I was reading the latest issue of the Net Effect (Stompernet) today and there was a great article about link building. I’ve often wondered about these paid link submission / link building services. You know, you pay an amount of money and you’ll get 300 links back to your site.
Now, I knew that Free For All (FFA) sites are frowned upon…. so why would link building packages like this be any different. So I haven’t personally used the services myself.
However, on reading this months Net Effect I see that they have some cautions to consider when using these services. What they do say is the following:
- Backlinks are a MUST to improve the rankings of your site in the Search Engine Results
- You don’t need hundreds, or even thousands, of backlinks to your site though
- You need highly targetted, high quality, well placed links back to your site.
Sure, you can pay for backlinks to your site — just be careful about where those links are from and how they link to your site.
Many link building services will offer to submit your site to directories. The team from Stompernet advise the following on using directories:
Aside from the major directories like DMOZ, Yahoo! and Best of the Web, very few get any real traffic today. In my [Jerry West, Stompernet Faculty Member] testing, I have seen a HUGE drop off in the quality of directories that are currently available. Many directories are being sold to marketing firms and the current listings are either being dropped or the links are worthless. Google has also removed the “submit your site to directories” in their Webmaster guidelines, so Google is “cooling off” in giving value to directory submissions.
So, if you’ve found a service that offers only directory submissions as their submission service – it possibly isn’t worth the effort – do your homework. You can manually submit your site to DMOZ, Yahoo! and Best of the Web without much effort.
In following posts, I’ll discuss these services a little more. For now, I wanted to share some great strategies that I’ve found work really well for my sites… and are relatively easy for anyone to implement….
1. Use the blogging facilities on high ranking social networks
Use the correct anchor text to link back to your site. The anchor text — the text that shows as the link — should have your keywords in it.
Link to pages on your site, not just your home page.
Sites that seem work really well are Ecademy and, if you have a BlogTalkRadio show, the Blog Talk Radio blog.
2. Article Marketing
Using articles, with the Author resource box correctly set out, is incredibly effective. The best directories to post on are:
- EZine Articles
- Qassia
- Associated Content (and you can earn some money here)
You should take one article and post variations of this article to these directories. That way you avoid any duplicate content penalties.
If you want a wider distribution, I use the Free submission service for Article Marketer as well.
3. Blogging
My favorite! Create a blog and generate high quality content. Use your blog to link your sales pages or website.
Better yet! Make your website on the blogging platform.
To really juice up your blogs indexing, if you’re using WordPress, install Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger and notify these directories at least when you add a new post:
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://rpc.wpkeys.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.britblog.com
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.feedster.com/ping.php
Of course, one of the great strategies is to take your blog posts and write a short article about it and submit it to the article directories, directing readers back to your blog post for the whole story.
If you’re not sure how to install your blog and don’t want to pay someone (like me) to do it for you, check out WordPress Unleashed….
4. Create Squidoo Lenses and Hubpages
Another favorite of mine…. I’m not as active on Hubpages, but I really like Squidoo.
Create a Squidoo lens about your topic and link back to your website, pages or blog. Squidoo ranks well in the Search Engine results and I found that my site was often found for my lens before it was found for itself.
Hubpages are the same — they use a different interface and system.
These are just 4 things that I use to help the rankings on my sites and they are very effective. In my next post, I’ll talk about other methods I use including Social Bookmarking.
Please let me know what works for you by leaving a comment – you’ll also get the benefit of the backlink from my site.
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