Search Engine Marketing Blog

10 ways to cheat at link building. Quick, easy tips to get you and your new site going.

1. Directories - quick, easy, fast submissions. Usually free, sometimes a small fee. Links are usually set up in a timely fashion. Find suitable directories at the Open Directory.

2. Buy a Yahoo directory link.

3. Ask people you know - personal friends, family members, your kid’s school, your golf club, people you met on holiday - anyone you know who owns, or knows someone who owns, a site.

4. Arrange with your business partners to do a Partners page - you normally refer them to customers so why not refer them on your site and get them to refer you by linking to you.

5. Ask satisfied business customers for an endorsement. You add their testimonial on your site with a link to theirs and they add you as a preferred supplier on their site with a link to yours.

6. Don’t have a news page, have a blog instead. Just for having a blog you qualify for links a normal site can’t get - there’s a whole Dmoz section devoted to weblogs not to mention all the blog specific directories. Use the blog for posting news, press releases, product recalls, job openings, sponsorships, and so on. If you post something that’s actually interesting to someone you’ll get links without having to ask. Blogging software is like a free, easy to install content management system that can be administered by just about anyone who can type and you don’t have to give them access to the rest of your site.

7. Put up a “Link to Me” sign on your site with code for a professional looking button that people can simply cut and paste into their own site’s code.

8. Offer a “Listed On” or award button link for any site that qualifies. Believe it or not sites are still willing to stick an award or “Listed On” button link on their site.

9. Every time you do a press release make sure it carries your website address and is distributed to the online press release services.

10. Let other sites use your content providing they link back to your site. White papers, studies, surveys, research, product recall notices, tips, articles, jokes, anything that you post on your site that other sites may wish to use. Stick a politely worded permission note on the bottom of the content page letting other site owners know they are welcome to use the material - all you ask is that they credit the content to you using a direct link.

Ok, so there is no completely lazy way of getting links. Didn’t your Daddy ever tell you that anything worth doing is worth doing well?

Be number 1 on Google for a term the author is looking to write about.

I’m not kidding. Everyone, despite knowing better, uses Google as a reference tool. The number of authoritative websites that reference our sites without us ever having asked is amazing. The only reason they do so is because they do a search on Google for a topic they are writing about and there’s our little site minding its own business.

Obviously, having a professional and “correct” design seals the deal. Even if you’re number 1 for “ancient Egyptian artifacts” you’re not going to be referenced unless your site looks the part.

So the formula for gaining authoritative links without ever asking is:

Great content on a very specific subject X the right design

I have to stress here that the design is very, very important. It doesn’t have to be swish, flash, swirling or otherwise gorgeous - it does however have to be exactly what the searcher would expect a site on that topic to look like. But that’s a whole different post.

Have the right design, get to the top and get referenced!

I just got this link request to my hotmail account. Assuming it was for www.semguide.com I opened it only to find it was actually a link request to hotmail.com. The idiots hadn’t even bothered to sort out their automation and instead of asking for a link on semguide.com they simply pulled the domain my email address was on, in this case hotmail. Oh, and notice the lovely misspellings and odd grammar.

HORRID LINK REQUEST EMAIL BEGINS

Subject : Link Proposition

Hi

Hope you are doing fine.

This email comes in as a link conjuction proposition which might interest you as your website ( http://www.hotmail.com ) is related to oour industry vertical or its niche.

If you feel that confederating with our website would be a profitable option for you to pursue, please go ahead and place our link on your website ( http://www.hotmail.com ) using any of the following information:

Option 1:
http://www.removed
Title: Website Development
Description: REMOVED.

Option2:
http://www.removed
Title: Web Development
Description: REMOVED

Option3:
http://www.removed
Title: PHP Development
Description: REMOVED

Option4:
http://www.removed
Title: ColdFusion Development
Description: REMOVED

Kindly place our link and let me know the location.

Look forward to hear from you with a positive response.

Kind Regards

Name removed
http://www.removed

Note: Please accept my apologies if I have offended you by sending a link request email. If you do not wish to receive any emails from me, please let me know.

END OF HORRID LINK REQUEST EMAIL

Apologies accepted but there is no way you’re getting a reply from me.

Seriously people, don’t be so lazy! If you want a link, take the time to write the email yourself!

A lot has been, and is still being, said about reciprocal linking - that you should do it, shouldn’t do it, it’ll kill your site, rob your family, give you cancer, make you rich and so many other rubbish absolutisms.

The reality is that reciprocal linking is the same as any other form of linking - it works or it doesn’t depending on what site is linking to you, where they’re linking from and how the link is placed within the context of the particular page it’s on.

And you can forget PR (page rank) right now. Just forget it. OK, I admit that’s impossible. But at least you can try to ignore it a bit. PR is not the important factor in whether or not you should ask for or accept a link exchange with another site.

I have been doing link building since long, long before SEO even had a name much less an anacranym and link building as a term hasn’t yet been coined. And I know for a fact that some reciprocal link building yields traffic and even sales (or sign ups, downloads, whatever the desired action might be) but they have to be the right reciprocal links.

So which reciprocal links are worthwhile?

• Links on extremely relevant sites/pages. Links for a casino site on a Stanford university student’s page is not relevant.
• Links that are placed so as to be noticeable - links and resource pages are fine provided your link isn’t buried amidst 50 other links. If it’s 1 of 10 and they are all totally on topic you’re in for some good click throughs.
• Button links, banner links, well worded text links, links that stand out in some way and scream “Click ME”. (Note that they have to be static, html links, not plagued by nofollow, rotating banners or tracked by javascript else search engines can’t credit them as a link to your site.)
• Links that are accompanied by relevant text such as a full description of your site or better yet the site owner uses your link within his page text as a noteworthy place to get more relevant information from and so on.
• Links that are the cited as THE information source for something or other: “For more information on blue alligators visit the blue alligator site”. It doesn’t really matter what it is so long as your site actually has that information and it is the one cited as the chosen reference.

Technical things to watch out for when exchanging links include:

• nofollow tags in either the header code or the actual link code itself
• javascript redirects which can take quite a few forms
• other forms of redirected links
• links being placed on a page that is listed in the site’s robots.txt as Disallow - meaning search engines are banned from spidering that page
• links on pages that are buried inside a frame or iframe - both of which are accessible to search engines but more difficult for them to get to than a standard page
• flash links - again, Google can index them but you can’t be sure it will

If you are in doubt simply ask politely for a good old fashioned static html link. If they ask you what you mean send them the list above stating that those are what you don’t want.

You are after traffic but you also need the search engines to index the link to your site and credit it to your site’s link popularity. Why shouldn’t you have the best of both worlds?

Happy link building!