40 Ways to Build An Army of Inbound Links
Commanding Influence: Build A Strong Online Presence
Imagine yourself having an entire army of inbound links marching into battle every day fighting to pump up your PageRank and to drive new visitors to your site. Visualize notable bloggers and webmasters citing your work and proudly referring their greatly sought after readers to your site every day. This dream almost sounds too good to be true.
Inbound links are the key to driving traffic to our blogs and websites. Google uses inbound links as one of the most important factors in determining your PageRank which can in turn determine your position in it’s search engine listings.
Matt Cutts speaks out on Building Inbound Links
To kick off our list, let’s allow Matt Cutts, a Google executive, to give us his advice on building powerful inbound links.
40 Ways to Build An Army of Inbound Links
If we want traffic then we’ve got to get some links pointing at our sites and this article is an exhaustive list of ways to do just that:
- Write amazing articles
- Write a huge list post
- Offer something for free.
- Put on a fun contest.
- Write a critique of something.
- Demonstrate authority on a subject.
- Write great link bait.
- Link to other people’s articles.
- Talk positive about other bloggers.
- Thoroughly revise your articles.
- Have an amazing design on your blog.
- Think outside the status quo.
- Write a tutorial.
- Submit your site to free directories.
- Submit your site to paid directories.
- Publish an interview with a leader in your niche.
- Publish an article about a leader in your niche.
- Guest blog on other related blogs.
- Ask for a link from another blog owner.
- Sponsor a post on another blog.
- Hire someone to build links for you.
- Post your link in your signature in a forum.
- Comment on dofollow blogs.
- Exchange links with a peer.
- Sign people’s guest books.
- Ask for a link on a website in your niche.
- Leave your reviews of products you use.
- Ping Technorati and others with your new articles.
- Get involved at Yahoo! Answers.
- Make friends with other bloggers.
- Create and use a del.icio.us account.
- Create an about page.
- Create a contact page.
- Only post original content.
- Stay with it for the long haul.
- Ask your readers to link to your articles.
- Link to articles that have trackbacks enabled.
- Build relationships with other bloggers.
- Don’t be a spammer.
- Get another site to review your blog.
Group Reflection
What are you doing to build inbound links at your website or blog? What tactics have you found to work the most effectively? Which would you encourage people to stay away from?
Dev | Technshare said:
Thanks for this awesome post nichlos.
Commenting on Dofollow Blogs is another great way to get backlinks and some traffic. ;p
btw.. retweeted !!
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Dev | Technshare » Yes but if you’re commenting on dofollow links, then you are commenting for the wrong reason and since I know a lot of people who actively tell their followers to only comment on dofollow blogs, it’s kind of disheartening. Comments are designed for communication. They aren’t designed to create backlinks to content that may or may not deserve backlinks.
Chris Guthrie said:
When the commentluv and keywordluv plugins came about it changed the design and purpose of comments from communication over to backlink building. It may be sad, but it’s true.
The reason why people with those plugins get so many comments is because everyone’s out there trying to build links back to their blog.
I comment for many reasons but the main reason is to get on the blog authors radar. I’ve had numerous discussions with different bloggers via email and found projects to work on together tips we could share etc which don’t come about unless you share valueable comments.
Like this one
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Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing said:
While that may be true, all smart comment/keywordluv bloggers have made it abundantly clear that any worthless comment will be deleted.
So as I’ve stated before, as long as the comment is what it is supposed to be, why care about initial motives?
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Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius said:
Linking my blog to my Twitter profile and Facebook page have proved interesting as the links are archived there and still draw traffic. Automatic submission of updates and comments updates also work in that sense.
All these drive traffic on the moment but help in adding backlinks in the long run.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius » Those are great ideas as well. Thanks for suggesting them.
Aahna said:
how to check our site inbound links? is there any site to check the inbound links???
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Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius said:
Try using the link: operator in Google “link:www.yourdomain.com” or you can also use tools like backlink watch : http://www.backlinkwatch.com/.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Aahna » Sachin is right. You can also use Google’s Webmaster Tools. Remember though the key to really building inbound links is to create content that is worth linking.
D'MarieF said:
Nice, handy list to have. I printed it out and marked the ones I’m doing or have done.
Enjoyed the video, too, but you may want to tweak something so it shows up on the iphone. I didn’t even know it existed until I opened my computer to print this post. On my iphone (3G if it matters) there was no video, but there was a “blah” where it should have been. I went back and checked it in google reader and using safari – same thing.
Warmest regards
Dennis Edell said:
Sponsor a post on another blog?
You mean buy an ad space within a relevant article?
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rita morgan said:
Some good ideas here. I had better get busy implementing them.
Many thanks.
Nicholas Cardot said:
rita morgan » You’re welcome. Now don’t put it off. Get busy building that Army so that you can march your way to success.
Srinivas Rao said:
Glad to see that doing interviews with leaders is one of the things that’s listed considering that we do 3 of them every week. At some point in the near future, if you are game, I’d love to interview you.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
That sounds like it would be a lot of fun. What format do you conduct your interviews in? Email? Audio? Video?
My Latest Blog Post: 40 Ways to Build An Army of Inbound Links
Srinivas Rao said:
All our interviews are audio-based. WE do them via skype. If you go to BlogcastFM you’ll hear an interview we did with your buddy Jordan Cooper. You can ask him about it too
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Srinivas Rao » Okay! That’s cool. My username is NCardot. Feel free to connect with me on there.
Richard Scott | Jewelry Secrets said:
Nice list. I’ve often debated whether or not to have a contest on my site. This has got me thinking again.
I like Yahoo Answers. I’ve used that to generate traffic.
One other way is to take advantage of Image and Video searches. I have one site that gets 90% traffic from Images alone. Plus, you can always gets tons of traffic from Youtube.
P.S. Love your site, not crazy about your arrows either. lol
Nicholas Cardot said:
Richard Scott | Jewelry Secrets » You’ll have to coach me on using Yahoo! Answers to build blog traffic. I’ve never done that before. You just answer questions and get backlinks or how does that work?
Those other ideas about images and videos are a great idea as well. Thanks for those tips.
P.S. My arrows are awesome.
Matt said:
Thanks for another great post, Nicholas. These are all wonderful ideas…can’t wait to implement them!
Keep up the great work. =)
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Matt » Thanks Matt! Don’t wait. Get started with building your army of inbound links right now before you forget about it.
Ron Leyba said:
All possibilities are discussed here by Nick!
Here is my addition:
41. Create a small basic software for your niche that can be beneficial to all.
In this way, people will link to you because you are the creator of that software and also, you can submit your own software to thousand of download sites thus gaining you more backlinks.
42. Create a podcast. Then submit your podcast to thousand of podcast directories.
Hope this tip of mine adds value to the above posted list.
Thanks again Nick!
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Ron Leyba » Those are great tips. Those are good additions to the topic.
mk akan said:
wow…great list..am happy am doing few of the points raised…still have a lot to do..thanks nick
Nicholas Cardot said:
mk akan » That’s good, though. We all have a lot of work to do. We just have to keep at it and keep moving forward. Take in as many of these points as you can and learn them. But even more importantly, figure out how to actually do them and put them into practice and you’ll be miles ahead of your peers.
Jason (@urbanjester) said:
thanks Nicholas. Great article! Do you have any opinion on purchased/ad links?
Reza Winandar said:
- Ask for a link from another blog owner.
- Ask for a link on a website in your niche.
Does that kind of methods is work? I don’t think it will be effective. It’s not easy to request a backlink from other blogger.
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scheng1 said:
Submission to article directories work too. Regardless of what methods, link building is extremely time-consuming.
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John Clark said:
Thanks for the great list! Even as an offline business, the web is one of my most important ways of getting new business. Any help I can get in that way is appreciated.
Kok Siong @ Cancer Research said:
I think leaving a comment in dofollow blog is still the effective way for me to build up the inbound links. I have tried the article submission too. However, i still have not seen any effect from this method.
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Annabel Candy, Get In the Hot Spot said:
I haven’t got any new ideas to add to the list but I think you need to be patient and do it slowly. I’m trying to get one a day by hook or by crook. I’ll probbly fall short but at least I’ll have build up quite a few:)
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Dani from Poland said:
Great article. Some of given ways are of course obvious, but some of them not. Good think, to get all them together in one place.
Good job.
BIZZNURSE @ Make Money Enjoy Blogging said:
Hi, browsing through your site for great tips here. I’m feeling a bit down these days since I changed from my blogspot domain to my own. My 8month of work of building Alexa Rank suddenly dozed of just because i changed to my own domain..have to start a new from below… However, I usually get inspiration from others people blogs.. sharing here is part of it
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Nicholas Cardot said:
BIZZNURSE @ Make Money Enjoy Blogging » I switched away from blogspot myself a few years ago and I can tell you that it was one of the best moves in blogging that I have ever made. Sure you have to start over from scratch on a few things, but as you grow with WordPress, you’ll be glad that you made the switch.
Andy FirstFound said:
Thanks Nicholas, you’ve put some great tips in that list!
People shouldn’t underestimate the power of a list post either – that’s always a great way of getting some attention.
Shawn Morse said:
Great information!
We are slowly making our way down this list. We have found a lot of success in the Blogging side of this.
Thanks!
Shawn
Claudia M @cdmtx65 said:
thanks for the “Homework” ,i will take a while to make it down the list ..lol
Olusegun said:
Hmm, Waht else can you get from the face of Google but pure online wisdom. Nice. I saw posted his video on my blog recently on how search engines work. The guy is amazing.
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Darren said:
Thank you, great tips, i have only just started working on my SEO and have managed to keep myself busy doing this for a while now.
There really is quite a lot that can be done
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Henry said:
how to setup links for my site
cancer treatments said:
thanks for this another great post. keep posting informative blogs like this.
Anthony said:
Great information. I’m new to the blogging world. Trying to learn the art of SEO.
Geoff said:
I notice Matt mentions exchanging links with a peer. Slightly surprised as too much of that can negate the value of those types of links can’t they?
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Yes. Too much of that can lead to a negative value but links between related sites that have built authority are extremely useful.