Which Link Building Methods Work Best?
This is a question that is really almost impossible to answer. Link building is an essential part of any SEO program (but not the ONLY part) but what could be considered a good technique today may not be as effective tomorrow. Directories are a good example.
Directories have always been promoted as great link building opportunities. Today, unless it is a really good quality directory then the value of the link is not as high as it used to be. Social bookmarking replaced directories as the bee’s knees of link building but that too is starting to lose its shine as thousands of mini social bookmarking sites arrive on the scene.
There are, however, several methods that still work and still work reasonably well.
Quality Content: There is no getting away from the basics. Provide quality content and others will link to it. Link bait articles can be effective as well.
Article Marketing: This has the benefit of providing links and traffic. The web is built on information, provide good quality articles to article directories, other sites (in the form of guest articles) and on social media sites such as Squidoo and Hubpages. Squidoo can be used to create mini sites and can be effective at delivering quality traffic.
Directory Listings: You can still gain quality links from directories but only if they are quality directories to begin with. Niche and geographical directories can also be valuable.
Social Bookmarking: Links from social bookmarking sites have more value if the bookmark is posted by visitors to your site. Display bookmark links and buttons prominently on your site to encourage bookmarking by your visitors.
Profiles: Rather than depending on bookmarking alone, be sure to have well planned profiles on as many social sites as possible. Many of these sites allow dofollow links back to a web site.
Other forms of link building can be effective and range from the simple ‘ask for a link’ through to press releases. You can also use social media giants like Facebook and YouTube – create effective videos and save them to YouTube and place feeds of your content on Facebook.
It should be remembered that search engines are constantly changing their algorithms. What works today may not work tomorrow. By utilizing each of the methods shown, you will have a broad cross section of inbound links. This is much better than just concentrating on the one method of link building especially if that method falls from grace in the future. Just remember – quality may be important and quantity may be important but diversity provides security.
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