10 Risk-free Link Building Methods
Penalty! As Google blows the whistle, you will never really know when it’s coming and why you’re suddenly out of the game. And that’s bad for any online business. That’s one good reason why most SEOs and internet marketers play the game ethically. Managing risks from your link building efforts is very important, seeing as not all techniques are safe for your business.
Content-based link building campaigns are the most – which I believe – that work effectively. Given that links coming from these methods look 100% natural, known to have all the standards needed to be of high quality, and it instill and passes through trust not only to targeted audience but to search engines as well. The good news is that today, I’ll share some of the link building methods that will not only assure you positive results but will also remove the risk of being marked as spam by Google.
Link Baiting. Having exceptional contents that will move on its own virally across your industry will naturally build links. Link bait contents usually need a lot of planning ahead. You have to ensure that you’ll be giving value through your contents to those who will see it for them to link to it. People tend to share remarkable contents if it’s educational or controversial, so it is really important to give your readers more than what they are expecting. Making original infographs is also a great way to entice your readers in linking to your contents, so take advantage of it.
Links from readers are the most powerful ones, because search engines see them as real recommendations from real people. The best thing about this is that it benefits your site in so many ways, such as in generating targeted traffic, passing more trust through readership and in establishing your site’s importance in the web (Pagerank and Authoritativeness).
Guest Blog Posting. To showcase your expertise on other blogs within your niche is another good way in building quality backlinks. Besides absorbing traffic/audience from them, you also get to pass through authority, trust and pagerank from its domain, in which can be of your advantage when the page gets older and when readers start to link to it. Another advantage of guest posting is that you’re not only building strong and in-content links; you are also building relationships that will help your business in the long run.
Article Submission/Marketing and Smart Content Spinning/Conversion. This technique is one of my personal favorites, because it gives you more than what you have invested. It gives you a mass of “topically relevant backlinks”, and it brings you traffic that are already well acquainted with what you are offering. The method has a big room for potentials and can deliver promising results. Just imagine how a single article can boost the number of quality backlinks pointing to your site if you submit it to various authority article submission sites, such as Ezinearticles.com, Articlesbase.com, and more.
And it doesn’t stop there. Once you’re done submitting your article, you can also reformat it to a press release or a “how to” article, then submit it to press release sites and “how to” submission sites (Ehow.com, Howtodothings.com and more). After submitting your article, you can also convert it into a PDF, widget, podcast, slide and video, and then submit them to their respective directories. But be sure to include a link to your site on their descriptions. Lastly, create an RSS mix of all the feeds of your article, podcast, slide, PDF and video, and then submit it to RSS feed directories.
Update: Article submission may not be as helpful as before. Many have abused its power, and bombarded sites like Ezinearticles.com with too much spammy links
Web 2.0. There are so many web 2.0 sites out there that are trusted by search engines, like Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com, Weebly.com and more. They have fast crawl rates and pages from them can gain Pagerank easily. Writing great quality contents and publishing them to these platforms is certain to build links that are highly relevant and authoritative. But it’s also important to build links to these pages to improve their visibility as well as Pagerank.
Build/buy quality sites. If you have the budget to invest on this kind of method, then go for it. However, it may take some time if you’ll be building new sites to interlink with each other, but it’s certainly effective when it comes to building high quality and risk-free links. It’s also best to hide your identity on your other sites before interlinking them.
Sponsorships. You really don’t have to invest cash on this method, since you can always barter your way to have a sponsored link from other sites. Offering your services or own products like an ebook or course in exchange for a link is one great way to do this. You can choose to sponsor a prize for blogging contests, in which your contribution can be a form of free product, service or consultation to the winner. You can also contact web designers to sponsor free themes or site templates, or non-profit organizations related to your industry and offer them your expertise for a deal that will be favorable to both parties.
Contests. Organizing your own blogging contest will definitely build more natural external links pointing to your site. All you have to do is to let participants promote the contest, site or their blog entries to their own networks. It’s also advisable to make this a part of the contest’s criteria.
Social Media Profiles. Links from social media, social bookmarking and forum profiles are known to have great value, even though most links from these channels have nofollow attribute, they are still well acknowledged by crawlers. Links from these sites (like Facebook fanpage, Twitter, Youtube, and more) are extremely powerful if your profile pages can gain the trust of search engines. That’s why you also need to build links pointing to them to be able to pass through the domain’s trust rank and authority. And it’s very important to have them regularly updated.
Widget Bait. If you are creative enough to develop a unique and useful widget, then this method is possibly your silver bullet to link building. This can definitely build thousands of high quality backlinks to your site, provide massive traffic and eventually attract new customers to your business. You can always outsource the task if you don’t know how to do this.
Resource Request. You can search for resource pages from .edu, .gov and other authority sites that are related to your contents. Then contact them to suggest your site to be included in their list of resources. Requesting to have a link from these sites is very hard and you have to be very confident with the information your site is offering in order to increase your chances of getting a link from them. Having links from these sites will certainly pass through Pagerank and Trust, so even if it’s hard, it would be still worth trying, right?
Risk is everywhere, what works for others might not work or be safe for you. The safest ways are sometimes the most tedious tasks to do, but of course it is business and we all want the best and wisest investments for it. So, how’s your link building campaign doing lately?
