All SEOs know that link building is one of the most important factors of SEO to date. There are lots of linkbuilders out there working their butts off just to get better links than the competition. As I’ve said in previous posts, links amounts to almost 70% of your off-site SEO.

So here, I’ve listed down effective link building strategies you can use:

Internal Linking

This link building strategy is, of course, the easiest one to do. Why? Well because it’s a factor that you can manipulate 100% since the link is located within your website. It is arguably an on-site element but it is an off-site factor since you are doing internal linking for the search engine crawlers and PR sculpting.

Internal linking helps search engine spiders find new content within your website. It also makes navigation easier for your readers in case they want more resources from you.

The best internal links are located inside your article and should not be clustered at the end of your content like how my related posts are below. You can have clustered related posts links but you should still also do internal linking on your own.

Blog commenting

This link building method has been debated upon by SEOs. Blog commenting used to be one clean linkbuilding game. Now, with the serious number of black hat SEOs and commenting softwares, blog commenting is generally frowned upon as a linkbuilding method. Most blogs have nofollowed blog comment links which makes any link that you build in their site useless when it comes to passing out page rank.

Some linkbuilders argue that there are better things to do than build links from comments. My team and I personally think otherwise. In fact, I think building relationships through commenting is great! And it can haul you a good amount of traffic – and page rank too!

Scout out for blogs with a good amount of readers, great content and dofollow comment links. It would help if the blog is using Commentluv. SEO Hacker’s linkbuilder, Jason Acidre, is an expert with this.

Be warned that you should not put in your keyword in the “Name:” section because that is considered as spam. In fact, I hate people who do that in this blog (even if this blog is not a dofollow blog… Sigh…)

Here’s a great resource about using blog commenting to get valuable traffic by Kristi Hines of Kikolani.com

Paid Links 

This link building strategy is arguably the most expensive one (ain’t it obvious?). It is also one of the best ones around. And even if Google generally says that paying for links is against their webmaster guidelines, you can’t beat how it could potentially rank your site – especially when you get a really good deal with other webmasters.

Paying for links is an investment. But, like all investments, you have to choose and pick the cream of the crop. Pick the best website or blog – then pick the best webpage they have – then pick the best spot in that page. It would be best if your link is within the article itself. But if you can ask for a link in the sidebar, then all the better.

Make sure that you don’t use link brokers. Link brokers cannot give you any good link. All their links are already devalued by Google – because it is against Google’s webmaster guidelines to buy links in the first place. And since link brokers are most probably already identified by Google, buying from them will get you nowhere.

.Gov / .Edu extensions

Getting links from these websites is much like winning the local lottery when it comes to linkbuilding. Getting a link from one of these sites spells out a lot for you. It gives you high link juice and authority. But getting links from these sites are tough. In most cases, you need political connections.

This link building strategy is a combination of hard work, determination and luck. Even so, you shouldn’t spend too much time and effort in getting a link from these sites. It can only go so far. Focus on where your specialty as an SEO specialist is – if it’s in creating great content, do that instead of trying to squeeze in your link in a .gov or .edu site.

Social Media

These links are all nofollowed. Meaning they are useless when it comes to building page rank. However, building page rank is not the point when using social media. The main purpose of linkbuilding through social media is for your links to attract people in different social networks.

The purpose of this link building strategy is to get links outside the social networks through the people inside them. I personally got some links from other promintent blogsites through the use of Twitter and Facebook. Of course, I used some premium tools such as SocialOomph and TweetAdder to increase my chances of getting backlinks from Tweetizens and I ran some Facebook ads to get some backlinks from Facebook users.

Link Baiting

This link building strategy is arguably the best choice when it comes to effective one way link building. Link baiting is all about creating good, quality content to attract one-way links from people who deem your article worthy of attention. I have created resource articles about link baiting previously – you can check ‘em out.

There is no risk in link baiting – unless you’re flaming or trolling quite severely. In which case, it will hurt your site’s reputation with the public. I don’t recommend this – but it sure as heck does the job when it comes to getting links.

It also hits 2 birds with one stone because you will also rank for the keywords that you used for the content you’ve authored. Yes, it is going to take a bit more work and creativity to squeeze out a great link bait – but it pays off in the long run.

Press Release

One of the popular ways of building links is through press releases. You create a good article, submit it to a press release site, let it roll for what it’s worth then pray for backlinks from all the potential readers. Don’t submit articles from your own blog because that would obviously be a duplicate.

The good thing about this link building strategy is, you’re tapping into a solid base of readers who are probably also webmasters looking for information and for good, reliable sources. Being known in a press release site can really help boost people’s awareness of your site.

The thing is, you have to be an avid reader and writer in order for you to keep up in maintaining your press release output. You articles must be laser focused, helpful, concise and intriguing to your target readers. Otherwise it is pretty much useless and you’ll get nothing but air. You don’t want air. You want links.

Update: Google is stricter now that even press releases are counted as spam. The truth is press release is a still a good way to build links, however you have to make sure that what you’re posting is newsworthy. Press release without news is not press release at all.

Reciprocal Linking

Exchanging links isn’t a sin. This link building strategy is just an irritating way of bugging webmasters – especially if the webmaster is not in any way interested in giving away links in exchange for another one.

There is more to reciprocal linking than meets the eye. You have to study up on a website and make sure that the link you’re gonna get is approximately equal or better than the link you’re giving. Otherwise, it won’t do you any good.

Some webmasters have a webpage dedicated to link exchange. Usually it can be found at a /links extension. For example: iamalinkexchanger.com/links

This will definitely NOT help. First and foremost – having a page dedicated to links is stupid and is already a way of telling Google that you’re giving out links. Second, who the heck wants a link from an all-outbound links-page? Probably the ones who also give out links in an all-outbound links-page.

In the end, nothing will happen to either of you because reciprocal links don’t give out much juice to each other – most especially when it’s in a dedicated links page.

On the other hand, developing excellent relationships with other webmasters in your niche can get you the best link exchange deals around. Those kinds of link exchange are a gold mine for your ranking. If you can tap and build relationships with other blogs related to your topic, then link exchange becomes a very valuable asset.

Tips for Keeps: Link building is always a necessity when it comes to SEO. It is a way of driving in traffic, and a way of ranking higher in the SERPs. Find a link building strategy that best suits you in terms of enjyoment, effectivity and efficiency.