply share it with their network.

Getting links from reporters :

Have a reporter as a friend?  Ask him to review your business or simply ask him to review your industry and make a mention of your website with your anchor text. You can leverage on journalist within your locality. One great service you can leverage on is to use HARO- Help A Reporter Out.

File sharing :

Are you good at creating great presentation (slideshare) or infographic ? Slideshares and Infographic are great source of link bait. They do can automatically add to your link profile. You can create infographic using free web services like EWC Presenter or Info.gr.
After making your infographic, look for directories that allow you submit your infographic. One great place to place your visual content is Visual.ly

Article Marketing:

Article Marketing is a lot like writing guest post . The only difference is here is that article directory has a large group of categories that can fit into any niche. E-zine is a great article directory website where you can submit your articles.

List of Articles directories:

• Ezinearticles
• Articlealley
• Articlesfactory
• Articledepot.co.uk
• Elib.org/articles
• Articles-Hub
• Articlecity
• Articledashboard
• iSnare
• Buzzle

Being able to get link is the end result of a natural process; building relationships. A good link steams from a great relationship that has been built. So when thinking link building, think relationships.

Get a good Link profiles that steams from quality and relevancy to your website and watch your website climb higher for your main keyword.

Share your experiences on using these simple link building baits .

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Adegboye Adeniyi

Adegboye Adeniyi is the head of Search Marketing for VTNS Solutions. He creates and implements campaigns for clients,endlessly discovering new prospects and strategies for growing their business online. Outside of the Internet realm, his other passions include reading and playing chess.

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