SEO BLOG

Women are like websites. Getting links is like having sex. You can pay for sex or you get it for free. If you are very attractive you have no problems. If you are ugly, boring and shallow you have to pay. Still there are lots of guys that are quite intelligent, interesting but kind of introverted. I know, I was one myself. The same applies to websites.

There are very useful websites out there that still won’t get many links for many reasons I do not want to recount here. Their webmasters have the money to purchase links, but they don’t want to to pay prostitutes especially as Google scares people with penalties who enter bad neighbourhoods.

So what can you do if you want to stay ethical and can’t think of any linkbaits or other methods to get links? What to do if you could pay a link but you do not want to annoy big Google?

Well, consider one of my 20 methods of getting legit paid links without getting banned. Many of those methods are even cheaper. Moreover nobody can harm you, they are perfectly clean.

Skip text link ads, paid reviews and other controversial link building tactics.

No bribery or dirty tricks involved. Starting with easy already well known and often practiced ones. The farther you get, the deeper you enter terra nova of SEO 2.0!

Indeed as altruism is the best egoism, the most successful of the methods help you by helping others.

Donate money	Support webmasters or programmers and many will link to you to show their appreciation	Just one link, often with a high PageRank, but sometimes spammy if people donate only for SEO reasons (you can tell when you read German anchor texts)
Sponsor a Wordpress Theme	Better pay a designer to make a Wordpress theme for you and then give it away on your site, people will naturally link it	At least the designer will link to you, potentially hundreds or even thousands of links if the theme really rocks.
Pay a developer to code a Wordpress or Firefox Plugin	You can’t do everything yourself, pay someone to create a useful Wordpress or Firefox plugin .	Brings potentially hundreds of links, Aaron Wall does it for instance.
Stage a contest	Give away penalty of small prizes unlike those who offer a “free iPod” for thousands of contestants.	Depending on how stingy you are you get some, many or no links. Contests are common, so be creative.
Offer free web hosting for artists or activists	Artists and activists will love it and you can ask them to link to you, but they most often will even without being asked	Everybody loves art and many people support activism, so those sites get strong so you get a good link for each site you support.
Help charities	There are many ways to support charities but giving them money is the most direct one. There are thousands of them, so you surely will find dozens of causes you would like to support.	The charity will probably link to you and if you do a little more, announce it big time, people will love you for it and link to you
Create a charity	Internet Marketers for Single Mothers? Why not?	Why just donating money to someone who probably has not the marketing skills to get real support and outreach? Will get you lots of links.
Offer discounts for students	Students have less money now, but will have more in future. Already they are important influencers online. Offer discounts for them.	Students have homepages, indeed I had one my first three years of my Internet endeavour in college. If you offer something useful to students many will link to you. Ever heard somebody talking about .edu links?
Use a product or service of a company that will show you in their portfolio	Many companies will proudly show off their clients in their portfolio, sometimes even write a success story. Why buy a product of a company that does not bother? Choose the one that does.	One link, often high PageRank. If you let a well known designer redesign your site you may even get dozens of backlinks through CSS galleries.
Send bloggers presents (your product)	There are millions of bloggers. Most of them below the radar of the Technorati Top 100 although they are experts in their trade. Sent them a present, your product for instance. They will be delighted and blog about it.	If it’s a nice present even other bloggers may link to you. I you send presents to a bunch of bloggers, you will get a bunch of links…
Mirror a heavy traffic site	Support your favorite open source software, videographer or netaudio artist with a mirror.	Potentially dozens or hundreds of links.
Pay a designer to create free icons	Every webmaster needs icons, but who wants to pay for them? Or who can afford it?	Many links, depending of the quality of the icons.
Buy an established blog or website	Many bloggers blog for some months and then stop and sell their blogs. Often with high PageRanks.	Keep the blog going and get many links to that blog.
Pay a programmer to create a useful tool	A SEO tool or CSS generator of some kind will always get some attention.	Depending on how useful the tool is, you get plenty or at least some links.
Pay a copywriter to write guest articles at established weblogs	I write myself and the links are often the best ones. At least before I started SEO 2.0	At least one link per article, but authority links.
Pay a translator to translate your articles and give ‘em away	Your article republished all over the world for free? It’s possible. SEO 2.0 posts have been translated in at least a dozen languages.	Dozens, even hundreds of links possible
Offend an evil corporation and pay a lawyer to defend you	What about a lawsuit against Yahoo for handing over Chinese dissidents to the police? Invest in freedom.	Basically if you can convincingly fight against anti-democratic corporations people will love you. No wonder.
Pay a cracker to deface your site	Well, you get linked for being defaced. Especially by your readers. This is a win to win situation if there is no real destruction done. The cracker can brag about that and you get linked.	Many links if the defacement is spectacular enough and people care for your site.
Pay a star to make a guest appearance on your site	Musicians and writers in most cases lack money, even the famous ones! It can be just a visit with some pictures.	Lots of links, especially if you target the MySpace generation. They’ll love it.
Pay an artist to offer a mp3 download for free on your site	Why not paying the artist to offer his new song as a download on your site? Make sure that the people link the page/site not the mp3 directly though.	People love free mp3 downloads, especially by well known rock stars. The more known or the rarer the more links. Many in any case.

Now don’t get me wrong. Not one of this methods is about “manipulation” or something. They’re not even really paid links. They are completely legit and you won’t get penalized for them whatsoever. Otherwise Google has to penalize the Web as a whole!

On a side note: I do not use the methods myself as I can garner enough links without paying anything, I’m just sooo cool ;-) ! I used some of the methods without payment, such as guest blogging.

The best things in life are free. The same on the web. So treat those ways of getting paid links as a first step to organic link heaven.

Also, you pay, but you give away for free, so you’re almost there, at completely organic link getting (not building, as then the links appear by themselves)!