Link Building Guide: How to build backlinks – Best Practices for Link Building

Link building strategies: Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. No SEO professionals can think of improving their site ranking without a proper link building campaign. However, no one can learn it overnight. Planning and implementing an effective link building strategy needs specialized insight and SEO knowledge. The following are some best practices that you can adhere to optimize your back links.

What are backlinks? [Video Tutorial]

What is a natural backlink profile [Video guide]

Link Building Guide

 Best Practice #1: Deep Linking

Deep linking is one of the best practices when it comes to effective link building strategy. Therefore, one of your first tasks is to incorporate a deep linking strategy throughout the site. Blogs are good example of deep linking; they provide more deep links than most of the websites. And do it smartly. So study a few top blogs and find out how you can implement a similar strategy in your site.

Best Practice #2: Alter the Anchor Text

Anchor text plays a great role in link building and SERP (search engine results page). So alter your anchor text in a way that it reflects your content. This helps to keep your site highly relevant, which in turn helps in getting higher ranking in the search results. Your targeted keywords too play a great role in search engine results page. So be careful while selecting your keywords.

Best Practice #3: Balance between No-Follow and Do Follow Links

While marketing our sites, we mostly concentrate on the sites that provide do follow links to share the link juice. However, you must keep a balance between No-Follow and do follow links. Though the No-Follow links do not provide any credit to the linked site, you must not leave them out from your online marketing strategy. Remember, both Facebook and Twitter provide No-Follow links; nevertheless, they are important for any online marketing strategy.

Similarly, focus on all kind of sites with high, medium and low PR while exchanging links and marketing your articles. Though you should pay more importance to authority links, a proper mix of high, mid and low PR sites is a must for a successful link building campaign.

Related reading: How to analyze your back links

Video Tutorial – How to build quality backlinks

Link building best practices [Video tutorial]

White Hat Link Building Strategies of all time

Creative link building strategies of all time –

1. Backlink strategy #1: Select An Evergreen demanding Keyword or Topic – Select such keywords in your niche that have evergreen demand, so that if you can rank for that keyword, you can get new visitors for longer period of time. Search Google trends and keyword research tools
2. Backlink strategy #2: Turn Your Evergreen or demanding Topic Into an Evergreen Content – Create a long form of content around that evergreen keyword and regularly update that content. We call it Pillar content.
3. Backlink strategy #3: Snatch Your Competitors Quality Backlinks – Research your competitors backlinks through ubsersuggest or alexa or ahrefs or moz or backlinkchecker and try to build your links on that sites too.
4. Backlink strategy #4: Link Roundup Strategy – Link roundups are daily, weekly or sometimes monthly blog posts that link to your pillar contents. You need to find out blogs who do these kind of link round up and request them to link back to your site. You can search Google with “Keyword” + “link roundup” to find such sites.
5. Backlink strategy #5: Resource Page Link Building – A resource page is simply a webpage or blog that lists useful links and resources on a specific topic. Resource page link building is the process of getting your webpage or blog URL included on the resource page as one of the useful resources. Find those resource pages by typing in Google : “Keyword” + inurl:links , “Keyword” + “helpful resources”, “Keyword” + “useful resources”, “Keyword” + “useful links”, “Keyword” + inurl:useful links
6. Backlink strategy #6: Broken Link Building Strategy for SEO – Find broken links on other websites and email them to replace that broken link with your related article’s link. Most of the cases you will get a positive reply as you are helping them to fix broken link issue.
7. Backlink strategy #7: Guest Posting: Build Backlinks to Your pillar Content – Read how to do effective guest blogging
8. Backlink strategy #8: Thank You Email Whom (blog) You Mentioned in Your Post – You can link useful & relevant external sites in your post and then email them informing you have done so and request them to share your blog post link with their community or newsletter or link back from a related post.

Link Building Strategies PDF Book

Download our PDF ebook on link building strategies. Learn how to find relevant back links for your website and how to build more quality backlinks for your website.

Top 3 Link Building Tips to Make you Breathe Easy

SEO companies are always looking for link building strategies that will get them ahead of the competition curve. The experts of the industry come up with articles and blog posts that formulate a number of tricks that can make your link building more robust and get you more online traffic.

However, if you scratch the surface a little, you will find that it is the simple tricks of link building that bring more benefit to your website! Keeping this notion in mind, here are the top 3 link building tips that will set you on the correct path:

Continue Link Building

Do not discontinue your link building efforts simply because you have attained your SEO goal. Getting to the top of the SERP result is not of much value unless you can cement your place there.

Your ranking will keep slipping if you terminate your link building process under the idea that you have all the links that your website needs. Keep digging for quality links to do your best in latching on to your place on the SERP.

Take Your Time

Do not push your link builders into getting you links by the dozens. That will not serve your purpose. You need quality links to get you the online network and traffic that you are looking for. Set a target of at least 1 high-quality link every day.

If you rush your link builders, they will target at only filling up the number of links you require daily. Sometimes, the best links will fall into your territory without having to hunt out for it! You need to be prepared in order to recognize those opportunities and grab it with both hands.

Do Your Thing

Do not allow the competition in your online domain to dictate terms to your link building team. Every website is unique in their appeal and demands. You cannot tailor your link building initiative based on what your competitors are doing.

Look for newer avenues and areas. Think differently and that will take you far instead of paying obeisance to the established norms of your domain. Consider each of your links as entry points into your website and nurture those links. In due time, you will get your rewards.

How to carry your link building

The technology and its strategies are modernized on day to day basis. The ideas and tactics for an effective link building of your organization for the upcoming year have to be planned by now. The online marketers are ready with all possible methods to attain successful and useful backlinks for their clients. All have to find the ways to rush up with new link buildings by presenting to directory on the Web. Innovative thinking and planning will give maximum effort to get high quality website for earning links.

Bring up your Manual link building for the next year with some advanced techniques that grow traffic to your site in a positive way.

Diverse profile

Create a profile that is natural and different from the rest of the others. The anchor text, useful and good information sites naturally acquire links. Links on paying should be avoided and unpaid links are advisable. The site should be connected to the high quality links and evade the low quality and risky ones. The smart way of getting connected with social form would create a natural link. The percentage of success is interconnected to the anchor text that creates a diverse profile and are most commonly attracted by the visitors. Make some sensible and relevant outgoing link from your site, as resources boost up the site.

Expert’s techniques

Restore your site with improved and quality content that receive links, Broken and error links should be replaced with new one or some replacement of your website page. Make good content websites for better traffic. Interviews, efforts, latest news and magazines, publications can be used as bait for links. Tactics like donations to charity, scholarships for students, and awards for best personnel, badges and bonus for employees can be updated on blogs and magazines that can get Manual link building to your site.

Smart Link Bait

Creativity and innovation of new ideas from you and your team can be effective. Content based on themes, animations and videos, digital graphics, sounds and any new thought of attraction can be used as bait for your Manual link building . Techniques like Gorilla marketing can be an effectual way of getting links.

Related reading: Best link bait ideas to get more backlinks & traffic to your website

Relationships

Human links are considered better than automatic and article links. Giving and receiving comments on social sites are one of the best resources. Register all important content and resource received from the people and use this as a tool for your link. Promote every positive factor in you and your company to others by social media or site and acquire the best quality links.

Competitive Factors

Always look into the positive aspect of the competitor and try to improve your plan. Forecast new competitions, analyze the existing competition, and execute the intelligent way of building your links. Focus not only on desktop searches but also on mobile searches too.

Conclusion

As the marketing strategies rely on the SEO and ranking, social media links should be the significant strategy . Increase your visibility from simple search to global search with content based ranking as for the betterment of your business.

Check our link building strategies PDF ebook above.

Do-it-Yourself Link Building for Your Website

For favorable search engine ranks, you need to get your link building strategy in shape. Think it’s quite a task? It’s time to think again! Link building can be an easy job to perform once you can get the basics right. You can start off by evaluating your own website. What are the pros of the website and how can you bring down the number of cons? Exciting content, eye-grabbing web designing or praiseworthy web interface: what makes your website stand apart from the zillion others available on the internet? In other words, zero in on the USP of your website.

The next step is to find out why your website should be considered link-worthy by more reputed websites. Because you need your web link on websites with a higher online traffic value than yours, you have to spell out how that will benefit the website on the better pedestal. To make your website more link-worthy, invest in better content and online customer service. Get active on social media networks so that your connection with the online customer base is better than your competitors. This will not just get you excellent back-links but also improve the online traffic to your website.

Link building can go haywire unless you have a definite strategy in place. Some websites, usually startups, want back-links anywhere they can! Websites of established online brands can afford to be choosy. Prioritize between quality and quantity. Set your monthly link building goals on the basis of this decision. Always choose goals that you can measure through numbers and empirical stats. And of course, they must be achievable. Your in-house team will get demoralized if you set outlandish targets for link builders.

Finally, test your strategies for link building on a small scale before going all out. SEO trends keep changing with each day. Your link building might run up against some technical glitch unless you keep your strategy updated at all times. Read up on alerts sent out by search engines for link building teams. Make changes to your content or website if you find repeated feedback going against your material. Bring in a fresh mind to evaluate your website from an objective standpoint. Link building can get you rich dividends in SEO if you put your nose to the grindstone and fight it out.

Link Request Site Selection for link building

Link building through reciprocal link exchange is a traditional, but effective way to gain back links for your business website. The basics of link requests via emails begin with searching for proper sites with which you will be exchanging reciprocal links. One needs to follow a set of strict guidelines, when it comes to selecting sites for link exchange. Though such guidelines may vary, the focus is generally on the relevancy and quality of the sites. Do not do reciprocal link exchange with any or every website. Do it with caution and keep it very less but super effective.

Search engine optimizers mostly advice to send link requests to sites that are complementary to each other, rather than approaching competitive sites. Yes, it is true that competitors are unlikely to exchange links, but as a marketer, I believe it is worth taking the chance. However, the trick here is in selecting the keywords or search phrases.

Use the keywords you want to optimize your site for and look for sites that can be your potential link partners. Not every site ranking in the search result is likely to be your true competitor, at least not by their products and services. Such sites are more likely to exchange reciprocal links with you; in addition, they will also send the most relevant traffic to your site.

Once you have found some sites that are not your competitors for similar products and services go through their site and look for link pages. In case, the site lacks a link page check for their newsletters. If possible, place a text ad/link in the newsletter. This is an inexpensive way of getting quality back link.

This technique, often referred to as “piggybacking” helps you to take advantage of the site’s higher ranking on a similar search term. This way you pursue a back link from one of the best ranking sites, rather than competing with them to unseat their ranking. Such link exchange technique also ensures that you have a network of quality links pointing back to your site from some high-profile sites, which receive a great deal of search engine traffic due to their high placement.

However, the challenge is to convince these websites to give you a link on the first place. To make the matter easier, become their affiliate if your website sells products. If you don’t, go ahead with the affiliation nevertheless and ask them to mention you on their site. For example, your site offers information about weight loss and dieting, but does not sell any product. You can become an affiliate of a popular diet program and swap banner or editorial text links.

Saying this, remember that the approach is the key factor. You main focus is to create win-win partnerships; thus, reward your link partner with a proper link back and they will reward you back in the process.

How to build links [ Infographics ]

How to write link request emails

Every marketer is familiar with link requests emails – they either send such mails or receive them or both. I receive about hundreds of them every month. Link request emails include a number of elements that basically serve two main purposes – (i) the person you are contacting will know that you actually visited their site; (ii) it will make easier for the person to take their decision regarding the link exchange.

All the elements of a proper link request email have logic behind them. The following are the twelve elements that you need to consider while writing link request emails.

Subject Line

This is one of the most important aspects of link request emails. Apart from being eye-catching, your subject line should clearly indicate what your intention is – a link back from the other site. For some sites, you need to follow specific directions, when it comes to subject line. They basically mention a specific subject line on the link to request page itself. Thus, make sure you study the site properly for such directions, as not following them means you will never hear back from the respective site owner.

However, a bigger challenge lies when you have site with no such instruction. The former at least ensured that the site owner would read your link request email, if you follow their instructions. Here, on the contrary, you don’t have any such guarantee. Thus, you must be creative enough to write an attractive subject line and smart enough to ensure it appeals the receiver.

Being too pushy will not help either. Another tip is to never include the word “link exchange” in your subject line. Firstly because emails with such subject line are usually considered as spams by many and secondly, it’s a poor way of approaching someone. Whatever the reason may be, such emails are likely to get deleted without being read.

Mentioning Names

This common courtesy can help you to gain the receiver’s confidence. Gone are the days when “Dear Webmaster/ Site Owner” did the trick. Today, you need to give more than a simple link back page’s URL to impress the email receivers. You need to make them realize that you have taken the time and effort to actually go through the site, before sending the link request email. In case, you can’t find the name of the site, Google it – you are likely to find the name of the site owner on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites. You may even call them for the webmaster/ site owner, using the phone number given on the site.

Similarly mention your name not only at the end of the email, but also in the beginning of it. This basic conversational etiquette shows you have taken the time and effort to personalize the email.

Site URL

This too will ensure the receiver that you are not lying or spamming them. If possible mention a content of the site that your found interesting or relevant to your business.  This will help the receiver to figure out that you have not only visited their site, but have also read the content. Showing fake sincerity or implying friendship will hardly do any good to you, when it comes to convince a person over emails for reciprocal link exchange. Rather, being professional, brief and direct, and courteous will actually help you to build a long-term business relationship.

In addition, mention the name and URL of your site that you want them to link back. BE as clear as possible in your approach. Another URL that you must mention in your link request emails is the URL of the page where your link fits. This way, you will save their time otherwise would have been waster to figure out the suitable location or to mail you back for the same.

In most cases, web owners offer a dedicated page for the purpose. These pages are known as either “Links” page or “Resource” page. However, some sites will give you a mention on more relevant pages.  Similarly, mention where you will be placing their links, if it is a reciprocal link exchange.

For banners and logos, mention the proper HTML code.

Describe Your Site

Describing your with a short paragraph about who you are and what you do will help the receiver to have a brief idea about your business, even before they visit the site. However, do not oversell yourself. Be subtle in your approach and provide them with a link to your ‘About Us’ page for further information. Remember the main purpose of your link request email is to inform them about your site and that you are looking for a possible back link from them. It is the quality of your site, which should impress them for the same and not just your mails.

Finally, give a valid email address and response to the emails at the earliest.  You may even include your phone number so that the person may contact you, if required. And for return links, especially where you need to give prior links, confirm that the link has been added. Also mention the URL where you have placed their site’s link.

Be humane in your link request emails – do not fill up the email with junks. Check out the email infographics below to get some more insights on what words to avoid and how to get better response from email receivers

Source: Mashable

Reciprocal Links: Will They Hurt Your SEO?

As per study by Ahrefs, they found 26.4% of the 140,592 domains in their sample have no reciprocal links. 73.6% of sites have reciprocal links. 43.7%—almost half—of the 112,440 top-ranking pages they studied have some reciprocal links. This once again seems to indicate that reciprocal links are a natural byproduct of the web. 4–5 out of every top 10 organic Google rankings have some reciprocal links, on average.

Link Building Tactics to Avoid after Being Penalized by Google

Link Building Tactics to Avoid after Being Penalized by Google: Why would Google penalize people for link building when they know people do it and even go as far as to give tentative advice on doing it too (Google rarely explicitly tell you to backlink to yourself)? The reason is because Google knows that link building tactics  may be used to manipulate the search engine and so have to take steps to stop that. Also, for the record, Google know that you can set up as many social media profiles as you like and then create your own buzz on social media networks, they are not stupid!

Here are some link building tactics  you should avoid anyway (not just after being penalized), though let’s face it that it is time to go whiter-than-white after being penalized because you are likely to be under the microscope (roughly translated means behave or you will be penalized again).

Backlinks from low quality press releases (Link building tactics to avoid )

There was a common occurrence of people hearing that press releases were great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so people started issuing them on the stupidest subjects just so they could get a backlink from it. These days are over and people who run press release disseminators are very picky about what they release. If a company is releasing any old crap then you do not want to link a press release from their platform.

Backlinks from link pyramids or wheels (Link building tactics to avoid )

People know that too many reciprocal links are going to get them in trouble, so what companies organize are link pyramids or link wheels. A link wheel works a little like this:

A links to B

B links to C

C links to D

D links to A

In that way Google cannot tell that people are secretly reciprocally linking, but the trouble is that the companies that arrange them do it too much to the point where Google realize and end up penalizing every website that has ever been involved with the company, so it is best to just avoid them

Backlinks from poor quality guest posts (Link building tactics to avoid )

Guest posting is a big deal these days and people have started to take advantage of it. Blogs are popping up everywhere and a big part of them are low quality and only exist in order to let people guest post and have a backlink. Linking from these blogs is going to do you no favors so it is best to avoid them.

Backlinks from article marketing spam (Link building tactics to avoid )

There are companies that are spamming article content across the net in order to enjoy a slight search engine boost. Doing this is not such a terrible thing if your record is whiter than white, but yours is not so it is best to give it a miss.

Backlinks from comment spam (Link building tactics to avoid )

Comment spam is pretty pointless these days when most comment sections are set with a no-follow directive. If you are getting offers from SEO companies to add in comment backlinks then give them a miss to be on the safe side. Just leave links from comment sections to other websites.

Backlinks from forum spam (Link building tactics to avoid )

Getting backlinks from forums is not the best idea anyway because forum masters are aggressively territorial. What tends to happen is that you enter forums every week to post your link and within a week the backlinks have been deleted by the forum master. This is not a problem until Google start to notice that you are losing as many backlinks as you are gaining, at which point they will assume you a backlink spamming and will penalize your website to be on the safe side.

Backlinks from followed links from adverts (Link building tactics to avoid )

Despite what you may have read–a backlink from adverts are not search engine friendly in any way shape or form. If you have any sort of advert on another website that leads to your own then it must either be on a no-index page or it must have the no-follow tag next to it. A backlink that is followed from an advert on another domain is bad news.

Backlinks from a blog post with very few posts (Link building tactics to avoid )

If a blog has very few posts then you can assume it has been set up by a spammer. There are even people who ask for guest bloggers to fill up their blogs. Give these people a miss and instead wait a few weeks or months and watch the blog grow before becoming a guest poster on it. You do not want to associate your website with a blog that may soon be under suspicion of being a spam website.

High value Links are shielded to Survive Google’s Present and Future Algorithm

If you ar e in the SEO business, you must be bothered about building high reward and future proof links. There can be umpteen numbers of link strategies working in your favor. But, it won’t be a very wise decision to look for something that works only now. Google keeps changing. The aim should be on getting the most bang for the money through what Google rewards.

In 2012, it was seen probably for the first time that bad links hurt the sites. Webmasters got paranoid about it. Google has a parameter of its own to decide whether the links are good or not. There can be different link building strategies like, content marketing, link wheels, paid link, user generated content, real company stuff, etc.

Google warns against unnatural links. Google has its own algorithm to detect unnatural links. It is difficult to point out specific characteristics to define unnatural links. It can be over-optimized anchor text.

The links that Google offers higher ranks are called high reward links. They get better indexing. There is no particular type of link that Google usually detects. You cannot control the way people will link to your site. Editorial links are high reward type links. Naturally, those are in high demands.

People work hard for building their sites and it may take 5 to 10 years. But, suddenly the hammer of Google is laid down and the sites get spoiled. Their businesses find no possible way out from the trouble. They start laying off hands and then start all over again. With time, Google gets better in finding the patterns and eliminating unnatural links. The threshold gets broader.

Infographics, guest blogging are being judged as the next big thing in the field. One may work for you, but, the other might work for somebody else. Some people do not the right ways to use these techniques. Guest blogs get spammed with unnatural author profile links, infographics, etc. The same anchor text gets linked to over 100 blogs. But, people who are using the natural methods and working on it diligently get their reward. Google encourages such behavior.

As a webmaster or an SEO, you can understand whether your technique is working or not. There is one thumb rule. Go for the links that does not let you have control over the anchor text. 80 to 90% times, this golden rule works amazingly. You should always build high reward links. No matter what method you are adopting for link building, this rule will definitely work.

Previously widgets were put in for infographic links. This way, the same anchor text used to get spread out to over 100 blogs. This has a chance to get penguin penalties at the time of optimization. Potentially unnatural links can be turned into high value links. The smartest way of doing it is by rotating the anchor text. Make sure even the recreated anchor texts do not fall in a pattern. It is good to avoid using a widget or text box. Google’s reverse image search helps you finding out who is posting your infographic. You can reach out to them and ask for links. This way your anchor text becomes natural.

Press releases links have a bad reputation of not adding a lot of value, because they are often abused and spammed. They often have exact match anchor texts going to many low quality websites. A press release goes directly to the journalists. If your product is linkable enough, it will get linked from the news organizations.

Guest posting has become one of the best tactics of link building these days. Guest posting can also be troubling at times. Over-optimization penalties may trouble you. A natural anchor text can be put in the middle of a guest post. You have to link it to any linkable assets.

The old and effective method is writing emails asking for links. This is a time tested method. The new smart way is influencing anchor text. If you are a smart SEO, you don‘t ask for a link, you just ask for a share. It works at least 6 times out of 10. They put it on their blog or website and eventually, you get the link with an authentic anchor text. Twitter and Facebook get you more anchor texts than you can even imagine.

Last but not the least, high value and high reward link is the key to survive in the ever evolving SEO world.

How SEO and Link building go side by side

Link Building and SEO are some of the most powerful SEO tools. Google uses a complex algorithm to determine the popularity of a website, and people that are new in the area of SEO must understand the power of those tools, and how they can be used effectively. However, while the theory is simple, putting it into practice is the real challenge. Where do you need to start from? What links are needed? By trying to answer to those questions, you will probably make many mistakes, but finally, the purpose is to create a solid SEO and link building campaign that will bring you the desired results.

Link Building

how it can be done

how you can connect it with SEO

how to avoid mistakes

You might think that placing some links on other blogs to your page is easy. Well, it is not true. First, by posting links randomly on other pages and blogs will probably not bring you the desired results, and it might even be considered spam by the respective pages. On the other hand, it must also be connected with the on-page SEO campaign, as you must connect the articles on your page that are expected to have the higher impact for the visitor. Moreover, you should also find the relevant directories and blogs where to post your messages, if you are really looking for effective results.

Quantity and quality

Many webmasters make the mistake of preferring quantity instead of quality, but this is wrong. If you want to connect your page on hundreds of directories, you will lose time and the result might not be the expected one. Moreover, you will also need to write many original SEO optimized articles to promote your page and isn’t it better to write them for your site instead of sending those articles on irrelevant directories?

There are the automated systems that will automatically subscribe your page to hundreds of directories. For some money, of course. It is the biggest mistake you can make. First, Google considers automated subscription as unfair; therefore, the pages that are promoted this way might be the subject of penalties. Second, an automated system will probably subscribe your blog having a technological theme on a directory designed for toys for kids, therefore the technique is not only ineffective, but also time consuming.

What is the connection between SEO and link building after all?

Link building is the method that will promote your website on other sites and in other internet places, while SEO is the method that will make sure your visitors will find your page with Google searches. As those visitors would want to find relevant content, it is important for your articles to be well written. This is why the SEO campaign must be perfectly coordinated with link building. If you want to invest some money in your site, you can find the specialized companies that will offer you an integrated SEO campaign, with link building and everything you need for your website to achieve the online visibility you desire.

3 Basic Tips For A Well-Trained Link Building Team

If you are determined about starting your own organization of link builders, there is nothing much, apart from the fear of making a few tiny mistakes that can hold you back. No matter how big the team is, it should contain all the hardworking and diligent people ready to handle big projects and campaigns with the required efficiency.

Make your goal and required job profile very clear to the employees at the very beginning, i.e. at the time of hiring them. That makes the expectations very clear to your employees and set their own goal to achieve it. Hiring link builders with effective SEO skills reduce the trouble on your part for training them with basic optimizing skills that can always be an added advantage for you to exploit. They also should update themselves with the advanced link building methods and trends for better results from your organization.

I would like to hint at a few methods for training them for making efficient link building in your company look effortless. They should have a few things like,

Information on Why Link Building is Important? 

SEO or earning high rank is not the only reason behind link building anymore. Social media marketing, CRO are other reasons for which link building is important. Knowing the proper goal of the task helps the staff work in a target-oriented manner.

Feedback for Improvement: 

Without proper feedback about their quality of work, your link building team can never make their work add proper value to your client’s site. Ask them to maintain a spreadsheet of their work for better understanding of their own work. Moreover, you will also get a chance to have a look at the amount of progress they are making.

Learning Basics of Link Building Business: 

Collate some sources of materials informing about the basic “How to’s” of link-building. This can become the perfect link-building handbook for the team members. In order to get best results you can sponsor an effective link-building course for them. Organize some in-house meetings for sharing your knowledge on the topic earned over the time and informing the team about the progress the organization has made over the time. Attending seminars on the topic can also enrich them with a good deal of knowledge about link building.

There are several things that you have learnt about link building and can teach your team of novices. However, the biggest strength that will require to be a good boss is ability to see it fail. Link building cannot assure you of ready success. Still, patience with the processes and the efficiency of the staff helps you beat all odds.

Link Building Tricks you’re Missing

Webmasters often miss out on some simple tricks to get more links coming into their websites. These tricks are important to tap because they are opportunities that you don’t have to create by investing time and effort. They are already lying there, waiting to be exploited! Go through these link building tricks that you’re missing out on and you’ll know how to make the most of what you’ve got!

404 Errors:

Nothing is more irritating for an online user when the web page they are looking for pops up a 404 Error. Similarly, nothing is more damaging for your link building strategy than these 404 Error pages putting a stop to the flow of incoming traffic. Check up Google Webmaster Tools for your website and fix the loose ends. Find out which pages are broken links and reactivate those pages.

Social Profiles:

This is another trick that most websites miss out on during their link building strategy. Social media profiles of the company on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn are great harvest centers for online traffic. If a social media user checks up your company page on Facebook or Twitter, they must not be thwarted there itself. They must be directed to your company website with the help of a web link placed strategically on the social media profile page.

Author Bios:

Author Bios are precise and short two-liners about the writer of a blog or article that is published online. Whether you’re writing blog posts or articles for SEO purposes or as guest posts, you have to include your website links in them. People reading your blog posts and articles will be interested in checking up your website by clicking on the web links that you provide on the Author Bio.

Online Press Release:

This is the perfect vehicle to get your links out there for people to click on. You’ll be surprised by how many websites miss out on this easy, but effective, trick to link building! An online press release goes out to a wide audience, depending upon whether you use free press release sites or paid ones. No matter which one you choose, you can expect it to go out to a wider spectrum of people. Place your web links in the press release. Use anchor texts as well for readers to click through!

Tips on Link Building for Newcomers in e-Commerce

The business of e-commerce will make life easier for you if you have steady traffic flowing in. A robust network of link building can get that for your e-commerce website. However, following the traditional link building trajectory may prove to be very taxing for your website. It takes time for the link building machinery to kick in and start getting you dividends. The best way out would be to adopt a link building strategy exclusively designed for newcomers in the e-commerce business. You can follow three pathways outlined in this post.

One, you must look for websites of businesses related to your domain, including vendors and retail sellers. You have to get into a tie-up with them because adding your strengths will prove beneficial to both sides. Vendors need the traffic that you get on your website and you need their support as well. You can get in touch with the webmaster of the vendors’ websites and showcase your products or services. If they like what you have to offer, they will enlist you on their website or mention you in their references. That kind of link building is a sure-fire way to grab relevant online traffic.

Two, offer to send over freebies in return of link building opportunities. Do not jump to this route before evaluating if it’s going to work or not. You need to interact with the website where you want your link to appear. You have to understand that high-traffic websites are always flooded with requests for link building. To get ahead of the competition, you have to offer something that breaks through the clutter. Incentives usually work in these cases! If you treat others well, it generally translates into something positive for you as well.

Three, offer to collaborate on content as well as coupons. If you are selling tea, you can offer to provide discount coupons to a biscuit seller! Think out of the box and innovate on the way. You can also offer to write guest posts for websites where you think your web link should appear in return. There will be occasions when your writing will be rejected. Do not get into a depression mode! Turn your focus to other websites and try again. If you can pull it off finally, it will do wonders for your new e-commerce website.

Seasonal Link Building: Why and How

It is not enough that you continue with link building for your brand online with the keywords specific to your business zone. While there is no denying the fact that continued link building is necessary to sustain your internet marketing drive, you can see some spikes in link building if you take seasonal events of the calendar within your purview. Seasonal link building is catering to events of the calendar that complements your business and integrating them with your primary keywords.

Seasonal link building is important primarily because of the additional online traffic you will get without breaking a sweat. For example, if you sell confectioneries, why not take advantage of events like Easter and Christmas? Add them with your usual set of keywords so that users looking for Easter confectioneries find you as easily as people looking for just confectioneries. This is a great way to build traffic and using the events of the calendar to your advantage. You can target specific keywords by looking at the events calendar in advance.

To have an effective seasonal link building strategy, use these tips:

• Demography Research: Know your consumer base inside out. You must know what kind of events excite them and what they are looking for during that event. That will help you jot down ideas to create and publish content. You can draw up keywords accordingly as well.
• What You Can Offer: After you have listed the events of your interest, draw up a list of what you can offer for each event. Think with insight. Look for ideas online. Use this in content when you look for seasonal links.
• Promote the Content: When your list of seasonal keywords is ready and content published online, you have to promote your content actively. Start off a few days before the event and build up the tempo in the days leading up to it. You will find it easier to get seasonal links that way.

Make sure your content and events maintain relevancy to the events. Do your studies carefully before writing the content for seasonal link exchange as events have cultural connotations that you have to keep in mind!

Link Building is More of Content Marketing

Link building is gradually becoming more of content marketing. In fact, content marketing itself is just another term widely used for link baiting. All you need is some outstanding content and submit them in various directories and bookmarking sites. If your content is compelling, soon people will start linking to you. And it is just not articles, blog posts and social media conversations are the actual place from where the links come alive. In fact, the market for articles is gradually slipping away while social media is taking the hold. Therefore, your blog is the place where you need to focus the most to increase the number of back links of your site.

The best way for link baiting using your content is to say something compelling as well as fresh. Both the search engines and marketers cry for fresh, unique and original content. Nevertheless, the content you are using is hardly likely to be original. In most cases, they are rephrased or rewritten from other people’s content. In fact, it is not even possible to create a wholly original content, unless the writer has an exhaustive knowledge of the particular industry. The key here is to be original in word choice and order, at least for the search engines. Also, make the content sound fresh even if you are rewriting other’s work.

The best solution is to give your own business insights and opinions to make the content sound more interesting and original. It is recommended to start writing your own blog posts as you can use your experience, knowledge and reputation – being the figure of influence in your particular industry. This will also help to think clearly, as you discuss the issues affecting your industry through your blog. The result will be some interesting posts attracting the attention of your readers.

Going back to link building and content marketing, there is no difference when it comes to practical upshot. However, the difference is on the emphasis on social media instead of emphasizing on the traditional SEO streams. Since Internet marketing these days is mostly comprised of social media marketing, we can safely say, “Content marketing is the new link building.” And this transformation has turned the link builder into a link creator. The revolution has once again congealed the age-old saying – Content is king. All you need is to create the best content to keep the snappiest and informative readers under your control, which in turn, will help you to create back links for your site.

Using Articles for Link Building

Link building is essential for higher search engine ranking. Even Google values the quantity and quality of links that point back to your site. You can obtain links in various ways and through different kind of web pages. For me, one of the best ways to obtain back links is through article marketing. Though it may be a little tough for some, article marketing is very effective in increasing search engine rankings, if done properly.

Most of the content available on the Internet is articles and blog posts. These online articles come from various sources. Though some publish content for study and research purposes, some use them for marketing as well. Content could be of various topics depending on your particular industry. However, the only thing that you should ensure is that the content should be unique or fresh.

In other words, it should not be duplicate content as Google (as well as other search engines) is very particular about this issue. In fact, Google launched Panda updates to ensure the freshness of your content. The search engine giant rewards sites with unique and fresh content with higher search rankings, whereas site with duplicate content are likely to be penalized by Google.

Apart from the freshness of your articles, you need to consider some other technicalities. The first is the keyword density. Keywords are important for ranking, but you should maintain a proper balance while inserting keywords into your article and blog posts. Overusing of keywords in content is often regarded as spamming. Similarly, focus on the title of your content. Make it eye-catching to attract attention.

However, don’t forget to insert your main keyword in the title. This will help both the search engines and the readers to understand what the article is about. Also, use good anchor-text links to help search engines in their indexing process. This link will be pointing back to your site; thus, make sure you place it strategically in the content.

After you have created the content, it is time to post it for link building. By now, every marketer knows about the various different ways to submit articles on Internet to get links. Apart from the blogs and article directories, there are free website services like Blogger, WordPress, Weebly and Yola – where you can submit your content. In addition, some sites focus specially on article submissions such as HubPage, Squidoo and EzineArticles. Each of these platforms has their own pros and cons.

While selecting your article submission platform what you need to consider is whether you want to opt for quality or quantity. For example, one article published on EzineArticles or Squidoo holds higher value in terms of quality that having 100 articles posted on various directories. The key here is to maintain the balance between quality and quantity.

What Makes a Web Site Link-Worthy?

What would make one webmaster choose to link their site to yours? The main aim of this was to allow documents that relate to each other be linked from one computer to the next. However, this was before the majority of the world became familiar with the Internet.

A large majority of commercial web content is related to  Link Building process. From banner ads to text ads, to even tweeting a URL from your twitter account. All this linking is what connects people. Thus, anything that is clicked to connect people to another web page constitutes a link.

So, what can one learn from this? Generally, if your content is not useful to people online, you will not get links to your website from other pages. One needs to ensure that they not only have quality content on their website, but that the content is also relevant to people. When websites are not getting as many links as they would like, the webmasters may opt to buy some of these links.

However, this is not going to solve anything as most of these bought links do not generate much traffic. Instead, you need to battle the core of the problem, which would be the content of the website itself. This is the only thing that will help generate successful links that will do wonders for your search engine rankings.

So, what comprises a website that is link worthy? Let’s picture that you are dealing in a magic website. A website that has all things magical ranging from wands to fairy dust. However, if you are only providing products on your website, would this be sufficient enough to get numerous links from different people?

This is what separates link worthy websites from those that are not. If you have an online magic store, you need to provide something additional that will make people come back other than the products that you are trying to sell them.

So what about, in addition to the products that you are selling, you also have a database on information pertaining to magic itself. This database could include information on various magic tricks, biographies on magicians, and a glossary of words frequently used in magic.

This would make your website much more relevant as it would have content that people are interested in. This is especially people who are visiting your website for your specific products as they can now get additional information on whatever questions they may have.

Content for Earning Links

Link building is still one of the most effective means of getting Google’s attention. Now, to grab a spot on websites more reputed than yours, you have to come up with some killer content!

That is probably the only way to earn back links from websites with higher stream of online visitors. They will allow you to put up your web link on their page only if that leads to content that looks good on their brand credibility. Brush up your content by following these easy steps:

Create infographics.

They are the ‘in’ thing now! To create infographics that are ‘share-worthy’, you need a crackling good copy and excellent designing. Hire professionals for this job. If your infographic is good work, you will not just get links but also ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ on social media networks.

Focus on structured long form topical content on your website.

Online readers were always looked upon as an impatient lot. Now the stakes are even higher with more websites and more options available to netizens. But you should not compromise on quality of the information you are providing with the topic. So if your content is lengthy, keep a proper sectional table structure or page content menu with clear headings and sub headings so that users can jump into the preferred sections easily or scan the content easily. It is always preferred to write 1000-2000 words well researched unique content with mixture of audio, video, images, infographics, pdf & statistics or data.

Related reading: How to write compelling content

Solve problems.

Readers do not like to read about their problems and how difficult the problem is for them to deal with. If you know how to solve it, offer the solution. Ask questions in your post and go on to answer them. That will bring your content quickly under the attention of your reader. Once they get solutions to their queries, they will read more of what you have to say.

Stop talking about your brand always.

There are others topics to write about. You may leave out writing about your competitors and how bad they are! But speak of related issues that concern your domain. If you are selling shoes, you can afford to write a couple of posts here and there about pedicure or foot massage tips. It breaks away from the monotony.

Offer to write high quality guest posts.

This will broaden your network as a writer and also mean well for your brand. Through guest posts you can reach out to readers who are not part of your network. Be ready for rejections! Keep trying and you will be surprised by what one published guest post can do for your brand.

Related reading: Guest posting

Content Marketing Explosion – Infographic

Source: Unbounce

The Role of Link Building in Content Marketing

Who comes to read your website or content web pages determine what kind of response you are going to get! If you are placing web links with the wrong websites and targeting irrelevant consumer groups, your content marketing is going to take a toss. Links are the entry doors to your world of content and if these doors are not bringing in the people you want, you need to rethink your link building strategies. Here are some pointers that you can take into consideration:

• Remember that old adage: do not put all your eggs in a single basket. Link building for content marketing benefits must be true to this saying. Do not build up links with only a single type of websites. Broaden up your horizons. Get more people to come to your content pages. You never know where you will strike gold!
• Quality is everything when it comes to link building, especially when content marketing is your chief aim. Bad quality links reflect poorly on your content as well. Other than the fact that you will get the wrong people on your content pages, the authentic online users will shy away from your content because you are associating yourself with the wrong websites during link building.
• Spread out your Authorship over several writers. Mind you, these Authorship profiles have to be ‘real’ people! If you credit all your content pages to a single writer, it looks a little stretched. Come now, everyone knows a single content writer cannot publish ten web pages in a single working day! Be natural and organic.
• Do not compromise on link building strategies. If you oversimplify link building methods, you will get instant or immediate results. But you will risk your credibility as a content marketing source. Content marketers have to be very particular about their authenticity and the level of trust that they share with their readers. If that ground becomes shaky because of your faulty link building strategies, irreparable damage would be done.

The best way to move forward is to ensure that you have quality links, if not a large number of links.

Contextual Link Building Service – A Successful SEO Strategy

Placement of link is only justified if it entices users to click it, which is entry point of your website. Bingo! You are thinking right; I am talking about contextual link building.

Creation of content walks along with the contextual link building. Quality of content is the measure letting site win numbers of backlinks. Hence, link building can stay healthy with the creation of high quality content, as it is inviting factor for many other websites to link with your site.

Contextual link building service is one of the important aspects of SEO. It is one of the desirable methods that make your site rule the search engine rankings. In the era of fierce internet marketing competitions; good link building efforts can make the site survive happily. There is no doubt in mentioning that it is highly helpful and also boosts the websites for gaining prominent presence.

Discover some features of the contextual link building services offered by the companies that is helpful for your site’s progress

• The service aids in fetching some of the good and relevant contextual links
• The links attained must always be natural and should not be taken from any link farm. This increases the credibility of site.
• The links are collected with contextual content
• The packages offered by the companies includes submission to good article sites or other credible sources
• Articles should keep up the quality and should also be SEO friendly. The writing has to be rich in quality and keyword
• The articles must equip at least two to three links
• Submission only makes sense if done to a good Page Ranking source
• It is mandate for each landing page of contextual link building service to be of high PR social bookmarking.
• Best strategy is to have permanent nature links and should not be renewed

Being crucial element of link building campaign; Contextual link building is a construction using which users mark presence on your site. Therefore, get proficient SEO professionals for witnessing best rankings in search engines through good link building strategy. Good expert not just enhances site rankings but also attracts targeted traffic to the site.

Site can maintain visibility of site and also improve it by following good contextual link building strategy. Having most relevant contextual links is the significant aspect of search engine optimization.

Contextual Link Building is helpful in nurturing the site and it is ideal to position your links in the home page. Although, there are several anchor text requirements but positioning the links on the home page is always recommended.

Role of Video Content for Link Building

Video content are mostly popular due to their incomprehensibly viral nature. They can create an epic over the Internet, if used properly. However, you need to posses the hottest video to crease such a buzz. A good video content can even spread without any marketing. The social networking sites, along with their “Share” button have actually made it a reality. So if you are about to enter the wonderland of video marketing read its benefits to measure your ROI.

As you know, Google sends crawlers to your website to collect certain information including page quality, keyword instances and relevance. And having multimedia objects in your site will add value to these metrics. Moreover, video content are known to increase and improve user engagement. As a result, the user’s “Time on Page” will increase indication a higher page quality.

Related reading: Video Marketing Strategies

Also, website that contains multimedia content are more likely to get linked back by other people who find them interesting. In addition to the aforementioned benefits, video content helps to stand out on the search engine results page or SERP, as it is better known as. Thus, adding a mere video thumbnail will help you to improve your ranking in search results. In fact, ecommerce sites can actually doubled their linking root domains by placing videos in locations like product pages.

A smart marketer should even consider surrounding their video content with images and text, as Google’s crawlers are not programmed to decipher the embed code of your video content. This way, Google will receive better algorithmic signals from your site. This practice has an additional benefit of providing you yet another opportunity to better target your keywords.

Give a proper headline to your video content and summarize its content. Also, provide links for other related videos to keep your users engaged.

It is recommended to opt for YouTube, when it comes to selecting a host for your video content. This will help you to leverage upon Google’s own video outlet to receive precious link juice from this video sharing site. Apart from YouTube, you can opt for the video hosting servers offering paid services. For Google, it will seem as if the video content is on your domain. Wistia and Vimeo Pro offer such paid services. However, the former can generate as well as submit video sitemaps on your behalf, while the latter comes across as an affordable video hosting option for those with limited budget.Incorporating Video into your Link Building Strategy

Sites to Submit Video to:

• MetaCafe
• Veoh
• Vimeo
• Break
• Daily Motion
• Atom
• PhotoBucket
• Zoopy.com

Related reading: Top Video editing Tools

The Sins of Using Generic Anchor Texts in link building

Anchor texts, simply put, are the keys in a written online document that takes you to a different web link than the one you are currently reading. Anchor texts are extremely popular not only because they help the reader locate additional content or a related web page, but also for the search engine algorithms to identify keywords in the SERP process.

However, the practice of using anchor texts is much abused by desperate SEO efforts to grab higher page ranks. The most commonly abused anchor text is ‘Click Here’! Are there alternatives to this? Let’s find out!

Take a hint from Google’s patent example. It clearly demonstrates how you can use the method of ‘co-occurrence’. To state it in layman terms, the example encourages you to place the anchor text links on related key-phrases instead of on the keywords itself. This will also help you come up higher in the ranking order because your content has relevant anchor texts. Also, it weakens the unrelated anchor texts. Using synonyms is another smart way of falling into the clichéd anchor text trap. Use the tilde (~) operator of Google and find synonyms that work as alternative keywords and so, anchor texts.

Who says that anchor texts have to be keywords and generic key phrases only? You can think differently and use your brand name or branded-product names as anchor texts. The only word of caution here is that unless you have gained some online branding, it is not advisable to use this method.

Also, if the name of your brand or product matches with that of a reputed brand, do not use this method. It will confuse the search engines and your gains will not be much. SEO efforts stuck in this rut can try anchoring to names of people who matter in your brand. You can achieve substantial gains by using anchor texts on names like the name of your CEO.

To sound the end note, avoid the overuse of anchor texts by repeating them irrelevantly. You cannot outsmart the search engines by this method. A wiser way would be to write excellent content and link through relevance. Your readers will appreciate this method far more than shoving web links at them and demanding that they click on them. Create unique anchor texts and you will reap the benefits of doing so.

Is Your Link Building Reaping Benefits?

Every SEO initiative worth its salt invests in link building. But you’ll be surprised at how many of these link building strategies are not even evaluated regularly! The answer is very simple if you ask why it is so. Traditional SEO practices like link building are tried and tested methods to achieve popularity on the internet and also get higher rankings on search engine results. That is why online businesses carry on link building knowing in their hearts that results are around the corner. However, the fact is that with a little insight and statistical analysis, the link building practices will gather more leverage for your online business.

What do you need to do in order to get back your link building effort on track? Firstly, evaluate your progress every week. Check up Google Analytics and find out which back-links are giving you substantial traffic and which are just lying untapped. Just as placing web links on reputed websites that are more popular than yours important, these links must get you some online traffic. It often turns out to be a better idea to place back-links on an upcoming website with a steadily growing base of online users than a branded one. You can position yourself to take such calls only when you are armed with statistical data.

Link building strategies must be aimed towards grabbing higher rankings on search engine results (SERPs). If the links that you have at present get you rank 5 for a relevant search, you have to scratch your way higher up by improving the quality of links. Always go for quality links rather than many links that don’t add up to much. You will get more traffic from a link on a popular website than many others on non-popular ones. Encourage your link builders to look for back-links from websites with Page Rank of 5 or more. Achieving that standard of excellence will drive your online traffic through the roof!

Social media networks also contribute in the link building category. Uploading web links on Facebook pages of popular brands or tweeting on the profile pages of such brands increase the visibility of your website. It is not important how many ‘shares’ or ‘retweets’ you get unless they translate into actual online traffic. Check up how your web links are doing on social media network with analytical statistics from sites like Crowd-Booster.

Link Building Isn’t about Building Communities Only

Gone are the days when link building was only about building up communities in the hope of back links to your website. Then, link building was solely dependent on article submission, blog commenting and all those traditional forms of building up the web chain. With time, especially with the rise of competition, you cannot get the kind of links and the number of links that you need to keep afloat. You need quality links that people take to like fish to water. In order to do that, you need visually engaging content and building real communities around it. Here are some content areas that you need to focus on to scale up link building:

• Real-life Engagement: Readers of blogs and discussion threads are not robots and sociopaths. They are human beings with real emotions and feelings. Tap into that. Visual content that generate emotional responses will generate links in the process. There is no better way to building up links than creating content that people associate and connect deeply with.
• Unique Posts: The most difficult part about creating visually rich content is finding the right niche. For example, if you are looking to build links for a dessert website, you will find stiff competition in that domain. Why not pin down your content something really specific that has less competition around you? The idea is to grab the attention by being unique. True, you will find few viewers at first but you need to keep at it and work your way up to more generic topics. Such posts have greater value in the link building chain. 
• Share Something Special: No one likes to read rehashed posts culled from other blogs. Add your own personal inputs to the proceedings, something that they will not find anywhere else. It will make readers come back to your content with others similarly interested in the topics. In this way, you will create a sizable community and also generate enough links in the process. You need to share your innovations and ideas with people out there.
• Not about You: Don’t make your content about you. Such an approach repels online viewers and undoes your link building initiative. Instead, make it about the readers and online users. That will help you create readable and most importantly, shareable content.

Best Ways to Get Google Traffic except Link Building

We have always looked at link building as the first person to go to if we want quality google traffic to our websites. This has resulted in a dependence on link building initiatives that do not always justify the returns on investment. You end up spending too much time on getting links that bring too little quality traffic to validate the time and effort spent in the process. Here are some other ways in which you can get the cream of Google traffic to your website:

How Social Media signals support Link Building?

This section explains how social media signals support link building. The role of socially supported linking helps increase the organic social media signals.

We all know that the balloon of internet industry is often filled with flux. You cannot expect something that is successful today to be triumphant tomorrow also. This is clearly evident with the dominating importance of social media signals like tweets, +1, likes, reddits etc for your search engine ranking.

Just the act of linking shortcuts or buying links to your website cannot support your website’s ranking anymore in the search engines. Here comes the role of socially supported linking that helps increase the organic social media signals and improve the reach of your business propelling to longevity.

Is Link building a real mountaineering task?

Link building is always challenging and can play a vital role in taking your product or services to the ultimate users with the kind of search engine rankings and popularity it fetches for you in the celebrated search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Only an authentic site will link to other reliable sites with relevant content and it becomes a real challenge for fake or spam sites to get links from unfailing websites. It’s been more than 2 decades since the search engines have started using links as the major sources for determining the potential of the site to benefit the ultimate web users. Search engines have their own parameters and value the links in a unique way. It’s always good to understand the credence and valuation of links by search engines before starting your Link building campaign.

Link building in the algorithm of search engine ranking:

The two factors that are used as the prominent metrics in the search engine algorithm to grade a website is the quality and the quantity of inbound links. You can always build imperative and prolonging links to your site from exceedingly pertinent third party sites and this is one among those effective strategies of link baiting that spreads the information virally. 

This feature is a part of link building that targets to enhance the number of relevant and good quality links to a website. A link bait article can also be called as social media content as it is readily available for people’s attention and influence them to share it or link it to their community. This aids you in getting people to your site easily.

Importance of social media signals for supporting link building:

The recent years have experienced an unexpected increase in social media channels and its impact on search engine rankings. The search giant has started to slot in numerous social signals hooked on to its search results. This act can be entailed with the bespoke and specialized results for the users who have logged-in to their corresponding social media channels.

Even those pieces of content that are not a part of the top ten rankings of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) have the possibility of being shared within the social circle of the ultimate searcher. Promoting your content to a massive group is just a click away for the users with large social circles as they keep on sharing and linking it extensively, fetching potential visitors to your website.

This table representing the questions sent by the renowned author Danny Sullivan of Searchengineland to Google and Bing and the response of these popular search engines for the most significant points on social signals will help you understand things better.

Questions by Danny Sullivan	Google’s Response	Bing’s Response
Do you look upon links that are shared within Facebook? (Through Fan pages or Personal wall)	Personal wall data from Facebook is not available and links that are shared on Facebook fan pages are treated in the much similar way of dealing with tweeted links.	We consider links that are shared from the fan pages of Facebook and especially look for those ones that are denoted as ‘Everyone’.
What about an article that is retweeted or positioned a lot in Twitter? Is it counted as a signal apart from tracing non-nofollowed links that may be a natural result from it?	It is counted as a signal and is employed in news and organic rankings. This is also used to perk up our news universal by indicating the number of people who shared a particular article.	Bing Social Search gives more weight to the tweets from more trustworthy people, moving to the top when the top match significance is done. We also look at the user’s social authority to know how many follow you and the number of people you follow.
Do you really think that the influence of a link depends on the person who actually tweets it?	Yes this is used as a signal chiefly in the ‘Top Links’ segment.	Yes for sure.
Do you think that the weight of a link depends upon the person who in fact shared it on Facebook?	Yes and our treatment is the same as we do it for Twitter.	We can easily take a call on the quality on Facebook with the influence on Twitter. We treat it as justifiable and legitimate if it is shared in both Twitter as well as Facebook.
Do you use Author quality and make an attempt to know who they are really? (Do you compute the authority of a person who tweets?)	Yes and we calculate a person’s authority as we are not aware of anyone for that matter in our real being.	We compute the authority of the personality who tweets and try associating the popular figures with their real identity.

This clearly signifies the importance of social media signals support for link building and their considerable weight in the system of search engine rankings.

Possibility of getting more natural links:

Acquiring quality and hands-on inbound links through social media signals influence and enhance the possibility of getting more number of natural links to your website based on the relevance and the quality of your content. The basic purpose of a link is to bring in myriad users to your site naturally without any kind of compulsion.

The user should willingly visit your site and get benefited with the value of the content delivered in it. It’s good to check whether your website’s content gets natural tweets, likes etc, and whether they share the content that they actually liked and many more.

Social media signals add value to your site as the extremely good and quality content has the potential to be shared across other social media channels, creates chances for bloggers to refer your content or generate a new content based upon your piece of work and grants you all the other benefits that the traditional link building practice was trusted to deliver.

Are Backlinks Dead in Modern SEO?

When I started off in the digital marketing world, acquiring backlinks was a major force. SEO experts swore by their efficacy. Companies, even startups, paid tons of money to hire and engage executives to get backlinks. This army was roughly called ‘link exchange guys’! Since those early days of the internet and digital marketing, much has changed. Techniques have evolved and somehow, the traditional model of acquiring backlinks has been relegated to the backburner. So much so that ‘link exchange’ is nothing short of an abuse in SEO parlance!

Yet, you would be making a huge mistake if you write off backlinks completely. Backlinks highlight your importance online. There is no better indicator of a brand’s popularity than its outreach on the internet. That is probably why a Search Quality Senior Strategist of Google, Andrey Lipattsev, holds backlinks as one of the two most importance factors considered in the search engine giant’s website ranking system.

The problem starts when brands, especially the middle or lower tier ones, try to acquire links. The usual skyscraper approach of using email blasts directed at websites popular than yours for link exchanges do not work anymore. Despite all those resources engaged in directing emails for links, precious few come with favorable responses. Bigger brands do not want any truck with your business and you end up frustrated, heaping colorful abuses on the use of backlinks and how useless it can be as a tool!

It is time for a different approach. Here’s what I think about circumnavigating your way around the question of acquiring links. Now big brands are not offering you backlinks because your content and website, or brand value, is not good enough for them. Once your content starts to get popular, these brands will notice your work and you will probably get what you are looking for. The key is to make your content popular. Your brand name should be noticed online. You can do them in a number of ways.

Infographics, for example, is a tool that is continuing to ride the popularity wave. Initially people though that they will die out like a yesterday fad. But it has caught on and survived. Once you create infographics, you should promote them through your online channels. Social media platforms will be excellent for this purpose. You can embed them in newsletters and send them over. Identify content creators of a similar vein. Contacting influencers in your domain of work is another option for you. Email them your work instead of just link exchange requests.

Other than infographics, gifographics is another technique that works. Animated gifs are extremely popular on social media, especially Facebook. You can do one step better by providing the gif code for those who like your gif and want to use it on their website or blog. The idea here is to open up your content for new audiences and content editors. Instead of simply looking for links, let them notice your work and be interested in your brand.

There are a couple of thumb-rules that you can follow to judge the value of your content. Ask yourself: would you share the content you are creating if you were an unassociated user who has nothing to do with your brand? Secondly, take the content’s main keyword and do a Google search. Are the content quality of the first 3 results better than the work you have created? If the answers to both questions are in the affirmative, you are ready to publish the work and take it to the big brands.

After all, you should remember that it is doubly difficult for a largely unknown brand to get noticed than a popular brand. If you get something in your email from a reputed brand, you are tempted to check it out. For a smaller brand, the content must really stand out to get noticed. This is the target you should have when developing content. In the modern day SEO world, only excellent content will get you the cream of links for your website. Almost all other efforts will draw a blank.

So, rethink your body of content and that will redefine your efforts for better backlinks.      

Infographic on how to prevent google penalty

Here is an infographic describing 3 important tips to prevent google penalty in search.

Related reading: How to save your website from Penguin Updates & How to get benefits from Google Panda & Penguin update

Earning Links Better than Building Links

The concept of link building is as old as the idea of search engine optimization. It has been long considered as the premiere way of widening the horizons, building up networking milestones and getting the cream of SEO traffic trooping into the website or blog. In the last couple of years, however, the concept of link building has taken a serious beating. Much is due to the fact that SEO professionals (if you can call them so!) abused the idea of link building. Spam links, unrelenting pushing of links and link buying were rampant till Google put a stop to all of it.

Now, SEO firms have no other choice but to look beyond link building. Serious-minded SEO professionals are choosing to go for link earning rather than link building. Link earning is a kind of pull marketing where you engage online users and websites enough to make them ask for links from their blog or website. This is the best way of building up your linking network. It is much easier written than done! For link earning, you have to be at the very top of your game. The content on your website has to be cutting edge in order to get other websites and blogs interested in placing your link.

There are other ways in which you can make your website or blog powerful enough to earn links, other than content marketing. Building up contests and opinion polls can get you a substantial amount of popularity on the internet. When people flock to participate in contests on your page, you can get other parties to want links from your page. This is a great way to build up organic links and also get enough coverage on the internet.

Freebies in form of free ebooks or other giveaways are excellent ideas to link earning. Other websites and blogs will be interested in your page when they find that they can get something out of nothing. You don’t have to give away premiere content or apps developed by your company! Give away something that is not too hard to make but is quite useful for others. Such low-key offerings will have the entire online domain eating out of your hands.

10 Ways to Discover Link building Opportunities on Social Networking Websites

Smack your head against the wall no longer.  Here are 10 simple ways to discover link building targets.  You can do this.  It just takes some time, some preparation, and a bit of finesse.

1.       Choose a Target Audience

• Industry Players: Consider choosing the industry player if you are looking for trusted experts in your industry.  Their links will give you a shot in the arm in the form of credibility.
• Audience Hubs: Looking to demographic hubs can help you find the players or at least earn a reputation in the niche you’re after.
• Other Link Builders: The people who have already been where you want to go are a great demographic.  If you can get in league with them, you will be on your way to good links.  They are usually on the lookout for ways to increase their own links and fresh content.

2.       Nail Down Your Online Persona

If you are building links for someone else (an outside client), you need to create or at least tweak an appropriate online persona.   So build an online persona that works with your target demographic.

If, instead, you are building links for your own site, obviously you are the primary source.  Use the social media accounts you have, so long as they serve your purposes.  If you have a “work life” and “personal life” choose the one that works best for your target audience.

3.       Create and Promote High-Quality Content Only

You only need to use the best of the best of your content to build links.  Promote links to your work that adds to the community conversation rather than your homepage.  Your article/whitepaper can provide a homepage link.

Be sure that your content is original.  Add value.  When possible, give them something brand new.  If not, at least give them a fresh look or add your own flavor.  The more original the work, the better.

4.       Search Twitter and Search Engines to Find Targets

• Directories: Twitter directories are easy ways to find relevant Twitter users. Start with relevant tags or user locale.
• Search tools:  Google Twitter.com +_________ (insert tag here) to find posts related to your tags.

5.       Look for Influencers in Your Industry on Facebook or other platforms

Look for influencers in your industry on Facebook and connect to them.

6.       Search Del.icio.us For Like-Minded Users

• By tag: Enter keyword and find the most popular links from that category
• By site: Plug in a competitor URL to see who has bookmarked it in the past.
• By related article: Find an article that’s relevant to your content then search for it on Del.icio.us and check out the users who’ve saved it.

7.       Look Through Categories for Mix

StumbleUpon lets you key in your targeted topic and find relevant blogs it has indexed.  It’s a fast search and gives you the ability to connect to others who have viewed the same material.

8.       Find the Top Users and Topics on Digg

Digg displays the most influential topics and users by category. Is your subject/niche in a leading category?  Then look through the leaders and hook up with them.

9.       Search Quora Questions

Quora is gaining popularity. That means you need to get in there now and start networking.  Search the related questions and answer them there. Provide relevant links.

10.   Look through LinkedIn

1. Search: LinkedIn’s Advanced Search feature allows you to search other profiles and then allows you to filter by business, location, etc.
2. Answers: Here is a good place to find experts and insert yourself in the conversation.
3. Groups: While you have to put up with a lot of updates you might not want to read every day, this is the key place to find the players in your niche and get to be part of the conversation.  Don’t skip this.

Conclusion

This process takes time.  Don’t get in a hurry.  Your primary concern should be building community and slowly building your reputation as an expert in your niche.  When you ask for a link, be personable yet brief and polite.  Expect to have some rejection.  The more you can talk to others and contribute to the conversation, the faster you will begin to grow your own reputation.  Relevance is the key.