Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics For 2009
Six and a half years ago (which is ages, in Internet years), Robin Nobles, Eric Ward, and John Alexander compiled a legendary list of 131 legitimate link building strategies. Four years later, Aaron Wall and Andy Hagans published 101 link building tips to market your website, which was inspired by the other article. Considering the furiously changing face of search engine marketing and with 2009 already ahead of us, I thought it was time to evaluate both lists and create an updated collection of link building strategies.
7 Internal link building strategies
1. Make sure that your navigation is spiderable. Either use (anchor text carrying) text based navigation, or an image based navigation with relevant alt attributes attached to each image link.
2. Breadcrumbs are a great internal linking tool. Use them for usability and anchor text differentiation.
3. In-content links not only tend to have a higher click through rate and perceived trust, but are also able to add more relevance to a link because of the surrounding text.
4. Use a sitemap. A good sitemap is useful for visitors, useful for search engines and, therefore, useful for you.
5. Link to topically relevant pages on important pages of your website. Link to important pages on every (or most) topically relevant page of your website.
6. Be consistent in linking behavior. If you link to homepage.com, always link to homepage.com, and not to homepage.com, homepage.com/index.php and homepage.com/index.php&id=123.
7. Identify your most linked-to pages, and make sure that the link juice flows to your most important pages from there, in a well-optimized way.
10 Easy link building starters
8. Optimize your existing links. Contact the webmasters of prominent websites that link to you and ask them to change ‘click here’ to an anchor text that contains relevant keywords, an anchor text that encourages clicking through, or -ideally- a combination of both.
9. Monitor your 404 statistics. Keep track of whoever links to old pages or misspelled URLs, which is data that Google provides as well. Contact those webmasters and provide them a good URL which they can link to.
10. Create a ‘link to us’ page, where you provide information about how people can link to you and which URL(s), logo and/ or anchor text they can use. Update this page regularly in order to diversify the anchor text.
11. Contact family, friends, colleagues and other people you know and let them know about your website. Some will send you useful feedback, others -who happen to have a website of their own- might link to you.
12. Do you block search engine bots from indexing certain parts of your website via robots.txt or meta-noindex? Find out if people link to this section of your site. If so, contact the webmasters of these sites and kindly ask them to link to an other page of your website.
13. Use your spell check. People will more likely link to correctly spelled articles than to content that’s full of grammatical errors.
14. Search for websites that already mention your business name or URL, but haven’t linked to your website. This works excellently in Yahoo!.
15. Look for websites that mention your personal name, but currently don’t link to your site. Use Yahoo! for this as well.
16. Leave comments on the blogs you visit every day. Hey, you’re visiting them anyway, so why don’t leave a (relevant, useful!) comment?
17. Find out which website your company owns. If you work for a small company, there may possibly be several. If you work for a large company, the number will probably knock you off your shoes. Link these websites (carefully!) together, or redirect the most important and/ or relevant ones to your main website.
12 Old school link building techniques
18. Search for related websites by using relevant keywords. Filter out all interesting websites and contact them. When you did this for your main keyword(s), there are still tons of other combinations possible.
19. Check which websites link to your competitors. Try to get them to link to your website as well.
20. Check which types of websites link to websites that offer the same services or products as you, but in a different country/ language. This might result in a “I never thought of that…” feeling.
21. Either interview an expert from your field, or try to get interviewed by someone else. Don’t forget to mention your best content: readers of the interview might be willing to link to it.
22. Write guest posts for relevant websites in your niche. You could also write posts about your industry for websites that are slightly related to your niche.
23. Teach. Whether it’s a public workshop (local press), a class at a local college or University (.edu website) or at a business related event (industry links), teaching can result in authority links.
24. Use any search engine advertising program and advertise on keywords that linkerati might use. Try to convert the targeted traffic into links.
25. Use Google AdWords’ content network to determine which (relevant) websites generate traffic and conversions. Contact those websites directly.
26. Join an affiliate program. See #25.
27. Determine who’s linked to you before. Contact them again when you’re releasing an interesting new piece of content.
28. Trade links. There’s nothing wrong, with swapping links with a few, highly relevant, authority websites that can bring in extra traffic. Exchanging links with lots of irrelevant websites, however, might get you in trouble.
29. Donate to a charity. Although buying links is not allowed by Google, there are still lots of ways you can buy links (kind of) legitimately.
12 Places to submit your URL to
30. Most social media websites are only useful for promoting good content (which will get you links in return), but sites like LinkedIn still provide dofollow links with an anchor text of your choice.
31. Some general directories, such as DMOZ, the Yahoo Directory and Best of the Web are still worth submitting your website to. Make sure to submit your site to the most appropriate category.
32. High quality, niche directories can be worth considering as well. Notice the emphasis on high quality.
33. Don’t forget to submit your website to high quality, regional directories. Especially worthwhile for websites that target local markets.
34. Publish stunning, interesting, funny or beautiful images in your Flickr account, that contains a link to your website.
35. Writing an article about a relevant topic, that contains one or more links to your website, and submitting it to article directories such as eZineArticles might work for you.
36. Relevant, non-spammy links in Wikipedia articles, Yahoo! Answers or Google Groups may have nofollow attributes attached, but can lead to (dofollow) links indirectly.
37. Submit your RSS feed to important RSS directories.
38. Blog directories may be willing to link to your blog. Submit your blog to the high quality ones.
39. Use PR websites to distribute your press releases, in addition to your PR agency. Make sure that your press release contains one or more (clickable) links to your website.
40. Got a great design? Submit your site to CSS directories and/ or website design contests. Even well-designed parts of your website can result in links.
41. Twitter. Just published a new post or article? Mention it on Twitter, your followers might visit it and -if they find it interesting- link to it.
12 Ways to make people write about you
42. Send out christmas gifts or birthday gifts to bloggers (or website owners) you know.
43. Offer services or a product in exchange for a review. Don’t ask the bloggers or webmasters to link to you, they most often will do anyway.
44. Create something unique. Top 10s, top 250s, mash-ups, how-tos, best-ofs, surveys, studies, awards. Define the proper hook, create unique content and attract good links. The possibilities are infinite.
45. Try to start a hype, use a new word, get a meme going, or do something else you’re the first at.
46. Link to others. People -especially bloggers- will notice it if you link to them. If you do this several times and offer content that is or might be relevant to these bloggers, they might link to you as well eventually.
47. If you happen to have some breaking news, offer a blogger (or a select group) the scoop. Bloggers love to publish scoops.
48. Say something groundbreaking, shocking, confronting, stupid, weird or flattering. People tend to link to others who are different or act that way.
49. Create something with an amazing design. This does not necessarily have to be your website, just having an awesome business card can result in extra links.
50. Launch an extraordinary offline campaign. People will talk about this online. If you integrate this offline campaign with an online version in a perfect way, you may even receive some extra links from ‘this is how you should integrate offline and online’-articles as well.
51. Create a contest and offer give-aways for winners. This is not only a great way to get attention, but to get valuable input as well, for example when hosting a guest post contest.
52. Build useful tools and/ or plugins that are free to use.
53. Speak at an industry conference. You’ll meet lots of interesting new people, and will probably get mentioned in several conference write-ups.
12 Common business tactics
54. Add a link to your local Chamber of Commerce profile.
55. The Better Business Bureau, and any industry related association you’re a member of are interesting link targets as well.
56. Contact your (preferred) suppliers, manufacturers, other partners. Obtain links from these website if they have a partners page as well.
57. Offer to write testimonials or a quote to your suppliers, if they are willing to link back to your site in or near this testimonial.
58. Ask clients to write testimonials about your product or service that they publish on their website, in exchange for a discount, extra fast delivery or any other benefit you can provide.
59. Hire a publicist. Press agency employees usually know the right people in the right places, which can result in a higher acceptancy rate of your press release.
60. Join relevant forums. You can either link to your website on your profile page, in your signature or in your posts. Notice how this one is listed under ‘Business related tactics’ in stead of ‘Places to submit your URL to’? There’s a reason why: forums are not places to drop links, but to join discussions.
61. Sponsor something. There are tons of possibilities, such as an industry conference, a sports club, a relevant forum, a local happening, or just any offline event that happens to have a website.
62. Hire an intern. You can let him or her work on a piece of research, which you can in your link building process. Also, don’t forget the website of the University you’re intern is attending.
63. Offer awesome product or services. People love talking about great stuff they’ve bought. If your products are ‘just’ good in stead of awesome, make sure that your after sales or customer care is excellent. People love talking about companies with a great service as well. Of course, offering crappy products or a lousy service will also result in links, but I don’t think those are the links you’re after.
64. Look for companies that went out of business. Either acquire their website, or contact the website that they’re currently getting links from and ask these sites to link to you in stead.
65. Turn your colleagues into link developers. Each of them has his or her own specialty and group of contacts. This not only take works off of your hands, but is very efficient as well.
4 Important considerations
66. Hire a link builder or an expert. Either let somebody you trust manage (a part of) your campaign, or visit a link building workshop. Especially when you’ve been building links for your own site for several years, a fresh mind can bring new ideas.
67. Hang in there. Link building isn’t something you can do in just a few hours, or something that you only have to do during one week in a year. Building a brand can’t be done in a single day, the same goes for a solid link profile. It’s a continuing process that takes time. Lots of time.
68. Keep an eye on the news. Follow important and interesting different blogs, in order to keep up with the latest news, trends and tricks. I’m not just talking about link building or SEM blogs, but make sure to follow general marketing blogs, slightly different, creative blogs or industry related news websites as well.
69. If you have to ask yourself ‘is this a legitimate approach’ or ’should I be doing this’, the answer is probably no. Too much, too aggressive or too shady isn’t advisable. Don’t do things you would be ashamed of when explaining them to your mother. Or Matt Cutts.
0 Advanced link building strategies
There is no such thing as advanced link building. While this list already sums up quite a few different strategies, I’m pretty sure that you can easily come up with a dozen more, that are specifically suitable for your company or industry.
Eric Ward once said that link building is “one part marketing, two parts public relations, and three parts common sense”. I’d say that link building is 10% basic SEO knowledge, 20% business thinking, 30% creativity and 40% perseverance. Either way, there’s nothing advanced to it.
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145 comments on this post
What, no link to yours truly’s ‘internal link building’ plugin :)?
Edit by Wiep: Gab, check again ;)
Great list of link building tips. I definitely need to start applying more of these. My site has a lot of backlinks but can always use more.
Great list and has made us re-think ideas we forgot about at the start of our business. You’ve inspired us to finally go and design some funky business cards that we were so eager to do in Jan (before work got in the way) -)
Very interesting post. It’s not only a link building article but a complete guide for anyone looking to promote his web site. Great job Wiep!
This is a great reminder. I especially like #16 :)
p.s. found this post from search engine roundtable
Great list to start of 2009..! I love reading these things even though they say for beginners because sometimes the best of the best forget the simple things. CHEERS
Great list. I especially appreciate #67. Another tip that could be added to #67 is “patience is a virtue.”
Thanks for such a complete list!
Wow! A really extraordinary outstanding and comprehensive collection of ideas. I hope you don’t mind me having written a translation (and set a link to your orignal post) on my blog for the many German people interested in SEO, who are not so familiar with english…
I think I shall print this off and tack it to my cubical wall. Now i”ll never be truly bored!
Very good article for someone just starting out at blogging. I may just have to print out the list and refer back to it once in a while.
This post really sums up a lot of helpfull tips. Nice list for 2009
great stuff for a seo starter, thanks
Cool list, I’m glad you still included some directories and mentioned high quality niche directories / blog directories. This is a good resource for people starting out or a refresher for those like myself who could use a reminder!
I’m usually hesitant when it comes to articles like this, but I thought your tips were thorough and helpful. Good work.
This is an excellent list, very inspiring, thanks so much!
Hey. Pretty informative article. I also like the meaning behind ‘0 Advanced Linbuilding strategies’. Some of these’re pretty good, like teach.
Great work. 8)
Thanks for the post – feeling depressed now – got to get the finger out.
Great list of tips, showing the importance of using more than one technique to get traffic to your website. Thanks for putting this together!
Hi Wiep,
what a great post.
I am looking forward to working with you on TJNL.
Speak soon,
Axel
@Patti: ‘Patience is a virtue’ is a good addition indeed!
@SEOdiot: no problem at all!
@Bloggeries: Good, relevant directories have always been great link targets.
@Axel: Thanks & I’m looking forward to working together as well ;)
Intresting! I’m going to bookmark this page to read it when I got some time.
Great post! Just one additional remark:
http://images.google.de/images?q=ifollow
shows websites which over dofollow blogs and have one of the following pics in there site:
* ifollowblue.gif, ifollowgreen.gif, ifollowpink.gif, ifollowpurple.gif, ifollowltgreen.gif, ifolloworange.gif, ifollowwhite.gif,
* ifollowmagenta.gif
* ifollow.(gif/png/jpg)
That is the easiest way to find dofollow blogs ..
Wiep, great post as usual. Your articles on link building are consistently some of the best I’ve seen on the Web.
@Dirk: that’s a good tip, but I left out searching for dofollow blogs on purpose. If you’re just looking for blogs that dofollow, you’ll probably miss the interesting ones that don’t. Don’t limit yourself to dofollow links only. (but like I said, it’s a good tip)
I have been using the juicy link finder over at seomoz to help filter my link building research. I then set up a Google custom search engine to further filter my results. This is a great strategy to find highly relevant authoritative sites in your niche. I couldn’t really explain the whole strategy here so I wrote a post about it. International Link Building Strategy I hope you find it useful.
Brilliant article, some golden oldies in it but brilliant tips for experts and newbies as well
Excellent post. Thank you…
This list is helpful…already forgot a thing or two – most of it is very logical, but not as evident….so thanks!
Excellent guide. Some sections are already well known but it’s always good to recap and familiarize yourself. Thank you!
Very helpful list you have there.Now wonder I got into trouble doing link building.It’s because I didn’t follow your guidelines.Thanks for reminding me..
Great advice, however none of it is really fresh for 2009, but for beginners it is a good guide to link building and should keep them busy for the year!
Really good tips and there all in one place so now i know a lot more strategies to get those all important links happening.
Very good
Thanks Brad
Hi,
Very nice tips and thanks for sharing. I’m applying tips #16 now and going to try the others. :)
Cheers,
Will
http://WillLim.com
Knowing that link building is one of the most difficult parts of SEM, having articles like this published on the web just makes my heart glad :) There can never be enough _good_ link building tips.
Great post! I would like post a summarization in my blog and link back to your post – fantastic for my readers.
Thanks!
Deidre
@deidrehughey
Fantastic article Wiep! I wanted to chime in with a few other tips along the lines of Linkedin. There have been a few great social networking/business sites like this popping up such as Gooruze and Authorati.com, and if you folks look harder many more!
good tips. A bit advanced for the stage that I am in, but hopefully some day I will need to hire an Intern to get all my work done!
Fantastic,
I am a complete newbie in blogging and you’ve just saved me the research.
Thank you, I would buy you a beer if you had a button.
A lot of good tips here! Thanks, now I know some extra ways to get links!
Thanks for the summary. I think this should be the best way to start a well ranked homepage. But mothing is about good trusted links.
thanks dude for sharing very useful information.
Great post! Linking is my goal for ‘09. To get the ball rolling, I linked to this post from my blog. Great blog! I’m so glad I found it!
Thanks for the list, definitely things have change since 2006. Just 2 things:
1. Good directories function via invitation only, the others are crap, they just steel your rss.
2. The most important strategy: Don’t stop making good content, lets say 1 year, and people will naturally link to you.
Sorry for my bad english.
Good post. As if to prove a point, I got here through a twitter message.
Great article and advice. Thanks!
This article covers almost all the link building tactics that we can use to gain more backlinks for your sites. I think In order to make link building campaign Success, we must use most relevant keyword in our “Anchor Text”.
This post is a link building tactic n°44…and it is a smart post!
Great job!
This is the best Link building strategy I ever read, keep on writing good posting.
A good resource on ranking tips. However, is there any resource on haw to avoid page rank penalties by the search engines?
Hi, What a fantastic resource! I am constantly amazed by the number of people with a website who have no idea about SEO. I will pass this comprehensive article around to help them out. Wishing you all a Happy, Healthy & Successful New Year – Thanks very much! Claire from My Local Guide http://www.mylocalguide.net.au – tip #16 in action!!!
Thanks to write this. This could be good reference to build a better links.
very good Ideas I will start from now ..But It need more time and efort to be in the top rank…
Great post, many thanks.
Phil
Very helpfull techniques though they are old but still old school rocks..!!!
Wau…..very useful tips!
It’s awesome, you have done a very great job!
Thanks a lot.
thanks for this link building strategies.
I could not understand robots.txt or meta-noindex
Excellent guide Wiep. I’m going to get stuck into these as a late New Years resolution. Re:- number 19, I’ve just found my competitors on Alexa and it shows the sites that link to them. Now I can see if I can get them to link to me. Great tips mate. Thank you so much.
A great link building resource that I will certainly be promoting in my small business web seminars.
This is a great article, I’ll be using these techniques in the future!
Great post. What is your thoughts on comment type links though? Are these worth the effort if you’re seeking traffic? What’s the chances that people will read comments and click the links?
Hi,
This is such a great list. I started to run out of ideas with ‘old school’ methods and needed new tips. You’ve learned me quite a few good ones ! Your list differs quite a lot from many quickly put together obvisous tips you can find in many places. Thanks !
Very good information, I’d love to apply all this strategies but it’s nearly impossible! I’t be very useful to have a list of link building activities in order of power they have, so people like mi can concentrate first in the most important once and then to the others….
I miss the don’t’s in your post. There are some thinks you really shouldn’t do. But other then that an absolute excellent post.
This is a excellent post and will keep you busy for the whole year implementing them all.
Thank you, as a complete seo newbie this is a really useful list. Too much to absorb in one go but I will be printing it out and keeping it near my deep thought area (the loo). Dave.
Great post. Point 13 should be:
… to correctly spelled articles than to content that’s full of GRAMMATICAL errors.
I don’t normally point out spelling or grammatical errors on blogs but in this case I’m sure you’ll understand why I couldn’t resist :-).
Despite that ironic error, you still won a SEMMY for this post – well done.
Super-nice useful list here. The old school techniques were my favorite.
Great tips thanks for all your input… I am searching for an intern anyone have any ideas???
Great info! I guess combining some link building ideas results in very interesting new ones too!
thats sound advice and solid instructions for newbies and old hatters.
Martin
Great guide to building links. It’s all here. Can’t think of any more that makes as much sense as these. BTW, found this link on twitter.
Great post. Thanx a lot. Lot’s of useful info for a newbie like me.
ya this is true that without link building a website cant run.
so this link strategeis of 2009 must be followed
Greate todo list for me, thank you!
Very helpful list thanks for sharing, just got into social bookmarking and trying to figure out what the best sites are and the methods for using social bookmarking to increases my serps and build pr.
Thanks for the tips well noted!
I think the primary key is finding the balance between honing your content and actually “building” links.
Thanks for this helpful article, especially for #16 ;-)
Some excellent ideas in there, some that I have not thought of before, and coming to think about it, it is just common sense in a way really.
At least I have got something to keep me busy for the next couple of weeks! Great article for link building.
Great Post!!
I was just concentrating on social bookmarking and social networking for building up links…i need to rethink my strategy for targeting some competitive keywords
this is the most complete link building that i ever read before.
thx for your sharing and tips.
Brilliant Article. LInk building basics and a few other tips that cover most do-it-yourself link building techniques. I believe adding contextual links for SEO is a valid way of building up ibl and not spamming the ranking algo’s.
This post is definately bookmarked!
Oops, I forgot to ask, are there any tools available to auto checking clean links?
This is a complete SEO strategy.Thanks for the valuable post.
I am concentrating on article marketing for link building. But commenting on forums and blogs will generate some traffic. That is important for a blogger.
many thanks for tons of tips in a same place. Lot of time saving while googling for link building. Wondering if hiring a link bulder be of advantage in short time or do it myself ?
Fantastic – I have to do a presentation about link building on Monday; this will help a lot in my preparations!
cool. this is the motherlode of link building strategies
These are all very excellent linking strategies and link baiting strategies. Offering incentive programs and getting creative with link building and baiting should always be a consistent method used.
I have personally found recently that SE love well rounded linking plans that are diversified through numerous mediums.
great so much informations for link building .. thanks a lot
Very interesting, this is a excellent post !!!
Thanks! That’s excellent.
thanks for the very Long list of Link building tips up there!!!
My knowledgebase in linkbuilding has once again been filled up with another batch of useful information!!!
Wow.. Thank you..thank you..thank you..
Congratulation for this article.
Wow that is quite the list isn’t it. So many pointers in there for the unaware and changes constantly for how things work so great information to get people started. Looking for the next update!!
Bravo, bravo, bravo. Very useful for anyone who will read this post.
Glad to have a new Link Building reminders post to review every few months, the SEOBook one was getting boring. Thanks!
Outstanding posting. I can not believe how much of these tips are overlooked by webmasters. I am reviewing my site to incorporate some of these great tips. Thanks again for such a great posting.
Although this is an older article, it has lots of great information for both the novice and the expert SEO. Thanks for sharing!
16. Leave comments on the blogs you visit every day. Hey, you’re visiting them anyway, so why don’t leave a (relevant, useful!) comment?…luv that and ;) to speak truly ireally reached you by rel=”dofollow” seaching :)… it is the most costeffective way for newbies like me !!!!! thanx again… i am book marking you…this list is very very informative ..
great list for link building… we can also hold up a contest for bloggers and get tons of free links
thanks for the list. but i have a basic question. Do you still recommend directory submission? i mean does it bring any traffic these days? as yahoo’s listing isn’t free, so spending money would of any worth?
Thanskfor sharing the tips. But I have one question: is there any difference between dofollow links and no follow links. I am really confused about that. Most of the blogs do no-follow links. will that help in ranking in google
Really good to see somebody thinking outside the usual generic link building articles.
Thanks for the list, I think it will help in my link building process. I’m finding it really difficult though but i guess I shouldn’t give up. Determination is the key.
I added this page to my favorites. Got some work to do!
This is usefull and will help for sure.
If there are more related pages, let me know… ;-)
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