Promoting Your Blog – Link Building

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed a lot in recent years. On page elements are not nearly as important as they once were. These have been replaced by the all important back link. Getting your blog up in the ranks is all about getting your site linked on quality web sites. You can have the greatest content in the world, but until other bloggers or sites are finding it and linking it you won’t be able to move up in the search ranks.

Guest Post

A great way to get exposure is to guest post on a larger blog. Some cases of this are harder than others. In some niches the blog saturation is low, so there are no large blogs to post on. In other cases there are large blogs, but they don’t accept guest posts. If you are lucky you’ll be in a niche with a healthy amount of blogs, and a thriving blogger community. The best way to approach becoming a guest poster is to start commenting on their blog. Add to the discussion, and really get involved in the community. After a short period, e-mail the owner of the site and inquire about adding a post or two. If you are denied you will still be on the bloggers mind, and when they are having trouble getting posts up you’ll be ready to take up the call! If you do get accepted, make sure to put your best foot forward and submit a high quality post. The higher the quality the more likely the readers are going to go to your blog and stay there. Even if you miss out on the readers you’ll be getting the all important link on a major site which will translate into higher rankings for search terms!

Post on Forums

There’s a lot of forums out there that allow links in signatures. This a great way to get involved in the community while adding to your link building. There is a catch though. A lot of forums have a nofollow policy which tags your signature links with nofollow and does not allow you to get credit for the links. You can check this by viewing the source on a post and looking for: “rel=nofollow” in your signature link. Even with nofollow enabled you can still build up a following by adding intelligent conversation to the forum and becoming entrenched in the community.

Exchange Links

This is a less advised method because Google is able to distinguish a link in the sidebar or footer with a link in the content. Links in content are weighed more heavily than links in a blogroll. However, these still carry weight and used sparingly can be helpful to your blog. A big mistake people make is assuming that a link in someones blogroll is going to gain them traffic. People rarely if ever click on sites in a blogroll. This is purely a method for garnering search engine attention. When attempting an exchange do not send out a stock e-mail. Larger blogs receive link exchange requests all the time. Be personable and professional when contacting another blogger.

Ezine Articles

For high quality links look no further than Ezine Articles. Ezine Articles allows you to post original content on their site which you can add your sites link to at the bottom of the article. These posts don’t have to be your best work, and knocking out about 10 posts is a good idea. This is a great way to get solid back links.

Submit to Directories

There are a ton of free directories out there. Yahoo and Dmoz being some of the more popular ones. Submit your link to these various directories for easy no thought back links for your site. However, do not rely on this method. This is a long shot because getting your links on these directories takes a long time and is not guaranteed. It’s best to just submit your site and forget about them. Three months later you might be pleasantly surprised by being included on one of the big directories!