8 Proven Link Building Techniques

Every website owner knows there is no question about it, the more links to their sites, the higher their rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN will be. Here are eight ways site owners can get those links.

1. Requesting links: it’s time consuming but it does work. If you have a site with good content, you may be able to get some one-way links. Generally, however, you will need to reciprocate.

2. Submitting your site to directories can result in your obtaining a lot of links in a relatively brief period of time. If you can get listed in dmoz.org, you may get an immediate rank boost. No other free directory is as important, but those with high Google PR, like the-big-brain, will also help your site.

3. All website owners should write and/or buy brief articles and submit them to article distribution websites. Each article should include an author biography (with your name and website URL), that will be run with the article. That way, every website that uses the artcle will generate a link. It is not uncommon for a single article to be picked up by 500 websites, thereby generating 500 links for the author’s website.

4. Press releases: you can write your own news releases or pay to have them written for you. Either way, be sure they include links to your websites. There are services that will send out your press releases to a few news outlets for free, or numerous outlets for a fee.

5. Unlike the other kind of writing which can generate links, blogging is very simple because you can write about nearly anything related to your website, and good blog posts need not be very long. All webmasters should have at least one blog, write a minimum of one post a week, and link from the blog(s) to their website(s). In addition to short articles, many bloggers post link exchange offers.

6. Many website owners have picked up lots of links from their listings on Facebook and similar sites.

7. Offer well written, informative articles to selected bloggers. By including an author’s box, as you would with any other kind of article, it is possible to pick up dozens of links on sites (blogs) likely to be read by people likely to be interested in your website.

8. Useful, relevant posts in guestbooks and on forums and blogs, with your URL in your signature, can produce many links with little effort. But, do not spam. Post only when you really have something of value to say.

Note that buying links has not been listed; and for good reason. Google and the other search engines discourage link buying and many search engine optimization professionals believe that webmasters who buy links may be subject to search engine penalties. The eight link building suggestions above are effective, and will not earn webmasters the wrath of the search engines.