Posting for Profit

When you are trying to develop your backlink strategy it is important to understand the different ways to gain links to your site.

In building a backlink strategy for your site, remember that there are different ways to get links. One of the easiest ways is to do a link exchange

Link exchanges are done with similar sites with both sites placing a link to the other. Link exchanges have been penalized by search engines because of heavy spam but there still benefits to doing a link exchange, so don't be afraid to try.

The best links to get our inbound one way links. These links are sometimes difficult to get because there is no exchange. It requires the other web site to link to you without you linking to them. Building one way, inbound links should be a top priority in your off-page optimizing strategy.

You must get noticed to gain one way links. Getting noticed online is not a whole lot different than getting noticed off-line.

In order to get other sites to link to your site you have to provide unique original content on your site. One way to develop this content is to add a blog, Forum, or other method to regularly add content to your site. If you have a static web site it will be much more difficult to gain links.

Applying SEO techniques such as the above can bring great benefits. As an example if you are trying to optimize a site that sells vitamins. The first step would be researching highly ranked competitors. After analyzing their sites you can use their blog or forum to determine what topics are hot. Typically in these community sites hot topics will draw quite a bit of traffic and comments from readers.

One method of gaining their attention is to look at the topics on their site that are creating the most commotion. When you find the hot topics, do a review of the site on your blog. In your review concentrate on the hot topic, but don't just talk about their services. Remember you're trying to gain attention so argue about what they're missing or things they don't have. The key is you're not trying to advertise for them rather you want to establish yourself as an expert.

Often, the other site will notice your review. You may need to draw their attention to it, it wont always happen automatically. Think of it as being in a crowd where everyone is talking. If you enter the conversation you must make sure to say something relevant. If you speak up and say something unrelated or meaningless people in the crowd will quickly dismiss you.

Here's the trick to this technique, when you comment about a site or bring up a controversial point they have to link to you to reply to your review. Remember to position yourself as an expert when you do this. Don't be rude or obnoxious, but make meaningful comments and reviews and you're bound to get noticed.

Most Blogs track links to the site, so rest assured that if the blogger read something that needs to be addressed by them they will comment.

Don't just leave it up to the whims of fate, after doing your review leave a comment on the site. Excerpt just enough of your review to get attention and peak their interest. This will serve two purposes, first it helps establish you as an expert, second you will benefit from their readers following the link in your comment to your site. The key is to do this on popular active sites. If the site doesn't have an active community, reading and commenting, you will get the benefit.

In time you will build links and increase traffic to your site. If you do it right you'll see the numbers jump in your traffic from other readers visiting your site to get the rest of the story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR