Effective Free Link Building Strategies

Backlinks are one of the most important factors to consider when you are trying to get a good rank in search engines for your blog or website. Backlinks are often called Seo fuel and they are the most important off site optimization methods. In this article I will tell you some effective methods which can be used to build backlinks fast and easy.

Content

If you have unique and quality content then people will probably link to you. If you are looking for websites related to Technology News, the first web site that probably comes into our mind is Techcrunch. Almost every Tech websites links to Techcrunch why is that? The answer is simple, because Techcrunch delivers quality and unique content. The TechCrunch website has a massive amount of content published on an hourly and daily basis.

Commenting

Leaving comments on relevant blogs could get few backlinks but don’t leave spammy comments or the moderator will delete it and you will be banned from leaving future comments. Instead leave thoughtful and meaningful comment. Not only will this contribute to the overall blog experience, but it will also help in getting people to read your comment, thus encouraging them to visit your site.

There is also a wordpress plugin called comment luv which automatically places a link to the commentators last blog post. Many blogs are currently using this plugin to increase comment activity. All you have to do is look for blogs with comment luv plugin and leave meaningful comments. Personally I don’t use this method because it’s very time taking and instead I invest time in making quality content for my guest posts.

Link Exchange

Exchanging links is one of the most common methods to gain backlinks. While link exchanges are beneficial, search engines pay more attention to one way links. Another alternative is to do a three way link exchange which is more beneficial and the most importantly search engine gives more importance to it rather then a reciprocal link.

A Word on Do follow

If a blog has a “no follow” attribute, it means that search engines will not follow the links off this individual site, which means that even if you manage to get backlinks from a website/blog, you won’t receive any link juice. Search for the websites with Do follow attribute and ask them for a link exchange instead. There is a Firefox Addon called Do follow 1.1 which tells you what links are Do Follow or no Follow.

Buying Links

If you are too busy to invest the necessary time and effort to build quality backlinks, there are many services out there that can provide the service for a price. One of the popular place to buy backlinks is Text Link Ads where you can find tons of websites selling links, though these types of methods are usually frowned upon by search engines.

Guest Posts

Writing guest posts on website and blogs can gain a lot of quality backlinks, and most importantly, they are free. All you need to do is to find a good website related to your niche and send a quality guest post. Some blogs offer a single backlink if their page rank is very high and while other blogs with lower page rank may offer two or more backlinks. If you have not written any guest posts as of yet, and are writing first time I suggest you go after smaller blogs rather than the larger blogs because they may be more accepting of your post. However, in the end it comes down to the quality of your guest post content.

Article Marketing

There is no doubt that article marketing is one of the most effective ways to get one way backlinks. Article marketing is just like a free advertisement that’s lasts for life time. The easiest way to get started is by submitting original content to article marketing directories, which I have listed below. Many of these article directories have very high page rank and alexa rankings, which may cause your articles to rank very high in the search results.

EzineArticles.com
GoArticles.com
ArticleDashboard.com
SearchWarp.com
ArticlesBase.com
iSnare.com
selfGrowth.com
Buzzle.com
ArticleCity.com
IdeaMarketers.com
ArticleAlley.com
Web-Source.net
SelfSEO.com

Top Commenter

There are lots of blogs using the Top Commentator widget and if you are one of the top commentators you will get a backlink from all pages on the blog, or how many pages are displaying the widget. High PR websites such as Quicksprout.com and Johnchow.com also use these kinds of widgets.

What are your preferred methods for free link building? Please leave a comment with your resources, comments and experience.

This guest post was written by Rafay Baloch, an Ethical hacker, Web entrepreneur and Internet marketer blogs at Techlotips and also the author of the book A Beginners Guide To Ethical Hacking.

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5 Lessons I learned from Writing Almost 300 Guest Posts in One Year

I started blogging in January of 2010, and I’ve decided to give what it takes to make my blog successful. This great desire and determination of mine has led me to do a lot of things, some quite surprising, which includes writing almost 300 guest posts in one year. After writing tons of guest posts I’ve learned a lot of lessons, and I wanted to share them with you.

1. Having Goals Matter

You probably have heard many bloggers say that having goals is critical to succeeding as a blogger; this same principle applies to guest blogging.

When I started guest blogging, I used the work hard approach instead of the work smart approach, I didn’t have a specific goal in mind and this led me to writing so many guest posts without tracking the results, it was after I have written so many guest posts that I discovered I’m not getting results.

Right from the onset, make sure you know what your purpose for guest blogging is because it will determine your approach. If your purpose for guest posting is to improve your search engine rankings your approach will be different from that of someone who wants to increase his/her blog subscribers.

2. Quality Beats Quantity

I wouldn’t have agreed with the above statement when I was still new to guest blogging, no wonder they say “experience is the best teacher”.

There were days I wrote as much as 6 guest posts and I write guest posts almost every day of the week, my main aim was to get my guest posts published on many blogs, which led to the quality of my guest posts suffering. I submitted most of these guest posts to small blogs and they ended up sending me very little traffic, some blogs didn’t even send me any traffic.

I didn’t discover the truth until one day, my guest post was published on an A-list blog which sent me thousands of visitors; it was then that I realized that quality beats quantity.

The bitter guest blogging truth many people might not want to hear is this, “submitting 5 guest posts to 5 “big” A-list blogs is better than submitting 100 guest posts to smaller blogs”. Most A-list blogs will send you thousands of visitors depending on the quality of your guest post while the majority of the small blogs will send you very little traffic, if at all.

3. Your Guest Post Will Determine How Much Traffic You Will Get

From my experience with telling people the benefits of guest blogging I’ve seen a lot of people who believe that writing valuable posts for other people’s blogs is a waste of time. They believe it’s better to have all their best posts on their blogs only.

The truth is, if you write an exceptional post on your blog it can go viral, but as far as blogs with little traffic are concerned, luck plays a very large role,

In order to get good results from your posts you must have a big audience, and one great way to do this is by writing for other, larger blogs. A guest post on a big blog can send you far more traffic than you’ll ever get in a week, no matter how great you think your blog posts are.

Another thing is that many people make a mistake of writing low quality guest posts for other blogs, as this ends up affecting them because it is either rejected or it underperforms on the blog they submit it to.

The better your guest post, the more traffic you get – and this factor might be even more important than the size of the blog you as publishing your post on.

4. It is Very Important to Work on Sustaining Your Traffic

When I wrote a guest post for an A-list blog that sent me thousands of visitors, I was so happy and I began to think I would be getting so many visitors from that period onward. How mistaken I was. A lot of factors will determine the percentage of visitors you’ll be able to sustain from your guest posts, some of these factors include the quality of your own content, your domain name and your design/user experience.

It is very important to work on getting as many visitors from your guest posts to subscribe to your blog because that is the best way to keep them returning over and over again.

5. Rejection Is Inevitable

One thing many people are afraid when they consider guest blogging is rejection. They wonder what will happen if the other person doesn’t like their posts. That is a pretty good question, but you should also know that being rejected is not the end of the world – as long as you will be guest posting you should always be prepared for rejection. What matters most is not the rejection but how you deal with it.

If a blogger rejects your guest post, try to face the reality and find out what can be responsible for your guest post being rejected. It can be because of your guest post’s quality, it can be because of too much grammar errors and it can be because your guest post is not in line with the style of that blog. If you can’t figure out what is responsible for your guest post being rejected try to get in touch with the blogger and ask him/her politely to tell you why your guest post was rejected so that you can improve on it in the future.

Share Your Thoughts

What do you think about guest blogging? If you were to start guest posting again what would you do differently? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

About the Author: Onibalusi Bamidele is a 16 year old entrepreneur and founder of YoungPrePro, a site with practical tips on achieving online success.

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Blogosphere Trends + Guest Posting

This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world’s best blog posts). – Darren

While Darren and his family are on a well-deserved holiday, he has lined up enough pre-written content and guest posts to keep ProBlogger readers supplied with plenty of quality reading in his absence. So it makes sense that, this week, we’ll be focusing on the art of the guest post. The most important thing to remember is that guest posts are a win-win situation for the host blog and guest blogger. Keeping that in mind as you send pitches (or review incoming pitches) will take you far.

Regator has, as always, provided a list of the ten most blogged-about stories of the last seven days, and we’ll use posts about those hot trends to learn about what makes a great guest post:

1. Iraq
Example: A Traveler’s Library’s “Baghdad in War Time”
Example: Watts Up With That?’s “Stop the Hysteria”
Lesson: Stirring controversy in a guest post is risky business, particularly if the host blogger disagrees or the comments get out of hand. As Chris Garrett said in a ProBlogger guest post from 2008: “If you are going to be snarky, damage your own brand.” This example, however, is opinionated but clearly backs up the host blogger’s opinion. You’ll need a pretty good sense of his or her ideologies before you can do that though, so understand where you stand before you take the plunge. As always, be sure to take the blog’s tone into account. Darren has fostered a positive, helpful vibe here on ProBlogger so my posts are still very “me,” but tend to be a bit less snarky and opinionated than posts I might do elsewhere.

10. Oil Spill
Example: Naked Capitalism’s “Guest Post: Scientists Say Dispersants May Delay Recovery of the Gulf By Years … Or Decades”
Lesson: In addition to building your reputation and expanding your audience, getting backlinks is one of the main reasons many choose to guest post. This example shows subtle promotion. Don’t go overboard and make the entire guest post about you and your brand. It’s content, not an ad.

Do you accept guest posts? What advice would you give those who wanted to guest on your blog?

For further reading on ProBlogger, check out:

• “How to Guest Post to Promote Your Blog”
• “How to Maximize the Benefits of Guest Posting”
• “Finding New Readers for Your Blog With Guest Posting”
• “9 Ways to Become and Exceptional Guest Poster”
• “How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially”
• “How NOT To Get A Guest Post Published On A Blog”

Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator.

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