One of the best ways to get your website highly ranked is by using organic link building and ethical link building strategies, but both are time-consuming, which means you can’t expect to have everything done in one day, because it is a process. According to ShoutMeLoud.com building links organically should be a part of your overall SEO strategy. There are two different sides to this. First, you want to build links in an ethical way so that your site does not appear to be spam. Next, you want the organic method, which is the linking to someone else’s website via someone mentioning your site in a blog post or find your articles via SEO, you may find others referring to your article or website without you having to do anything in return.
Obviously, there are many advantages to building organic links, but it takes time and certainly is not something that you will see instant results from. This is why you need to build and submit quality articles around keywords that are highly searched on the major search engines because this is what will make your site stand out when bloggers are looking for references for their own blogs and when they mention your site, you are getting free exposure. According to RonMedlin.com link building is one of four core strategies that propel websites to the top of the search engine rankings.
It is not enough to just stuff some keywords in articles that make no sense, because this is not going to help with organic link building and may end up looking like spam to the search engines, which means you will not be using ethical link building either. The important thing to remember when building links is to work smarter and not harder, because if you spend months stuffing keywords into your content, which basically means taking articles and putting keywords into them that are hotly searched that not only make little sense, but the density or amount of times you use the keyword is unacceptable.
I recently read a fantastic tip from SeerInteractive.com which describes a tool that you can use to quickly identify broken links, which in itself is no big deal, but the kicker is what you do with that knowledge. If you want to score some quality backlinks from broken links that you find on other domains then check this out.
Remember, if you spend your time building your links ethically and organically in the end, you will have built a website that gets traffic from sites and webmasters that you never asked to mention your site at all. Moreover, it is the most natural way to build your website traffic in the eyes of Google and other search engines because they spot keyword stuffing via their own algorithms they use when looking at the various websites and your links. The more time you spend building quality links and back linking, the more positive the outcome will be in the long run, but again, this is not for the faint of heart because you will have to spend a lot of your own time before you’ll see results. See this post on SEOmoz for some link building ideas that you may not have thought of.
Another way to get some organic backlinks is by setting yourself up to participate in communities that are related to your product or service and offer expert advice to your audience. Of course, this does not mean that you start dropping your link in every other word because people will know what you are up to, but be the go-to person in the community and this can lead to backlinks for your site, which then makes your site more popular.
Here’s a summary of some mind-blowing link building techniques from SMX London.
One of the areas that you need to be concerned with is making sure that linking to your site is easy. If it is too much trouble, webmasters will find someone else. This means that you need to make sure you provide the proper link code when submitting your website URL. Don’t make the person that is wanting to give you some organic linking do the work for you, because many will not and then you will have missed a good opportunity.
For those of you interested in Portland’s SEM community, check out This recap of their January 2011 link building conference.
One of the best types of articles you can submit to directories are instructional types because these tell people how to do a specific task or accomplish something that is related to your niche, which helps to establish you as an authority in the field. Moreover, in your how-to or instructional articles provide facts that are not well known, for instance, if you are involved in selling leather goods, give some facts about why the staining and stitching make such a difference in how long the piece lasts. By adding additional and useful information, you make your articles look and appear as someone that has a lot of authority on the subject you are sharing.
Along with great article writing, consider making some quality videos and upload them to YouTube because this is free and when your videos are good, people will link to them on their own website or blog. This is a great way to get backlinks to your site, but these also take time to work, so you need to be patient as you build your knowledge. Make sure you are projecting the right image in your articles and videos because no one wants to link to silly articles or unprofessional videos because it makes them look bad.
Ross Hudgens has written a great explanation of how to use Google Alerts to help you build links.
While there is a great deal of work involved in organic link building and making sure you are using ethical link building tactics, in the end, it pays off by sending more traffic to your site. What’s more, this is not just random traffic, this is targeted traffic, and the likelihood they will buy from you is very high.
