Any SEO campaign is simply impossible without a strong link building tactic. When you think about the structure of a successful optimization strategy, link building is the backbone of it. Here is the second part of my article on 12 Effective Ways to Build Quality Inbound Links to Your Website.
1. Participate in forums and discussion groups
Most forums out there allow you to include a link to your site in your signature, giving you another effective way to build links. Just make sure you don’t make the same mistake many website promoters seem to fall into: don’t post just to get a link. This means that you don’t just jump into every single thread with a “Me too” post or start tons of “Hey guys check out my cute website” topics in every forum you come across.
Try to focus on the forums where you can get valuable information and give back to the community. Answer questions, share some interesting and useful information. That way, the links you put in your sigs not only stick there and give you a pure SEO effect (which is rather small), but you also see a significant flow of traffic and if your site is as valuable as your forum post , people will end up linking to your site.
2. Create great content and let people know about it
I’m sure you’ve seen this link building tip countless times. However, many people who support it stop halfway through telling you to create outstanding content. But that’s only part of the job, and while it’s the main part, you need to get your work known. Once you’ve written a great blog post or article on a topic that you think will resonate with people and get them interested, you need to tell the world about it.
Go to blogs and websites with similar or related posts and say how you agree, disagree, or complement the points made there in your article. Whenever someone asks a question that your blog post answers, provide a short summary answer and leave a link. Submit your story to social bookmarking sites and if your content is really valuable, people will notice and link to it.
3. Fix existing links
Some websites may link to pages on your website that do not exist. You can find these links using Google Webmaster Tools and ask the people linking to you to change the anchor URLs to the actual pages on your site or to redirect the links. This not only gives you credit for the links from the search engines, but also unlocks the visitors who were directed to 404 error pages instead of your website.
4. Exchange Links
This is the tried and tested method of building links to your website. Find relevant websites that are indexed and (preferably) well ranked by the search engines and offer them to exchange links with you. Sounds easy doesn’t it? However, not only do you need to get reciprocal links, but you also need to make sure they stay in place, which is a very time-consuming task. Good news, you can save a lot of time finding link partners and maintaining your links by using quality link building tools.
5. Hold competitions
People get excited about contests in every way we can: we love entering them, we love winning them, and we love telling others what linking them means online. Think of a contest you’d like to enter and create one. If it resonates with more of us, you’ll get lots of quality links.
6. Giving away freebies
Yes, we like stuff, especially we like free stuff. If you have something to give away, whether it’s a product, a free WordPress template, or just valuable information, just share it and the links will follow.
7. Think one step ahead
In every industry there are certain events that take place regularly and attract a lot of attention. Prepare for these events in advance and start covering them on your website or blog before everyone else does. That way, interested prospects will come to your site early and many people will be the first to link to you providing information on the topic.
I hope these techniques work for you and help you get higher search engine rankings. Learn more about link building to ensure strong and lasting SEO success for your website.
Source by Jon Sparks
