Jamdo Marketing Blog

By now, you’ve probably figured out that links are the lifeblood of your blog but I still constantly hear the question of how to get backlinks. Getting links pointing to your blog affects everything from search engine spidering through to referral traffic and Google Page Rank. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to understate the importance of links when you are developing a site. I have mentioned a few of these tips before, but I thought it might be time to reiterate what still works.

So where and how do you get links?

There are plenty of ways to get links to your site. It just takes a little work.

Ask

Asking similar themed blogs and sites is going to be your best way of getting high-value one way links from respected websites. Type in your keywords to the search engines and you should find plenty of relevant candidates. Just email the owners and ask them to mention your site to their readers. If you have a reasonable quality site, then you should get a positive response from many of them. Usually positive response rates vary between 20% and 50%. It’s basically a numbers game - the more people you send email to asking for links, then the more links you are likely to get. Don’t forget to follow the ettiquette of emailing bloggers when you do this.

Blog Comments

Commenting on other people’s blogs is also a good way to get backlinks. Many people will have the nofollow tags on their blogs comments, but this doesn’t seem to stop Yahoo. Also many people are starting to realise the futility of the nofollow tag and are ditching it altogether, meaning that they give full Google search engine love to your comment links. Drop relevant comments on people’s blogs on a daily basis and you will get lots of links and a bit of traffic too.

Reciprocal Exchange Sites

There are thousands of people looking to do reciprocal link exchanges with new sites. Look at places like Link Metro to find these other webmasters. Don’t go too crazy with this technique as it is not as good as getting a one-way link, but it can still be worthwhile. Make sure your link partners are using the correct anchor text in their links to you.

Buy Links

Buying links is frowned upon by Google, but it still works. Be sure to buy links from only relevant sites that have a decent page rank and preferably some traffic as well. Again, don’t go too crazy with this as there are plenty of ways to get links for free. You can find people selling text links at the DigitalPoint Forums as well as Text Link Ads.

Social Bookmarking

If you are usining social bookmarking sites such as Simpy, Del.icio.us and Furl then you are building up the backlinks to your site automatically. In fact, it is a good idea to use Only Wire and sign up for all of the services they offer. These links will help your site rank and may even bring you a little traffic if you have good content. The search engines spider social bookmarking sites like crazy so you will get spider activity from this technique very quickly.

Forums

Putting a link in your signature in forums is also a way to get backlinks. Often they are not the greatest in terms of search engine love, but they can still be crawled by the search engines and you will get a lot of people following them, especially if you post in a relevant forum that is busy and you are a little descriptive or inventive with the signature you use. Find good forums over at Big Boards.

Article Distribution

Writing articles is a great way to get one way links. By writing the article yourself, placing a link to your site in it, and then distributing it to article directories and other sites, you are achieving several things. For starters, there’s the backlink itself. Then there is the fact that the link will be on a relevant page because you wrote the content. Then there is the fact that article directories such as iSnare and eZineArticles are used by thousands of people so the chances of your article getting picked up by several sites is pretty good. The more often you submit quality articles, the more quality, one-way backlinks you will get.

Press Releases

Submitting press releases to the major press release sites will get you one-way links to your site and might even get you some press coverage in which case you will get even more links. PR Web is the main site for this, but there are plenty of others that will also publish your release. Now you just have to think of an idea.

A Sneaky Tip

Search engines count links from .edu and .gov sites more than links from other sites with extensions like .com and .info. They regard government and edcational institutions as more trustworthy in whi they link to and therefore afford them “trusted site” status. Now, one sneaky way to get a .edu backlink is to find the casual emplyment service of your local university. List a “casual job” with them for your site. You will have to pay a student for the work they do (university students are decent writers so get them to develop some content or something). But you will now have a one way backlink from a .edu site. If you worded your job description correctly, then it should be a relevant page too! Ofcourse, you will have to find a university that leaves the jobs up on their site, but that shouldnt’ be too difficult.

Guest Blogging

Many blogs are thrilled when somebody offers to write some content for them. So thrilled in fact that the standard payment is generally a free backlink to the author’s site or blog. Take advantage of this and start emailing people asking if they would like you to write an article in return for a backlink. You will also get a good response to an offer like this in any of the webmaster forums.

Testimonials

I haven’t actually used this one myself, but a lot of people will offer testimonials on a product in return for a backlink. Not exactly free of a conflict of interests, but at least they get their backlinks. As long as the testimonial is truthful I don’t see any huge harm in it though. I have seen this most often on pages for ebooks and downloadable programs. So if you buy something, why not offer up a testimonial in return for a link?

Conclusions

I am sure there are a few other ways to get backlinks to your site, but these are the main ones. I know that some people also like submitting to directories (which can’t hurt) but it has never been a real winner for me. If you continue to do the things above, however, you will build a nice collection of backlinks for your site.

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