There is a lot to be said for the benefits of high quality search engine optimization. In fact, the success of any website is directly proportional to the quality of its search engine optimization campaign. Search engine optimization is about optimizing the source code of your web pages and building enough links from other websites pointing to your optimized pages so as to create better rankings on all the popular search engines such as MSN, Yahoo and Google. However, advanced link building techniques and, indeed, a whole link building campaign tends to not only be cumbersome but also highly complicated. These small difficulties can immediately transform into something big if you are unaware or negligent of even one of the many fundamentals of link building. In order to avoid such situations, the following are some link building techniques along with descriptions to help you in your endeavours.
1. Directory links:
There are many different types of directories for online and offline businesses. The trick, as you may already know, is to list your business on as many directories as possible. Although this process is quite tedious and time consuming, it will not only give you click through visitors but also improve your page ranking. Two things you should be sure of, however, are that the directory is indexed by major search engines and that you vary the anchor text being used.
2. Specific linking:
One of the most difficult but also the most advanced link building techniques is to create links for, at least, the top 20 results for your relevant keywords. This technique involves you using your relevant keywords on search engines and trying to get the link of your website on the top 20 results from those searches. Logically, the competition has to be excluded from the top 20 list. While all websites might not be conducive to your requests, others will settle for link exchanges, tie ups, money and even free SEO services from you. The reason why this is so useful is that each link that you create in these search results will generate targeted visitors for you which would be easier to convert into sales.
3. Link searches:
This is a very old technique used in a link building campaign by experienced search engine optimizers. The aim here is to look for websites, pages and portals that allow link additions pertaining to the industry you operate in. You can search for these types of pages, websites and portals via all the major search engines. Usually, these searches will result in link directories, business directories, forums and, sometimes, even blogs. These results will vary in the way that they may allow free links, selective links, paid links or link exchanges.
4. Competitor’s links:
If your website is only just starting then you will need this advanced link building technique to reach some type of parity with your competitors who have been in the industry for a significant amount of time already. This technique involves you searching for places where your competitors have already placed their links and then placing your own links in the same places. This will quickly lead you to achieve a sort of equality with your competitors in terms of quality traffic. Furthermore, you would get insights into your competitors’ link building strategies and these would be tried and tested by them over the years.
5. Article submission:
Original articles on the subject matter related to your business can easily become the spine of your link building campaign because, with this technique, everything will be in your hand. Herein, you are supposed to write unique articles related to your industry and post it on your own site. However, you should make sure that your articles conform to the SEO rules i.e. include relevant keywords, in order to be truly successful. Along with this, you can even generate good ranking by posting original articles on various article directories that are available online. Putting articles with links of your website on third party websites can make a significant difference in terms of your ranking.
6. Forums and online groups:
While other advanced link building techniques look to get traffic onto your website, forums and online communities will allow you to not only get targeted traffic onto your website but also make contact with industry insiders. Just posting links on forums would be considered spamming. Therefore, you have to employ the proper technique for posting on forums. You can use the link of your website in your signature but make sure that you post relevant and authentic comments.
7. Blogging and blog comments:
Linking with blogging is more akin to making contacts and building followers. Inbound links on the back of your creativity and brilliance in your own blog or through blog comments can lead to a lot of people going through your website. In fact, by being truly interesting and building an image for yourself, you can even generate a regular audience over and above the individual links that you create in your link building campaign.
8. Tie-ups and collaborations:
This advanced link building method is a lot like renting pages on other people’s websites, portals or domains. However, you can make this even more elaborate by making collaborative partnerships with other websites that provide products and services upstream or downstream to your services or products. Therefore, you would be able to get relevant page ranking because you are connected to a reliable website and also proper targeted customers that arrive at your link looking for your services.
9. Automated link building software and packages:
This is a method that will give you instant results but is also very risky if you get noticed. You will find many types of software, programs and packages online that will promise to submit articles, comments and forum replies automatically for you to create links. However, you need to be extremely careful with these kinds of software because they can get you blacklisted by major search engines quite quickly.
The above mentioned advanced link building techniques are only a few and there are many others that you can use in your link building campaign once you have cracked these. Link building requires a lot of patience and diligence from the search engine optimizer, which is why you should make sure that you are set for the long haul.
A very nice and detailed article on link building and how it effects SEO strategies. But regarding directory submissions, I am sure most people are not investing much time as almost all directories are dead or in other words; are not effective enough to get a quality backlink.