Other Ways to Get LinksLast week, we talked about finding and getting relevant links. Now let\’s discuss other ways to get links:

More link building techniques:

From Friends and Family:
You have lots of personal connections, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. Most of them probably have sites or blogs or some other representation on the Web. Ask them all to link to your site(s). Provide them with the link code and tell them how you want the link to be added. Don\’t worry if their sites aren\’t related to yours. You just want to increase your total traffic numbers, which will affect your pagerank and the overall value of your site(s). Just don\’t get links from the \”bad neighborhood\” sites: racist, terrorist, hacking, illegal, adult, pharmacy, MLM, gambling, etc. Stay away from those as far as possible.

From Clients and Partners:
Yes, you can get great links from your clients and partners. These are usually reputable and established websites, and gaining links from them definitely helps. Write down a list of sites that have this type of connection and entice them with something (a discount, reciprocal links, etc.) to have them agree to linkback.

From Networking Profiles:
Add a link of your site into your profile page in all the social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Since it\’s your profile, you can optimize the links and maintain control over their placement.

From Sites You Like:
Write about sites you like and let them know about your articles. Flatter them enough and more than likely they will agree to link to your site or articles.

From Video Sites:
Create viral videos about your website/service/product and submit it to all the major video websites. I wrote 2 good articles about video SEO and video marketing that will guide you on the entire process.

From Wikipedia:
Find Wikipedia articles related to your field and add your link there. Note: Only do this if your website is really a good additional resource to that wiki-article you have chosen. Otherwise, chances are your linkback will be removed by the Wikipedia editors. Wikipedia just recently added a nofollow tag to all external links. This tag gives a zero weight to links in search engines\’ algorithms. However, you still can add your link and benefit from the quality and targeted traffic from Wikipedia.

From Directories:
Don\’t underestimate this old proven link-building method: The Directories. Get links from both paid and free directories but examine each directory before you submit your site(s) there. You want links from quality directories only – not link farms. There are also thousands of quality directories on the Web to submit your site(s).

From Link Baiting:
Write content that will generate links by itself. Think about what you can write that is compelling enough to have people link to it virally. Here are some ideas for you: make a unique quality list of something related to your field; interview someone known and reputable in your field; write something funny or controversial, etc.

From Projects:
Create your own directory of all sites in your field. Do it on a different domain than yours. Invite all relevant sites to register. Require all of them to link back to your major site from their websites. You can build a good link-base with this simple technique.

From Link Sellers:
Buy links from link brokers or better directly from sites/blogs: there is nothing wrong about buying links, as it opens many doors. Just make the links look very natural. Try to buy a review instead of the link in the blogroll, or even better ask them to place your links into already written popular articles somewhere inside the entry and pay them for that. Google opposes the entire link-buying/selling industry, but if you act smart your links would never differ from those gained naturally.

From Article Sites:
Write articles for external respected resources. Always include an optimized link to your site in the body of the article. This is quite a powerful technique. Also, you can submit modified versions of the same article to directories and gain lots of one-way links that way as well.

From Social Media:
Add those little social media buttons so people can dig, tag, vote and rate your content and submit it to those numerous social bookmarking portals. These are your additional inbound links.

From Forums and Boards:
Participate in the related forums and online communities, build a reputation there, and always include your signature with a link to your site within your every post. Periodically change the link anchor text of the signature\’s link to your site.

From Your Own Site:
Finally, get links from your own site or sites. When you write articles, mention your own site or some page on your site and try to do it periodically. These are your additional links.

What I\’ve given you will keep you busy, but I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to approach this methodically and carefully. As you\’ve seen, such linking can be a powerful way to boost your pagerank and SEO goals but if you do too much too fast, it can damage your results. In this case, slow and steady will ultimately win the race.

Shavkat Karimov
Director, Online Marketing
Every problem comes with a solution