This is a guest post by Tom Mcloughlin who offers link building services with The WebMarketing Group.
Links are the fuel of SEO success so if you want to get good traffic from search engines to your blog then you need to get great links.
We all know about the fantastic value offered by guest posting, but what other ‘white hat’ ways can you get more links pointing to your blog?
The 3 ideas below will set you up for great results from your link building efforts and start the traffic flooding to your blog from search engines!
Infographics
Infographics aren’t a new method of link building, but they continue to generate huge interest around the web and will generate links too, if executed correctly. If you can bring together useful information in your niche and present it in a fun, appealing way, then it is almost 100% that other people will share it and link to it.
You can benefit from links in two ways with this tactic; either people will link directly to the page you show the infographic on your blog, or you allow them to embed the infographic on their own site, including a link back to your main blog url!
Either way, this method will undoubtedly generate links and buzz around your blog and kick your search engine rankings up the tables.
Create a Niche Directory
This requires a bit of initial investment, but that investment can be easily made back in a short space of time. By creating a directory in your niche you provide people with an excellent resource which they will definitely want to be a part of, whether they are a blogger or a commercial company. You can offer ‘Featured Listings’ which commercial companies will pay for and earn back your investment pretty quickly (and even make more!).
The key link building tip though is to offer reciprocal links to bloggers who can get a listing for ‘free’ (we’re all on a budget after all!).
However, the reciprocal link will not point to the directory, it will point to your blog, and provide you with a huge amount of one way links from quality sites.
Create a Viral Series
If you create a viral series that works, it is an outstanding way of natural link building.
The idea is to start of a blog tagging process which will continue to grow and reach far and wide, by asking bloggers to contribute to the series, then tag (read ‘link to’) another 5 blogs. You ask each blogger to link back to the ‘Rules’ page on your site in their post, meaning you get a link from everyone who takes part.
If only the first five take part then you get 5 links, if they all nominate 5 people who also take part then you get 25 links, if they all nominate 5 people then… well, you get the picture. It’s got the potential to gain a huge amount of links!
The crucial thing is to come up with an idea that will be both interesting and beneficial to other bloggers in your industry. Tripbase, a travel company, ran a series called “3 Best Travel Secrets” and they gained a huge amount of success and links from a wide range of travel blogs. If you can go a step further and make it a necessity that people link to the rules page then you’ll be on to a winner.
Hopefully these 3 ideas will give you some food for thought when considering how to get more SEO success with your blog. If you manage to put them all into action, then it’s a matter of when, not if, you start topping the rankings.
Create a viral series is a great idea. I never thought about it. After reading this I understood what is viral series and how to do it. I will implement it on my blog within next few days. Is there any wordpress plugin to make this easy?
Tom, Great article…
Pinterest has really helped infographics take off. If you post infographic to Pinterest you’ll a definite spike in the number of repins and likes versus just a standard picture.
Thanks!
Ryan H.
I saw an interesting link building idea on another website recently, which I have yet to try. The idea is that you find someone who runs a directory of websites in a specific niche. Locate a broken link in that directory and email the webmaster with the corrected link. Add to your email a line to the effect of “while you’re at it, here’s another link you might be interested in…” It seems like it might work.
I heard some good feedback about infographics though wasn’t able to implement it yet with my site. Maybe I might as well try to add it with my marketing campaign online. Thanks for sharing this buddy, looking forward to read more of your post.
I have never thought on Inforgraphics to build backlinks.
Infographic must have to be informative rather than graphical. It should be in that way that people forcefully share on their blogs and you earn a backlink which cost absolutely free.
Good thoughts! Nice article btw.
Well, this is the first time I’ve heard of these unique ideas. Will chew on them and figure out how to execute them on my blog. Thanks for sharing your ideas Tom. It definitely helps because link building has become so important today and many link building services don’t appear to be offering genuine services. We don’t want to go the Build My Ranks way, do we.
Good to read all these innovative ways for link building. Infographics is an interesting way for link building. I’va read some infographics, all were very informative and engaging.
I think idea of creating viral series is very interesting and beneficial if applied properly.
Love this post. Especially the suggestion about infographics. I personally love them. They are good on the eye and are jam-packed with info. They also allow you to be creative and informative at the same time. Great tool!
Infographics are great. I have used them on some of my niche sites and they work great. Not only do they give you another link, they are great for traffic as well.
I think that right now with Google’s new algo change staying away from networks is a good thing, blog owners need to look for more natural ways of gaining links