What are your best link building techniques?

Please share your best link building methods.  What do you find works well and are there certain types of sites that you find are easier to gain links for?

Hey John,

If you sell products or services, there is one technique that I learned of that I think it pretty interesting and solid as a way to find and get incoming links. The basic premise of the technique is, using the search engines, find sites that used to offer products and services but no longer do. Obviously this would vary depending on what you are selling, but in general it can be a great way to capitalize on these sites in two ways.

1. You can contact the site owner and ask them if they would be interested in putting a link to your service (since you now offer it and they no longer do) on the page that no longer offers the service.
2. You can analyze that site and see what links it has for that particular service or product and contact them using the fact that this site no longer has an active service as a way to make your offer of a link more attractive.

You can find a bunch of sites like this simply by doing some clever searching like "xx product no longer available" "xx service no longer available" etc. The full post on this topic can be found here.

I also find that using things like twitter, pownce, blogging, facebook and other social apps help in your goal to build links. Every website/business should have a twitter account that is updated frequently with relevant topics and information about their business and linking to their site. Same thign with the other social applications. The distinction here though is not to spam out your links, use these applications as they were intended. Provide valuable posts and information, not only will it help build links, but it may be more likely that others are willing to help you out if you are legit and providing value.

A good link building technique is to find sites linking to your competitors.  So, using the search parameter  link:http://www.domain.com  will help you find the links pointing to that particular site and there may be a chance of you obtaining a link from those sites as well.   Like Julia said things like twitter and digg are very lucrative.

Not only can you rank better for a specific term, but there is the chance of the links gained through sites like blogspot, gather, etc... will also rank and push down your competitors while still ultimately pointing to you.

There are also paid services out there that you could utilize.  Some think that this is risky because Google frowns on paid links, but I think it is safer than some would think.  Some link placement could be legitimate ad buys and the website hosting the ad may not worry / participate / know about link building tactics and in turn that link gives you strength by not being nofollowed or masked in some way.  So I find it hard to believe that Google would penalize someone in this case.  And to determine this for every site across the internet is such a beast of a task I believe there is not too much to worry about for quite some time.

Just don't participate in obviously dubious linking campaigns!

Linking is one of the most important components of increasing traffic to your web site. Here are 8 simple methods to get links to your site:

1. Links are a contract term: Any time you sign a contract with a new business partner, include in the agreement a requirement that they must link to your site.

2. Web based PR: Promote your site using conventional PR! We like to use PRWeb because they are inexpensive, and offer great access to news directories, as well as conventional magazine editors.

3. Use URL Wire to launch a site: Eric Ward's URL Wire is a great way to announce the launch of a new site.

4. Start a Blog: Blogs are a great way to recruit links. Be careful though. Keep the commerciality low. Also, make sure you learn how to use tags, and plug it into Technorati. You can read our article on Blogging SEO tactics for more information.

5. Ask Visitors to the Site to Link to you: Keep it reasonable. Don't bury them with the "link to us" message. But if they want to give you a link, make it easy.
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Gwenstefni

Gwen,

Those are simple yet great tips for anyone looking to build their links. You have a few interesting suggestions that I don't think most people readily think about. Adding a link back as a contract term for a business partner is something I never really thought about. Good post! Thanks for the tips.

Julia

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I don’t believe in adopting one SEO link building practice for longer period. I select the sites seeing their PR and relevancy to our product. Reciprocal links or two way links are better than one side links. I prefer to place my links on do-follow blogs.

In my view best link building is one way link building..its more effective than reciprocal link building..

'I don’t believe in adopting one SEO link building practice for longer period. I select the sites seeing their PR and relevancy to our product. Reciprocal links or two way links are better than one side links. I prefer to place my links on do-follow blogs.'

I don't want to sound rude but what search engine are you targeting? I don't think you'll find any credible SEO's that will agree with the second part of your statement. I hope others viewing this forum topic don't read this and follow the suggestion. It is definitely not better to obtain reciprocal or two way links as opposed to one way links. Additionally, at this point, the value of a link from a do-follow blog is diminished significantly from what it was a year or two ago...

Use the blog search capability of Google to search for related blogs and post comments with an url linking back to your offerings. Remember  that your post needs to be genuinely helpful to the readers of the blogsite.

Use Twitter.com. Because Twitter is the best social networking and social booking websites. But you have to use it daily otherwise it will not give u any benefit.