How to Really Build Backlinks and Dominate Google
Written by Glen, this post has 153 Comments
Without a doubt, the most frequent post request I’ve had on this site is a post about link building. I rarely take requests, simply because people rarely know what they really want until you give it to them, but this time things are a little different.
First of all, I have been studying SEO day and night since I was 16 (almost 5 years ago) and I’ve ranked on the first page of Google for some of the most competitive keyphrases in the world. Therefore, I like to think I know quite a bit about the topic and can provide some insights in this space.
For those of you who don’t know why links are important, let me just say that if you want to get traffic from the major search engines, they’re crucial. Links from other sites to your site are basically a ‘vote’ that tell search engines you are trusted and you are a good resource for whatever your content is about.
A large percentage of my income to affiliate sites is from traffic via Google, and the difference between ranking 2nd and ranking 1st can literally be thousands of dollars extra on my bottom line.
SEO is generally divided into two parts: on-site optimisation and off-site optimisation. On-site is changes you make to the actual code of your website to help with rankings. In my guide on Wordpress SEO I gave a lot of tips on this that you can also apply to sites that aren’t running the CMS.
Today we’re going to look at the off-site side of things, which is building links.
15 Ways to Build Links to Your Site
Instead of just telling you to do this or do that that many link building guides do, I also want to share a few principles that I believe are crucial in building a website that attracts thousands of high quality links. A few years ago you could take a robotic approach to SEO, but the web is now far too social to rely on old tactics to help your website rank higher.
Build a Site for People
I can’t remember who said this phrase but it’s one of my favourites: “search engines follow people.” Not only does following this motto steer you in the direction of build an honest, legitimate website, it’s also a very true way to get links to your site.
Have you noticed how Wikipedia absolutely dominates Google search results? I don’t believe they should be ranking for 50% of the phrases that they do, but Jimmy Wales built a site for people. It is a resource that millions of people naturally want to use, and because of that, people talk about them.
For a lot of competitive keyphrases online you’ll also find popular blogs, forums and niche social networks ranking highly. If you can get enough real people to care about what you’re doing, then you can’t go far wrong.
When people talk about you online, links follow.
Utilise Guest Posting
I talk about guest blogging a lot here but for good reason – it has lots of benefits. Not only does guest posting get you traffic from relevant websites, it’s also a great way to get links with custom anchor text around the keyphrases you want to rank for.
I have written a massive guide to guest blogging that tells you more about the practice, so read that for a detailed guide on how to get links through this process. To explain how this works in the most basic of forms, when you write articles (for free) for another website, they’re happy to give you a backlink in the byline in return for your content.
Be Useful
Pretty much every legitimate site on the Internet serves some useful purpose to it’s users. Facebook lets you keep in touch with friends and family. Google lets you find awesome websites. Digg lets you find news that you know hundreds of other people recommend. Youtube provides educational value, entertainment, product reviews and much more.
These are some high profile examples, but there are literally millions of useful sites online. This blog helps people leave the rat race and make a living online. PluginID helped people be who they want to be and deal with the issues that come up on the path to get there.
Ask yourself whether your site is helping people to fill a need. If it’s not, then why should people care about you? This might not sound great but everyone active online in any space online is generally just thinking about what’s in it for them.
If you can give people what they want, you can receive what you want.
Check Competitors Backlinks
When I talk about competitors, I simply mean people trying to rank for the same keywords / phrases as you in Google. For example, this site is “trying” to rank for the phrase viral marketing. I put trying in quotes as I’m only implementing a small number of these strategies as I’m not too bothered about ranking.
If I wanted to find great sources of links though, I could simply see which sites are ranking well for the phrase and where their links are coming from. As an example, a site ranking 2nd for me right now is a page on Wilson Web. If I take that URL and do a link search in Yahoo (they shows more backlinks than Google) I can find link sources I can also use:
The operator I use in Yahoo is simply “link:pageurl -site:domain.com” (no quotes) obviously changing the parts in bold for the site that is actually ranking for your keyphrase.
Check your competitors to see if there are freely available link sources that you can also get for your own site. After all, if they’re helping that site rank, they’ll probably help you.
Leave Blog Comments
Most blog comments are nofollowed (this means search engines aren’t supposed to give weight to the link, though I believe Yahoo and Bing still do) so they don’t provide much link juice directly. There is a resource for dofollow blogs where you can leave comments that give link weight, but many of them get spammed and there will only be a few that are relevant to your niche.
I like using blog comments as an indirect way to get links back to your site. For example, if I contact a big blogger out of the blue and ask them to link to my latest article, it’s probably not going to happen. Yet, if I’ve spent some time interacting with their community and leaving comments, it’s more likely that they will fulfil the request (as long as your resource is relevant, and awesome).
Blog comments also drive visitors to your site, which goes back to the point of search engines following people.
Check Flippa Auctions
One of my favourite ways to find awesome sources for links is to check the Flippa marketplace. Flippa is a place for people to buy and sell websites and has a very interactive community. Even if you’re not looking to buy or sell sites though, it can be a great way to find links.
If you take the time to look around, you’ll find a number of repeat sellers who are selling websites that have ranked well in Google very quickly. In some cases, these sites are ranking for phrases that bring in thousands of dollars, just in a few short months.
Looking at these sites and finding where their backlinks are coming from has provided me with a lot of easy-to-duplicate tactics and links that Google clearly love.
Write Awesome Content
A few years ago you could write an awesome post and it would receive hundreds of links. Look at the trackbacks on old Copyblogger or Steve Pavlina posts and you’ll see what I’m talking about. With the introduction of Twitter and sites like StumbleUpon, people are more inclined to ’share’ sites, rather than link to them from their own blogs.
The amount of links you can get for awesome content has definitely decreased, but by no means has it stopped. My post on Wordpress SEO picked up a lot of blog links and is getting new ones all the time. My friend Danny also noticed the decrease in bloggers linking out and started a mini-campaign about it.
“Awesome” content means a lot of different things to different people. In terms of this site, it might be a great resource post. For a humor blog, it may be a funny image. For your Gadget blog, it may be announcing a new product before anyone else.
If you know your niche well enough, you should know what people want.
Participate on Social Bookmarking Sites
I really don’t like this tactic if I’m honest, but I can’t deny that social bookmarking links are helping a number of my sites rank. Bookmarking sites like Delicious simply give people a place to store their favourite links an organisable archive, which is generally far more useful than your browsers bookmark bar.
They’re also available from any computer anywhere in the world, so a lot of these sites have popped up due to their usefulness. Many of these sites offer dofollow links and custom anchor text, although they aren’t the best links in the world to pick up.
You can automate the process using something like Bookmarking Demon (not an affiliate link – none of those here) or you can even pay someone on Digitalpoint to submit to hundreds of sites manually.
To utilise this tactic in a more ethical manner, simply sign-up on a few sites you really want to use and bookmark your favourite links from around the web. Just don’t forget to link to your own site as well.
Add Links to Your Forum Signatures
Unlike blogs where you get nofollow links for contributing to the discussion, most forums allow you to have a (followed) link in your signature, every time you make a post. If you’re already active on some communities online, see if you can put a link in your signature.
I really don’t recommend you sign up on lots of sites just to get links, but if there are sites that you’re really interested in and want to participate, then link back to your site. Note that if you have 10,000 posts on a forum already and add a link there, that’s not going to be anywhere near as powerful as 10,000 links where each is from a different site.
It’s far better to have links from different domains, rather than lots from the same source.
Utilise Free Content Sites
Another link source that I don’t really love but I see doing well for a lot of sites is utilising free content sites like Squidoo, Gather and Hubpages. These sites basically allow you to sign-up, write about whatever you please, and link to yourself however you want.
Hubpages is very unpoliced and they’ll basically allow anything to stay on their site, but Squidoo (owned by Seth Godin) recently removed thousands of spammy pages from their site and are constantly policing them.
If you are going to use sites like this, at least take the time to to create a good resource for users, rather than just throwing links to all of your sites in there. Not only will that make your link more valuable (more relelvant and on a page with lots of content) but its better for these communities.
Use Article Directories
A much better source of links if you want to receive them in return for your content is using article directories. There are a lot of awful, highly spammed directories out there, but there are definitely a few worth looking for.
My favourites include Ezine articles, Article Dashboard and Go Articles. Ezine and a number of other sites review articles manually first so you’re not going to be able to spam them (which you shouldn’t want to, anyway). However, if you write good content, or pay someone else to, then you can get a great link in return.
Ezine is definitely the most trusted and you’ll actually find the page you write the article on can rank quite well, quite quickly. Once you’ve inserted your article content, you’re given the opportunity to fill in an Author Box and you can put your links in there.
Collaborate with Influencers
Some of the most popular posts on PluginID were the ones where I collaborated with other influences in the personal development niche. Examples include the Face-Off series that I ran and times where I would ask the same question to multiple people.
If your idea is unique and interesting, you’ll find that the people involved are often happy to share the piece via social media sites and even link to it from their own blogs.
Interview Someone Important
Similar to the last idea, interviewing someone in your industry or someone high profile is likely to get you a lot of attention. There are two ways to gain links via this method.
First of all, you can interview people who you hope will link back to the interview from their own sites. Or, you can utilise your connections (or hustle, hard) and interview someone the average person couldn’t get to answer their questions.
I personally tried to interview Eckhart Tolle (an author who has been featured on Oprah and sold millions of books) but didn’t get very far. If I had managed to land the interview though, I know a lot of people would have linked to it naturally.
Design a Unique, Beautiful Site
There are many ways to have a good looking website. I personally like to buy templates from the likes of Theme Forest and customise them heavily (like I did with ViperChill). You could also hire a designer like Reese to create something custom that looks amazing.
Once you have a beautiful site in place, there are literally thousands of link opportunities. “Where?” I hear you ask. “CSS and design directories”, is my answer. There are tons of sites which showcase beautiful designs and offer a link to the site so people can view the real thing, rather than a screenshot or thumbnail.
Many of these have a lot of authority in Google so if you want to find some, here’s a good place to start.
Create a Great Resource
There are a number of personal development bloggers giving sitewide (links from every page) links to PluginID because I created an amazing resource. That resource was a list of top blogs in my industry, but yours doesn’t have to be the same.
Can you create a free eBook that answers a need? What about a resource on 101 ways to do ‘X’? How about a list of other sites which offer great advice on a popular topic? Think about something that you know your readers would want but would take a lot of work for you to put together.
That’s the resource you should be creating.
What Not To Do
Now that we’ve covered some of my favourite ways to get links to a site, I quickly want to run through some things you shouldn’t be doing. While search engines generally reward sites with a lot of links by giving them high rankings, there’s also a few things they don’t like.
Remember: search engines want to show the best results to their users. If you’re manipulating link counts heavily and don’t really deserve to rank for your phrase, then they don’t want you to.
Here are a few things to watch out for:
- Building Links too Fast – Build links very quickly is usually unnatural. There may be times where write a post that gets hundreds of links overnight and that’s not going to penalise you, but just be careful about building too many links for your site as a whole. I’m not a search engine, so I can’t give exact numbers, but if you think you might be going a bit over the top, then you probably are.
- Using Spammy Resources – Not all links are created equal. It would be far more powerful for ViperChill to have a homepage link from Problogger than it would be to have a link from Hubpages or an automated link farm. You can’t control who links to you, but just be careful where you focus your link building time.
- Taking Part in Link Exchanges – If you want to add sites to your blogroll or resources page then add them, but don’t just do it because people are linking to you. Link exchanges worked well about 2 years ago, but are a very dated technique that search engines are well aware of.
- Building Links Around One Phrase – You might have a phrase that you want to rank for and the best way to do that is to get links with that phrase as an anchor text, but only having links with that phrase is very unnatural. Most links help your rankings in general, so don’t be afraid to get links for different phrases or even your domain as a whole, like http://www.viperchill.com
If you have any of your own ways to build links that are working well, I would love to hear them in the comments.
Excellent article as always.
Merci Beaucoup
I’m definitely putting a link to this from my writing blog. This is very useful indeed. As an aside, I think my blog is in 10th position for Viperchill on Google. This is odd, something I never expected. I think this stems from the fact that I run a follow friday – blog style and once featured this blog.
Thanks again for these tips.
Hey Anne, thanks!
That’s funny, I see you 12th over here in South Africa (which is still high). Title tags play a massive role in relevance and rankings.
You’re welcome, thanks for the comment
Killer article Glen. I love that it’s not only in depth but doesn’t call for unethical tactics as well.
Personally I liked the section on guest posting as well as writing awesome content. I feel if you can do both of those, the rest will take care of itself.
Bud!
Your first ever comment here. What is going on?!?
Great point. You definitely don’t need to implement all of these to be successful. Many of them will also apply to different sites. For example, it’s unlikely you can get a clear, sales-page affiliate site in a CSS gallery unless it is out of this world.
Hopefully people will use the ones that resonate with them the most
Great article! I’ve been pondering how to better rank on google and build links. I am new to this, and you have definitely created a great read on the subject. I’ve still got to learn how to use these backlinks and keyword tools. I’ll be working on these strategies for a while.
Hey Colby,
Thanks a lot, bro. Let me know how you get on!
Hi Glen,
I appreciate that you’re using your 5 years of study and condensing it here in one place. I have been making a study of your articles and yours is one of the few blogs where I actually take (real pencil to paper) notes!
In my case, there is no concern for building links too fast — I have enough to keep me busy, learn and implement.
Cheers,
Kim
Hey Kim,
Thanks, that means a lot to me!
I have a few friends IRL who I think might have been building there links too fast so thought it would be a good idea to include that. Obviously it’s not for everyone, but just a precaution
Thanks for your comment, as always!
Heya Glen!
Awesome post, this is one topic that I have really been wanting to know more about since it plays a big part in mini sites and affiliate sites
Seriously thanks for writing these posts! I’m sure this one is going to get you a lot of links too!
Ciao!
D
Hey man,
Surprised your still OK with commenting here after owning you on TopSpin
Hahah, j/k.
You’re welcome buddy.
Thanks for this Glen. I’ve been looking for more information on how to build backlinks. Bookmarked
Awesome Jacob, thanks
Great Idea about checking the sites on Flippa for back links, I’m on there all the time looking for ideas but never thought to take it a step further and see how they got their link. Thanks!
Thanks Brian,
You could also do the same with Marketplaces on Digitalpoint and Website Broker, but Flippa definitely has the best sites.
great article!! let me add 2 more if you don’t mind. 3 way link and link wheel…
what are 3 way link and link wheel
Great ideas and great links. I will definitely look into some of these resources. I never thought about checking out competitors back links. Smart!
I do have one question. Why is it necessary to leave (not an affiliate link – none of those here) in your article? Is it taboo? Do you think it will chase other bloggers away? If they like the info you give them, what’s wrong with getting commission? Just curious.
JS,
I’m pretty sure I’m the only blogger in this industry who doesn’t post affiliate links and there are blogs a lot bigger than mine. I don’t think there are many issues with it.
It simply doesn’t align with me personally as I a) don’t need the money and b) don’t want people to think I’m only recommending something for a commission.
I make my living with affiliate marketing, so I have nothing against it
Okay, I get that. But why point it out?
Because I like to?
Maybe it doesn’t resonate with you because you want to post them yourself.
It was only a question. Sorry!
Sorry if my replies came across as stubborn, that was not meant to be the case.
I sent you an email
Hi Glen,
This is why you rock. Such an awesome article! Sharing it with my list now in 3…2…1
Thanks Scott.
Leaving a comment here means you rock too
The feedback from my list has been uber-positive. The content you write here is some of the best free information I have seen in a long time on any marketing/internet blog. The amount of golden nuggets you give for free is just awesome.
Keep up the good work and I look forward to hearing more about your $1M website project.
I’m interested, with great resources like this, whats your personal opinion on spending money on SEO books and guides? Do they really reveal stuff that you don’t talk about?
The only book I would ever recommend for SEO was from SEOBook.com but it’s no longer available unless you sign-up for a $200 per month membership site.
There is more to learn, but not much more that I think is necessary.
Awesome article and now I’ll have to check out Flippa and start using Yahoo again to study backlinks. Thanks for the renewed energy.
Glen, your posts are works of art.
I can’t agree more with the need to understand principles rather than simply going by instructions or digging up tips to follow.
Some new ideas for me in this post. Thanks!
I’ve never heard that one but thank you, Haider
Your support has been awesome over the last few weeks!
[...] How to Really Build Backlinks and Dominate Google, ViperChill [...]
Awesome post Glen! I don’t know if you remember me, but I was the guy that read your post in the parking lot on How I Really Built a Blog with 6,500 Subscribers which had a link about guest posting. Since then, I’ve overcome my fear of doing guest posts and have written 4. One of them just came out on 6 Aliens and the other one will come out on Change Your Thoughts in March. I think this will help me build some back links. Thanks for helping me out me get out of my discomfort zone.
Hey Hulbert,
I remember – although I”m pretty sure you’ve changed your gravatar
That is so awesome!! Thanks for sharing. You’re very welcome.
Hi Glen,
A tremendous resource for link-building. I’m partial to guest posting and commenting on other’s blogs. Content creation trumps all though. If you write stuff that provides great value you’ll receive plenty of links.
Ha – just starting a new site and was pondering the best strategies for links. I’ve found Ezine Articles a good source of traffic too.
This is just what I needed. Very good, honest advice. I’ve bookmarked.
Cheers dude. Boom!
Thanks Carl!
Glen – my favorite “Personal Development & Viral Marketing Guru”,
As usual, another of your honest, to the point and inspirational posts. I’ve been learning a ton from you and your experiences which you so generously share with the rest of us. Thank you. I always take into consideration the advice you give and try my best to implement whatever I can (in my blog). Good luck with all your current and future endeavors.
How many of those do you have, Ingrid?
Thanks a lot for all of your support. Best of luck to you, too!
Hey there,
Thanks for the reply. In response to your question – I’d like to think that I have or am close to having 4 of them. But like you said – awesome content means different things to different people. But so far, the feedback I’ve been getting from viewers has been rather positive. However, there is always room for growth and improvement and I’m working on both!
I recently had my site retouched to better reflect the style and personality of the blog in general. It’s still being worked on and should hopefully be done by late next week. Still using a WordPress theme so it’s a small makeover for now but to me – already an improvement.
At the moment, I’m in the process of preparing “ask the same question to multiple people” – but still needs some time.
I haven’t guest posted on a site yet – but I have been asked by a decent size (45,000+ unique visitors p/mth) website (which targets mostly my region) if I would be willing to have 1 or 2 of my posts appear weekly on their site – they would of course include my name as well as a direct link to nittyGriddy.com. What do you think? I was thinking it may be a good idea. Your advice on this would be – as usual – greatly appreciated. Thanks. Ciao:)
I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t at least give it a try
Just write for them once and see if you think it’s worth writing there regularly.
Thanks a lot Glen
I think I may just do that – after all, they’re just gonna’ take what I’ve already written on my site and publish it on theirs – the way it is.
Cheers
Ah, another post at ViperChill. Time to put the kettle on and settle down with a nice cuppa and try to take it all in. I agree there’s lots of handy info here and people should be writing it down. I personally have added a few things from here to my to do list on NetVibes – huh, I think you recommend that to me to. Might be turning into a Glenbot…
Anyway, nothing much to add except that I will try to mix up the links name. So where the active link tends to be to my blog name (Get In the Hot Spot) I have tried to get people to link to a key word (eg. personal development blog) but should also consider using the actual domain name (www.xyz.com) Am I getting this right?
Also feedback on “not an affilate link” I appreciate that. Mainly because I was looking for an email newsletter solution and most of the big names recommend Aweber but then I started to wonder if they only recommended it because they get a kickback from it. It kind of turned me of Aweber and made me a bit suspicious about why people recommend things so I think you’re doing the right thing there.
Gracias amigo:)
Hey Annabel,
I’m building up an army of Glenbots. Just be wary of what I ask you to do next
Yep, the way you are doing things seems fine.
P.S. I love Aweber, it is a great service if you want to use one in the space.
De nada
Great info Glen as par for you. As I slowly move into understanding more and more about the SEO I can see why you have been so interested by it and why its so hard for many of us to master. It is very complicated and seems to change. Most business people are used to having those set rules about what to do and why. It seems to me that SEO is much more fluid and that is hard to understand for a lot of people. You make it sound easy though. I’ll find out in a few months as I keep listening to the advice you give and see if I can learn.
Gracias Amigo!
Hey Glen, I read some of your stuffs on PluginID for a while back and followed you here to Viperchill. You have lots of great content here! Thanks so much. This definitely serves as a great checklist for us who are looking into SEO. I haven’t gone too detailed into SEO myself although I do use the all in one SEO plugin, instead I focus on writing great content and building relationship with people. I figured I wouldn’t have enough time to tweak all the stuffs, as long as I can focus on the most important parts I’ll be on a good track.
Having said that, I’ve been more conscious about SEO lately for some reasons and had been doing more to make sure my stuffs are more search engine friendly. So this is a wonderful refresher list.
Thanks!
Great info Glen and an interesting way to use Flippa for backlink research. You can narrow down the sites you’re look at by using the advance search functionality. Try refining your search by adding in PageRanks of 2 or more and age of 3-9 months.
Excellent addition Luke, thanks for sharing.
Awesome to see you over here
Every couple of years – and even less nowadays – its good to reevaluate what works and what doesn’t in all aspects of SEO. Some things will remain true like title tags and backlink analysis but other things will fall off as the engines evolve – meta keywords and recip links. I define a good post as one that gets the ideas peculating long before your done reading, thanks, I really enjoyed your post!
Great Info Glen, I have been working on my click bank mini sites and have actually made a sale but just mainly from forum traffic, I really need to keep building good links so I can get more daily traffic without having to force it..
Hi Glenn,
I’m a big fan of guest posting for generating juicy backlinks. I started a squidoo page the other day. I liked the freedom to pop links on, but I haven’t taken the time to think about how to promote it or what I might gain from promoting it. I just submitted two articles to ezine earning a nice backlink. Next, I’ll have a look at checking competitor’s backlinks. I’m focused on links right now. This post comes in handy. Thank you!
Writing Quality & Useful contents is the No.1 way to build back links. But bloggers ignore this and try to use all other techniques you have mentioned. I can figure out why people ignore the main reason but follow other ways. The reason is they want to get backlinks from outside resources but not trying from their inside resources. That means they don’t want to use their brains to offer useful content but they are using their brains to get backlinks from other brains.
Glen, I really love your first paragraph more than other paragraphs in this post. Really people don’t know what they need and want.
I’m starting a new website with the cloud living model with a friend, and we were thinking about making hundreds of links from ezine articles and other article directories. We also want to try to build a useful site because I google naturally wants to show the best results. Now that I read this article I will try other technique as well. Great post.
Thanks Oscar,
Guest post links are far better than article directories IMO, so if you can get links for your content from those instead, then I would. But, like you say, there are a lot of other tactics out there to be used.
Oh man!!!! Glen!
I’ve been making such a noob error!
Almost all my main affiliate sites’ backlinks’
anchor text are for my main keyword phrase.
Doh!
Here I’ve spent over 300 hours
building links to my site and just making
the bottom of the first page of Google.
However, another page on my site
is already on page 2 with way less links.
But these links’ anchor texts are for various
related keywords. How basic. I’m sure I’ve
read this somewhere too. This is so key.
Doh again!
I was thinking I’d need a year on
each site to rank in Google at this rate.
I may make enough to buy lunch in 2030. LOL
Oh, and thanks for the help on Facebook!
You’re the man.
Hey man,
This is one of the reasons I’m working on a Cloud Living update. There are quite a few things that I want to make sure people are (or aren’t in this case) doing.
Don’t stress about it though. Just go easy on that site for a few weeks.
Glen, that was absolutely informative and to the point with great tips. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Glen,
Thanks for the great content, you’ve really provided some really great insights and tips. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on video, as you don’t specifically mention it, and how that could be also used to lift your search rankings.
Thanks again,
Gus
Thnx Glen! Another brilliant linkbuilding article. …enough tips to keep every linkbuilder busy for years
Hi,
I’ve been very interested in SEO for a while and have been learning every second i get to learn new techniques.
Thanks a lot for this entry! it was AWESOME!!
Bookmarked!!!!
Thanks again!
Great informative post, Glen. Building backlinks is a must, and is something almost every blogger has to work at till they reach that magical tipping point where traffic to their site is automatic.
I would also include in your list the need to be patient. Building traffic to your blog doesn’t happen over night. For some, it seems like it does; but for the majority of blogs, it doesn’t. Stay focused and practice what Glen lays out here and you’ll reach your blog’s “magical tipping point” sooner rather than later.
Wesley Craig Green
Hi Glen,
Great compilation of link building tactics. We just released an ebook called “An SEO Insiders Guide to Finding (an obtaining) Free High Quality Backlinks” for those that sign up for our newsletter. Many of the tactics you mention are in the ebook, however there are a few additional ones.
Keep the great posts coming!
Thanks,
Tyler Stample
Hi Glen,
gr8 post, very useful to learners
Thanks,
Sri
Hi there Glen,
Great article, really liked the depth that you provided. Building links in my experience can be a long and arduous task, the more support and help we can get the better.
Have a good day.
M
Hi Glen,
Good post, its so nice to see honest SEO techniques that are not spammy. I completely agree with you, link building is not just done in a month and I think as long as you are a serious business, playing by the books Google is going to take a liking to it. Like anything in life, if you want something then you have to work hard for it.
Thanks
Louise
Hi, great post. I manage our Multilingual SEO and this is a bit of fresh air. Its great to have clean professional non-spammy pages, that help clients get what the really want. We certainly try to offer something of real value to our visitors.
I’d add when we author I always ask – when would anyone visit this page. If I can’t answer it then I delete the page. This makes us focus on the core, valuable content people are after.
Cheers
Damian
Great post Glen, easy reading and some great tips particularly to someone starting out in the industry not knowing where to go in an ever increasingly competitive channel
Hi all
Thank you for this article and all the coments all togethermakes it into a must read for ethical link building. We are using vertical-blogger.com what do you think about this practise?
Regards
rafa
[...] Getting Inbound Links – there are many decent link building guides and this is one the best – 15 ways to build links to your site, including the clever idea of building links by monitoring those sites up for auction [...]
Great post Glen, very exhaustive, including post & site backlinks strategies
My main concern these days is a bit different: How to get the most of seo/backlinks in the minimum number of hours. As a blogger I guess we all share the same concerns, get the maximum return of every hours we spend on our project.
So i have a question for you. If you had only 60 minutes to spent for:
* writing a post
* optimised that post for a keyword (that means keyword research & on-page)
* post promotion
what would you do ?
Might be a good excercise for another post
Well, I would never only have 60 minutes, but I would spend it writing a post. Either for my site, or someone else’s.
I think I have wrote about 3 posts in the last 2 years (out of 200) that were aimed at getting SE traffic. On-site optimisation is something you can generally do once, and then leave it for the most part.
If you do no keyword research before writting your post, then I guess web 2.0 backlinks building has no secrets for you.
It’s pretty impressive how fast you can rank that high. Apart from that your content is great so you will rank high long time too.
Congrats
Yes, don’t underestimate the power of social media. But I notice that well thought content is getting more trust from Google.
Thanks for the tips, very useful and well explained.
All great tips. and mostly free ways to get BL’s. very cool.
Always nice when someone shares the tricks of the trade. Thanks a bunch for this superb article, off now to check out the Google SEO article to brush up on some skillz.
Have you considered writing an article on how to figure out the quality of the site that is providing the backlink or would it be too short for your liking? : ) Or is it as easy as just seeing where they rank on google, alexa, etc. and combining this with common sense?
Generally I look for whether:
– it is relevant
– it has a lot of links pointing to it
– it isn’t linking out to irrelevant or spammy sources
I hope that helps.
Glen,
Thank you so much for this.
I must admit, that the information you provided here, are very precious to me. I never seen something so clear said about building rank. I found your post very useful and I believe that it will help many people including me, to understand how search engine works.
Once again, thanks for posting it…
Regards,
Ioan
[...] long winter days seem to have kept quite a few folks inside, considering the large amount of great in-depth link building articles I came across last month. When even Bing starts writing about link spam, you [...]
This is a good arcticle about this theme. I started a new site und your tips are very helpfull.
[...] How to Really Build Backlinks and Dominate Google [...]
I could use some advise. I am building a community website for a niche hobby that I will then use to market related affiliate products too. I am about to start marketing and I’m a bit lost on if I should first market to people with just information, in order to build my email list/followers, or if I should market to potential buyers of the affiliate products (keywords that lead to buying rather then information?)
Also when contacting potential websites (not blogs, so I can’t guest post) what are some ideas that would encourage them to write something or link to my site?
Thanks for your help. This is my first visit here and I am sold on your honestly and quality help and information.
Hey Glen,
Can you please do a post listing all of the sites you’ve guest posted on in the past few months? I’ve seen you on Copyblogger, MaxBlogPress, etc. I’m building a master list of sites that accept guest contributions like:
-Mercola.com
-About.com
-LifeHack.org
-DumbLittleMan.com
-SeekingAlpha.com
Kim Roach had an awesome podcast called 10x Content Marketing (or something like that) and it listed a ton of ways to share content also.
Your readers would love something like this.
Best,
Raza
[...] importance of on page optimisation, this article concentrates on strategies you can implement to build links to your site, otherwise known as the off site side of things. The article emphasises the need to provide [...]
I’d love to try Bookmarking demon but I use a mac. Anyone know of any alternatives that work on a mac?
Great article. There’s a lot of information talked about here which I haven’t heard anywhere else. Thank you very much.
The Steps which has worked well for me are
1. Online Profiles where I can place a link to my site and if I participate on the website my profile page gets really good PR as well.
2. Reviews and testimonials on products I prefer and use and they are published on the website with a link to my site.
Both helps me get good links to my site.
Thanks
Shabbir
Remember: Don’t spam forums! Earn the “right” to get a clean link by creating good posts!
Hi Glen, Great Post, I am a new reader and and am working my through all your posts! With building links, you mention, building links too fast can be bad…I am just wondering, would building 50 or so links for a new site a month be too much?
Hey Glen,
Thanks so much for your excellent content. I am one of your readers for almost a year now – but because of rss I am not that likely to leave comments
Anyways because of you I started to get into affiliate marketing and try to dominate google. When I look at analytics I have following traffic composition: 9.66% search engine, 82.77 reffereingsites and 7.56% direct traffic.
I am wondering how to increase the search engine term since when I got it rigt is the key to success?? Backlinking seems not to work as it should. Any tipps???
Cheers Sebastian
Promoting a product that helps you build backlinks and asking me how to do may be one place you’re going wrong
Note to self: Give away less.
Where is your referring traffic coming from? How old is the site?
The Yahoo trick is a real killer that I use extensively. Also another tip worth mentioning is to search through Google for the keyword phrase you are trying to target and go through the top 50 or so sites looking for any ways you can get a link from them. Works well for me.
Hi Glen,
Is ‘Bookmarking Demon’ worth buying ?
And most important would the promoted site not be banned by Google because of its use ?
“To utilise this tactic in a more ethical manner” So using it is not ethical I gather.
I just launched my site and link building is something I have really been trying to figure out. It is a lot tougher than I thought, but from everything I have read, it seems that it just takes time and you need to keep creating killer content. I am glad I bookmarked this page, so that I could refer back to this article. Thanks a lot for being some helpful and informative.
Have heard a lot of good things about your website on Twitter. Your blog/article entries come highly recommended. I really enjoyed this piece on link building and when i get some more time i plan to read more of your content. I do believe a lot of people put too much focus on one or two core keywords when link building so i am glad you made a good point about spreading the range of keywords that are targeted
Another killer link building tool is creating infographics. These lead to highly editorial links and can get 100’s or even 1000’s of links at a time. Check out http://www.chartporn.org to see what I mean. There are some amazing data visualizations there.
Kudos…very informative. I’ve heard alot about your methods and absolutely want more. Awesome work!
Its a great post i think and will help most of us bloggers who are looking for the great help out there on net. Thanks for the great post and have a great reader ship…
Glen – This is a great post. I’ve been having the problem whee i’ve got great content but nobody knows about it. It’s beginning to change now and traffic is picking up – but your tips are very useful. Very interesting site you have – with some great posts.
Hey there Glen,
I stumbled here from another SEO expert blogpost on the subject “Must read blog list”.
When i read the post, i relized why. Great stuff I must say.
I would like to add that OnlyWire might help on Social Bookmarking, it sure haven’t 100 places installed but hey, it’s a free service right and free is good
B.
Glen,
Excellent post and great list. I love this list and try my best to follow your tips.
Thanks,
Hussain
I agree about building a site for people. It creates more value that way. And where there’s value, everything else (traffic, money, etc.) will just follow. =)
Thank you Glen – I like the Flippa comment in the comments too – just off to check that out.
Very good post, i love your blog! xD
You write very good quality articles, i very like to read them and there are very useful also.
So fast, my site is only one moth old and i have already get 6k backlinks.
How? I didn’t do anything dirty to get these links, i have just write comment on dofollow blog which have top commentators plugin, i hope that searchs engines won’t think that i’m doing “weird” thing? o_O
Thank you so much. I just like the “what we not to do” part. This is something exceptional and good tutorial.
Thank you. As yhou can imagine, I do NOT want to engage in “black hat” SEO for my new site. It is annoying, though, when Google and Yahoo list my site…and rank it pretty high…when Bing won’t show my site even if I type in my precise website url. Arrrghhh! The Bing forum just tells me to be patient and build backlinks. I appreciate your approach to building backlinks!
Bing has a tiny marketshare right now so I wouldn’t worry about them too much. They are very slow to pick up backlinks + new pages in my experience.
Thanks for the comment!
Why has it taken me so long to find you – great stuff…many thanks. Just need to apply it all and find time for a life and a business!
Hi All
one week down the track and it is all success at the vertical blogger end. We have had an enormous response from bloggers and advertisers. For ethical link building http://www.verticalblogger.co.uk is the best way to go.
Hope it helps
rafa
Thanks dear,
I am sure that I am going to follow the guidelines giiven by you.
Thank you,
This was a highly informative and very usefuyl article.
I can certainly take a lot away having read it and impliment it in my own website promotions and backlinking.
I am currently using a couple of the items that you list so I at least feel I am already walking in the right direction, and as I offer a free traffic facility myself you have opened up doorways to a whole new world of resources for me.
Thank You Again,
Warm Regards,
Clive Anderson
Awesome post… still building my site at the moment but I’ll certainly apply some of your techniques along with some of my own
Thanks great info!
Thx for that “not to do list” It will be very useful for me , since I’m Also a beginner and still building up my sites ,
Glen,
I’m curious to know your thoughts on removing “nofollow” from comments in links? What do you think about this?
Keep sharing the knowledge!
Mike E.
I’m starting new website based on cloud Living “model”, and there is something I can’t understand.
you mentioned several times the importance of link building in increasing site ranking, I understand that.! but I found several websites with only with less than 10 backlinks with very very high ranking in alexa and google!!! how they managed to beat a site with 100+ backlinks.
The links they have are probably from strong domains, or very relevant.
Great stuff, especially the flippa one. One of the problems with sites for sale on flippa is their traffic is mainly from ppc or affiliates (Click bank etc), I will keep trying. Keep up the good work
Hi Glen,
Great article! I’m just recently started guest blogging on behalf of a client and have been having good results. Now blogging under my own name is another thing altogether (I’m talking major writers block here). Anyway, what I’d like to ask you is whether it would be ethical to repost someone else’s blog (like yours) on my own site if I provide a link back to your site AND give you full credit.
[...] can find blogs that will give you a few link building tips each week and then I go ahead and write 15 in one post. You will find blogs with tips here and there on Wordpress SEO, and I go and write what I think is [...]
I have just started the , and am really struggling to grasp my head around backlinks and workin my way up google, i need some sort of manual, or a video manual, any one have any suggestions
guest posting and commenting has been my top ways to build back links .it has other benefits like helping you build a relationship with other bloggers.
This is a solid list and while I like your focus on content, it can be very time consuming and expensive. Plus if your playing catch-up to other sites with massive profiles you’ll need to build more links than will be generated by content hosting and submission. Believe me I know quality is better than volume, but sometimes you just need to find prospective link sources in bulk and use tools to grade their value. Then reach out and negotiate for placement. Ryan
We focuse on content. The link building simulates the real network of the business.
Although, I have been learning some SEO tactics recently, you definitely list a few I have not heard about. Thanks again.
great tips ….i never thought of using flippa..thanks
Very useful article. I’m on the way to promote my website and your article does help me.
i want to learn about seo.
Hi,
What a great information. By experience with link building google put more importance on quality backlinks. So a website with 100 quality backlinks will get more higher ranking than a website with 1000 backlinks ( not focusing on a quality backlink) . Thanks a lot for the useful information.
I’m asking a question, hoping perhaps you can help. I appreciate your insight on creating traffic and developing a following. However, with my blog, I run into some issues. Mainly one issue, that my blog is a blog that has a huge range of topics. Creating backlinks for specific keywords wouldn’t work, because I never settle down to one topic.
Main question: How does one promote/market a blog that is eclectic? I see successful eclectic blogs (Scalzi, Violent Acres), but typically they become famous in other ways. Thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Although, I do not have a answer, I just want to let it be know that I am also interested in the question you posed. I will be starting a site that will be on many topics as well.
Is any1 aware of google sandbox, i think i am in, does any1 know how to get out ??
Hi,
First of all I need to tell you that I have found this website from a link on Polish forum about SEO. There was discussion about “how to do SEO in UK market” and some of users linked to this page as a good source when you are beginner with SEO. So I need to agree that really important is a content of the website – and your website is self example of what you are writing about.
Thank you and best regards
I knew already some of The Tips but thank you for this read and I’m just following your instructions and commenting in a Blog.
Fantastic article Glen! very informative, I would like to ask a question about article/blog posting,
If I have an article post on my own blog and i post it on other website as say a guest post, would this get penalised by google becuase it could be seen as duplicate content?
[...] I wrote in my post on How to Dominate Google, search engines generally tend to follow people. If your site is very static, uninteresting and [...]
Thx for your post,it’s very useful for some guys like me.
Is there also a way for me to add My own blog backlink on my blog for others to copy and paste on their blog? if there is, How. Thanks
Hi , Gren .
Thank you for your article.
I ‘m Japanese , but your post useful for me.
I’ll try them !
Hey Glen, just a quick update that the dofollowblogs site had already expired. Might wanna remove the link there.
Long time lurker, Cloud Living lover, and first-time commenting here. Thank you kindly for the superb content! I notice you didn’t mention submitting to RSS feeds here. Is there any benefit to doing so?
Hello Glen,
I love the writing aspect of blogging, yet getting traffic and sharing my information with as many people as possible is the ultamite goal. Thank you for sharing some of the technical aspects to blogging. I look forward to seeing you at the top!!! (Of Google, Bing, and Yahoo!!!)
P.S. Thank you as well for setting the example of following up on peoples comments. That will for sure have people come back for more
one of the best articles on Link Building I have read. Really glad I’m on your email list.
Getting ready to listen to the podcast of you on the SPI site.
Thanks for sharing your resources and knowledge.
Thanks for the info. I’ve been working for months trying to get it right.You helped out a lot.
Great tips on building links, now if i could get someone to build them for me
Great refresher read, and a couple idea I had not considered before. Thanks for the article!
Great refresher read, and a couple idea I had not considered before. Thanks for the article!
(sorry about re-post, screwed up site URL in the one above.)
Hey Glen,I read your article and started working on it.Your 5 years of study is really very helpful for new bloggers.Keep writing great articles.
Glen,
Thanks for the informative post. I have been slowing implementing your tactics for the last year before even reading this. You just cemented it in for me that I am on the right path. I guess it’s kind of like planting a garden, we have to do the work now and then reap the benefits down the road.
-Kelly
Yeah great article linkbuilding the right way will always be a daunting task.
Then, I guess it’s OK if I leave a link here?
Great text, lots of useful tips, thanks!