Strategies for Effective Link Building

If there are no links on your blog or website, it will be invisible to everyone except the direct traffic, as its referral traffic will be zero. I’ve seen a lot of smart people developing highly popular sites and creating continuous streams of fresh links. They do this by attracting natural links from trusted blogs and sites of high quality.

The following strategies will help generate links that drive relevant traffic, build web brands, and also build credibility amongst both search engines and people. 

Creation of Authority Lists Tagged to Brands

You need to build a system where top blogs are put together in a single useful place.

This strategy proves highly effective, not simply for SEO purposes but for user friendliness as well.  When your list gets a brand on many blogs and the social web, it creates a lot of awareness about your program.  When you choose top quality sites in your network and gain a prestigious level, many bloggers will wish to be a part of it.  This will help them build credibility for their own sites.

If your site or blog is already popular, this strategy will work better. You can then actually drive traffic to all sites within the network.  If you’re connecting people usefully, it makes it more worthwhile for them to become members, and they’ll probably promote you in a big way.

Creation of Free Wordpress Themes

Creation of free Wordpress themes that reinforce the components of your brand can go a long way. Attach links to your blog at the footer and optimize the anchor text if you wish. Promote the theme on your site, calling it a blog post. Include a themes link in your blog. You could submit the theme for inclusion in Wordpress theme directories.

This is a wonderful strategy if you create a unique theme. Sometimes the simpler themes do well because they can be customized as required.  Some people doubt whether the footer links can contribute much towards SEO. However I think many back links to sites can’t do much harm, especially when they’re on a large number of active blogs.

Invite People to Republish

You can create content having a niche appeal, and at the bottom you can invite readers to republish it and link to your blog. If your content is valuable and useful, this is quite likely to happen. I just love this strategy. It really works towards getting me links of exceptionally high quality.

Have a Blog Contest

There are many contests running in the blogosphere and you can follow suit. Try to keep the contest creative yet simple.  It should be fun, lighthearted, upbeat, and positive.

The more it appeals to your site’s demographic, the better are the chances of a large number of participants.  Link to participants, drive attention towards them, and make them feel very special. Highlight winners in an especially dedicated post.

The contest shouldn’t be too complex or else you’ll have people shying away. Try to keep it natural for better participation. The scenario should be such that everyone wins and things are equally beneficial for participants and host. If you can get people to post links to you on their blogs, great, but use more creative ideas than simply telling them that they can enter the contest only if they link to you. 

In conclusion, we would advise careful study of link and traffic rainmakers for inspiration. There are really no wrong strategies as long as you stay honest, open, and transparent… and do not use black hat techniques.