You’d probably have read about the recent happenings around Google and Build My Rank. John even published a post on it here a few days ago.
To be sincere, I was as surprised as you when I came across that post as I can imagine how much loss the owner of the service and its users will have incurred.
As much as I love the concept of it, automated isn’t something to smile upon if you own an online business and really care about it, especially if you depend on the search engines for your results.
The key to SEO success is to be as ethical as possible; every search engine I know of has advocated this, and all the trends have proved to be in favor of those who are ethical.
If you’re still involved in unethical link building practices for your online business, it is time to change. If you don’t know much about link building, this article will help. I’ll be sharing with you 5 ethical long-term link building techniques guaranteed to work. Most of these techniques I’ll be using with my led tubes website, so I think I should share them with you first.
1. Guest Blogging
You’ve read about it, and it’s not new, but it’s effective.
One thing that surprises me about guest blogging is the rate at which big companies are using it, whereas bloggers pay little attention to it.
Guest blogging is the process of writing a guest post for another blog, with the hope of gaining quality backlinks, exposure, or traffic back to your site. It’s been for a few years now, and everything proves to show that it works.
The key to success in guest blogging is for you to focus on authoritative blogs that work. Not necessarily smaller blogs, but not also the blogs that are too big. Focus on the moderate blogs, observe your results and be ready to tweak when necessary.
The key to successful link building via guest blogging is to be as unique and informative as possible in your guest posts. Focus on offering as much value as possible, let people see it and you’ll get the results you desire.
If you don’t know what guest blogging is, check out this article on YoungPrePro.
2. Trackback Links
Very few people talk about this, but it is quite effective. There are two advantages to focusing on generating trackback links. First, it requires you to link to other bloggers in your article, and this is healthy for your blog in the search engines. Search engines like it when people link back to other sites, since it is authoritative sites that usually do this. It means you can be trusted, and that you don’t only care about getting ranked.
The second advantage of linking back to other bloggers in your article is that it helps you score permanent links. Most bloggers display trackbacks on their blog, because it is a way to boost their ego and let everyone know that someone linked to them.
Trackback links won’t be deleted, they would always be given a priority by the bloggers that get them, and they are keyword rich since they contain your post title (this is a privilege ordinary comments won’t enjoy).
Linking back to other bloggers also helps them know you; it fosters a relationship between you and them, and increases your future chances of success. Link to other bloggers, there’s a lot of benefits for you in it!
3. Video Links
Videos can provide you multiple advantages if you use them right. First, the search engines give them priority over text and other mediums of content; in other words, your video will be ranked higher, linked to a lot more and then benefit your site on the long run.
You can also submit your video to several streaming sites without having to worry about having duplicate content problems; in other words, you can use one video to get as much as 20 unique backlinks.
Videos are becoming more popular and effective nowadays, both for links and better user experience so make sure you start doing more of them.
4. eBook Distribution
If you search for education related keywords you will notice a lot of pdf files already indexed in the search engines. The fun thing is that if you try to read any one of those pdf files you will notice that those files actually have their own pagerank, which is often very high in most cases. In other words, if you could have 20 pagerank 4 ebooks linking back to your site with your desired keywords, you can imagine how much impact that will make.
Very few people write ebooks to build links, so this particular tactic is highly underutilized. Here’s your opportunity to capitalize on it.
Focus on writing quality ebooks, embed links back to your site in them, and try to market the heck out of them.
5. Be Interviewed
You’ll be surprised at the number of people willing to interview you just to build their portfolio. You don’t necessarily need to be established in your field; you just have to be interesting and unique.
It doesn’t matter which field you’re in, you can still be interviewed. Contact other bloggers in your niche for interview opportunities, ask relevant media outlets whether they want to interview you, and subscribe to sites like Help a Reporter Out to get updates on who might be interested in interviewing you.
What are Your Tips?
These are the link building techniques I’ll be using with my led tubes site, what are your tips? What is working for you? Has your site ever suffered as a result of unethical links from other sites? Kindly share them below!
John Holt is a professional led tubes expert that gives link building tips.