SEO and Marketing

I am tired of hearing about the same old link development methods over and over again. Go to any seo forum you like and start a 2.301.991-st topic called: “What are good ways to get backlinks?”. I bet you will get told to go and submit your website to directories, write articles and exchange links. Come on! We are in 2008! You need to stand out from the rest in order to succeed at seo!

I have decided to sort this out once and for all and cover every single link development method known to man. (Probably not but if i miss something out please do leave a comment) I will keep this nice and sweet. Us seo-ers don’t usually have all day to read a blog entry From now on I will simply point everyone asking about way to get backlinks to this post. Here we go…

Directories: Don’t bother with them unless you can get into DMOZ or Yahoo. I can assure you, your time will be wasted submitting to tens of thousands of directories. You are much better off doing other things I will cover bellow.

Link exchange: I stopped exchanging links years ago. One or two link swaps can still work well but when you end up creating another sidebar just to accommodate hundred links you have pointing to your link partners, you’ve gone too far.

Link development via templates: When you create free templates and give them away for free. For more info have a look at my previous blog post about link development with free templates

Link development with free scripts: Works as above. Create a great script and give it away for free. Take phpbb for example. We can however argue about it’s greatness.

Press releases: A way to get your news noticed by various companies and news agencies. For this to work you really need to have something news worthy. Here is a list of press release distribution websites and here is how you should write a press release

Articles: If your website is about tennis then you simply write a bunch of articles on tennis and submit these to various article directories. Each article should contain a link back to your website. Other websites about tennis would then go around searching for content, grab your article and publish it on their own site. I recently had a big argument about this method with a fellow seo-er. You may end up having various problems with duplicate content. I may well blog about this in more depth later on. If you can’t wait to start, you can find a bunch of free article directories here

Commenting on blogs and posting on forums: Some forums will let you have a link in your signature. Therefore you can get a backlink with every post. These backlinks are not too effective however. When it comes to blogs, you may even get rewarded for your comments and appear on top commentators list.

Referral spamming: Some websites make their statistics available to public. (Awstats for example). You can use a program such as PRstorm to ping a list of urls. Or fake referrers in our case. Not only you will end up with curious webmasters visiting your url, you will also end up with a backlink whenever these stats update. This method can get you into trouble if misused.

Social bookmarking: Increasingly popular link development method. See my earlier post on link development with social bookmarks

Exploits and injections: Anyone who knows PHP can easily write a quick script. It is much harder to write a secure script. This is why most scripts out there are vulnerable. You just need to find the holes. This is why sneaky defacing and link injection is possible. I won’t be posting any candy for script kiddies but if you know what you are doing already I suggest you start on milw0rm.

Link baits: Something people find interesting and feel a natural urge to link to or blog about. For example a great article or an amusing animation. Hopefully this blog post will be a nice link bait.

Paid backlinks: Very simple. You just go and buy a few backlinks. It can be a blog review containing a few backlinks. See my blog post on TNX and keep an eye on my future post about buying backlinks. It will hopefully help you avoid a bunch of penalties from search engines.

Playing top referrers: Some websites like to display their top referrers. (Sites that send them the most traffic. Search for “top referrers” + your keyword for real live examples. You can either send the traffic their way or cheat using various methods such as proxified hits or iframes.

Hijacking and redirecting: Under certain circumstances you will be able to hijack particular pages on abandoned websites and redirect them to your own domain using a search engine friendly 301 redirect. You can argue how well this method works.

Social news: Similar to social bookmarking. Involves submitting stories to sites like Digg.

RSS and syndication: Making it easy for others to grab your content and get a backlinks in return.

Social engineering: Exploiting human factor. At the end of the day every webmaster is human and if you say the right things at the right time you can end up with a backlink. For example sneaky link development I blogged about a while back.

Tag clouds, pixels, lists and other websites: There are a bunch of websites that let you create various link cluds and lists. Listible is a great example. See my previous post on link development for more information. It seems like Listible however has been down for a few days now.

Certifiers: When you get a hacker safe badge at scan alert for example you will be included into their hacker safe directory. There are a bunch of free alternatives. There is one for web 2.0 sites I can’t seem to find in my 2GB list of bookmarks. (2GB is an exaggeration :D)

Most searched/viewed/visited: There was a popular PR check website that used to display the last x domains checked on their front page. I was able to set up a little macro that would check my websites PR every hour or so and therefore keep my link on the front page at all times. I wish I had a list of such sites but I don’t. You will have to search for them yourself.

Sponsorship: Very similar to buying backlinks apart from the fact that the people you sponsor don’t always realise that the only reason you sponsor a certain event or project is to get a backlink. Would you like a backlink on Google? If you have $10.000/year you can end up on Google partner/sponsor page.

Classifieds: Posting classified ads will also bring you backlinks. For example Gumtree or Craigslist.

Answers + Questions websites: You can try asking or answering questions on Yahoo answers or Yedda. Have a look at my previous post on Yahoo answers marketing that should help.

Video links: Not quite videos that work as links but rather backlinks in video description. For example I used to use Google videos a few years ago and the urls I put into the little field for video description are still there and counted by Google.

Software: If you are good enough to create a great website builder for example make sure every website generated by your software contains a backlink in the footer. Other examples include bookmarking software. Every time someone bookmarks their page, they automatically bookmark yours as well.

Free resources: Squidoo pages, free blogs/journals/guestbooks and so on. You can go and create a bunch of free blogs on blogger and Wordpress right now and include a few backlinks in your posts. You can spend the rest of your life doing this type of link development as there are so many free resources available to you.

Work: You can work or help out with various tasks for backlinks. Next time you see someone having problems installing a Wordpress blog for example, simply offer them your help in exchange for a backlink on their blog.

Widgets: All them various bits on bobs some webmasters fall in love with to the extent they can’t help it but to keep on adding more and more. I’m talking about various widgets that display your link popularity, PR, Alexa rank, number of subscribers, server speed and so on.

Reviews an testimonials: Companies or individuals that sell certain products or provide services often collect reviews and testimonials. These are often published on the front page of the website along with your backlink in order to boost their sales. Next time you buy a product or pay for a service have a look at their review section. It might be worth your time to write one yourself.

Sexual favours: Find a sexually frustrated blogger, preferably a virgin, willing to help you out with link development in exchange for sexual favours.

Please do make a comment and suggest other link development methods I can add. Next time someone asks you about different link development methods, point them here