How to Get Links on SEO 2.0 and Other Blogs
Image: Node by Uqbar.
As both business blogger and SEO am I aware of both sides of "link building". I get lots of spammy comments from Asian "blog commenting services" but
I also appreciate blog comments by fellow SEO practicioners, I mean real people with a name in the SEO industry. I blog for clients about other topics as well, topics not related to SEO and I've been blogging privately since 2003.
While SEO 2.0 has been around for years, many people still practice low quality link building techniques like worthless blog commenting for the sheer number of anchor-text rich links.
In SEO 2.0 we don't build links, we get links.
That means that you don't have to force your link upon others. Others give you a link out of their own accord. In fact they are often glad to link to you. That's one of the most important differences between SEO 2.0 and conventional SEO.
You may call it social SEO, SMSEO, findability, inbound marketing or SEO 2.0 - the long term strategy these days is the same: Make people link to you.
You can't make people link to you by being an ass or just ass kissing. You can, but that only works sporadically.
Getting links SEO 2.0 style is convincing other people that you are worth it.
Once you have convinced them they will link to you again and again. That's the whole secret.
I have covered the basics of getting links a few times already. This time I want to focus on how to get links from blogs. I will use an example close to home, this blog here, SEO 2.0
Blog Commenting
Just add a meaningful comment here, saying something more than "thank you, great post". Do it three times and your link will be "dofollow". Add a link to an additional resource (not necessarily your own) and you get credited in the post itself with an extra link to your site. That's not that difficult. It doesn't work of course if you offer services like "200 links for 10$". Then just f*#k off. Many bloggers are grateful when you add value in the comments. Some will even credit a whole post to you.
Pinging
In case you use a WordPress blog you can easily notify me that you have published a post that links to me. It works automatically unless you have switched it off. I consider to make all pingbacks dofollow. Some other blogs already do. Their comments are nofollow but their pingbacks (and trackbacks) are real links. Of course, like above, you can end up linked as an additional resource in the editorial part of the post itself. Moreover I will check out your blog and know about you. This might be a beginning of a link love relationship.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is highly popular these days. Some friends of mine even offer services for guest bloggers. I've written down my guest blogging guidelines just a while ago. Most bloggers either actively seek out guest postings or are open minded enough to publish them when approached.
Make sure to read the blog first and find out what favorite topics the blogger has, what kind of audience s/he attracts and how their writing style sounds. For instance some people want to publish posts o SEO 2.0 that explain SEO basics in an article directory style of writing. I can't publish that.
People reading SEO 2.0 expect advanced SEO and a juicy language. They don't want to get bored with another "content is king", "what is SEO" or "on page optimization basics" posts.
Interviews
Sometimes an interview is the best way to deal with a certain type of news. I publish interviews whenever I can and I can more often than I am able to write a post myself. After all, for interviews I only need to write the questions. Just look at the people I've interviewed in the past: Patrick Gavin of DIYSEO, Steven Snell of Vandelay Design, Frances Mary Krug of Search Marketing Standard. They may not be the superstars of search, social media and blogging but they have dome something important and they are around for a while.
Be around for a while as well and when the time comes to launch something or a newsworthy event will happen I will be glad to interview you instead of rehashing the news everybody else has covered already.
Many bloggers do interviews. In the SEO industry SEO Book and Search Engine People do for instance. These are some of the best authority links you can get. Don't approach me wanting to get interviewed when I have never before heard of you.
Doing Something Linkable
Do something linkable aka remarkable. Just think about architecture and green blogs. Architecture blogs write about new buildings built by architects mostly. Green blogs mention seemingly each and every project that is a hope for a more environmentally friendly future. Even the most obscure endeavor get publicity there. Te more bizarre the more attention it gets on social media.
I will feature more of such news aboout the growing SEO industry. In other niches it's already common place as my examples show. Also doing somthing remarkable makes you a more interesting interview partner.
Creating A WordPress Plugin
Do you know the LinkWithin related posts plugin? It's not even a plugin, it's more of a widget. It has PageRank 7 so speak in old school SEO terms and an incredible amount of link. Just check it with your favorite tool like Open Site Explorer, Majectic SEO or Blekko. It's not even good at finding related posts, they barely match the topic of each post. Still myriads of blogs use it. This is probably the best case study of how the SEO 2.0 way of getting links overtrumps the tedious "link building".
Create a better one and you'll get even more links. Many attempted this with social media buttons but this is already a crowded market. I'd use a good related posts plugin with image preview but haven't found a perfect one yet.
Directory Inclusion
Some of the most important blogs out there, think TechCrunch e.g. have their own directories. You have probably noticed, I have added a directory section on SEO 2.0 as well. You can't submit your site to it. It's a very high quality niche SEO directory. I will only add SEO service providers I already know, trust and can recommend. Be it SEO companies, SEO bloggers, SEO software vendors or whomever fits in. I have added some of my favorite SEO companies to it already, many more will follow. There is a paid option as well for those who are eligible in the first place.
In case I know you already you may get a paid directory entry with highly optimized title, headline, description and contact info. It includes up to 5 meaningful links for users ans search engines alike no "click here" crap. Search for [Relentless Technology] to see their entry on #3 for their name. The basic entry is free but as I said I don't accept submissions.
How do you know that I know you? Well, have I linked to you in the past here or on SEOptimise? Are you on this Twitter list or tagged best SEO website design here on Delicious? Do I follow you on LinkedIn?
Other search marketing blogs offer directories as well: just check out the SEOmoz, Econsultancy and Blogstorm directories.
What else can you do? Focus on getting links instead of building links. Getting links means you get them almost as a side effect. You don't submit somewhere.
The best links are those you deserve not those you build manually.
Change your approach. As a die hard old school you won't get links. It's not 2004 anymore.
Offsite SEO is similar to having sex, either you do it yourself (link building), you pay for it (paid links) or you invest in relationships so that you'll get it forever for free (getting links as in SEO 2.0)!
How to Get Links on Blogs Without Annoying People…
Why comment spam if you get editorial links from bloggers with a bit more of patience?…
‘thanks for your post, i find it really useful’
Haha, blog spam aside, great stuff. Many industry commentators are pointing to the importance of SEO/linkbuilding being part of a holistic marketing strategy – more ‘traditional’ SEO’s either need to acquire a new skills set, or perhaps more marketers need to learn SEO? SEO can no longer be viewed as a standalone entity…
Pretty good advice, but people need to remember than to get people linking to you, you really need to be in it for the long haul.
Unless you already have a reputation and other sites, it is still very hard to get listed on good sites without asking.
Most comes down to luck, if someone lands on your page, likes it and then links back.
Obviously the more, and higher quality content you have, the more chance you have of that person coming along.
Web 2.0 properties are best to get good backlinks. Providing the best and accurate information is the key part to grab the attention of your readers. if you want to get quality back links then you should High PR web properties such as blogger, wordpress, gather, hub pages and etc.
Claire: IMHO “traditional SEO” is disappearing. Most quality SEO I witness in the wild is SEO 2.0 or at least not SEO 1.0
AJ: No, read the article. I’ve showed you a few ways everybody can get links from bloggers without being much of an authority yet. I’ve done that myself as new blogger years ago already and it still works. So don’t tell me it doesn’t.
Jessica: You don’t get it. I removed the spammy anchor text from your “name”. Web 2.0 properties aren’t the best, especially not the ones you cite. Real blogs, self hosted ones with real people behind them are the best.
Pinging and three comments and it is a dofollow… Two things that I have learned here.
Yup, Relationships are what it is all about these days. I view everyone as a customer, my clients and all the websites and their owner which might possibly link to my clients websites. I build and manage the relationships between these. Increasingly, a good CRM system is super useful for the SEO professional.
So my question is should you allow WordPress to display the ping back if it was an Autoblog that re-posted your article?
Also, I thought on most blogs, comments are always nofollow? Are you saying that its normally set to after 3 they are dofollow links?
Robin: Which CRM app do you use? BTW. your site is completely anonymous, how do you plan to establish relationships then?
Chris: No, spam pingbacks should be deleted, only real pingbacks make sense of course.
Comment links are in most cases nofollow on blogs, that’s true.
Dofollow blogs often use plugins like Link Love that give link juice only to real commenters not just the drop in once types.
This post is not about getting links by dofollow links from comments. You focus on the least important part.
We all use various and different methods if building links. When it comes to blog commenting I personally don’t care if it is a Do Follow or No Follow link. I provide value with my comments and comment only on posts of value. Yes I like the benefit of having a link back to my site, but that doesn’t influence my reasons for posting.
You see commenting to build links is ok if you do it as part of your networking, if you only comment to build links you will burn out and in most cases it is not a valuable practice.
Good suggestions. It all comes down to having good content in the end though, whether it be in your content or comment content. The only way you will be able to get links or guest bloggers or interviews is if people are actually interested in what you have to say.
Well, to be honest I like the idea of building relationships. In life, whether business or personal it all boils down to relationships. Blogging on a regular basis, reading others and commenting with “GENUINE” input or feedback has always been a favorite way of building those relationships and getting my name out there, no to just convert those to links!
Nice to find your blog and read that relationships matter most! That’s a part of SEO ethics that seem to disappear for the most part…so well said!
:-)
Jim
I belong to a particular forum, and yesterday started a new thread to ask a question about my site, and included my url in the question, but made sure the post didn’t autolink since forums consider this a “link drop” and frown on it. Anyway, this morning I got their email newsletter and they had selected my thread as one of the threads to highlight, and guess what… my url is now a hyperlink that is in their newsletter and getting emailed to all of the forum members.
Will this link ever count in the end? I don’t know. But the key is that I wasn’t trying to “build a link”, I was just participating in the conversation.
I love it when karma works!
Hey Jim: Welcome on SEO 2.0, nice to meet you. Your blog name is so unique I already remember it from my past visits but now I know you as well.
charlie: Yeah, that’s an excellent example. I’m using forums all the time in Germany and I know how people hate it when you simply resort to “dropping links” on them.
I think you have some very good advice here but I think there is a problem here. What if you are doing it for clients like the one I’m linking to in my comment. If this was my own passion project it would be easy enough. But when you have tons of clients and not very much time it become difficult to foster strong relationships and lasting consistent links.
Your analogy of SEO 2.0 with sex is both humorous and problematic. I may want to engage in all three categories of getting links.
I have seen people abusing pingback services as well. I had been getting lot of spammy pingbacks.. from totally unrelated posts & autoblogs. I had to finally turnoff the pingback option.
I really got a lot of good ideas from this post, since I am just starting to learn seo. I really liked the comment “Offsite SEO is similar to having sex, either you do it yourself (link building), you pay for it (paid links) or you invest in relationships so that you’ll get it forever for free” it makes sense. Thank you
[...] How to Get Links on SEO 2.0 and Other Blogs [...]
I agree with the spamming. I’ve just began learning and implementing seo without any help, other than the internet of course. I have finished tagging and all the basics. I’m at the process of learning to link build. Any suggestions please email me. I’m not looking for buying links or auto junk that I hear are more black hat seo. I just wonder why all these black hat seo’s really survive? shouldn’t google just ban em for life? I mean look at all the make money online schemes. Who knows. I’ll stick to learning white hat, and follow the guides of others who seem to know what their doing. A wise man learns from their mistakes, the wiser learns from others mistakes ;)
Guest blogging is the way to go for link building these days. If you can post guest posts on popular blog it not only gets you an authority link but also gives you exposure to their audience.
[...] Learn how to get those all-powerful, credible links from SEO 2.0′s SEO Blog [...]
Great tips here, I’ve found that focusing more on my content than linking strategy works better, no point losing sleep over how many links you are getting. Give it time, get some good content onto your site and work your way up.
Surminga: Well, not really. You could blog for years like that to no avail. Everybody has great content nowadays. Only a few get the links and the attention though.