10 Cheap Ways to Build Quality Links to Your Website
The backbone of any SEO campaign is always going to be building backlinks. Now while you can certainly pay someone to do the work of building backlinks for you, it’s also possible to do the job yourself if you know how to build the links. Here are 10 great ways to build quality links to your website:
1. Blog Comments
The single most popular way to build backlinks is by commenting on blog posts. These kinds of links are quite easy to get because you merely need to visit and write a comment. Note that most blogs are “no follow” blogs though, meaning that you won’t get much value from the links. This means that you need to hunt down blogs which are do follow.
There are a number of ways to do this, but one of the easiest is to look for blogs which use the CommentLuv commenting system. CommentLuv is a special system which allows you to offer blog comments with do follow links. The idea is to encourage people to leave quality comments. By the way, that is definitely important, because most blogs worth getting links from will not publish your comments if you don’t have something of value to say.
2. Forums
Another easy way to get quality links is to visit various online forums where you can include a link in your signature. Again however, you need to ensure that your comments on the forums are actually worthwhile. Otherwise, you’ll end up having your comments removed as spam.
3. Guest Blogs
While it is time consuming, guest blogs are a great way to get quality backlinks for free. Not only can you get a link which is actually within the content (meaning that it’s worth much more in terms of link power), but you also get traffic from the people who visit the blog regularly, meaning that you have that much of a better chance of getting some quality traffic which is directly related to your own area of interest and expertise.
4. Plugin/Theme Sponsorship
When people create blogs using WordPress (or to a lesser extent, Blogger), they need plugins which will allow them to add additional functionality to their blogs. They also need themes which provide some extra features on the blogs. If you know how to write such things, you can create them and give them away in exchange for free backlinks from the blogs that people create with your software or themes. Or, you could invest a small amount for a one time fee and have them made professionally.
5. RSS Directories
RSS, which stands for really simple syndication is a method getting your content into the hands of your readers in a simple manner. It’s really designed as a “push” system which allows them to get a limited version of whatever you have on your website “pushed” to their computers automatically every time you do an update of your website. However, they also need to find these RSS feeds and that’s where you can get additional backlinks. There are hundreds of directories of RSS feeds which you can sign up for and get your information into so that you can get additional backlinks. Not to mention that you’ll also be able to improve the numbers of your RSS subscribers.
6. Ezine Directories
No, they’re not what they once were, but Ezine directories are still a quality source of backlinks for those who need them. The key is that you need to ensure that whatever content you send to Ezines is just as good as what you’ll put up on your website. It needs to be that way because of the Google updates which make sure to weed out junk. It also helps to put your Ezine articles only on directories which have human reviews of your content to ensure that what you are putting up is considered to be worthwhile.
7. Web Directories
Another great source of quality backlinks is to put your site into various web directories. There are a number of these, including things like the Yahoo Directory (which does cost money) and DMOZ, which is harder to get into but which is free. It’s also useful under the rubric to look for links from sites which aggregate headlines, including places like the MSN and Yahoo homepages.
8. Social Media
Social media should definitely be high on your list of places to get quality backlinks. This includes places like Twitter, Facebook and all the like as well as social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Digg. The important thing with these places though is to try to get people who have more influence to link to you rather than just putting up your own links. The reason is that these links are relatively easy to get and the links will have more value as far as Google and other search engines are concerned if you get them from what is known as “influencers.”
9. News Websites
Another often overlooked source of free quality backlinks is the news aggregation sites like Google News and Yahoo News. The reason they are often overlooked is that these sites are not so easy to get into to begin with. In order to do so, your content must be excellent and you need to have more than one person posting to your website. However, if you do manage to get your site listed in the news websites, these can be an excellent source of free backlinks as they are often updated much more quickly than other sites.
10.Google Places
Local businesses take note: if you haven’t got a listing on Google Places then you are losing out on of the best sources of free links there is anywhere on the web. Google Places is designed to allow people to find local businesses to fulfill their needs and it does this by automatically loading itself whenever a local search is done (for example, if you type “dentist Las Vegas”). While you don’t need to have a website to have a Google Places listing, you can optionally add a website to the listing and thus get yourself a free backlink from Google’s own system.
Insightful article as usual Yasir, thanks.
This was a good read. Some of these I haven’t heard of before.
I do not find leaving blog comments that easy. You must leave a good comment. With the spam out these days most blogs will moderate all comments and if they decide you are just trying to get a link from them they will spam the comment.
My thoughts are if someone is taking the time to create a comment that is contributing to the topic that they should be allowed to get a little something back from it like you do here allowing my name to be New To SEO (which I am). Some blogs would reject comments based on that alone even if a 200 word contributing comment is written.
I also like the Ezine Directories submissions and RSS Directories. Both are very good ways to gain backlinks.
I agree with the comment above. It is not as easy as many people think to get blog comments. I have been through 50 or 60 and only got 9 one that are waiting moderation so its still a mabey.
Thank Yasir, I love how clean your site is and so ez to read! Google Places for local businesses is absolutely essential. My landscape company dominates the whole first page for my city, where we prefer to work. Plus Google also gives you the options to input the cities, counties & states you want to provide service. Great article!
New to SEO:
I understand how you feel. However, I do believe that if you take the time to read what the blog post actually says, you can usually find something intelligent to say rather than simply “nice blog.”
Hi Brian: That’s great to hear. However, you should be aware that you need to keep working on it in order to stay on top. The fact is that SEO really is like doing the laundry — even once you’re done, there’s more left to do.
Rooms 101: Thanks for commenting. Well as you can see, you got your comment approved here ;). The problem as I see it is that all popular blogs are inundated with spam comments and as such, bloggers are constantly trying to weed out the junk. I know that on the blog I own for example (www.thepersonalfinancehelpcenter.com) I may have missed one or two legit comments because they were buried in around 1,000 spam comments which had flooded the site over a course of a few days. I ended up just mass hitting the spam button to clear the cache since it was impossible to wade through all the junk. I’ve since added a captcha though and that seems to have weeded out all the junk and allowed me to focus on real comments.
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I’ve been doing most of the strategies however it is not really easy, specially in blog comment most are under moderation. Well, that’s what link building is patience and effort are required.
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