Well after about two months I am finished with my series on how to run successful link building campaigns (though the link building landscape is constantly changing so this type of blog post could pop up again). I hope you all have learned something new or have gained some helpful tips. With this blog post I just wanted to do a quick bullet list and review of all the different pieces that I have talked about.
Week 1: Where to begin – In this post I talked about how you should begin your campaign as well as some helpful hints on how to maintain your campaign throughout its duration. The key points to remember the use of reporting. Make sure you set up benchmarks for yourself so you know how good or bad you are doing and where you need to improve/focus on in your next month.
Week 2: Social Linking – I went into some detail about how social can be a valuable source for traffic. Look at what your competitors are doing and whether or not they are successful , failing, or not even doing any linking at all. Do your research and make exciting content that will drive social traffic
Week 3: Link Modifications – Link modifications are taking backlinks you already had and asking to get the link text changed so that it is more beneficial for you. This is no easy task and there is a risk factor to remember when asking to get your link changed. If the website owner had forgotten to remove your link and you sending them an email reminds them of that, you might lose your link entirely. Be personal in your messages and be sure to thank them for the link they have provided.
Week 4: Directories – Directories are viewed as being an old way of link building, but in this post I gave some examples of how you can still be successful with them and what to look out for when doing directory research.
Week 5: Blog Comments/Forum Linking – Blog comments as well as forum linking can be very successful if you are careful. You need to tread lightly and watch your wording when posting. If your comment/post looks in any way shape or form like spam you will most likely not get the link. Be personal and read the post to add value to your response.
Week 6: One way linking/Reciprocal Linking – Reciprocal linking has been viewed and still is viewed as a spam technique and many SEO’s do not believe it to work. The truth of the matter is that if you are picky and careful, you can be very successful with this type of campaign. Something to keep in mind with this is that when asking for a link you do not always have to say that you are willing/going to link back to them right away. One-way links are far greater then reciprocal links but much MUCH harder to get.
Week 7: Article Distribution/Press Releases – Article distribution and press releases are a great way to gain a lot of backlinks rather fast. Keep in mind again that some of these links will most likely drop off so while at some point in time, you will see a great jump in your backlink numbers the next week you might see far less. Yahoo and Google will only keep the best out of those links for you which is better for you in the long run.
Week 8: Blogs – The last post of the series talks about how you can utilize blogs as a way of generating back links to your site. If you can create great content and gain just a small number of links back, you will see a great increase in traffic not only on your blog but as well the site your blog is part of. Be sure to always socially submit your blog posts as that is a great way to gain some traffic. Be sure to keep your blog updated as much as possible as this is a great way to build a community which will help with your backlinks in the long run.
Well that’s it, I hope you all have learned something and have enjoyed the series. I am going to try and come up with another helpful series in the next coming weeks. As for next week, keep an eye out for some tips and hints for creating at .htaccess file that will do everything from redirecting non-www version to your www version to eliminating those ugly source/id/database tags that are at the end of your URL.