Link Building Strategies For Seo Success.

Every webmaster knows the importance of building quality backlinks to his/her site over time. However, this should be done with caution as building too many links in a relatively short period could cause your site to be completely ignore by the search engines.

What are Backlinks?

These are links on other websites directed back to your site. The importance and popularity of your site is usually determined by how many webmasters consider a link to your site viable. However, the quality of the backlinks you gather is what the search engines are really interested in.

What are Quality Backlinks?

These a backlinks from websites with similar content to yours. It’s all a game of relevancy and has a lot to do with the success of your website and marketing efforts.

Building backlinks to your site is top priority if you ever hope for a better PR or SERP. There are several legitimate ways of doing this without engaging the so called "black hat" techniques that’ll only get you banned from google and other quality search engines.

Write Articles and submit to Article Directories.

Writing articles and submitting them to article directories is a simple, but very powerful and effective way to create interest and generate traffic to your site. Best of all, it’s absolutely FREE.

Basically it works like this. You write interesting articles and submit them to article directories for webmasters & publishers to use freely on their sites, blogs & in their written works. However, they have to use the article as it is and are not allowed to change it. In the authors resource box within the article, you place a link back to your website so that any reader who likes your work would most likely click on your URL, visit your site and ultimately get you some targeted free traffic.

Your articles should be short, informative and straight to the point. A typical article word-count is usually btw 400-700 words.

Submit your site to Web Directories.

Submitting your website to quality directories online and deep linking within them will not only increase your link popularity but your website PR and SERP as well. Make a list of the top web directories online and manually submit your URL to them. Some would require a reciprocal link back to your site and some will charge a fee for inclusion. Which ever the case, submitting your URL for inclusion in these directorys will guarantee you have some quality backlinks to your website.

Participate in Forums.

You can find forums all over the internet focused on a diverse range of niches. But the "making money at home, internet marketing, webmaster & SEO" forums are by far the most popular. Register for an account with forums in the above niche market and post regularly to the board. Participate constructively in discussions and remember to leave your site URL in your signature so it appears in every post and thread that you participate in.

Be supportive and gradually become a source of good and clean information, become a valued community member. By doing this, you’ll build up reputation and create valuable credibility for yourself. This way, rest assured your site will always be visited by your forum community thus increasing your link popularity and quality backlinks.

There are more techniques that a webmaster can utilize to bulid links and improve SEO for his/her websites, but applying the above link building blueprints will certainly guarantee results, with a little hard work.

By: geek4ever

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Donald Arinze is an Internet Entrepreneur and SEO Expert with over 6 years of Internet Marketing and Mentoring experience. He runs an SEO web Directory at www.trafficattitude.net and owns a PTC website at www.earnbyaclick.com. He also admins over www.contentsgeek.com (an Article Submission Directory)

Link Building and Link Strategy for Increased Web Traffic

Toronto, ON November 26, 2007 – There are millions of websites in cyberspace. The challenge becomes how to ensure that your website is found on search engines and is seen by potential customers.

Part of your marketing strategy should be website link building. You will need tools to help make it easier to acquire and manage linking. The benefits of linking include increase traffic, possible search engine placement improvements and website revenue opportunities.

The reason to build links is to make your site competitive relative to other websites. The more link submissions you make the more of a chance you have of getting web traffic from these links. The second benefit is that your linking count will go up relative to other sites in your niche category. Websites that have lots of traffic often have lots of links and this was done through manual link submissions.

One last thing, if you think you are going to run a website and get rich by doing this marketing technique alone. It is not likely going to happen, unless you figure out a way to do this very efficiently. This technique is just one factor of many to tick off, on your marketing to do list.

One site is making it easier for webmasters to ensure they receive the maximum exposure by providing all the resources necessary to build their links and create opportunities. From information on blogging to a complete listing of major and minor search engines, http://www.linkbuildingstrategy.com is the free and simple way to build up site visitors.

101 Link Building Tips To Market Your Website

Link Building… Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it’s still the trump card for higher rankings.

Many of us have been hoping that it would go away. In Brett Tabke’s 5/18 Robots.txt entry, he echoed a sentiment that many, many webmasters hold on to as a hope:

What happens to all those Wavers that think [i]Getting Links = SEO[/i] when that majority of the Google algo is devalued in various ways? Wavers built their fortunes on "links=seo". When that goes away, the Wavers have zero to hold on to.

The pertinent questions:

1. Will link building still be very important for rankings in the medium term?
2. When will link popularity be devalued in favor of other algo elements (that are less tedious, from a webmaster’s point of view)?

The answers:

1. Sorry, but link building is still going to be the SEO trump card for the foreseeable future.
2. I wouldn’t hold your breath for search engine algorithms to place less importance on link popularity until the Semantic Web arrives, or maybe when HTTP gets replaced by a new protocol. Because links are still the basic connector, the basic relationship, on the Web. And for the forseeable future they’re going to be the easiest way for a computer program to judge the importance and trustworthiness of a Web page.

What will happen to the way search algorithms score links is already happening. The Google algo has become much more elegant and advanced, devaluing staggering amount of links that shouldn’t count, and placing more emphasis on trusted links. And the trust and juice given by those links is then verified by elements like user data, domain age, and other relatively hard-to-spoof factors.

But please, don’t fool yourself. Links that should count are still the key to rankings (in Google, at least and MSN and Yahoo! are only a few short years behind).

71 Good Ways to Build Links:

Love for Lists

1. Build a "101 list". These get Dugg all the time, and often become "authority documents". People can’t resist linking to these (hint, hint).

2. Create 10 easy tips to help you [insert topic here] articles. Again, these are exceptionally easy to link to.

3. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic (see Mr Ploppy for inspiration).

4. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category.

5. Create a list of gurus/experts. If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the gurus may end up linking to your site or saying thanks. (Sometimes flattery is the easiest way to strike up a good relationship with an "authority".)

Developing Authority & Being Easy to Link At

6. Make your content easy to understand so many people can understand and spread your message. (It’s an accessibility thing.)

7. Put some effort in to minimize grammatical or spelling errors, especially if you need authoritative people like librarians to link to your site.

8. Have an easily accessible privacy policy and about section so your site seems more trustworthy. Including a picture of yourself may also help build your authority.

PPC as a Link Building Tool

9. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign. Relevant traffic will get your site more visitors and brand exposure. When people come to your site, regardless of the channel in which they found it, there is a possibility that they will link to you.
News & Syndication

10. Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic.

11. Submit an article to industry news site. Have an SEO site? Write an article and submit to WebProNews. Have a site about BLANK? Submit to BLANKinformationalsite.com.

12. Syndicate a press release. Take the time to make it GOOD (compelling, newsworthy). Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message. For good measure, submit it to PRWeb, PRLeap, etc.

13. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.

14. Trade articles with other webmasters.

15. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.

16. Write about, and link to, companies with "in the news" pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments. This is obviously easiest if you have a news section or blog. Do a Google search for [your industry + "in the news"].

17. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important. If you can make other people feel important they will help do your marketing for you for free. Salary.com did a study on how underpaid mothers were, and they got many high quality links.
Directories, Meme Trackers & Social Bookmarking

18. This tip is an oldie but goodie: submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.

19. Submit your site to paid directories. Another oldie. Just remember that quality matters.

20. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible. Of course, if you make it into a truly useful resource, it will attract links on its own.

21. Tag related sites on sites like Del.icio.us. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.

22. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you. If your site gets on the front page of Digg or on the Del.icio.us popular list, hundreds more bloggers will see your site, and potentially link to it.

23. Look at meme trackers to see what ideas are spreading. If you write about popular spreading ideas with plenty of original content (and link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source on the meme tracker site.
Local & Business Links

24. Join the Better Business Bureau.

25. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.

26. Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources. (Easier in some countries than in others.)

27. List your site at the local library’s Web site.

28. See if your manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.

29. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online and off, by recommending each other via links and distributing each other’s business cards.

30. Launch an affiliate program. Most of the links you pick up will not have SEO value, but the added exposure will almost always lead to additional "normal" links.
Easy Free Links

31. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist to be a cheap or free classified service.

32. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and provide links to relevant resources.

33. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.

34. If you run a fairly reputable company, create a page about it in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis. If it is hard to list your site directly, try to add links to other pages that link to your site.

35. It takes about 15 minutes to set up a topical Squidoo page, which you can use to look like an industry expert. Link to expert documents and popular useful tools in your fields, and also create a link back to your site.

36. Submit a story to Digg that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page.

37. If you publish an RSS feed and your content is useful and regularly updated, some people will syndicate your RSS content (and some of those will provide links unfortunately, some will not).

38. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and potentially read your site, link at your site, and/or buy your products.
Have a Big Heart for Reviews

39. Most brands are not well established online, so if your site has much authority, your review related content often ranks well.

40. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. We have seen this draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links.

41. Create product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your background (LINK!).

42. Review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.

43. Review products and services on shopping search engines like ePinions to help build your authority.

44. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links. Two testimonial writing tips make them believable, and be specific where possible.
Blogs & the Blogosphere

45. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.

46. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

47. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

48. Technorati tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.

49. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.
Design as a Linking Element

50. Web 2.0-ify your site. People love to link to anything with AJAX. Even in the narrowest of niches, there is some kind of useful functionality you can build with AJAX.

51. Validate and 508 your site. This (indirect) method makes your site more trustworthy and linkable, especially from governmental sites or design-oriented communities. There are even a few authoritative directories of standards-compliant sites.

52. Order a beautiful CSS redesign. A nice design can get links from sites like CSS Vault.
Hire Help

53. Hire a publicist. Good old fashioned ‘PR’ (not PageRank) can still work wonders. Andy Hagans now offers a link baiting publicity service.

54. Hire a consultant. Yes, you can outsource link building. Just make sure to go with someone good. We recommend WeBuildPages, Debra Mastaler and, ahem, Andy Hagans.
Link Trading

55. Swap some links. What?! Did we really just recommend reciprocal link building? Yes, on a small scale, and with relevant partners that will send you traffic. Stay away from the link trading hubs and networks.

56. In case you didn’t get the memo when swapping links, try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages. Do not try to get links from pages that list hundreds of off topic link partners. Only seek link exchanges that you would consider pursuing even if search engines did not exist. Instead of thinking just about your topic when exchanging links, think about demographic audience sets.
Buying Sites, Renting Links & Advertisements

57. Rent some high quality links from a broker. Text Link Ads is the most reputable firm in this niche.

58. Rent some high quality links directly from Web sites. Sometimes the most powerful rented links come direct from sites not actively renting links.

59. Become a sponsor. All sorts of charities, contests, and conferences link to their sponsors. This can be a great way to gain visibility, links, and a warm feeling in your heart.

60. Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the profits to a charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.

61. Many search algorithms seem biased toward older established sites. It may be faster to buy an old site with a strong link profile, and link it to your own site, than to try to start building authority links from scratch.
Use the Courts (Proceed with Caution)

62. Sue Google.

63. Get sued by a company people hate. When Aaron was sued by Traffic Power, he got hundreds or thousands of links, including links from sites like Wired and The Wall Street Journal.
Freebies & Giveaways

64. Hold a contest. Contests make great link bait. A few-hundred-dollar prize can result in thousands of dollars worth of editorial quality links. Enough said.

65. Build a tool collection. Original and useful tools (and collections of tools) get a lot of link love. What do you think ranking for mortgage calculator is worth?

66. Create and release open source site design templates for content management systems like Wordpress. Don’t forget the "Designed by example.com" bit in the footer!

67. Offer free samples in exchange for feedback.

68. Release a Firefox extension. Make sure you have a download and/or support page on your site which people can link to.
Conferences & Social Interaction

69. It is easy to take pictures of important events and tell narratives about why they are important. Pictures of (drunk?) "celebrities" in your industry make great link bait.

70. Leverage new real world relationships into linking relationships. If you go to SEO related conferences, people like Tim Mayer, Matt Cutts, and Danny Sullivan are readily accessible. Similarly, in other industries, people who would normally seem inaccessible are exceptionally accessible at trade conferences. It is much easier to seem "real" in person. Once you create social relationships in person, it is easy to extend that onto the web.

71. Engaging, useful, and interesting interviews are an easy way to create original content. And they spread like wildfire.
30 Bad Ways to Build Links

Here are a few link buiding methods that may destroy your brand or get your site banned/penalized/filtered from major search engines, or both.
Directories

72. Submit your site to 200 cheesy paid directories (averaging $15 a pop) that send zero traffic and sell offtopic run-of-site links.
Forum Spam

73. List 100 Web sites in your signature file.

74. Exclusively post only when you can add links to your sites in the post area.

75. Post nothing but "me too" posts to build your post count. Use in combination with a link-rich signature file.

76. Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.

77. As a new member to various forums, ask the same question at 20 different forums on the same day.

78. Post on forum threads that are years outdated exclusively to link to your semi-related website.

79. Sign up for profiles on forums you never intend on commenting on.
Blog Spam

80. Instead of signing blog comments with your real name, sign them with spammy keywords.

81. Start marketing your own site hard on your first blog comment. Add no value to the comment section. Mention nothing other than you recently posted on the same subject at _____ and everyone should read it. Carpet bomb dozens of blogs with this message.

82. Say nothing unique or relevant to the post at hand. Make them assume an automated bot hit their comments.

83. Better yet, use automated bots to hit their comments. List at least 30 links in each post. Try to see if you can hit any servers hard enough to make them crash.

84. Send pings to everyone talking about a subject. In your aggregation post, state nothing of interest. Only state that other people are talking about the topic.

85. Don’t even link to any of the sites you are pinging. Send them pings from posts that do not even reference them.
Garbage Link Exchanges

86. Send out link exchange requests mentioning PageRank.

87. Send link exchange emails which look like an automated bot sent them (little or no customization, no personal names, etc.).

88. Send link exchange requests to Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer, Tim Converse, Google, and Yahoo!.

89. Get links from nearly-hidden sections of websites listing hundreds or thousands of off topic sites.
Spam People in Person

90. Go to webmaster conferences and rave about how rich you are, and how your affiliates make millions doing nothing.

91. Instead of asking people what their name is, ask what their URL is. As soon as you get their URL ask if they have linked to your site yet and if not, why not.
Be Persistant

92. Send a webmaster an alert to every post you make on your website.

93. Send a webmaster an email every single day asking for them to link to your website.

94. Send references to your site to the same webmaster from dozens of different email accounts (you sly dog).

95. If the above do not work to get you a free link, offer them $1 for their time. Increase your offer by a dollar each day until they give in.
Getting Links by Being a Jerk

96. Emulate the RIAA. When in doubt, file a lawsuit against a 12-year-old girl. (Failing that, obtain bad press by any means necessary.)

97. Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you.

98. Send thousands of fake referrals at every top ranking Web site, guaranteeing larger boobs, a 14-inch penis (is that length or girth?), or millions of dollars in free, unclaimed money.

99. Wear your URL on your t-shirt. Walk or drive your car while talking on a cell phone or reading a book. When you run into other people say "excuse you, jerk".

100. Spill coffee on people or find creative ways to insult people to coax them into linking at your site.

101. Sue other webmasters for deep linking to your site. Well, this is more "hilariously dumb" than it is a "bad linking practice".

I can’t believe you have made it to the end!!

By: laksh_khamesra

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Laksh makemoneyonline-withme.blogspot.com/

Answering Whats And Whys Of Contextual Link Building – Quick And Natural Rankings

Link building is arguably the best way of achieving a high ranking website. In today’s world, when web surfers don’t pay attention to banners or navigation bars which is evident through the pathetic conversion rate, contextual ads are the only option to make things noticed.

What contextual link and link building is all about?

Link popularity is important for your websites and contextual link building is a simple way to uplift the popularity to the required standard. Since keywords are considered to be the lifeblood of search engine optimization, so, there is nothing to emphasize the importance of promoting them. That’s exactly the point where contextual link building comes into play.

Through contextual link building, certain articles are written by bloggers around specific keywords relevant to your sites or products. Different blogs and websites with Unique IPs display these articles and help you to promote your site and product. Since these blogs are relevant in context to your site, so, the links are usually referred as contextual links.

In simple words, you need advertising to make your online business prolific and the best form of advertising is the one which doesn’t seem like advertising. That’s contextual link building for you, i.e. a natural form of advertising which never looks like a blogger is promoting something.

The importance of contextual link building:

Much of the web’s success is driven by contextual links because they provide the base for interconnectedness. Assiduous SEO companies contact bloggers or niche writers and offer them some incentives to write some good stuff about your products or site and then post each article on a different blog which may already be well-promoted. Since these articles and contextual links are rated as unbiased third party votes by web spiders, they work wonderfully well to soar your search ranking by providing quality backlinks.

Sometimes, the network of blogs is maintained by professional SEO companies to provide their customers with quality backlinks along with providing several other benefits. For instance, here are some other points accentuating the fact that contextual link building done by professional SEO companies should be considered.

It is a fact that some pages at your website will not be ranked as high as others because of the absence of more inbound links. By making use of internal contextual links, you can increase the ranking of other pages at your website by linking them to the pages having more inbound links. This is a good strategy that can help you to strengthen the weaker pages.

Usability of a site can get affected by the right use of contextual links. By adding links to the content of your page, you can inspire visitors to check other pages at your site. It is an effective strategy and backed by usability studies where it is mentioned that people prefer clicking links in the content rather than clicking them in the navigation bar.

Contextual link building should be considered because it uses quality content and natural one-way links to attract web spiders which ultimately creates positive impacts on search ranking.

Contextual links promise great results because of the human touch involved in blog reviews and links. Also, the blogs posting reviews about your site are already in good books of web spider which helps you create terrific impact on your ranking.

Contextual link building should be considered because it is one of the most cost effective way to get quality inbound links.

To achieve high ranking, search engine optimization offers several strategies and contextual link building is one amongst the best if of course used properly.

By: Cleva Smith

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Cleva Smith is an expert author who helps in article marketing for SEO Peace, an established and professional SEO company that offers affordable SEO services including social bookmarking, manual directory submissions, contextual link building service, article marketing service and more. To know more about the services, please visit SEO-Peace.com

Link Building Basics Start Building Links To Your Website Now

There are several ways to build links to your website. I believe this is the simplest and I know it is quite effective. I have used it for the last few years.

Comments on Blogs
The easiest way to get links. You do not need any special software. Just a little bit of time and the ability to write something that makes sense.

For this example I will use "Credit Cards" as my Niche

Three simple steps
Go to Google and search for "Google Blog Search."

Then in the Google Blog search search for your Niche "Credit Cards" or whatever niche you are working on.

Open up the first blog that comes up and search the page for "comment."

Comment section
Look at the comment section. If they give you a spot for your URL then add your url. This will be a hyperlink under your name. If they do not give me a spot for my link I do not comment.

Now speedread the article and pick out something in the article relevant to your website. Make a comment. 20 to 50 words. Never repeat the same comment. Always write one that comes to mind from the article.

My email
I use a throwaway email address. I set it up on hotmail and open it up once in a while so it stays active.

Comment Name
This is important. This is the title of the link this website will be linking back to your website with. Since my name is Rick if my site was about credit cards I would use a name like "Credit Card Rick" or "Out of Debt Rick" or "Credit Card boy" or "Master of your Credit" whatever the keyword of the page I am linking back to is with Rick added to it.

If you just use your name then there will be a link to your website as "Rick." This isn’t bad but a relevant link with the page keyword in it is way better.

A few links before you go to bed everyday will help significantly in time. Make valuable comments. Like all your content you want it to be real. In time you will have a lot of relevant content on you site and also pointing to your site.

Make Comments instead of watching commercials. Quick and you don’t need to focus too hard.

Nofollow Comments
There is a lot written about how much good a Nofollow link does. I do believe that a link without nofollow is more valuable but you will see results from nofollow links in Yahoo and MSN and Google is always checking them so consequently Google too.

When I find a Dofollow Blog
I often have several websites on the same subject. I will use the Dofollow blog to link to all of my sites in the niche. I will make only one comment per "Blog Post" but I will comment on my second site in that niche on a different post. I use different names usually. I am even more attentive the the comments to these blogs. I make longer more relevant comments.

By: Rick Kemp

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Check out this Unique Ezine Article Linking Strategy. I like simple effective linking strategies. This one is a lot easier than getting articles approved by Ezine articles. I know it works. Getting from one hundred to one thousand. This website is for getting to the next level. If you are trying to get from earning one hundred dollars a month to one thousand a month or if you are trying to get from one hundred per day to one thousand. imbyrick.com/ Internet Marketing by Rick will have some ideas for you.

109 Day Link Building Explosion

It uses only white hat ethical methods that anyone can implement.

There is a great free link building program that is being offered by Tucson SEO Solutions that begins in January. If you want to get the most out of this link building program you should start by reading the 109 Day Link Building Explosion – Coming Soon. It provides useful tips for organizing yourself in preparation for this program. It will be followed up with several strategy sessions before the January 01 launch. The first session includes suggestion that will help you set the realistic goals and expectations.

We all know that link building can be a hassle for the small business owner with a website. The biggest concern is just learning the ropes so that you are not wasting time building links on sites that do not produce traffic or ‘Do Follow" links. These links are mandatory for obtaining higher search engine placement.

Much of this frustration and confusion has been eliminated with the free 109 Day Link Building Explosion. This program has been developed using only white hat ethical
link building methods. These methods and sites presented here do not require any advanced coding knowledge to implement. The only requirement is time to complete the process.

This program launches 01/01/2009. However, there is a short series of strategy sessions prior to the January launch that should be read to get the most out of the program. You will want to start off by reading the preliminarily strategy sessions before beginning the program to get the most out of it. These pre-launch articles will cover the tools that you will need to have in place prior to starting this link building effort. Are you ready to start an ethical link building program in 2009?

The 109 Day Link Building Explosion – Coming Soon

10 Link Building Techniques for Web 2.0

I expect most of you have heard of Web 2.0. If you haven’t, Wikipedia defines it as "a second-generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways."

Now, we all know that the Internet is about sharing information, so what’s new? And how does Web 2.0 affect your online business?

Web 2.0 is all about the rise of consumer-driven contentsocial networking sites (My Space and Facebook), Folksomonies (Flickr and Del.icio.us), and Wikis (Wikipedia).

What makes Web 2.0 interesting from an online marketing point of view is that it offers (among other things) more link building opportunities for website owners. And we all know how important links are in the search engine optimization game. If you’ve forgotten, here’s an article on the importance of link building that will refresh your memory.

So, with Web 2.0 and link building in mind, I thought I try to come up with 10 link building techniques for Web 2.0. I’m sure there’s more (some of mine are oldies but goodies) so if any of you have suggestions, feel free to comment on this article.

10 Link Building Techniques for Web 2.0

1. Make your site, and your content worth linking to.
This may seem like obvious but you’d be amazed how many times I get link requests from sites that are a total mess. Not just design-wise but poorly thought-out or lacking in relevant, useful content. If you want to attract links from good quality sites make sure your site is of equal quality. Think bricks and mortar: you wouldn’t want your upscale retail fashion studio to be associated with a flea market.

2. Write and syndicate industry relevant articles.
Oh, the power of a great article. Did you know that article sites like Goarticles, isnare and Ideamarketers.com’s pages often rank high in the search engine results? Well, they do. And what’s more they can send targeted traffic your way.

Keep on the look-out for news in your industry then write an article on the subject. How-to articles like this on are particularly popular with readers and they’re easy to write. You can also submit your articles to social book-marking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us or Technorati. If your article gets elevated to the number one spot on Digg, hundreds of bloggers looking for content will see your site and may link to it.

3. Get the press on your side.
Public relations is not only a great way to spread the word about your company news but it can also attract links to your site. Either hire a public relations consultant or write your own press releases and submit them to hundreds of journalists, bloggers and media outlets via PRWeb or PRNewswire. A recent press release we submitted for a client resulted in several links to their site, and an increase in sales.

4. Start your own blog.
Yes, you do need one. Whatever it is you sell or whatever service you provide, there are people out there who are interested in what you have to say. Post useful information regularly; make your execution flawless and your grammar and punctuation spot on. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to get people to engage in discussions and link back to your site.

5. Create your own directory.
Although this is an old method of attracting links, it still works today. Build a directory of sites that relate but don’t directly compete with yours. Not only does a directory provide your visitors with useful information, it also builds incoming links.

6. Submit your site to directories.
Yahoo, DMOZ and other directories are still worth submitting to. Some directories allow free submissions others require a one-time or yearly fee. Whether they require payment or not, satisfy yourself about the quality of the directory before you submit. Remember: incoming links of low-quality may reflect badly on you.

7. Sponsor or donate to a dot org.
When search engines think "authority" websites, chances are they’re thinking of charitable organizations. So, a link or two from a few .org domains will help. Consider making a donation to charities or providing products or services free to charities that are relevant to your industry. Many non-profits link to businesses that help them in some way. You’ll gain quality links, attract free publicity (you can even write and submit a press release about your charitable tendencies), and best of all, you’ll feel good.

8. Network locally.
Join your local chamber of commerce and the Better Business Bureau – you’ll receive a high-quality link back when they list your company on their sites. Submit to city and government resource sites and develop business relationships with non-competing companies locally – you’ll profit online and off.

9. Be Sociable.
Many large companies are setting up pages on MySpace, Squidoo and other social networking sites. You can too. Use these sites to create "buzz" and position yourself as an expert in your field, not to aggressively advertise your products or services.

10. Pay-per-click
Consider using paid search advertising on Google, Yahoo or MSN to sell your products, build brand awareness, and create a few links from relevant content sites. Of course, the main objective is to sell, but, even if you don’t sell much using this channel, people who come to your site through your ads, may like it so much they’ll link to you.