These are some of the suggestions to Get Links

Write Articles For Ezines

Write articles of 400 words include a link to your site at the bottom and submit to ezinearticles.com. There are many others, but, this is the best. These articles should not be on your blog, but written specifically for the ezine. You don’t want to spend along time writing these articles, but, they want to be good enough so other sites will copy and give you more links. Use article titles like 10 tips for getting links. More on ezine articles here. e.g. vary the link text. The benefits of ezines may have become devalued because everyone is doing it these days. Therefore, don’t rely on this strategy.

Get to Know Other Bloggers in Your Niche.

Look at other bloggers in your niche. In particular look at blogs at a similar stage of development. It is more difficult to get links from a top blog, but, easier to develop relationships with blogs of a similar stature.

• Leaving comments,
• Linking to them
• Dropping an email

All these will get the blogger interested in your blog. If he likes your blog and you have good content, the above strategy’s may result in links. However, I would point out I never expect links from other bloggers. I never ask for them directly. Think about building relationships rather than just a mindset of ‘getting links’

Linkbait.

Linkbait is an article that is unique, highly interesting or something people will love. As a new blogger, you may not appreciate what link bait is. For example, this post is not linkbait. It is  not exactly the first article on getting links on the internet… However, if you had an interview with a celebrity in your field on your blog, that is unique – it is a first. People will be interested in viewing it. Another strategy is to get collections of photos which are particularly interesting for your blog. After writing the linkbait, you need to let people know about it. Email specific bloggers (it is of course helpful if you already have some relationship). Also this is something not to overdo.
The second thing, is to mention it on a forum in your niche. This can work if you know the forum members will really like the content. If it is unrelated or selling a product, it is dangerous. It also helps if you have contributed to the forum in other ways than promoting your own content. If the content is really good, it can lead to appearing on several forums and blogs. Getting several links like this is definitely worth the effort of creating superior content and the effort of letting people know.

Blog Catalogues

Mostly a waste of time. Although for a new blogger, a few might be worthwhile. In particular look for niche specific catalogues.

Blog Carnivals.

A good way to get links. If you link back to the carnival and select a few other entries, it may encourage people to to the same to you. Blog carnivals

Where Do Competitors get links from?

You could look and see where other blogs get their links from them and see whether you can get one also.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia links are nofollow so don’t help google rankings. But, one or two might be useful for driving traffic. As long as you have good content related to the page an external link should survive. If it doesn’t no harm.

Look around

Many other opportunities for getting links will appear the more you get to know your niche.

Build Up RSS subscribers.

A long term strategy is to encourage a loyal readership and RSS subscribers. The more RSS subscribers you have the more chance of getting links unasked for. This is the best long term strategy. people will subscribe to a blog which offers compelling reasons to subscribe

Related

How To Determine Quality of Links

Number of links on a page.

If your link is the only one on the page, it will have much more weight, than if it is one link out of 100. In the initial creation of Google’s page rank. The strength of a link was determined by a random walk model. If you goto a page, how much chance is there that the visitor will click on the link to your site. Clearly if there are only a few links, there is a higher chance people will click so Google give it a higher weighting.
For example, Blog Carnivals are a good way to get links, but, the quality is invariably reduced because there can be upto 100 links on the blog post.

A link on a sidebar is good. But, if there are 100s of links on the sidebar, its weighting is reduced.

Relevance of Link.

This is very important. Why would a blog on cycling link to a site on life insurance. If you have a blog on life insurance, you need to get links from finance sites, preferably sites about life insurance. If you have a link to life insurance on a blog about poetry, there is a higher chance google might suspect it is a paid link.

Duplicate Content.

Sometimes I see other blogs copying my content and giving a link back to my site. This splog is of little benefit. Sites with duplicate content are not given high weighting by Google, so their links will be less important.

What is Purpose of Site?

If the site’s purpose is to give links to other sites, I feel this reduces the quality of the link. For example, anyone can write an article on an ezine and get a link back to their site. Because everyone can do it and because ezines link to so many sites, I feel that the quality of the link is reduced. It is the same with blog directories and link directories. Their main purpose is to give links, nobody actually reads these sites because they have no interest. Therefore, the power of a link is reduced.
If the site offers high quality articles and doesn’t link out to all and sundry the power of the link is worth more.

Page Rank of Site.

Page rank can often be given too much importance. But, a link from a PR6 site is ceteris paribus worth much more than a link from a PR2 site. Also check the PR of a page. Also this doesn’t mean it is advisable to buy links from PR6 and PR7 sites. There are many examples of sites who have had their page rank reduced because they sell links.

Is the Link Bought?

The problem with buying links is that it means the site is willing to sell them. If a site is selling links, you will get spammy sites buying them. If you are lucky you may get away with it (especially if it is a relevant niche). But, buying links could damage your site. At best they will have no effect, at worst Google could quietly give your site a bad reputation

Natural Links

These are the links difficult to fake, impossible to buy and given without asking. They occur because other bloggers like your site so much they want to link because your page is useful / interesting. These are the links that appear in the middle of the text. The page rank doesn’t matter that much nor does the anchor text. The important thing is that they will count for a lot because they haven’t been faked.

Nofollow?

If the link is given the ref-”nofollow” it counts for nothing. – unless it brings traffic, but, nofollow means it is ignored by Google algorithm

Traffic.

If a link sends actual traffic, this is a good sign. Firstly traffic is always welcome. But, if the page gets traffic it is likely to be ranked highly by google or at least social bookmarking sites. If you buy a link from a PR7 directory, that link will almost never send traffic, because nobody wastes their time reading blog directories where you can buy links.

Overall

The more difficult it is to get a link, the more useful it generally is. If the link can easily be got by simply submitting to blog directory, blog carnivals or article directory it means everyone else can do it. But, getting a high quality link in the middle of a blog post is not easy and so counts for more.

If you are a new blogger, you should get the ‘easy links’ I do advise submitting some articles to article ezines. I do advise submitting to blog carnivals. But, this shouldn’t be your only strategy. Soon, I will look for practical ways to get those elusive high quality links.

Tips for getting more links

Is it worth selling text links?

I have previously suggested some tips for building links here – Tips for getting more links

In recent months, I have been working hard in building up links on my blogs. One my favourite strategies at the moment is becoming a regular commentator on other blogs.

I don’t target the very successful blogs, but look for blogs which are relatively new and blogging on a similar theme. Becoming a regular commentator helps to build up a friendship, which often leads to mutual links as well. If it doesn’t no harm; but, on quite a few occasions it has led to blogroll links and links in posts. Don’t be tight about linking to other blogs either.

Note: a while back I said I had stopped commenting on other blogs (for Net Writing’s niche) I found it wasn’t working for this particular niche. However, in the cycling and to a lesser extent economics niche, comments have been very effective. Either I was

1. Wrong,
2. Commenting in the wrong place or
3. Maybe it just depends on the niche.

How To find Good Blogs for Developing Contacts.

1. I use google blog search to search blogs on my niche e.g. search ‘cycling’
2. If the blog is very good I add it to my RSS feed and give it relevant category.
3. Once or twice a week I go through my feed and comment on my favourite blogs
4. Alternatively, look at popular blogs and click on the people who leave good comments.
5. It is a mix between finding new blogs and establishing relationships with the blogs you like. Don’t just be a hit and run commentator

Useful Tool for checking backlinks – backlink watch

These are some of the benefits of Writing For Ezines

Increase Number of Links

Firstly, you get a link from the ezine. But, more importantly your article is invariably copied by other websites looking for free content. Some articles have been copied by 20-30 other sites, therefore, you can quickly build up a range of inbound links. Many of these links are of low quality. Sites which just scrape content are not valued by Google. However, sometimes your article may get picked up by a good quality website in your niche. These links are more valuable than the initial ezine where the article was published.

Choose Anchor Text Keyword

• When writing ezines it is important to carefully choose the most useful anchor text keywords. Don’t just link to your home page. But, link to specific articles with the most valuable keywords.
• For example, quite a popular keyword at Net Writing is ‘writing good email’. Therefore, I will include this anchor text and link to the specific article. The important thing is to focus on particular articles and vary the anchor text.

Traffic.

One of the most surprising things about the ezine articles is that they have provided a good source of traffic. It is not a huge amount, but, to my economics site, ezinearticles may send about 50-60 a month. It is quite a small % of total traffic, but, the traffic is quite targetted and google analytics suggest the traffic from ezines spends a long time period at the site. By linking to my blogs, this traffic can help to build up RSS subscribers. True I have written quite a few articles, but, if you write 1 article per week, you are constantly adding to your traffic sources. There is a powerful cumulative effect. Just don’t expect to write one article and then sit back.

• This is always the sign of a good link – does it send traffic? If a link is sending traffic, it is likely that Google is valuing the site and therefore more likely to value the link.

• Tip: Make the link relevant. If I write an article “Why the Dollar is devaluing”. My link at the end will be something like For more detail on the consequences of a falling dollar”. This will significantly increase the click through rate of the link. Basically, I try to make the link as relevant and interesting so people are encouraged to come to my site. If you have an unrelated link, the click through rate will be very low.

What Kind of Article does well?

My target article is 400 words, with a clearly defined structure. It is usually broken down into sections using bullet points and subheadings. Scannable content is always more likely to get copied by other sites. The important thing with ezine articles is to be able to write good quality articles quickly. Choose a topic you know well and write as simply as possible. Also choose good keywords for the title so the article will get good rankings and traffic in google

Do You Publish Ezine articles on Your Own Site?

No, I write articles specifically for ezines. This means my site is not associated with duplicate content. My theory is that the link is more valuable because the content is not on my site. In the beginning I did duplicate some articles but now prefer not to do it.

Limits of Ezines

I’m not entirely convinced how valuable ezine links are. Google is trying to crack down on duplicate content. However, I feel ezines have helped grow my sites especially in the beginning.

Time Consuming to write articles. It is time consuming to write articles. Also you may feel it is more worthwhile to publish articles on your own site. But, in the beginning, I think it is definitely worth publishing 10-20% of your articles on an ezine. As your site gets more natural links, this % might fall. When your site is very big, there is no need to use ezines any more. The articles will be more valuable on your own site.

Related

• Tips for Getting Traffic to  A New Site 
• Ezine articles – Richard Pettinger 
• Ezine articles – Tejvan Pettinger 

When I first began building websites, getting into DMOZ was seen as just about the best thing you could do – Guaranteed to raise the all important page rank.

The problem was that it just grew too unwieldy and you could be waiting for up to 2 years to have your site reviewed and possibly put in. If you dared complain about waiting two years you were given short shrift and threatened with permanent banning.

The other problem was the potential for corruption, editors wield enormous influence and so inevitably some were tempted by charging a market price for inclusion. Of course, these editors are in a minority and DMOZ always said it sought to weed out corrupt editors. But, if a site has such power, the temptation for using it for selfish ends is enormous.

I’m glad to see DMOZ is no longer of any importance or relevance. DMOZ can tell us many things.

The internet changes very quickly – What is an important SEO tactic one year, can become irrelevant the next.
Success on the internet is not about getting one arbitary link from an anonymous editor. Success comes from building readership and quality pages.
DMOZ rarely sent significant traffic. One way to value links is how many real visitors do they send?
Links from link Sites are always rather dubious. No one goes through web directories. Why bother, when it is much easier to search on google?
Who will want to be an editor at DMOZ now? If there is no personal gain, why spend hours going through sites (a lot of them probably spam) when nobody cares anymore.

DMOZ is on a downward slope and will soon be looked upon as a relic of the internet’s early days. ” I remember at the beginning of the internet – people used to think web directories were of value! ”

DMOZ will sink further into obscurity, but, nobody will miss it.

Postscript 

Dmoz temporarily dissappeared from Google searches, but, it ended up just being a result of a 301 redirect to the same page. See: DMOZ home page goes missing.

The interesting thing is how enthusiastic bloggers responded to the potential demise of DMOZ at Blogging Tips

Today, Darren Rowse offered a video about the unimportance of Page Rank

- I agree entirely, accept PR, is still of some importance when you’re trying to sell advertising.

• Unlike other blog directories the site is done as a blog, so the link back counts in the technorati rankings.
• Another good feature is that your most recent posts get featured on the home page and also the different sub categories, such as your location.
• By chance I found a useful blog entry looking through the internet section.
• If you have more than 1 blog, you can still submit them, you just need to use a different username.
• Nothing to lose, Free links.

How Blog Carnivals Work

1. Go to Blog Carnivals
   
2. Search for Blog Carnivals related to your Blog. You can go here to list of blog carnivals and browse by category. Alternatively, you can also use the search button for looking for your keywords.
3. After finding a suitable carnival you can submit relevant blog posts. Most ask for a short summary of your article.
4. If you don’t find a carnival relevant to your recent postings, it is worth writing articles with certain carnivals in mind.
5. If your blog post is useful it will get mentioned on the host carnival, creating a link to your site.

For a relatively short amount of work, you can gain inbound links from a relevant blog. I cannot see any downside to this at all. Obviously, the better the blog posts submitted the more success it will have.

If you want to target keywords in google, you can try to work these into your title, if appropriate. This will give the benefit of having a link with your preferred anchor text. However, it should fit into the general theme of the carnival, otherwise it will not work.

If you wish you could also host a blog carnival. This gives you:

• a link from blog carnival
• Increased exposure and traffic
• Chance for more links, as participants link back to the blog carnival.

If your content stands out as being particularly useful, then over time this will attract webmasters to link spontaneously. Ask yourself, “Is this content I would want to link to?”

2. High Traffic.

If your site is getting 1000s of visitors, you automatically increase the chance of gaining natural, organic links. Most really successful sites have a combination of high traffic and good content.

• The problem is to get high traffic, you need links, without links you can’t get high traffic. Therefore other strategies are also needed to get links.

3. Blog / Web Directories.

A good place to start off for one way inbound links. Some directories are selective, so make sure your blog is worth linking to. If a blog isn’t selective, I doubt the link will have much weight.

• Dmoz is less important, but it worth trying to get listed (don’t get mad if it takes 3 years though)

4. Ezines / Article Directories

These are websites that, if you submit an article, allow you to have a link to your website,. The ezine gets your free content and you get a link. On some ezines, you can also specify the anchor text in the link.

• This is a good strategy, especially in the beginning.
• However, be wary of giving too much of your unique content to ezines. For example, it might be appropriate to give no more than 25% of your articles to ezines for links.
• Save the best articles for your own site.
• It may be worth writing articles specifically for ezines so there is no duplication of content.
• Some ezines are better than others; some like ezinearticles actually give reasonable traffic – an added bonus.
• Also consider blogcritics.

5. Write to Other Webmasters.

If you come across a site that links to sites on your topic, it is worth writing to the webmaster to suggest your site.

• It is best not to directly ask for a link. Instead you could suggest the site as a resource, if you can show you have a genuine interest in the topic, and are not just a spammer, it will help a lot.
• For example, “You may be interested in this website / page”

6. Social Bookmarking sites – Digg / Reddit / Stumbleupon.

These sites have the potential to give 1000s of traffic, and from this traffic you will naturally get links. To do well on these sites you have to:

• Pitch your content to the audience. – some topics just don’t work on digg.
• Invest in becoming a real member of the community – most of the top diggers, won’t just promote their own sites.
• Be selective in what you submit. Only submit your best; this is often known as link bait.
• Stumbleupon offers a chance for less popular topics. In many ways this is my favourite.

7. Wikipedia.

A PR 9 site that is free to edit. It is hardly surprising webmasters have used wikipedia to get links. If you do use wikipedia for getting links bear in mind:

• The link must be useful and relevant, otherwise it will be removed in time.
• Don’t overdo it. If you add many links at once your site can be marked as spam.
• Don’t choose the most popular pages, which will have many people editing.
• Consider a link through being a reference to the article, rather than just “external link”

Overview: Only use for genuinely useful links and don’t be greedy. However, 1 or 2 links from wikipedia are worth getting.

8. Build New Websites.

This may seem extreme, but if you really want to get links you can build other sites, related to your original one. However it is worth bearing in mind.

• These sites need to be genuine, with unique content.
• Shell sites, just for the purpose of getting links will be marked as spam sites.
• Will be more beneficial if the site is on a different server. It looks as if it isn’t related.
• Bear in mind that it is time consuming to start a new site. To be honest I wouldn’t start a new site just for the purpose of linking to your site. However, if you want to start a new site, a useful side effect will be the potential of linking.

9. Link to Others.

Linking to others gets your site noticed, webmasters are more likely to link to you, if you link to them. Just don’t expect a recipricol link automatically.

10. Forums.

Joining a forum related to your site, enables you to get links to your site. However as usual it is best if you can become a genuine member and actually contribute to the forum.

11. Comments

leaving comments in blogs is creating a link. however, most blog comments have the “nofollow” tag. Therefore these links will be not followed by search engines. However, comments can still be a way to promote your blog. (if they are useful comments) If you use comments as a way to build web friendships, it may end in links overtime. Also some blogs don’t use the nofollow tag.

12. Reciprocol links.

Although they have gone out of fashion, the internet is really based on recipricol links. If the links are relevant and useful to your readers, reciprocal linking can be beneficial and worthwhile. however, don’t bother with huge long “link pages” that used to clutter up the internet.

13. Blog Partipation

Participate in blog participation programmes like Thursday Thirteen and Wordless Wednesday
14. Yahoo Answers

Answer a question at Yahoo Answers, and provide link to your site.

15. Squidoo

Build a page at Squidoo.

16. Look at Links to Other Sites.

Find out where your competitors get links from: If the sites give links to your competitor / related site, there is a good chance they will link to you. Check Backlinks

17. Blog Carnivals

See: Blog Carnivals

Other important link Tips.

• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, try to get a variety of link sources.
• Also vary your anchor text.
• Don’t just get links to homepage, deep link as well.
• Overall, try to make Links appear natural.

References

• 101 link tips
• link building

If you know of any other good link building tips, feel free to leave a comment.