Link Development Methods
Link development has long been a key component of both search engine optimisation, and the all important issue of online credibility, in terms of both users and search engine indexing.
However, as users and indexing tools become more sophisticated, the many link building strategies that have been used in the past are starting to lose their effectiveness to some extent, making modern link development into something of an art.
Link Credibility And Sensitivity
The online environment has become ever more sensitive to perceived spam. As a result, it’s becoming more and more difficult to easily achieve effective numbers of quality, credible back links to your site.
There are many link development techniques that site owners can utilise. However, the effectiveness of many of them have become dubious, and there is always the risk of being blacklisted as a spammer.
Link Building Methods
Below, we’ll cover some of the more popular techniques that have found favour when it comes to developing your own link building strategy. However, you use them at your own risk. A professional link building package may well be a safer alternative.
Site Directories
Adding your site to site directories dealing with your product or service is one way of getting a few back links. However, it’s fairly generally accepted that this technique is not too effective, unless you manage to get listed in one of the very few highly credible directories such as DMOZ, the open directory project.
Link Exchange Programs
Offering somebody else a link on your site in exchange for a link on their site can work in a limited sense. The questionable quality of these links mean that they’re not always worth the effort though, and overdoing it with dozens of random unrelated links is probably worse than not having any by this means.
Link Development Through Templates & Scripts
If you’re a good enough coder to produce great templates or scripts, and proceed to give them away free, you can build a back link into them that will give you a link from everybody who uses one. A great technique if you can do it, but not only does it depend on the popularity of your give-away, but it’s really only relevant for certain fields.
Press Releases
Posting press releases on distribution websites is a potential way of getting your company noticed by news agencies and other companies. To have any hope of making this work though, it’s important to actually have information that is news worthy.
Articles And Article Directories
One way of building back links is to write a variety of content articles relevant to your website, and then submit them to article directories where other websites in search of content on those themes can make use of them. Every article should contain a link to your own website, so when they’re used, you automatically gain a link. Bear in mind though that this may cause problems with duplicate content further down the line.
Blog & Forum Posts
Often blogs and forums will allow you to include a link to your website in your signature. In those cases, any comment you post on the blog or forum will create a back link. The effectiveness of these links is open to question however, and bear in mind that platforms such as this are often heavily moderated, and very sensitive to spam.
Links Through Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method by which internet users can save, organise and search online bookmarks. These bookmarks are usually made public, which means that they act in the same way as a link to a particular site or page.
Link Generating Content
Simply, this means writing an article that enough people are interested in that they link back to it.
Paid Links
A practice that is frowned upon by search engines, it effectively refers to the practice of paying other sites, be they blogs or otherwise, to link to your site. This is often done in the form of a blog review that contains links to your site. Search engines will usually penalise paid back links though.
Social News Linking
Similar to social bookmarking, this refers to submitting pages to websites like Digg, which acts as an online bookmark, and therefore a link to the page.
Sponsorship
Sponsor the events or initiatives of other sites, and you’ll have a back link from whatever you’re sponsoring, to your own site.
Question & Answer Sites
If you answer a question on a site like Yahoo Answers, you can include a link back to your site in your answer. In addition, answering questions that are relevant to your content will increase the value (relevance) of the links you get that way. Simply answering random questions unrelated to your field though could do the opposite, so spamming answers is a bad idea.
Video Links
Putting links in the descriptions for videos that you upload to sites like Google Videos or YouTube can gain you some working back links.
Free Resources
In theory, it’s possible to use free resources on the internet to create platforms for your own back links. Create a blog, and include a link or two in your posts for example. The relevance of these links will probably be questionable though, unless you build the blog up in a genuine effort, creating relevant content for it etc.
Reviews And Testimonials
Companies or sites that sell certain products or services often include somewhere on their websites for customer reviews and testimonials. The next time you buy a product or service online, see if there’s anywhere you can review it. You could get a working back link published in your review.
