11 Legitimate ways to generate backlinks

Search Engine Optimization is a major buzz these days. One of the most vital part of search engine optimization is to generate large number of quality backlinks. The term quality refers to many factors like do follow links,the blog/website which is linking back and the anchor text used for the backlink etc.

Though we should keep in mind backlinks are not only meant for improving your search ranks but it also serves a greater purpose of bringing new readers to your blog. This is why in this post we will also focus on creating backlinks that may not be dofollow but is potential enough to bring traffic.

Those are the following techniques that I had figured out,in order to create backlinks to your blog

1. Guest Posts

Guest posts are perhaps the most common way,that all bloggers adopt to gain genuine backlinks. These guest posts also serve as a doorway to our blogs. Concentrate on writing good informative articles for guest posts. If the visitor like’s your post then they will surely land on your blog for more good content. There are certain points that should be taken care of while writing a guest post.

1. Make sure you write something related to your blog content,this is because,if people visit your blog following the link they will look for content relevant to the topic of the guest post. And if they don’t find any,all your effort will go in vain & you will loose a potential visitor.
2. Try to deeplink your guest post with links in your domain & use proper anchor texts to do that. But please maintain relevance, just do not put them only for the purpose of deeplinking.

Also see : Why Guest blogging wins and why you should host a guest blogger

2. Commenting

Well we also know about this technique to achieve backlinks. This process on the other hand helps us create relationship with other commenter as well as the blogger who wrote the article. This is far more easier way to scatter your blog url everywhere. But just do not end up commenting “Great Post” or “It was worth reading” type comments. Because this may please the admin to publish the comment(thereby giving you a backlink),but none other future viewers will be impressed enough to visit your blog for more.

And there is yet another concern that most of the blogs do not provide dofollow links in comments. So the url in the comment just do not serve any purpose. So make sure you are commenting on a blog that do not assign a nofollow link & if they does then make your comment useful(adding value to the post) so that at least it serves as a gateway to your blog.

3. Related commenting

This is about commenting too. But as the name suggests it is a little bit different. I personally experimented this technique to get genuine visitors & not do follow backlinks. Let me explain. Take any of your post that you consider is really great to be talked about. Now using Google search,look out for posts that also writes about the same topic as that of your post. Open the 20 top ranked articles in the search results in tabs. Now for each of them, gallop through the article & post a comment talking something on it. Something means if it had missed something or you think some part needs more explanation.

Finally add these words, “you all could also refer to this post on your-selected-post-title” & put the link of the selected post on your-selected-post-title. These comments really works in bringing visitors. But I must remind you that, please do not spam as it hurts back in the long run.

4. Social Networking

This is the best part for any blogger. Doing work & making friends on the same time. I bet that we(bloggers) all are to some extent addicted to these social networking sites like,Twitter,Facebook,Friendfeed etc. But while we enjoy these we could spend a little insight to these in order to extend our blog. Look out for people who are equally interested. Join discussion boards related to your blog. Help people there & make friends. Suggest them with some informative links on your blog. If your post solves the problem then it is sure to get praised by someone making any other future reader to follow your link. Well importing feeds is a common way to talk about your posts as soon it gets published.

But this does not generate buzz for new bloggers as they do not own large reader base neither do they have the trust of too many readers. So as it infers, personal interaction always works better than automation. So import your feeds as well as interact with people & build your brand.

5. Bookmarking Sites

As like social networking,bookmarking sites like Digg,Stumbleupon,del.icio.us,Technorati plays a vital role in bringing lots of traffic to our blogs. We are mostly familiar with the pinging services that pings those bookmarking servers whenever we hit the publish button. I am not going to say much on that. Instead I believe in personal interaction. Participate in the bookmarking sites personally thereby building your authority there. This may not help immediately,but if consistent can bring immense traffic after a couple of months effort.

6. Article Submission

This is a not-so-old technique adopted these days. There are lots of websites that has a article trading system. For the sake of this article I will not talk about the money factor. This is similar to writing guest post. But it has a multiplied effect. You write an article & then submit it to the article directories. If it is selected it will get featured in their pages. Now you get a backlink from them. The multiplied effect comes into act when someone else is interested in your post. These article directories lets others re-publish your articles depending on some condition i.e. they have to give the author(which is you) proper credits(your name, your blog name & a link to your blog). So you write once & it gets scattered without any more further effort. Here is a detailed guide on article marketing and answers to commonly asked questions.

7. Forum Activity

Forums are real places with real people. I mean to say this is a place where you can earn visitors that will follow you for long time. This is just because, in forums you get to help people & people really stay addicted to those who solves their problem. But how does it(forum) earn backlinks ?? There are two ways to do that

1. Simply look out for problems that people who are looking for a solution for and which you have already covered in any of your earlier articles. Just tell them in a nutshell there & put a link to that article of yours as a detailed discussion.
2. But if you face a problem that you haven’t covered up earlier in your posts but you know how to solve it. I suggest create a blog post with the solution first & then do as said in the earlier step. So you hit two target simultaneously.Create a post as well as earn visitors for it.

Try to help others and solve problems. If you create a good resource and provide free support to people in the forums,they are bound to visit your blog and eventually they will become your fan. For further reading read 17 ways forums help you becoming a better blogger.

8. Conditional Re-publishing

This is an extension of the article submission(point 6) concept. Let others contact you if they want to re-publish your content. Give them conditions as in step 6. This will not harm you regarding content duplicity. As your url will be first indexed as the legal one. If there is an issue, it will be with him who has copied it. So forget about it.

9. Blog Networks

Though this is a very minor factor in increasing backlinks still I feel like mentioning this here. Join blog networks with high PR. This may not give you large amount of visitors but still the backlinking goal for SEO is fulfilled.

10. Plugin Development

This is strictly for those who have knowledge in coding. This works really well to get large amount of dofollow backlinks. This is achieved by putting a dofollow link to your blog in the plugin setup page. So whenever somebody downloads & uses this plugin the plugin resides within their domain & the backlink also resides there. So you get tons of backlinks in very short time(if your plugin is worth using). But this is bad in one way. Sometimes the search engines penalize you for sudden surge in backlinks which is of course not acceptable.

11. Conditional Link Love

“Sharing is Caring”. This technique is not something I really rely upon & hence it is ranked as the last. Communicate with other bloggers in your niche & personally request them to put you in their blogroll & in return,you also do the same. This not only creates dofollow backlinks but it also lets you spread your brand as well as making relations in your niche.

Well I’m sure that this is not all but all I tried here is to give you a idea of what earns the most backlinks for you. I am sure you could find out many such ways yourself if you give it a try. I will be greatly thankful if you could share your ideas here which you think has earned loads of backlinks for you.

Written by Soumen Halder from Ampercent
Posted on October 4th, 2009 and filed under Blogging
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