If you’ve tried getting links naturally and it just isn’t working, it may be because your content offers nothing unique or different to site visitors. After all, the main reason others link to your site or a feature on your site is because they perceive it as adding value to their website visitors. Hey, they know that we’re all judged by the company we keep!

The popularity of our recent post offering ten easy links in 50 minutes is proof positive that plenty of website owners are having trouble generating good links – people flocked to this post to get an easy link. So why aren’t you getting links naturally? My guess is that your content isn’t unique, interesting or fresh. Don’t feel bad – it’s a common problem – one that forces you to buy links. In fact, this post is going to draw yawns from seasoned link builders and SEO’s. Why? Because they have demonstrated over and over that content is king. And it truly is when it comes to generating incoming links.

Our goal here is to reach those of you who have ecommerce sites or maybe sites in the financial sectors where you think “hey I sell shoes, what could I possibly do that is unique.”

Brainstorming For Content Ideas

A lot of owners think the way to create content is by posting a bunch of articles on their site – have you looked at your articles lately? Give them a really honest evaluation – would you take the time to visit another website to read them? If not, it’s time to do some brainstorming.

Don’t look at five other sites and rework the same tired themes. Get your team together and come up with a new angle, a new topic and a fresh approach – create some content that will really grab readers and make them take notice! Try some new approaches such as humorous stories, cartoons, videos, useful tools, historical or little-known facts or surveys. You could even solicit suggestions from your customers for topics or features they would like to see on your website. It’s going to take some time and effort but it will be well worth it in the long run.

After you’ve come up with some unique new content, put it on your site and optimized it – now what? You need to get it noticed!

Getting Your Content Noticed

If you thought creating the content was hard, getting your content discovered can actually be the hardest part. Once it’s up there, how do you get others to find it and link to it?

Promoting your content is just as important as creating it. Traditional methods such as press releases are always good, but make sure you then take the time to do your PR correctly. Usually it’s a good idea to pay for some serious online distribution. And many people forget to send them to local media, niche media and even bloggers. Traditional methods still work great for websites.

Blogging is a great way to get the word out about your content. Visit industry blogs and comment on current topics, working in a reference to your relevant content when it fits the situation. By suggesting an additional source of information that can help readers out, you’re being helpful and generous with your expertise – and you’ll probably gain some great links. You can do the same thing in industry related forums.

Maybe even start a little viral email campaign. Send an email to your friends, family and business associates with a link to your new content. Ask them to spread the word to anyone who may be interested in seeing your killer content.

And don’t forget your own customers – it may seem like you’ve already “won over” your customers, but you shouldn’t ever discount the value of having your current customers visit your website as often as possible. Put a brief blurb about your content on every e-mail, invoice and newsletter you send out so that they will be aware of what you have to offer. You never know when a repeat customer will read one of your “How To” articles and mention it on his “MySpace” page with a link, where it could pick up tons of traffic and additional links!

But the biggest message we want to get across today is to get a group together and brainstorm some ideas for really valuable content for your site. You will be amazed at what you come up with. Go forth and create! (Did you notice we made it through this entire post without saying linkbait?)  Newest Link Building Techniques.

[tags] content, link building, blogging, forums, brainstorm [/tags]

Vertical Measures

You may have tried link building campaigns in the past and been disappointed in the results. Perhaps you got barely a blip in the major search engines or you saw your rank rise only to fall a few months later. Whatever the reasons for your disappointment, it’s a good bet that the main reason you were disappointed in the results is that whatever link building tactics you used or paid for lacked two important qualities: balance and consistency.

The Importance of Balance in Link Building

Some people advocate the importance of content-rich websites, others focus on blogs and still others will insist that directories are the most important link building campaign features. The truth is never as simple as some people try to make it. It can seem like blogs are the place to link one month, and then be out of fashion just a few months later, with forums replacing them as the Holy Grail for link building.

The truth is, all of the many places you can link to and from (with the exception of unsavory linking sites that are tantamount to spam) are important to provide you a balance of coverage in your link building campaigns. Search engines are constantly changing, growing and evolving. They become more complex, develop new algorithms and morph so that you can’t ever keep up with how they are weighing the relative importance of any one kind of link, so you shouldn’t even try.

The solution is to balance your link building strategies for the greatest possible coverage over a multitude of formats. If you do this, you’ll find that you are always hitting on multiple cylinders. Although you might not be getting great results from every single link strategy, you’ll be getting pretty good ranking from several of them. It’s like playing a good point spread – coverage is key.

A good link building campaign with optimal coverage will include all of these:
• Directories with real editors. Well-known directories that are always updating and actually review the links are a hot destination for many industries.
• Forums. Links to your site from various forums provide dynamic attention for you – forums are the equivalent of the water cooler – the site where the latest and most interesting topics come up. Be present at the virtual water cooler and you’ll be talked about – and linked to.
• Article directories. Submit relevant, informative articles to directories to easily multiply your links. These article directories are used by others to provide content for everything from newsletters to special reports – if your content is good, you’ll quickly become a recognized expert.
• Reciprocal links. Provide links to sites that compliment what you are offering and ask that they link to you. Similar sites that aren’t direct competitors are powerful link partners.
• Contextual links in blogs and reviews. Another instance of the power of the people – reviewers drive people to sites because they are recognized as experts, so try and get reviewed and be sure a link to your site is included. Some people won’t even know they need you until they read a great blog about you –and then they will hot-foot it to your site for more information.

If you use a good mix of link building techniques, you’ll be balancing your exposure over all of the many kinds of linking that the major search engines use so that you’re always noticed without the risk of falling down in the ranks because one particular link strategy is out of favor.

Why Consistency is Key

Many individuals start out in overdrive when they start a linking campaign. They submit to dozens of industry directories, pack their website and article directories with great content, get noticed on blogs and in reviews, set up links on complimentary sites and enjoy the fruits of their labor – top rankings.

Then something happens; they find that they just don’t have the time to continue writing articles, they stop visiting blogs because they are overwhelmed with new customers….and they stop building links or slow down considerably. Unfortunately, they discover that they are now dropping in the search engine rankings and they can’t understand it. After all, nothing’s changed, right?

Actually, that’s precisely the point – nothing is changing. If you stop actively creating links and building a following, you will fall in the rankings because your competitors are actively building links, adding content and quietly passing you in popularity. The search engines are dynamic, so you can’t afford not being dynamic yourself – you have to consistently build on what you started in order to stay ahead of the pack. It’s a long-term commitment that you have to make if you don’t want to lose in the long run.

The perfect link building campaign is a combination of balance and consistency. If you continue to spread your links out over many venues and keep the content and information flowing every month, you’ll be successful in building a valuable network of links that will send you to the top of the pages.

[tags] link building, link popularity, directories, article marketing, contextual links, forums [/tags]

Vertical Measures

Link Building is considered to be one of the most effective SEO techniques. If you haven’t done any link building yet, you should consider doing some right now or contact a SEO company that offer Link building services.

Just a quick note about how search engines work first. For a search query entered into the search engine, the algorithm uses rules to identify the most relevant pages, based on the page’s text content and its context (which can be indicated by links from other pages and sites). So essentially inbound links act as a vote to your website.

There are different ways of doing link building but not all are good so you have to be very careful. Below are the link building practices that are considered to be among the best.

Link Directories.
Although link directories are not as effective as they used to be, many can still be considered quality links such as DMOZ and Jayde and are very cost effective.  But not all directories are created equal. There are very few directories left on the web that are still worth submitting to, so don’t put much time or money into it.

Link Exchange
Link exchange with the wrong sort of site can be bad for your website and get you banned from Google so be careful with this strategy. If you use link exchanges, you have to be very selective.

Article and News Submission
The good thing about good article sites or news sites is that their article pages often rank highly and send highly qualified traffic, so as well as getting inbound links from them you will often have qualified traffic click through to your site. So writing an article and submitting it to this kind of website is recommended.

Link Baiting
Link baiting is where the quality of your content is useful or entertaining enough that people will want to link to it, thus improving your number of inbound links and your position in the search engine results pages. It can be done through your website’s content as well as through your blog.

Forums and Blogs
Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and visit your site, link to your site, and/or buy your products. You can also post comments in blogs with a link back to your website.  Some forums us "no follow" so your link may only provide the benefit of traffic to your site.

To conclude remember that Inbound links (one-way text links) using good anchor text are your goal from an SEO perspective. It is much better to have 10 inbound links from related topic sites with a PR of zero, than 100 inbound links from unrelated, PR6 sites. And think long-term when building links, as it takes time to achieve real benefits.

[tags] link building, inbound links, SEO, link exchange, forums, blogs, search engine, link building services [/tags]

Vertical Measures