Creative Link Building Ideas for the Long Term

[Justilien]

Let’s share creative link building strategies that will attract natural backlinks over time. Here is one if your business is interested in long term results and helping out the local community.

Sponsor a local kids club or sports team. If you are on a bootstrapped budget offer them a free website and hosting. Make sure to have an “About our Sponsor” page to link to the different sections/products of your business (use an image for the “About our Sponsor” link so that Search Engines cannot read it). The club/team site will attract a lot of natural links from the city government, churches, schools, newspapers, city guides/directories and community websites. This will make it an excellent backlink for your site. Plus, remember all the links from the personal websites/blogs of the kids, parents and relatives! Since you are supporting the community many will also link back to your company website.

Share your ideas and thoughts

[Gurtie]

I don't really understand how offering them a free website will get links to your site? Even if you do it as a sub-domain then any links will be to the charity pages and not especially helpful to you.

The whole charity thing is a good idea though, offering charities genuine help (sponsorship, reconditioned computers, seo work, donations for auctions etc) will nearly always gain you a few quality backlinks even without asking from them and from local papers etc if you handle it right. An ongoing partnership can get you even more if you manage the drip drip drip of news right :)

[mmacintyre]

Hosting other websites on the same server and having links in them will not be that great, do you not want links from sites outside you range of IP addresses and in the catagory? thanks for the help

Mike

[Justilien]

I don't really understand how offering them a free website will get links to your site?
It’s not going to gather a lot of backlinks. It’s more about getting a link from a site that will have a lot of natural backlinks. Their site will be on their own domain. The site you donate will naturally attract backlinks over time from trusted community sites. In turn they will be linking to your site passing some of that trust. It’s a very long term strategy. One could also put a banner up simply asking people to “support our sponsor and link to them”.

This idea is geared to helping city specific sites such as real estate, lawyers, travel, etc. It would also help them build brand awareness and some click-thrus. Btw, ideally the company would actually sponsor the team and not just donate a website and hosting.

Excellent point mmacintyre (Mike) about hosting on different Class C IPs. Decent hosting for small sites is inexpensive. I would not put them on the same hosting account as your main site. This is also not something to implementing on a large scale. It would be a nightmare with hosting. LOL

Gurtie - what do you find works best donating directly to a charity or to a benefit auction?

[projectphp]

Well, I have one way to get links, but most people aren't gonna like it (http://www.insearchofstuff.com/2005/09/even-more-advanced-link-strategies.php)!!!

[Chris Boggs]

Well, I have one way to get links, but most people aren't gonna like it (http://www.insearchofstuff.com/2005/09/even-more-advanced-link-strategies.php)!!!

Love the title can't wait to read it!

Super Advanced, Mega Effective, Hyper Algo-Busting Link Strategies For The Über-Ultra-Intellectual Search Marketer.

(1500 words on the way :p )

[projectphp]

I actually received my first 1500 word essay today!! So first copy dispatched ;)

[Jill Whalen]

You go, Mike! I've sent many a potential link exchanger to the Trapezoidal Linking Matrix page. God knows what has happened to them from there...I imagine they're still pondering it...

:D

[Justilien]

OMG Too funny! Love the Martha part.