Link Building | Free Search Engine Optimization Resources

Link Building for SEO

Google defines a link from one site to another as a positive vote towards your link popularity. There are many methods of obtaining incoming links from other sites; some are quality practices and some are spammy Black Hat search engine optimization. We will dispell the myths and tell you what link building methods are best for your site.

Link Exchanges

Haven't you heard? Link exchanges are dead! Well, not exactly...

Reciprocal linking with other web sites in related industries can be helpful in getting your site crawled more frequently by search engine robots. But overall, link exchanges are a weak way to generate high rankings on Google for competitive keywords. Link exchanges really help when you are able to receive a link from a page with higher PageRank than the page you are linking back from. A Black Hat technique to link exchanges would be to mark all your outbound links with the rel="nofollow" attribute while your link partners don't notice, but this is generally deemed unethical by much of the search engine optimization industry. Getting link juice doesn't have to be Black Hat if you're willing to put in the work.

Directory Submissions

It's always a good idea to submit to good directories if the category page you are submitting to is indexed by the search engines. Some directories are obviously better than others. Many directories are set up for the sole purpose of charging for submission and are just cookie-cutter PHP scripts used across thousands of similar domains. These are not very useful and are a waste of time. Here is a list of good directories to submit to. Most are free, some require a fee for submission:

Blog Directories:

Article Marketing

A popular choice with search engine marketers to generate incoming links has been writing articles and submitting them to sites that offer a link back in the author bio section. Some article directories allow hyperlinks in the body of the article too, which is a nice bonus. Beware of services that advertise to submit your article to hundreds of sites (just like you should stay away from similar directory submission services). Many of the places they submit to are cookie-cutter sites that offer no valuable outbound link. You can't get penalized for any type of inbound link (that would make it too easy to sabotage competitors' rankings) but it is a waste of time and money to submit to these places.

A better tactic that has been emerging more recently has been publishing the article on your own site and then promoting it by sharing it on social media communities and by press releases. This way you get direct links to your web site as well as a ton of targeted traffic.

Press Releases

Press releases allow you to link back to your web site and can be shown across the very large network of sites. However, you should not be doing press releases strictly for SEO. You'll look silly if your business doesn't have anything of value to announce. But if you do, then it's important to take full advantage of the text you will be writing for the press release. If you are announcing an updated product or service, make sure you point back to the specific page on your site and not just the home page. Also make sure you use the most relevant keyword in the press release - treat it as you would optimize a page on your very own site.

Blog Comments

This method isn't one that should be a large focus of anyone's SEO strategy, but there are benefits to commenting on other blogs. It is important to remember that there exists a large amount of blog spam these days. If you post short comments like, "Hey thanks for the article!" or "Thanks, check out my site on the same topic", you'll quickly get labelled a spammer and will see some blogs not even approve your comment. Think of blog comments as a way to communicate with others in your field, not predominantly relying on it for SEO.