Our Favorite Natural Link Building Techniques
Link building is one of the oldest and most productive SEO techniques in the book. While some of the most well-known SEO factors have faded away from the limelight, link building continues to provide great leads and quality traffic.
It is so important to build that nearly 37% of the businesses spend anywhere from 10K to 50K per month building links.
It doesn't mean that you also need big pockets like these businesses; instead, there are a few natural link building techniques that can propel you to the top of Google page without spending anything out of your pocket.
What are Natural Links?
In the age of Google Pandas and Penguins, natural links are the mainstay of a successful marketing strategy. Natural links are created when other people link to your page because they value your content.
When link building happens naturally without the need to generate links, it is among the safest and most productive marketing methods.
There are many ways you can use to link naturally, but here are ten sure-fire methods that have stood the test of time.
Guest Blogging
By writing content on a similar website like yours, you can get your name and the name of your company in front of a large number of potential clients. Before asking another blogger to allow you to write content for their blog, it's important that you should have a relatively stable blog to showcase your own writing skills.
If you don't own a blog, a good writing portfolio can be the first step to a successful guest blog. If you get permission to write a guest post, the author bio is the best place to include your link because your bio will be the first thing that will interest readers.
Powerful and high-authority blogs will not only provide you a great link juice, it will also help attract a steady stream of targeted visitors to your website.
Article Marketing
In the earlier days of the Internet, writing articles in the article directory was the best thing that the web owner could do to boost links. Article marketing took a big hit with Google Panda, which downsized links from these article directories due to the presence of a variety of low-quality links.
Nowadays, it's common for experts to follow the alternate article content communities such as HubPages and Squidoo. These websites are built around communities, which helps website owners write great articles while accessing like-minded individuals who love to link back to the website.
The end result is a high-quality backlink that Google loves.
Videos
Video websites such as Youtube and Vimeo are great for uploading videos that will link naturally to your website. You can put a link on the video description enabling visitors to go directly to your web page.
These days it's easier to make videos using countless free video auditing software. In fact, you can also use PowerPoint and similar software without the need to reveal yourself.
If you're not good at recording video, a lot of free online voice recorders can also provide the voice-over using a text created for the video.
Social Profiles
Google gives a lot of rating to social profiles. If you're not active on Social Media, it doesn't hurt to build a page on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin just for the sake of linking back to your website.
You can increase your followers naturally by putting a link to these social pages on your websites. If you're not social, just hire a social media expert to do all the work for you.
Due to a rising completion, you can find such experts at ridiculously low prices at websites such as Fiverr, Freelancer, and ODesk.
Blog Commenting
To get your name in the market, start commenting on blogs related to your niche. Just make sure that you've giving useful comment on the blog to attract other readers. If possible, use your real name and picture to comment on these blogs. Certain WordPress plugins allow you to post blogs using your own profile and picture.
You may also find blogs that have CommentLuv attribute, which means that these blogs will allow you to place a link to your website beneath your comments. If you're hosting using a WordPress website, use CommentLuv plugin to find relevant websites that allow posting comments with your profile and a link.
Forums
Getting links from the Forum is a somewhat tricky affair. Based on the perspective of the Forum community, any link to your website may be OK or it may be seen as a way to spam the Forum. Under these circumstances, it is better to use BoardReader to find forums that allow authors to post links.
You can also search Google for vBulletin forums by searching for the keyword, "powered by vBulletin". Once on these forums, check to if these forums allow author signatures. If they do, then try creating 10 to 20 post before including your own signatures. Some forums even allow two to three links.
Q & A Networks
Website suite such as Quora, Linkedin Answers and Yahoo Answers are a great way to earn reputable high-quality links to your websites.
As with blogs and forums, some of these Q&A websites offer you a chance to include your bio. Whenever you answer a specific question related to the topic, the website will display your full bio with the answer.
Not all websites will allow linking back to your page. For instance, there is no provision in Yahoo Answers to display the website info within the answer. Therefore, if you want laser-target traffic, then Quora may be the perfect answer to generating great backlinks.
Sometimes, websites also allow displaying badges and banners on your profile, which is yet another great way to attract curious readers.
Email Links
If you love email marketing or you use emails as one of the marketing methods, creating colorful email stamps using software such as WiseStamp can create creative signatures.
Using the software, you can include links to your website and other pages, which can bring a lot of link juice and traffic.
Statistical Links
If you have a fairly established website that is on the Internet for more than six months, you can get high authoritative links from websites that allow visitors to check traffic stats and relevant information for a particular website.
For instance, Alexa and Similar Web are two high-quality websites where you can easily update your domain information to get a link back to your page. Just a quick search on Google using the keyword "check website stats" can reveal a number of such popular websites including Quarkbase and "About the Domain".
IFor a running website, getting high-quality links are never easier than this wonderful technique.
Become an Expert
For long-term success, there is nothing better than becoming an expert in your niche. People like linking to experts because we all listen to good advice.
In today's fast paced dynamic environment, we can easily differentiate between a well-researched content and content made for marketing purposes. No one will like to link with you if you're looking for shortcuts.
Instead of writing marketing-oriented material, write good content that is data-rich and well-researched. Use infographics, videos, and graphs to prove your point. Great natural links will follow as your readers will start linking to the article and share it with their buddies.
In fact, establishing yourself as an expert is the best-kept secret to natural link building.
Final Verdict
When Google founders created the initial version of their search engines, link building was the cornerstone of their ranking factor. It was easier to rank websites based on the number of links pointing to a specific page.
Today, 20 years later, link building is still considered the primary factor to evaluate the authority of a website. There is no doubt that it will remain important in the future. As a result, you need to focus on natural link building by creating great content, which will consistently allow you to stay ahead of the competition.
