Links are the backbone of traffic. The more links you have coming to your blog, the higher your traffic level. Search engines, like Google, place an extremely high value on links. Google’s PageRank system is largest based on how many sites are linking to you – the more links, the higher the PageRank.
In my never-ending quest to get more backlinks I have tried many methods, which I will share with you. These link building techniques have so far generated 7,218 links from 1,952 blogs, according to Technorati. That’s good enough to rank me 413th most popular blog on the Internet. Moreover, this is just the number of blogs linking to me. According to Yahoo, over 58,000 websites link to John Chow dot Com.
The effect of all these links has been a tremendous amount of Google love. Nearly 1/3 of this blog’s daily traffic comes from Google and I am predicted to go to a PageRank 6 on the next update, which should be happening around March/April.
Here are my top six linking strategies for getting more links to your blog.
Linking Strategy #1: Write Great Content
This one should be a no-brainer. Everything begins with content. If you don’t have content, you don’t have a blog. Not only must you have content, but also your content has to be good enough for others to want to link to.
You will be amazed by the power of one compelling article. The Internet’s Biggest Google Whore has been linked to by thousands of sites – enough to rank me on page 1 on Google for the search term “whores.” To this very day, I still get new sites linking to that article.
Linking Strategy #2: Visit Your Fellow Blogs
If you want other blogs to link to you, you need to get to know them. Therefore, pay them a visit and leave a few comments in their posts. Generally, that is enough to get the blog owners to give your blog a visit. If your have great content on your blog, there’s a good chance they’ll link to one of your posts.
Join the blog’s MyBlogLog community if they have one. I check my community page all the time to see who has joined. It is all about getting your name out in the blogsphere. If people know you, they will visit and if you have great content, they will link.
Linking Strategy #3: Give And You Shall Receive
One of the best ways to get backlinks is by giving them out. When you link to others without expecting anything in return, others will link to you. My Showing Some Community Love post got a bunch of backlinks even though I never asked for any.
A good habit to get into is doing a weekly or biweekly “Top Links” or “Things I saw while browsing the Web” post and sending a pingback to all the blogs linked. The bloggers from these sites will appreciate it and they’ll be more inclined to link to you when you have an interesting post.
Linking Strategy #4: Try Some Link Baiting
I wrote about The Art of Link Baiting back in October. Many people think link baiting is a negative thing but when done correctly, it’s a good thing and a great way to get tons of backlinks. My review my blog for a free linkback offer is the best link bait I’ve ever done. The link bait accounts for over 220 of the 1,952 blogs that links to me. The key is to make the bait so attractive that the targeted blog cannot pass it up.
Linking Strategy #5: Send Out A News Release
If you haven’t done so, you should be building a news list of blogs that cover the same niche you cover. When you have an interesting article, you can send out a news release to your fellow bloggers telling them about it. If your article is good, most blogs will link you. This is how The TechZone operates. We maintain a list of over 1,000 technology news sites. When we have new content, we send out a news release and BOOM! Traffic and link heaven.
Linking Strategy #6: Work Social Networking Sites
My traffic building strategy for this blog was to create compelling content and get them on the front pages of social networking sites like Digg. If an article is enticing enough, it will get enough votes to hit the front page. That not only sends you a lot of traffic but it will also get you a ton of links because many sites and blogs link to Digg stories.
The strategy worked really well. I would write an article, have it submitted to Digg, hit the front page, get tons of traffic and links, rinse and repeat. 30+ front page Diggs later, I got banned. However, by then, it was too late for the haters to stop my rise.