Coming up with effective link building tactics that both humans and search engines love
"You gotta develop effective link building strategies for your website or blog to rank high in search engines."
How many times have you heard that? Too many right?
Now if you're new to link building, you might not know why creating backlinks is crucial for online success. No problem. I wrote this article series with newbies in mind too.
So if you're not entirely sure what all this link building talk is about, go to this page here to first learn what backlinks are and why they're important. Then, come back to this page and continue reading.
So what are some effective link building tactics that you can implement that are still relevant today, even Post Penguin?
In a Post Penguin world, you want to keep it real as much as possible. (Not that it was very different before, but it seems that lots of people seem to have forgotten this.) Believe it or not, there are still lots of ways that you can go about getting inbound links without getting busted by Google.
In this article, I cover two tactics that will help you create backlinks that are valued by search engines and users alike!
Remember that not all inbound links are created equal.
In an ideal world, you want to secure as many high quality do follow links as possible. Having said that though, don't go searching for do follow links only. Why? Because if you're just getting do follow links your link profile will look unnatural. Diversification is the name of the game here.
Your link profile will probably end up having a mix of no follow and do follow links and a combo of medium to high quality links. Hopefully the largest percentage of your links will be high quality.
Effective Link Building Strategies: What type of links should you primarily be aiming for when looking to create backlinks?
.Gov and .Edu Sites
A link from a .Gov or .Edu site is considered to be the holy grail of all backlinks! These types of websites will often have a high page rank, are authoritative and have thousands of people linking to them.
As you might have guessed though, getting backlinks from these sites is often the hardest of all!
My tip for you? If you’re trying to get a .Gov or .Edu link to your website, make sure that you don’t have any form of advertising on it (such as Adsense, etc) and that the page is not too salesy. This will improve your chances of securing that link.
Another thing that you can do is to check whether they have a resources section and gauge whether your website can genuinely be a valuable resource to their readers.
If you think that your website can really add value to their resource section, send them a short email to introduce yourself and your website, give them a short overview of what your website is about and ask them to consider adding your site to their list of resources.
Link Baiting
Link Baiting is a great way to increase backlinks. When done right, this technique may very well skyrocket your number of inbound links.
When it comes to getting backlinks naturally, it’s all about creating great content. Link baiting is a technique that motivates and pushes the visitor further to link to your website. This is why it's such an effective link building tactic!
Some link baiting techniques that are highly popular and as a result get linked to a lot are the following ...
- Lists. It seems that people can't get enough of lists, and although this technique has been around for ages, it's still very effective. So let's say your website is about honeymoons, create a page about the Top 10 Honeymoon Destinations.
- How to pages also have a tendency to get linked to a lot because people love to share stuff that they think their friends, colleagues and peers will find useful.
- Controversial posts are also usually very popular and can go viral immediately if the issue being covered is a really hot one. A word of caution on this though. You don’t want to have all your blog posts or web pages covering controversial issues. I recommend that you use this technique sparingly.
- Humor can play an important role too when trying to create a link bait. Again, this type of link bait should be used sparingly or it may somewhat de-value your online credibility. That is unless your website is all about humor or you’d like to brand yourself as a carefree, fun and humorous website.
- Follow trending Internet memes and create a new one that ties in with your niche. Memes can be very effective if you hit the right chord with your audience. Of course, not every website is suitable for using a meme as a link bait.
But if you think that a particular meme will resonate with your audience, then go for it! To be effective a meme must be somehow related to that specific page that you're using it on, like the meme that I created for this page above ;-)
This is Part 5 of a FREE 7-Part Article Series on Effective Link Building - Post Penguin. Be sure to read the others!
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