Slickest Link Building Tricks

[seobook]

What are the slickest and most effective ways you have personally done (or seen others do) link building campaigns?

[massa]

#3. Distribute and PLACE articles with your link on them on other people's websites.

I've heard a lot of people say a slick way of getting links is to write articles. Actually, WRITING articles gets you links on one site. --- YOURS.

The slick part is getting other people to put your articles with a link to you on their sites. Getting them to do it for free is time consuming and gives you no guarantee of anyone doing it or anyone keeping doing it. It does work, but in my experience not as well or as cheaply as just finding and renting the links you want. Making this the least slickest way I'll post here.


#2 Offer to pay a fair price for renting space on another's web site, (for whatever reason you have for wanting it). I know it sounds crazy, but it seems to work.

The trick is in finding the sites you "really" want and then getting the webmaster to realize you are for real and not just another SEO, (whatever that is), begging for a free link.

#1. By far, of these three slick ways, this is the slickest.

Pissing people off using graphics and obscure phrases, (usually taken out of context), so that when the pisseee, (or their cronies), wants to discuss it, they have little choice but to link to the page. Do it correctly and the anchor text is built in.

I've seen this technique used many times in this very forum.

>flame on<

[seobook]

"Do it correctly and the anchor text is built in." - I love this line

I have done really well w #3. I have participated a few times in #1. I am usually too cheap for #2...its something I got to work on ;)

[Nick W]

>>flame on

Wouldnt dream of it, nice post ;)

Somthing im having some success with:

Build a directory on a broader scope than your target site (say you sell ford cars, build a car directory) and then request links in the normal way, with the added benefit that you've already linked to them from the directory. Avoids reciprocation, webmasters seem to like it...

Nick

[Daria_Goetsch]

#3 is what I use, writing articles to place on other websites. Not only good link building, but contacts from new prospective clients as well. And the articles help people who want to learn more about SEO. A win-win situation. If you make the right connections, the websites will pick up your articles on publication which makes it pretty easy for the author.

[seobook]

If you make the right connections, the websites will pick up your articles on publication which makes it pretty easy for the author.

I got a few deals like that.

One thing that is hard is being constantly original though, even if you are creative. much of the stuff overlaps.

I still try hard not to make articles about meta tags though :)

another thing that helps me is moderating forums. footer links from over 100,000 pages adds a bit to ones relevancy :)

[seomike]

Article spam isn't a good all around method since you can't really apply it to clientel and still be profitable.

I like the word pisseee lol don't you just love how you can tweek the english language :D

[Daria_Goetsch]

Seomike, not article spam. You send an article to a small number of designated quality sites, not to everyone. That's how it works best. Applying to clientele? Well, if it brings in new clients, that must be worth something. ;)

[Daria_Goetsch]

One thing that is hard is being constantly original though, even if you are creative. much of the stuff overlaps.

Definitely takes some time. If I produce one article a month, that's normal.

I still try hard not to make articles about meta tags though :)

LOL.

another thing that helps me is moderating forums. footer links from over 100,000 pages adds a bit to ones relevancy :)

Absolutely. Plus, you build your reputation in the industry and most importantly, you help others. Another win-win situation.

[seomike]

Daria the thing about articles is every SEO newbie can write one. Flooding the net with old, out dated, hasty articles really is a diservice to all of us. It waters down the good articles. Not only that but look at all the SEO articles that were written a year ago. Most of them are out dated yet people will read and believe. That is why I call it article spam :)

[critter]

So writing articles about your industry and leasing these articles in a sense to other webmasters for backlinks?

My only question/confusion is who hosts the articles. If the webmaster you are doing the link exchange will place the article right on their website, how can one be certain they won't tamper with the article?

Thanks

CRITTER

[seomike]

If you do write articles I would keep them on your site and ask people to link to the articles that way if they are out dated you can update them or 301 them to something more relavent

[critter]

If thats the case SEOMIKE, how does writing articles as Daria_Goetsch discussed work as a non-recip link strategy?

Isn't the idea to write these articles, which contain links back to your sites, and then have these articles placed on relevant websites to serve as a non-recip backlink?

CRITTER

[seobook]

most of the articles do get dated quite quickly unless they talk of things from a general sense

So writing articles about your industry and leasing these articles in a sense to other webmasters for backlinks?

My only question/confusion is who hosts the articles. If the webmaster you are doing the link exchange will place the article right on their website, how can one be certain they won't tamper with the article?
Thanks
CRITTER
if they change stuff and you do not want them to then they lose the ability to publish your future articles.

If you do write articles I would keep them on your site and ask people to link to the articles that way if they are out dated you can update them or 301 them to something more relavent

I date my articles at the top of the article.

at the bottom of the article I add this blurb
"This article may be syndicated in whole are part. Simply provide a link back to the original article or http://www.search-marketing.info. Please note that I do not usually update articles over time and the date last modified on article pages is usually referring to a navigational change."

[critter]

So the articles sit on your site or the webmaster u r doing the link exchange with?

CRITTER

[seobook]

So the articles sit on your site or the webmaster u r doing the link exchange with?

CRITTER


I put them on my site and then alert interested parties to their existance. interested parties usually copy them to their sites. some sites will give you a login and allow you to upload articles right into their sites.

[critter]

I put them on my site and then alert interested parties to their existance. interested parties usually copy them to their sites. some sites will give you a login and allow you to upload articles right into their sites.So the non-recip exchange in this case would happen how?

You provide a link to a webmasters site, and you also search out other articles to have links placed on linking to your site?

Do you have a website live using this method?

Thanks

CRITTER

[Daria_Goetsch]

Daria the thing about articles is every SEO newbie can write one. Flooding the net with old, out dated, hasty articles really is a diservice to all of us. It waters down the good articles. Not only that but look at all the SEO articles that were written a year ago. Most of them are out dated yet people will read and believe. That is why I call it article spam :)

As I said before, send out to only a selected number of quality sites. That means if you are going to use this method, write quality articles. As seobook said, date your articles. I always have a copy of the original article archived on my website, it is dated as well. And yes, at some point articles are outdated. That doesn't mean all the information contained in it is irrelevant.

Write quality, not quantity.

Most of them are out dated yet people will read and believe.

Isn't that true of forum posts as well then? ;)

This idea is not limited to SEO articles, this can be used for any topic the author wants to write about.

[seobook]

This idea is not limited to SEO articles, this can be used for any topic the author wants to write about.

SEO is just marketing and spreading ideas to search engines. there are tons of different ways to do that.

SEO relates to a ton of different things.

[Daria_Goetsch]

So the non-recip exchange in this case would happen how?

You provide a link to a webmasters site, and you also search out other articles to have links placed on linking to your site?

Basically it is giving away free content to the other website, so there is no reciprocal link involved.

Also, remember to use copyright information in your author bio/link section of your article.

Do you have a website live using this method?

Here are a few sites that list SEO articles in this way:

http://www.searchengineguide.com
http://www.seotoday.com

[Daria_Goetsch]

SEO is just marketing and spreading ideas to search engines. there are tons of different ways to do that.

SEO relates to a ton of different things.

Exactly. See this thread for more information:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=22

[seomike]

I'll give you a hint on some linking strats that will blow your mind. They put 1000's of backlinks into their clients and I know one of them posts in here. Notice they keep quite cause they have a good method and it works. So heres the hint they both advertise right underneath these posts, and it's not seoinc. or bruce...

[seomike]

Isn't that true of forum posts as well then? ;)

ah touche' :)

but forums do have the ability to give real time feed back.

[seobook]

ah touche' :)

but forums do have the ability to give real time feed back.

so do good sites. I answer like 20 emails a day. (not saying that I am necissarily the standard for good, but if the guy who created Slashdot emails me back when I contact their site then its really not that hard for me to have enough time to answer emails in a reasonable amount of time.)

[AussieWebmaster]

writing news articles and submitting them to news sites gets you a good number of links and they generally use the headline (keywoord rich) as the link.

Also posting in forums that allow signatures helps build links.

[polarmate]

Sometimes posting in forums that don't allow sigs also helps build links ;)

[Artyom]

Hello everybody,
I've just read this article, any ideas about the statement about not posting articles to another sites?

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=21003

[seobook]

Hello everybody,
I've just read this article, any ideas about the statement about not posting articles to another sites?

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=21003

the thing is that it does not hurt you to have your articles on other sites showing above your own site.

people click the about the author link and end up at your site anyway...its similar to having an affiliate program where 8 - 10 people are advertising your product on the same page at the same time.

I do not think it hurts you at all.

articles on my site are wrote by me, but articles I put on other sites give me some sort of credibility.

[Artyom]

I've investigating the articles writing/posting idea and I do appreciate your answer. Thanks again!

[rustybrick]

If you look at writing articles and having them syndicated from a link building perspective only, then it works. It might not be the quickest method to get links but it does help. I am pretty sure that all the "quality" content sites date the articles that are posted. When I submit articles, I keep a copy at my site, and make sure to have a "last updated" date at the top, I rarely do ever update them afterwards. :)

But a reciprocal effect of writing articles is the ability to get your name out there. As people recognize you, you make more friends in the industry. You then trade favors, not necessarily links for links, but advice for links or whatever. And most of the time its not a reciprocated favor.

Anyway, so far this thread listed about 4 ways to get links. (1) Articles (2) Renting Links (3) Pissing People Off (4) Forum posts. Let's add to this and then we can try to figure out the order based on the "slickness" value.

I'll add: start a useful blog, uncover people pissing people off and you might get some links (not as good as pissing people off), build a directory, build useful tools, i'll add more later. Feel free to add.

[seobook]

well you want to actually like the person or product (else you ruin your credibility), but the absolute most low hainging link fruit is testimonials. in many cases it even works better than pissing people off (and you are not burning any bridges). with that said burning bridges is fun too though.

I bet many people have form letter testimonials all ready.

ever notice how those weezle like "internet marketing gurus" do it with their promotion lett... I mean newsletters.

[digitalpoint]

Just have products/services/tools/whatever else that are hands down the best in the world. :) You will get tons of relevant, "natural" links (I know, easier said than done of course).

Last summer was the first time I ever heard of SEO or PageRank, and the first time I looked (last summer) my site had a PR7.

If you innovate, you will get tons of links (root links, deep links, etc) without asking. Using the linkdomain: query (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain%3Awww.digitalpoint.com) in Yahoo, it shows digitalpoint.com having 203,000 links to various points within the domain (I believe Yahoo does not count internal links either). That's without doing link exchanges or asking for links.

If you just want tons of "raw" links, we put together a free ad network, where the ads count as links (an unrelated site of mine picked up 2,500 links [as reported by Google] in the last 4 weeks because of it). It's still pretty new, but so far it seems to work well.

[AussieWebmaster]

Or for a totally old school blackhat method... find sites that have public access to log files and put a link to them on a page and click click click... you end up in the top 20 and the spiders catch them....

Now that is something I don't recommend but it does work... have found it on an old site in the log files and checked.

[seobook]

Or for a totally old school blackhat method
keeping it real... :D

[AussieWebmaster]

keeping it real... :D


;) I always try and add the angles so others can see if they are being played by them.

[sarahk]

Somthing im having some success with:

Build a directory on a broader scope than your target site (say you sell ford cars, build a car directory) and then request links in the normal way, with the added benefit that you've already linked to them from the directory. Avoids reciprocation, webmasters seem to like it...

NickI'm trying this too and I know that one of the guys who is on my Singapore Property (http://www.pcpropertymanager.com/wsn39_1display.html) page is well pissed that I rank higher for the phrase than he does - and that was when he was my only link!

I've added some quality (authority?) links out for most cats and am linking to DMOZ too to try to build the authority concept. The pages are all pretty new in their mod_rewritten form so I'm still waiting for Google to rerank them. I can see that they get indexed (http://botspotter.net/botspotter/) so it's just a matter of time.

Or for a totally old school blackhat method... find sites that have public access to log files and put a link to them on a page and click click click... you end up in the top 20 and the spiders catch them....The technology is really simple but of dubious value. I call it referral spam (http://sarahk.pcpropertymanager.com/blogspam.php) and there are plenty of articles about it, including mine :)

I was recently hit by a guy selling kitset furniture and halloween novelties from a variety of sites, looked like he'd been buying up crap domain names cheap and putting up reskinned but otherwise identical sites everywhere. My logs aren't open but he hit away daily just incase. This was interesting because he wasn't selling the usual adult wares.

Sarah

PS, I'm new here but just looked at the who's online and it seemed like a veritable SEO whos who!

[AussieWebmaster]

I'm trying this too and I know that one of the guys who is on my Singapore Property (http://www.pcpropertymanager.com/wsn39_1display.html) page is well pissed that I rank higher for the phrase than he does - and that was when he was my only link!

I've added some quality (authority?) links out for most cats and am linking to DMOZ too to try to build the authority concept. The pages are all pretty new in their mod_rewritten form so I'm still waiting for Google to rerank them. I can see that they get indexed (http://botspotter.net/botspotter/) so it's just a matter of time.

The technology is really simple but of dubious value. I call it referral spam (http://sarahk.pcpropertymanager.com/blogspam.php) and there are plenty of articles about it, including mine :)

I was recently hit by a guy selling kitset furniture and halloween novelties from a variety of sites, looked like he'd been buying up crap domain names cheap and putting up reskinned but otherwise identical sites everywhere. My logs aren't open but he hit away daily just incase. This was interesting because he wasn't selling the usual adult wares.

Sarah

PS, I'm new here but just looked at the who's online and it seemed like a veritable SEO whos who!


I never claimed it original... just old school effective... for all I know it may not work anymore (as my logs are not online)

[sarahk]

I never claimed it original... just old school effective... for all I know it may not work anymore (as my logs are not online)Oh, I know that. Just adding my 2 cents worth and pointing to more info incase anyone really, really wants to give it a try - or to protect themselves. After all, not everyone knows about it.

Just incase you're not sure if it still works search on google for "gaisbot" and the open logs appear at the bottom of page1.

Sarah

[jaanis]

Here is the best (slickest) way:

BUILD A GREAT AND INFORMATIVE WEB SITE!

[seobook]

BUILD A GREAT AND INFORMATIVE WEB SITE!

BLAH, that is not a trick!!!

tricks are like writing a press release about how self centered and self serving press releases are which is so funny that the blog community picks it up and sends hundreds or thousands of links at it.

that actually sounds like a fun project :)

[AussieWebmaster]

Or start a project like aquamarine negritude!

[Marcia]

The thing about building a "great site" is that it may just be different for ecom sites that sell stuff. How much chance is there that a site selling the same stuff will link to it no matter how great, and if "local rank" per the Google patent granted this year were to be a factor, how many of the top ranking for the same search terms would link just because it's "great"?

Anyway, so far this thread listed about 4 ways to get links. (1) Articles (2) Renting Links (3) Pissing People Off (4) Forum posts. Let's add to this and then we can try to figure out the order based on the "slickness" value.

Regarding (4) Forum posts - what do you guys think about this?

Professional Forum Spammers (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/83.htm)

[sarahk]

Regarding (4) Forum posts - what do you guys think about this?

Professional Forum Spammers (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/83.htm)I'm mates with the owners of a New Zealand forum and people use the forum for their own spurious purposes. Thing is that in a decent forum people can spot the spammers a mile off and they get dealt to by the loyal members.

A funny example is one guy, who's wife sells soft porn of herself, has had about 4 nicks and he only posts to bag the competition, while the competition post to build up their own profiles (which is win:win).
Even though he owns a piddling little forum himself he hasn't worked out that his IP is exposed on every post.
He had a secret trip to the USA earlier this year and was very hush hush about what was going on. Except that he made his poisonous little posts from the hotels IP addresses so we were able to track his progress around California.

Back to the tag teams posting on forums I'm not sure that the PR gains justify the effort involved in doing this.

Sarah

[I, Brian]

another thing that helps me is moderating forums. footer links from over 100,000 pages adds a bit to ones relevancy :)
I know - breaks my heart - I never got offered a footer link when I moderated. Maybe it helps that you sound like you know SEO when moderating there, while I was still cutting my teeth while doing it. :)

[seobook]

I know - breaks my heart - I never got offered a footer link when I moderated. Maybe it helps that you sound like you know SEO when moderating there, while I was still cutting my teeth while doing it. :)

I think few people usually notice footer links and the like. the link popularity is cool though.

[chrisT]

HELP

I just put this website up and after hours upon hours of reading about internet marketing I still can't seem to piece it togeathere. So I thought after stubling upon this nice thread that someone here might just help this poor starving student promote his website. Maybe include my site in one of those nifty articles you're all talking about or something. Any how I'm going to go back to submitting to search engines FFA links and news forums, so if anyone can help, maybe give me some valuable tips or something it would be a great help.

Regards,
Chris

[seobook]

Hi Chris

FFA links are probably a waste of your time. I would recommend submitting to directories and the like.

[Papadoc]

The thing about building a "great site" is that it may just be different for ecom sites that sell stuff. How much chance is there that a site selling the same stuff will link to it no matter how great.

If you structure this right to begin with, an ecomm site can get buckets of links, not from competitors of course but from complementary industries. First by exchanging links (you sell pool stuff, I sell lawn furniture) and second by becoming the expert. Everyone has specific knowledge that isn't proprietary and which they share with the public every day. Ask any offline proprietor and you will find that this is the way they sell their stuff. A nursery (the kind for shrubs and trees) sells based on their expertise, not on whether their azaleas are better or .50 less.

This can be an SEO challenge to get your client to understand that it's not just about selling, it's about becoming a resource, THE expert, THE place to go when you have a question and that this then becomes the place to go when they do purchase. It is the web version of walking into the store and talking with the proprietor to pick his brain so that you can make an intelligent choice.

[eitemiller]

Hi Chris

FFA links are probably a waste of your time. I would recommend submitting to directories and the like.

Huge waste of time - enough said

[eitemiller]

Did anyone mention an award? Claim to be a great web-designer, and then offer awards to "people with great websites" - be sure to include a link on top of the award. People will be coming to you, instead of you looking for people to link to.

[Robert_Charlton]

This can be an SEO challenge to get your client to understand that it's not just about selling, it's about becoming a resource, THE expert, THE place to go when you have a question and that this then becomes the place to go when they do purchase. It is the web version of walking into the store and talking with the proprietor to pick his brain so that you can make an intelligent choice.

As a long term strategy, this is probably the best advice on this thread.

[AussieWebmaster]

Using a completely different domain for your links page but work it into the site can make the inbound links one way while giving back the link (reciprocity is asked for) from another domain that gets PR from links on your site and other places where it builds respect for informed links.

[fathom]

I've heard a lot of people say a slick way of getting links is to write articles. Actually, WRITING articles gets you links on one site. --- YOURS.

The slick part is getting other people to put your articles with a link to you on their sites. Getting them to do it for free is time consuming and gives you no guarantee of anyone doing it or anyone keeping doing it. It does work, but in my experience not as well or as cheaply as just finding and renting the links you want. Making this the least slickest way I'll post here.

A little late to this thread but the above "is" the slickiest! Particularly since Google doesn't want to play the old update game.

1. Inform clients that they "must" write an article a week (it's their industry/market & they must be familar with the subject matter)

2. Add blogs to all their websites

3. Place full article (that you didn't write) on your website with select keyword anchors pointing to client pages

4. snippet article in blog with links to full article (on your website)

5. within 48 hours Google has fresh crawled the clients article (your page) bounces to the clients website fresh crawls the blog and does the same.

You got links / content > the client get links and traffic - everyones happy! ;)

[inpursuit]

Here is the best (slickest) way:

BUILD A GREAT AND INFORMATIVE WEB SITE!

there are thousands out there.. before you spend weeks and months doing that you still have to get good links in..