Developing Backlinks
The following are some great and useful ways of developing backlinks. In the posts we’ve talked a bit more about the principles, below are links to sites that are usefull for developing inbound links. First though I suppose I should address the question of “why develop backlinks?” I could say that you’ll get lot’s of traffic from them, but then you might work some and look at your logs and notice you don’t get much DIRECT traffic from you inbound backlinks and you’d be disappointed, discouraged and you’d stop working at it. You see the key with backlinks is that they may not equal direct traffic, but that they may actually improve the way search engines rank you.
Most search engines today give at least some weight to the reputation and content of sites that actually link to yours as well as the content of your site. So, you could put up the nicest “cheap travel deals” page in the world out there, but until lot’s of other sites (it helps if they’re reputable sites) link to you and tag the link as “cheap travel deals” you’ll likely not show up in a search for the phrase. So, building back links helps the search engines 1) know you’re there, 2) know some things that OTHER people think you’re about, 3)know the KINDS of sites that link to you. All of these things seem to go into the equation (along with what YOUR site is like.)
Linkbuilding Guides
This first set of links are to either forum threads or general link building guides:
Here’s a list of 26 link building ideas.
Why increase backlinks ? – because ultimately that increases traffic (either directly or indirectly) as evidenced by the fact that most every item in this increasing traffic list has to do with building backlinks. It’s not necessarily direct traffic though. (Visitors following your link to your site.) Much of it is due to increased search engine ranking due to the number and quality of backlinks coming into your site.
There’s a good link building 101.
Here is another good overview of the components of a link building strategy (and another.)
EDU sites. Backlinks on Edu sites are treated like the holy grail among search engine optimization people. For some reason, .edu and .gov sites (as well as .mil) tend to have more “authority” and better pagerank with sites like google. It makes sense in a way as registration is limited to those that are really educational institutions for edu, government related for .gov and military related for .mil But, it may be that they are just better respected by the search engines for their longer histories and being registered for longer periods of time.
You might think it’s nearly impossible to get such links, but it’s not as tricky as you might think. There are a couple techniques which could help you find places to participate in forums, or comment on blogs on edu sites. It just takes some search engine kung-fu.
What is search engine kung-fu? Well, it’s one way I like to think of more advanced searching techniques. Anybody can type “what is a site I can get a link from” in a search box. Only true masters of search kung-fu can type in site:edu “search phrase” “add a link” etc… It’s not unusual to find the same forum and blogging and guestbook AND link directory software hosted on edu domains as on any other top level domain, you just have to look.
(site:.edu inurl:blog might be a good combination – refine with relevant search terms though.) Here’s an article detailing some techniques for getting edu links. (Includes some search technique suggestions.)
Here’s another guide to edu backlinks.
Here’s yet one more guide on the topic of edu backlinks.
This digital point thread how to regain position in googlemight be a good resource as well.
this thread talks about a few more creative backlink building techniques.
How Many Backlinks do I Have?
This is how you can check and see how many backlinks (and what they are) for a given site.
How many backlinks do you have? You might try using backlinkwatch. Although many people prefer Yahoo’s Site Explorer. Unfortunately using link:www.domain.com in google doesn’t give a full listing of backlinks only a “sampling”.
Backlinks from Forum Posting
Regarding posting in forums to increase your pagerank. If you waltz into any forum and just start posting links to your website you will be banned, laughed at, publicly humiliated and digitally tarred and feathered. Take part in forums as a way of contributing to the forum. Whether that’s by helping answer questions, providing good information or whatever that may be. Contribute. (Give don’t just take.) Most forums allow a signature or at least a profile listing your website. That is where the link to your site(s) get’s distributed in the forum. Don’t shove it down peoples throats!
this forum thread at digitalpoint has some good suggestions (including a good way to search for forums related to your topic.) Here is a good list of forums that allow links to be followed by search spiders. (These are dofollow links.) There is another “do-follow” forum list here. I would add Adobe’s support forums too. I’ve also seen Big-boards.com suggested as a good place to search for forums.
Digital Point Forums – forum related to web/search and webmaster themed topics. Can be a good source for backlinks. With ANY Forum make sure to follow the forums structure and guidelines.
The forums at searchengine watch.
Sitepoint forums would be another good source of reference material.
Here is a good list of dofollow forums.
Here’s another good list of dofollow forums.
Offsite Blog to increase Backlinks
This is a little different concept than the idea of commenting on blogs. This is the idea of using a blog hosted at a place like wordpress.com or blogger.com to promote your site. (As far as I know, the following ALL are dofollow.)
bimbl.com – From their site “bimbl is a very simple SEO-FRIENDLY instant blog platform. You create an account in 6.2 seconds or so and your space is instantly available to start blogging on. We wish we could be more detailed, but thats it in a nutshell. Want a dead simple blog space to talk about you and your interests? This is it.”
Wordpress.com you can set up any number of free blogs here. If they seem strictly commercial they’ll likely be removed.
blogger.com again – you can create a free blog here. I don’t know right off if you can do multiple blogs, I think you can, but you will also see it removed if it’s too commercial.
ebay.com – did you realize you can use ebay.com to create a blog? Yes… blogs.ebay.com.
There are many other sites out there where you can create a free blog. The general rule though is that I assume most will delete the blog if it looks like it’s ONLY used to promote a product or a single site. So, be creative.
Blog Comments to increase Backlinks
Post comments on related websites and blogs. Many blogs these day default to “nofollow” links for comments, but here is a list of over 1000 DO-follow sites… at shrink2one.com. (nofollow essentially prevents the search engine from following a link and using it in the backlink calculation. (Although not all search engines respect this – google does.))
There’s another list of dofollow blogs at this 1114 dofollow link and a search of dofollow blogs at dofollow diver.
And here’s yet another list of dofollow blogs.
Building Backlinks through Directory Submissions
For Directory Links: Directory Critic has a good listing of niche directories.
Building Backlinks through Social Bookmarking
Only Wire – quick and easy social bookmarking – fill in username/passwords with major social bookmarking sites and click the button on your browser toolbar when you want to bookmark. Supports furl/spurl/delicious/etc…. (Not all social bookmarking sites contribute backlinks acknowledged by search engines.) (SocialMarker has a listing.)
Links Marker – Digg style link sharing
Mister-Wong.com – another social bookmarking site with dofollow links.
youbundle.com – this is a neat twist on social bookmarking – you essentially create bundles of similarly themed links. They will (currently) be dofollow links as well. The best advice is to not just package a bundle of links to your site, but be creative and use your bundle the same way you might use a squidoo lense…. try to be a “tour guide” of sorts for your chosen topic or theme for the links. One of the twists here is that if people like your bundle they can embed it in a page of their choosing.
Propeller.com – another social bookmarking style engine.
metafilter.com – social bookmarking-blog hybrid of sorts. Community weblog is the basic idea though.
Building Back Links through RSS indexes
Having your RSS feed indexed at an RSS aggregation site can give you deep links to each article in your feed.
Feedage.com – RSS search engine – (submit your feeds here.)
Another rss directory list. (With PageRank listings for what it’s worth.)
Building Backlinks through Article Marketing and Distribution
This seems counterintuitive to many people. Why would I want to spend time creating content to place on SOMEONE ELSE’S site? Simply because you can get backlinks to your OWN site by doing so. Don’t be greedy….. create articles for distribution and you’ll see a benefit.
SubmitYourArticle – submits articles to 1000s of publishers/partner sites/article directory.
Another suggestion is to work on articles at qassia.com. They will give you dofollow links to your sites with your article posts and the more articles you post (and better they are rated) the better visibility your articles will get there. Right now they have a high preference for articles that have not been posted elsewhere.
Squidoo.com – can create topical “lenses” with external links. Essentially the same concept as articles, but with a bit more content.
Scribd.com is another good article directory that seems to be in Google’s good graces.
As is ezinearticles.com
and goarticles.com
Here’s another article syndication idea: Zimbio.com
Other unique Link Development site ideas
Some other backlink ideas include: swurl.com – can be set up to be a unified spot to have all your online activity. (Blog feeds, some forum posts.) Somewhat like social bookmarking, but think of it as a unified place that collects or aggregates all your online activity.
Grizzly has a good listing of free link resources. There is some overlap with the above, but a lot of great resources listed there.
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