7 Easy Link Building Tips

Link building is an important part of SEO, but it’s one that’s often misunderstood. If you want to improve your search engine rankings, you’ll need to build some high quality links from reputable websites, and that takes a lot of work. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, however, the results can be impressive. Try these tips to improve your next link-building campaign.

1. Claim your name: Make a list of all of the big social networking and Web 2.0 sites, and sign up for them all under your company name. Even if you don’t plan on using those sites, it’s important to claim your name for several reasons. Firstly, it stops a rival from squatting on that name, so you have the choice of using it in the future if that site takes off. Secondly, it allows you to fill out your profile on that site. Point visitors to your primary website, and the social channels that you do use, so that surfers can easily find information about your company.
   
2. Use directories: The first thing an online marketing company would do to boost your rankings is submit your site to several high quality web directories. It’s not an instant fix, but it does help to get your link building campaign going. Only a handful of web directories are worth submitting to, so instead of wasting the time of an SEO agency (which would be better spent on more specialist link building), submit to the big directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo!, along with any specialist ones in your niche, yourself.
   
3. Use your Sig Space: Signatures on forums can be a decent source of organic traffic, and some forums allow their signature links to be seen by search engines. It’s a bad idea to spam forums just for the signature link, but if you are a regular poster, take advantage of the free advertising chance.
   
4. Comment on Blogs: Leaving comments on blogs that are relevant to your website is a good way to get to know your colleagues and get some advertising at the same time.
   
5. Guest Post: Guest posting on related blogs is an even better way to gain exposure. If you’re not confident when it comes to finding blogs to write for, or communicating with the blog owners, then that’s something an online marketing company could do for you.
   
6. Use Your RSS Feed: RSS feeds are a great way to get traffic. If your content management system supports them, turn them on and promote them to your readers, and in RSS directories.
   
7. Link Bait: You have to be careful with this one, but link bait posts (controversial topics and funny topics) can attract a lot of attention.  There’s always the risk of a post being taken the wrong way, or being thought of as in bad taste, so you might want to enlist the help of an SEO agency before trying a link-bait campaign, but when they work, they can make your number of incoming links, and your traffic, skyrocket.