Public Relations & Your Company | 8 Link Building Tips
Building links is an important part of building and improving a website. For blogs, this can be a great tool to advance your blog in your community and to increase your traffic. (The next step, of course, is to get those visitors to participate, which can be tricky.)
Here are a few tips for link building, some of which I personally have used myself (and now have a PR4 to show for it):
- One of the most important things to do is to join communities that are relevant and related to your industry or niche. This can be Facebook groups, TweetChats, or forums. Just get involved, and stay involved! That’s the best way to get people to remember you, trust you, and get involved with you too.
- Write articles on your blog and for other blogs. Though it is sometimes tricky to get an article really popular, having the content there is the first step! Working hard to network on social networking sites and writing quality content, the popularity will follow.
- Once you’ve written a great article that you’d like to share, post them on Ezine Articles. Another great one that I personally use is Business Exchange. With thousands of users trying out the Beta product from Business Week, Business Exchange is a great place to share your content and the content you’ve found interesting from others. Keep this updated with your new articles. Though Ezine will give you 5 free posts as an article submitter, once you show that you have useful content of value, they will allow you to post more and more.
- Submit press releases. This can be done on your own site as well as other press release distribution sites. You can pay to have your release submitted to sources like Google News, but free distribution sites can have great results too. Click here to read a list of ~50 free press release distribution sites.
- Comment on other blogs. If you truly have something to add of value to a blog, then by all means add that content. Nothing is more annoying than a visitor who posts comments that add no value to a blog post and link to a spam site that is irrelevant to the blog. Try to avoid being that person. Instead, add comments that add value to the post; try to add something more than “Great Post!”, though that is more appreciated than “Check out my band!”. Add you point of view or places where you agreed. This can get you a link to you blog and can help to generate relationships with other bloggers. Be sure to follow up when the blogger responds to your comment! Often times I’ve replied to a great comment left on my blog and have received nothing in response.
- Create your own Wiki-Site. This is a part of a site that allows users to generate content. Again, add something of value as what you write may not be added if it is irrelevant and/or useless.
- Exchange links with other blogs. This may be a “dead” practice, but I think I can attribute much of my blog’s success to the many welcoming and warm bloggers that have given me the time of day, even when my blog was pretty terrible in its early stages of development. I’ve in turn added their links to my blog and welcome any guest posts. I’ve also helped in advertising events. This is a great way to build rapport and to establish a relationship with other bloggers. The best way to get a link to your blog, however, is not to spam other bloggers, or “suggest” that they link to your blog without even so much as a reciprocal link offered (true story), but really get to know their blog, read their content, and get to know them on other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Spam is spam, any way you cut it.
- Lastly, you can add your site to other sites or directories, like Technorati, StumbledUpon,or Digg. These are great ways to share your content and to get others to share it for you as well.
Overall, building links takes time. A lot of companies may not take the time to do so,
which will make your efforts all the more successful. Link Building takes consistency, perseverance, and an understanding of others. Approaching other bloggers is not something you can take too seriously or too lightly; respect them as people (since they are, after all), and respect their time. The same goes for journalists and other members of the media. We are all strapped for time, so be respectful of that. Remember too that the more no’s you get, the more eventual yeses you will get, so keep at it! Link building doesn’t have to suck; it can be fun, and can really create a great online presence for your company.
Any other tips you may have for link-building that I may have missed? Any success stories?
Related Business Training.com Resources
Tags: Exchanging Links, Link Building, Social Media, Using Social Media to Build Links, Website Link Building
