Link Building Strategies: Organic Link Building

The first type of link building is called organic link building. This type of link building deals with anything that doesn’t have to do with automated systems and/or practices that are frowned upon by Google and the SEO community.

Let me just point out that these are just some of the organic link building methods that are out there. And throughout the development of the web and the internet, I’m sure many more will be innovated in the years to come.

Write great quality content

First one I want to point out is the white hat favorite – content. Content focus is arguably the best way to go when it comes to white hat SEO. It deals with giving people something valuable, something informative, something that they want. And so what happens is that they would naturally link to it as a source of that emotion you’ve triggered in them.

When you’re writing for people, you don’t write in order to give them something they’re asking for. You write in order to move them – in order to give them something they never thought they needed or wanted. That’s the most effective way of writing. It’s giving a gift to your audience. And they can’t help but share this gift to others.

As to how to write great, quality content – we all have our own methods and attitudes. And it will always be visible as to who wrote the article depending on the author’s way of words and idea-flow. It’s not important to know who wrote the article – what’s important is to know if people love the article. If they love it enough to link back to it and share it with the world.

Blog about the latest news

News is always fresh (that’s why we call it news) and it’s always available and present and delivered in whatever means available. When your friend tells you that he’s getting married, that’s news. When your puppy suddenly gets a little bit sick, there’s news in that. When your washing machine suddenly choked up an alligator, now isn’t that interesting?

Blogging about the latest news gives you a good shot at getting links – especially if you’re one of the few who got the news first. Why? Because the readers most probably found the news out from your site. The tendency for us readers (yes, we are readers too, you and I) is to make the first source the main source.

And being the main source, you’ll be sure to hook some links up back to your site.

Do social bookmarking

As we all know, most social bookmarking sites are nofollow sites. They don’t give link juice. So why am I including this here in the organic link building section? Simple – they give you traffic.

And when you hit the gold mine (such as in stumbleupon or digg) and your bookmarked content becomes popular – you’ll be sure to get a pouring of incoming traffic into your site. And some of those traffic will consequently be happy enough to link back to you.

Write for Ezines

I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with Ezines. There are a lot of Ezines out there in the web which will let you publish your link as an author bio website address. These links help you, yes. But what’s more important is that the Ezines are already a trusted and reputable source of content. when you publish an article in their collection, you can instantly hit first page in Google.

Consequently, when you’re in first page, some of the people reading the article you’ve published will notice your quality content and therefore go to the author bio website. Then the tendency for them is to browse around – looking for what you have to offer. Sometimes they find something interesting, sometimes they don’t.

Either way, some of them end up giving you links.

Give gifts

Seth Godin is the new Santa of the 21st century. He’s all into giving gifts. I believe I’m an elf because I sincerely believe him. And hey, it worked for me – so why won’t it work for you?

Giving gifts come in different forms. You can create your own top-ten lists of other bloggers in the same niche as you. Give them an award or a badge. Congratulate them for doing a swell job in their site. Talk with them. Invest emotional labor in their lives – they’re real people too!

Give out guest postings without expecting anything in return. Give out free ebooks. Give out free courses or plugins or widgets or what have you. Heck, give them a free picture of you if you want!  I don’t guarantee that your picture would get you links though. But hey, everything’s worth a try if you know what you’re doing.

Giving gifts will surely move people enough to give you links – because they want to share the gift you’re giving to others.

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This entry is part of the SEO Hacker School series: Link Building Strategies

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Related posts:

1. Link Building Strategies: How do I do link building?
2. Link Building Strategies: Why is Link Building Important?
3. Link Building Strategies: Introduction
4. Link Building Strategies: Ideal Site Attributes
5. Link Building Strategies: Link Building Value