Since there wasn’t a Link Building this Month in December, because of the yearly recap, this month’s edition basically is a double edition. In 2010, I will be putting the bar even higher than it already was. We’ve all read the same stuff over and over again, so I’ll try only to mention articles that are new, different or simply excellent.

Every new year usually starts with awards, recaps (see earlier link), resolutions (mine is better time management) and predictions. Debra Mastaler asked all Link Week columnists what they think 2010 will bring, and this is the result. As you can see, group interviews can be a great way to create great, linkable content.

And also:

• The psychology behind link giving – David Snyder
• Linkable asset inventory – Garrett French
• Link building checklist – Mark Nunney
• Top searches can attract top links – Debra Mastaler
• How to drive more links via public relations – Jeremy Bencken
• Linkfromdomain: a link building tip for Bing.com – Will Critchlow
• How to woo a blogger – Lisa Barone
• Guest blogging: the ultimate guide – Glen Allsopp
• Getting links for a poker site is easier than you think – Lyndon Antcliff
• How to measure link building – Michael Martinez

It’s already the last day of the year, so it’s time to list the best link building related posts of 2009. Just like last year, I’ve read a lot of great articles. Here’s my personal top three:

1. Link Development Training: How Link Building for SEO is Like Picking Up a Girl – Todd Malicoat
Unfortunately, Todd doesn’t write tons of articles anymore, but when he does, they’re usually great. In this post, he explains how he trains new link builders and which tools and approach he uses. Great stuff.

2. 101 Advanced Tips For The Next Time You Buy Text Link Ads – Gab Goldenberg
Even when you don’t buy links, there’s lots of tips you can get out of Gab’s post. Just replace ‘buy’ for ‘talk your way into…’ or ‘offer services/ a discount/ anything else in exchange for…’, and you’re good to go.

3. 21 Tips to Earn Links and Tweets to Your Blog Post – Rand Fishkin
Rand shares 21 great tips for optimizing your content in a way that you maximize its linking potential. Just try to implement all these tips in one of your articles, and you’ll end up with some killer content.

And here’s a few more excellent articles:

General

• Link building ranking factors – SEOmoz
• Why link building may not work – Michael Martinez
• How to buy links with maximum juice and minimum risk – Lisa Barone
• 17 Ways search engines judge the value of a link – Rand Fishkin
• Link building from A to Z – yours truly (yes, I hate including my own stuff, but couldn’t find a good 5th article…)

Finding & evaluating prospects

• 21 Link builders share advanced link building queries – Garrett French
• Link building evaluation guide – David Snyder
• The link builders guide to analyzing SERP dominators for link opportunities – Garrett French
• Link buying: the good, the bad and the ugly – Aaron Wall
• A big bunch of link building ideas – Debra Mastaler

Webmaster outreach

• Link building outreach: 5 steps to maximize the value of every opportunity – Garrett French
• Get your link building requests answered – Mat Siltala
• 10 Tips for requesting link exchanges – Steven Snell
• How to woo a blogger (and get covered) – Lisa Barone
• 10 Reasons why journalists will write about your website – Ken McGaffin

Content & link baiting

• What makes a link worthy post, part 1 and part 2 – Casey Henry
• How to research, create and distribute highly linkable content – Garrett French
• Getting links and content from Flickr – Lisa Barone
• The psychology of a linkbait – Ryan Caldwell
• How to promote good content – Lisa Barone

Most viewed posts of Wiep.net

1. 69 Link building strategies for 2009 (I know, it’s a post from 2008)
2. The perfect link request email template
3. Indispensable link building tools
4. 10 Questions to ask a new link marketing client
5. Advertising strategies that improve your link popularity
6. A good alt is better than a bad anchor
7. SEO Motivators (also a post from 2008)

This basically wraps up 2009. I hope this year has been as good for you as it was for me. All the best wishes for 2010!

With Halloween, Thanksgiving and even the other upcoming holidays in sight, November usually is a slow month in terms of finding high quality articles. And last month wasn’t any different. Wordstream’s interview series and Ari Ozick’s excellent interview with Deb Mastaler made up for it a little bit, though.

Also, Garrett French’ compilation of dozens of very useful advanced search link building queries was an excellent read. I’m pretty sure that nearly anybody would find at least one new query he or she didn’t think of yet.  And if you didn’t: how about keeping track of (relevant) companies going out of business in your neighborhood, and checking out their link profiles? :)

Everybody and their dog knows that having good content improves your chances of getting good links, but how do you come up with good ideas? Of course, analyzing success stories is a good starting strategy, and from their on, it’s basically just thinking outside the box.

And also:

• 11 Effective, efficient ways to use limited time to build links – Debra Mastaler
• The disproportionate value of deeplinks – Eric Enge
• The new rules of international link building – Andy Atkins Kruger
• The holiday link building blitz: a plan for ecommerce sites – Garrett French
• 10 Reasons why good link builders fail – Angela Moore
• Effective link building, one major ingredient – Lynn Terry
• 7 Ways to maximize your internal linking value – Thinkseer
• How to buy links with maximum juice and minimum risk (Pubcon) – Lisa Barone

Tools:

• I came across Tynt last month, but Patrick Altoft mentioned a similar tool today that’s certainly worth checking out as well: Link building pro.
• Cemper.com’s Link Research Tools will be leaving beta soon. I hope to review some of their tools (along with a few others) later this month.

PS – If you think I missed one or more interesting link building articles last month, feel free to mention it in the comments ;)

Considering the large amount of good link building related posts I came across last month, I’m officially declaring October the official month of link marketing; Linktober :)

Let’s start with one of the best posts I’ve read in a while – Gab’s 101 link buying tips. Whether you buy links or not, there are lots of useful tips in there for everyone!

If you rather not buy your way to the top, you’ll have to learn the art of web promoting. And this art starts by fully understanding why people share stuff with each other, and/ or how you can persuade them into doing so. From there on, you can move on to creating the right content and thinking about the right promotion strategy. The actual contacting of webmasters, either by phone or email, is the last (but also very important) part of the process.

And also:

• SMX East: Ask the linkbuilders – Lisa Barone
• Link building using Delicious – Wil Reynolds
• DMOZ: A solid directory or the great pumpkin of search? – Debra Mastaler
• The anchor text sparsity problem – Bill Slawski
• What is the perfect link? – Michael Martinez
• A marketing role in product development – creating buzz… & links! – Todd Heim
• Recovering from link building mistakes – Eric Ward
• Offer testimonials, get links – Rand Fishkin
• Advanced link building: clone your most successful link profiles – Ken Lyons
• Link building: not just off-page anymore – Julie Joyce
• The best linking expert you can know – Micheal Martinez
• Mining 31,500,000 free links for the take – Ruud Hein
• Google trust rank patent granted – Bill Slawski

PS – Lots of people I talk to about link building are always on the lookout for shortcuts. There. Aren’t. Any. Nifty tools like this come close, but it will always be lots of work.

PPS – Shaun Anderson is giving away free link building ebooks this week. Yes, that’s even more link building tips to digest.

A few days later than usually, but it’s here nevertheless: a new edition of Link Building this Month.

At Tribal, I’ve had the opportunity to interview dozens of potential link builders, and certainly know how difficult this can be. Useful tips like the 5 questions for link builders that Angela Moore listed, may help you to select the right people, and to build a great team of link builders.

If you would base your link building strategy solely on what people say in forums, or what they write about in blogs, it probably won’t bring you optimal results. Despite what some may say, reciprocal links can still be worthwhile, some directories are still very useful, and even some link buys can be very powerful. Even irrelevant links can help you to get better rankings :)

And also:

• Link building outreach: 5 Steps to maximize the value of every opportunity – Garrett French
• 17 Ways search engines judge the value of a link – Rand Fishkin
• Link building through relationships – Jake Matthewas
• Why ranking top 3 in Bing is important for link building – Dave Naylor
• How to get the anchor text you want without even asking – Kelvin Newman
• A link building rule to cut out and keep – Rob Ousbey
• Practical guide to finding link bait inspiration – Ann Smarty
• Why linkbait is a tactic the search engines will always value – Rand Fishkin
• 18 Must follow link building experts on Twitter – Melanie Nathan
• Search engines applying different anchor text relevance from the same site and related site links – Bill Slawski
• 17 Motivations for linking – Zach Daniels

Just like last month, I came across a few interesting articles that might be good reading material for those who try to obtain links through sending out press releases.

One of the best articles I’ve read in a while is Ken McGaffins list with 10 reasons why journalists may write about your site. Only link marketers who fully understand why people link to other sites in their niche can be optimally successful. Also, knowing the basics and trying to avoid PR mistakes and pitch no-nos can help as well :)

You probably haven’t missed SEOmoz launching their updated Search Engine Ranking Factors document, which they have expanded with a link building section as well now. The Search Engine Ranking Factors definitely are a good read – if you’re looking for more info on link value and valuating links, you can either read David Snyder or Jon Henshaws latest article.

And also:

• Advanced article marketing – Jannifer Mattern
• My favorite link building lie – Eric Ward
• Five approached to creating a link building strategy – Angela Moore
• Three internal links SEO gurus ignore – Michael Martinez
• Link building through social media; is it that difficult? – Ravi Venkatesan
• Finding sites to buy links on with a little help from Google – Marcus Tandler
• How a search engine might analyze the linking structure of a web site – Bill Slawski
• Link building for small ecommerce sites – Rob Ousbey
• Natural Link Building : Create an Online Presence and Linkable Brand – Loren Baker
• 230 Link bait ideas – Thomas M. Schmitz
• How to get dofollow links from Wikipedia articles – Tom Demers
• A case study: Using contests to build links – Debra Mastaler
• 3 Ways to measure link investment risk – Michael Martinez
• Why reciprocal links will always be viable – Eric Ward

 Natural Link Building : Create an Online Presence and Linkable Brand