I always think site building isn't too difficult. Link building, on the other hand, is a real pain. Here's the things I do to get get incoming links:

Submit To Directories
To be honest, I only really bother with a couple of directories - usually DMOZ and Splut. DMOZ gets a lot of stick - rightly so - but I always considered worth the time of submission just in case I can get a site listed and I had mixed success.

Enter into Wikipedia
I don't enter a site into Wikipedia for any SEO benefit, as I understand their links have the "nofollow" attribute, but if I have a page which genuinely is useful in the context of an existing Wiki page, I'll add it on and it's one way to get traffic. Some of that traffic might be webmasters looking for link partners too so its beneficial if you don't abuse it.

Check out the competition
I google for competitor sites URLs and find out which pages are linking to them. There's a reasonable chance the same site might link to you.

Search for related links pages
I think of the main keywords relating to my site and start searching the engines for keyword +links.htm to find links pages which are relevant. Also try links.php, links.aspx, links.asp etc.

Cross Linking
I have plenty of sites and I nearly always find space to cross link a couple of my other sites from each. Some people say you can get penalised for this. I never have, but I do it in moderation.

Buy Text Links
I have done this a bit. To be honest, I didn't see much benefit - none in terms of traffic and nothing noticeable in terms of SEO, but I may have just picked some bad sites to place my ads as I understand this is a popular route. It's something I should do more of, if I wasn't so tight fisted.

Ask In Writing
Ok, I haven't done this yet but I've seen it mentioned and I plan to give it a go very soon. The idea being that webmasters get tonnes of email, including lots of junk and many automated link swap emails which I can't be bothered with. But if you were to actually print out a hard copy letter and send it to the company address, it might get more attention than just another email.

Part of the problem when link building is that I don't mind admitting (but only to you, dear reader) that some of my sites are just affiliate sites. Even as I the creator understand they don't all actually add much value to the web so it's not easy to ask for inbound links. On the other hand, I recently made a website about Mayfair in London, and I really got stuck in with plenty of research and photos and I was much more confident about approaching webmasters and asking for links. So I guess the point is, the better the site, the easier it is to get links - ergo, make better sites, right?

Talking of asking for links reminds me of an email I received recently asking for a link from one of my sites. The site they wanted me to link to was nice enough but I didn't get round to replying. Then they sent another request a few weeks later asking me if I might think again. Once you've ignored someone once its even easier the second time so I blanked that too. Then the other day I got a third email asking me to select from a range of DVDs as a free gift and it would be sendtthe next day if I put a link up. I think I'll hold out for a fourth email and see what's next on offer!

So those are my link building "strategies" although I don't want to make it sound any cleverer than it is - that's all common sense really. If any readers have any tips, please feel free to post them in the comments. And don't forget I have plenty of websites (see the list at www.uretopia.com) to feel free to check them out and see if any could be suitable link partners for your sites.

Labels: link building