Link Building ~ I’m finally starting to get it.
It appears link building is the key to getting ranked for your chosen keywords in google. I have come to this conclusion from reading tons and tons online about setting up niche sites and getting traffic to these sites without having to keep updating them over and over.
I have done some link building in the past. It was mostly easy links from social bookmarking, or linking from my squidoo sites etc. With the new information I’ve read I’ve decided to go full tilt at this link building stuff for my new niche sites.
I have set up my marketing plan based on the 5 Bucks a Day plan. This means I am doing a new niche site each week. I set up the site and content on Monday, and then spend the rest of the week building links. I finally figured out how to tell how many links the top competing sites have. Google your keyword. Take the url from the top site, and then put in google’s search box link:yourcompetingsiteurl. Don’t use the http or the www, just the keyword.com. This will show you how many links the sites you are competing against have, as well as how many you need to get to overcome them!
I have subscribed to an article distribution service to help me build backlinks. It was not the one I really wanted to use, but it was a bit more affordable at this stage, so I’m giving it a go for the next three months. My opinion is still out on this service. It seems a little slow to get things distributed, but if it does what it’s supposed to once it gets going it should be very helpful. I’ll let you know more as time goes on.
I know there are some basic ways to build links and I have been brainstorming some other ways as well. I think I have come up with some interesting ways to build some links, so I’m going to share them with you.
Free Link Building Ideas
Article Marketing ~ add your link with keyword anchor text in your resource box
Forum Posts ~ add your link with keyword anchor text in your sig file
Blog Comments ~ keyword in the “name” area, and then your url. (will create a hot link with anchor text)
Comments at Ezine Articles ~ this one just occurred to me recently. I checked the source code and they do not appear to use the “no follow” attribute, so google should count these links. You may even get traffic from these too. I just enter my main keyword, and add a relevant comment to the article. I use this like I would a blog comment with my keyword in the name area and then my url. You have to wait for EZA to approve your comment, but it’s worth it.
Set up Google Alert for keywords ~ each time I set up a new site I also set up a google alert for the keyword. I only choose to get alerts from blogs. Now each time someone posts a blog on my keyword I know about it and can get over there and add a comment.
Build free Blogs ~ Build a blog at wordpress.com, blogger, tumblr or wherever. You can do this blog on a related topic and add your site in the blogroll. This will give you a link for each page you publish on this blog. I use PLR for these blogs, and just change up the articles a little bit so they are more original. You can also add links within the articles to your blog for added links.
I didn’t build these blogs expecting to get traffic from them, but I quickly started receiving traffic via the wordpress search function. So make sure your content is at least decent and you may find yourself getting more traffic as well as backlinks.
Hubpages and Squidoo ~ build pages at both of these free sites. Make sure to add a link to your site using keywords as your anchor text. At squidoo you can also add a link to your product or service you are promoting. Depending on how you want to use Hubpages I would be careful adding links to affiliate products over there. I just use hubpages as a way to get one more link from a quality source to my new niche site.
Myspace ~ set up a myspace profile and only add friends that are related to your niche site. You can quickly and easily do this with myspace friend adder software like Friend Blaster Pro. You can then use any/all the article you have written for your site and/or blogs as bulletins to send to your friends list or on your myspace blog. This will get you nice backlinks as well as targeted traffic.
Zimbio ~ this site is new to me. I have used it for my squidoo lenses, by adding my lensmaster RSS feed url from Squid Utils it will post each new lens I write on Zimbio. You can do this with the RSS feeds for each of your sites, including your main niche site, as well as any free blogs you set up. Make sure to do this first so it will catch all your articles as you put them up.
Directory Submission ~ there are tons of directories you can add your site url to. Here’s a great list of directories you can get started with. (this site also has a huge list of social bookmarking sites and article directories) I set the timer for 30 minutes and just go as fast as I can submitting. I do this at least once a day for 30 minutes.
Wis.dm ~ A fun little site where you can ask a question. There is space for you to submit a url where people can find the answer. Just think of a question that relates to your niche and then add your site url in the space provided.
Twitter ~ not sure how good this is for backlinks, but if you have some people following you, it might be worth sending a quick tweet about your new site. You might just mention you found a cool site etc, so as not to give away all your niches 
Here’s even more great ideas about how to build backlinks.
If you want to take things to the next level there are also services you can join to build links. I have not joined any of the slink building membership sites as of yet. If I decide to do it, I’ll let you know how it goes. If you are currently using a link building site, leave a comment and let me know about it.
That’s all for today, it should keep you busy though! I keep remembering this comment from Court’s Internet Marketing School Blog. He talked about how you should be spending 90% of your time building links. When I thought about how much time I was spending in this area it was probably about .5%. Stay focused, and set up a system for yourself and you too can build tons of great backlinks.
Need some help getting started? Wherever you are I can probably help. Whether it's Squidoo, niche blogs, or an authority blog, one on one help is available!!
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Thank you for a great article. It’s very informative. I have done link building for my company’s website too so I read many articles available online that provided the information about link building methods. So I was aware of some of the tips you described. But most of your ideas are new to me. I’m glad I found your article and read it.
Great article. As for finding your competitor’s backlinks, etc. I recommend SEO for firefox plugin, it lists it automatically a click away on each site.
Kyle
Thanks Kyle,
Is that a plugin for Firefox? or wordpress? I’ll have to take a look for it.
@ Julia, glad you found it informative. I also have t he Blog Finder software, and forget to use it. I will pull it out and set it up again. It’s really easy to use and a great way to get relevant blogs.
Jackie
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Great article. As for finding your competitor’s backlinks, etc. I recommend SEO for firefox plugin, it lists it automatically a click away on each site.I was aware of some of the tips you described. But most of your ideas are new to me.
A great informative article.YThanks forwealth of information.
For Jackie- yes, there is an seo tool by Mozilla for Firefox called SEOQUAKE.
Jackie,
Outstanding article and tons of valuable information here. I appreciate you for providing so much value here! Thanks again.
Dali Burgado
Another Internet Marketing Mommy
Hey – this is a great list! There’s a couple on there I haven’t heard of yet, so I’ll be checking them out. Thanks!
I have been following a number of experts on link building techniques and this is by far one of the better ones. I was unfamiliar with Google Alerts. I am already forming thoughts on how this can contribute to my link building efforts. Thanks.
Thanks for the advice on a place to start from. I’m getting overwhelmed with trying to drive traffic to my sites. Your list is going to get me going, I hope!
Really a powerful method in getting audience. Write a good article based on your niche topic and submit it in article directories. Just go to google or yahoo and search for “free article directories”.
Thank you for the excellent article—- Free Link Building Ideas.
Jackie,
Continuing to make new Squidoo lenses each day, up to 7 new ones with a Wordpress Christmas blog on Wordpress Direct. I couldn’t believe that when I put up the Wordpress Direct blog, I had 23 unique visitors with a couple of hours! Whoa – you were soo right!
I also went through Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge and he suggested we get Traffic Bug which automatically submits all of your urls to hundreds of directories and social networking sites. I love it.
Thanks for all your help and inspiration!!!!
Kristie
A Southern Gal
Jackie – what great information. The only thing is, when I click on
list of directories under directory submission I’m getting a “file not found on server, 404 error”. Can you help? I am anxious to try out your techniques – thank you so much for sharing.
Huh, the site I linked to must have taken down the post. If you google web directory list you’ll find plenty of lists.
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Hi Jackie~ GREAT article. Thank you for all the backlinking helps. I did have one question…I could not get the link to your list of directories to come up. Can you post that again. I like your idea of setting the timer for 30 minutes and submitting to as many as you can in that timeframe.
IF you read my comment directly above yours you’ll find the answer.
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Hi Jackie,
Thanks for the info on the backlinks. Made it to #1 on google today. Don’t know how long I’ll stay, but have to work to stay there. I now realize google really takes their time and backlink results are not over night, mine took weeks.
Thanks again
Congrats! Yes, it can be a waiting game for them to do their thing, but if you keep taking action it will work!
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Hi, Nice article.
I have a question for you on linking and indexing.
I have been trying for ever and a day to get lenses indexed at Squidoo. I have put out articles pointing to them, the lenses, but the articles are indexed in a few hours while days and days go buy and the lenses do not index. I ping them and ping them and add content and ping them. I bookmark them and on and on. I am at a loss as to the problem.
Do you have any idea what gives?
Thanks.
Kathy
Follow me @KatEaster on Twitter!
Not sure what the problem is. Do they finally get indexed? Sometimes it just takes a while, but if you’ve linked to it, it will eventually be indexed. Meanwhile your ezine article is driving traffic to it.
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!