100 Ways to Build Real Links

This is not the first big list of link building technique posts, there’s a couple of others here, here and here. My intention here was really to create a list which was just link building tactics, no recommendations like ‘use spell check’ and ‘get your site to validate’- although these are fair points they can’t really be called tactics. I’ve dug into my old bookmarks to come up with some of the best techniques around as well as some which many will consider outdated. I’m sure there’s plenty more to be found.

I would guess most SEO’s are probably only regularly using a small fraction of the link building techniques on this list, it’s easy to get into a routine of just using the means you find the easiest so hopefully this big list might encourage some out of box type thinking in your link building.

The list is certainly not exhaustive and some of these techniques I definitely steer clear of these days although I would assume they still work. Please feel free to add anything I’ve overlooked in the comments with links if possible. Enjoy!

Directories

The emphasis has to be on quality over quantity with directories. A few still offer PageRank/ trust passing links. Most free directories don’t seem to although in uncompetitive niches you might still be able to use free directory submission on a large scale with manipulated anchor text to target your keywords. Local directories still work pretty well also.

1. Buy high quality listings on Yahoo, BOTW, business.com etc
2. Get a free DMOZ listing either by submitting or better yet, become an editor
3. Get an AboutUs spotlight written for your business
4. Find a list of all the niche directories in your industry and submit to them
5. Look for local business directories in your area and submit to them
6. Hire a company to build 1200 low quality directory links (might still give you a boost in uncompetitive industries)

Articles

There’s only a small number of article directories worth submitting to now but these are well worth using still as their links pass some value and you can easily manipulate anchor text and build deep links.

7. Write quality articles and publish top article directories like Ezine, Buzzle, GoArticles, & Article Dashboard
8. Write articles for work.com
9. Write articles for Infobarrel
10. Hire a company to write lots of 400 word articles and submit to syndication services link article marketer or iSnare with about the author backlinks

Online Press releases

Press releases were all the rage a few years ago. The usefulness of online press release sites for juice passing links is fairly low (although again you can deep link and control anchor text). If your story is good enough getting picked up on Google news through these sites may be one road to get into the mainstream media.

11. If you’ve got news worthy content run paid press releases through sites like PRWeb
12. Syndicate press releases to free PR sites

RSS

RSS scraping can occasionally give you new backlinks, although the sites which your feeds are published on are usually low quality

13. Create an RSS feed if you haven’t already got one for your company news. Submit it to RSS syndication sites like Feedbomb

Buy links

Still fairly essential in competitive markets, there’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to buy links. Basically the bigger the footprint the bigger the risk so tread with caution.

14. Buy quality links from webmasters and bloggers by contacting them directly and offering cash
15. Buy links through a link broker
16. Buy .edu links
17. Use a link network like TNX to buy a range of cheap low quality links
18. Buy inlinks
19. Buy links from local journalists
20. Use paid review services like sponsored reviewed, reviewme or pay per post
21. Buy cheap dofollow banners directly from small publishers, forum moderators and local businesses
22. Pay forum moderators or regular contributors to add your link to their signiture
23. Buy blogroll links

2-way link exchange (aka recipricol linking)

You link to me, I’ll link back. Maybe it shouldn’t work still but it does seem to. It makes sense that a significant portion of your entire link profile will be reciprocal, but don’t go overboard and only link out to quality, relevant sites.

24. Create a links page, look for sites with their own links pages and exchange links (still works well for local businesses)
25. Exchange in-content links (ideally on new pages as they’re added)

3-way links

Slightly dubious tactic. Only use in moderation and in conjunction with other 1-way link building techniques, else its going to look like you’re part of a link network

26. Create microsites or blogs on standalone domains and use these sites to trade off links to your main domain
27. Use a link exchange network like Linkvault or co-op to exchange links

Social media

There’s plenty of new ’social media’ type sites popping up all the time. Generally the links passed by these sites have little value in their own right but they can help to get your content in front of the right audience which can lead to organic links. Use in conjunction with link bait.

28. Create pages/ profiles on Facebook, Bebo and MySpace (nofollow)
29. Setup LinkedIn profiles (nofollow)
30. Create Squidoo lenses
31. Create hubpages
32. Answer relevant questions on Yahoo answers with backlinks (nofollow)
33. Answer relevant questions on LinkedIn answers with backlinks
34. Submit your content to Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit (use voting rings to vote your content up in these sites)
35. Bookmark your site on social bookmarking sites like delicious
36. Register your brand name on hundreds of social media sites with KnowEm – some will include links in your profile

Blogging

Blogs are hot-beds of link activity. If you have a blog and are prepared to link out, great things can happen!

37. Setup a blog within your main domain and submit it to blog directories like BOTW blog directory
38. Link out generously to other blogs to get on the radar and gain trackback links
39. Write guest posts on similar blogs
40. Comment on loads of other blogs
41. Buy blog comments
42. Swap blogroll links with other bloggers
43. Setup blogs on Blogspot, Wordpress.com or typepad.com, post a couple of articles with backlinks to your main site

Request links

You don’t ask you don’t get. Still one of the most cost effective ways of building quality links

44. Ask for links by analyzing your competitors backlinks and contacting their webmasters seeing if they’ll link to you
45. Ask for links from universities, local government or trade bodies

Content for links

As webmasters start to understand the value of their content more offering some sort of content exchange adds an extra punch to the classic link exchange

46. Identify content gaps on other sites or blogs, produce relevant content on your site and tell the webmaster about it
47. Ask to write articles/ sections for other sites for free with links in the text
48. Give great testimonials to your suppliers and make sure they add a link under your name
49. Get speaking gigs and stands at conferences/ trade shows
50. Give quotes to journalists for their stories

Forums

Although forum links are going to be devalued by search engines (because they’re so easy to get) having a number of links from decent forums on relevant threads will give a small boost and can drive traffic.

51. Contribute to industry forums using backlinks in your threads where relevant
52. Pay someone to spam write forum posts for you
53. Start your own forum on your domain- good forum posts attract natural links

Images/ Video

Done right multimedia can drive tonnes of links, but there’s often more skill/ money involved in the implementation which many SEO teams may be lacking.

54. Create informative or funny video’s on your site and make them embeddable with text links in a <noscript> tag- contact bloggers or sites who might like your vid’s and get them to embed them.
55. Submit your videos to video sites like YouTube and include links in the description (nofollow)
56. Give away free stock imagery with an attribution licence
57. Use an image hotlinking script

Link Bait

Link bait as a term is a bit of a fad, but the concept of creating quality, engaging content and promoting it to get links is a sound one.

58. Write funny, useful or controversial blog posts on your site designed to do well on social voting sites like Digg
59. Run some industry research like a salary survey and publish the results on your site
60. Create a ‘fake bait’ piece
61. Create a free tool or application (think about iPhone apps for a link frenzy) and host it on your site for downloads
62. Create a big list of free resources or top posts on a particular niche with lots of links out, just like this post!
63. Give stuff away- send free t-shirts or merchandise to bloggers in your niche or offer free subscriptions and ask them to review you
64. Do a promotion on twitter. Anything even vaguely clever will attract links from the new media press at the moment
65. Conduct an interview with prominent bloggers/ industry figures. At the very least you should get a link off the interviewee.
66. Setup an industry news feed
67. Write anything controversial/ defamatory

Templates & software

68. Create a blog for wordpress, blogger, typepad with a footer link back to your site
69. Think about creating templates for other open source CMS’s like Joomla or Drupal which have less competition in the template market
70. Create free Joomla components or plugins and get a link off the Joomla extensions directory (also embed links in the component if possible)
71. Create a free image hosting or fileshare system on your site. 301 redirect download links which haven’t been used for 1 month back to your homepage or other sites
72. Create a free javascript hit counter with an embedded backlink (there’s plenty of these out there already so you’ll need to promote the hit counter with Adwords)

Sponsorship & donations

These may be seen by some as paid links by the backdoor but sponsorship is a great way to get links on quality sites who would not otherwise link out.

73. Sponsor a university radio station
74. Sponsor a university sports team
75. Donate to charities and get links from their donor pages
76. Sponsor a forum with a dofollow banner link
77. Sponsor a well known podcast, get links off their site and from their listeners blogs
78. Create donar pages on sites like Kiva.org
79. Sponsor an industry conference

Advertising

80. Advertise on local radio. Ad sales guys will usually agree to give you a website link included in the ad package
81. Advertise on blogs which have ‘thanks to our sponsors pages‘

Miscellaneous

There are literally hundreds more link building tactics you could use. Here I’ve jotted down a few which sprung to mind to fill up the 100, add your own in the comments…

82. Place job ads on university or industry job boards with a backlink to your application form. Once the application deadline passes 301 the app form page to your homepage
83. Create an SEO friendly affiliate program
84. 301 your linked to error 404 pages back to your homepage
85. 301 redirect cannibalized/ duplicate pages to your main page
86. Buy up expiring domains with PageRank, use the way back machine to retrieve their old content and host the old site with some backlinks to your sites
87. Buy up expiring domains with PageRank and 301 them straight to your main site
88. Nepotistic links- make use of other sites you own, parent or child companies
89. Get links from any trade associations or industry memberships you pay for
90. Write into your contracts with suppliers that they have to link to you from their site in order to retain your business
91. If your sites pretty submit it to CSS galleries
92. Create online tests and give participants badges to put on their sites of your community
93. Create membership badges your sites members can paste onto their sites to show they’re part of your community
94. Join local networking groups and get a link off their site- use the group to network with other local businesses and negotiate more links
95. Create autoposting scraper sites and stuff them with backlinks to your main site
96. Search for mentions of your brand name which don’t include a link.
97. Use Google alerts to pick up on new mentions of your brand name quickly, if those mentions don’t have a link, ask for one quick
98. Run your own industry conference/ blogger meetup
99. Add your links to wikipedia pages or create your own page for your company (nofollow)
100. Add internal links to keywords throughout your site. If you use wordpress this plugin will help or this one for Joomla
101. One for luck- win industry awards