Craving Some Link Love?
Link building has evolved significantly since the days of laborious ad hoc Internet research and notorious link farming. These days, linkers are much more strategic about acquiring incoming links, which has resulted in less time spent on tactical implementation.
Competitor Analysis
They may be your competitors but they are an excellent source for building a quick list of link opportunities. Those linking to your competitor would more than likely be interested in linking to you.
There are some great online tools to help you identify incoming links to competitor websites.
o Touchgraph creates a picture of the link universe in which a particular website lives. Think of it in terms of “6 degrees of separation”.
o Back Link Analyzer is a free link analysis software that shows all anchor text linking into a given website.
o Yahoo Site Explorer also allows you track incoming links to a particular web page or domain.
Link Bait
Nothing generates an influx of inbound links like a viral campaign. Whether you come up with an incredibly useful resource or just a cool experience, if Internet users love it, you’ll get links. Link baiters need to think like ad and PR people. What will catch people’s attention?
A great example of link bait is “Will It Blend?” This is a website that sells blenders, a very uninteresting household appliance. The website brings the product to life with videos of obscure items being blended. They are currently blending the iPhone….
Social Media
The Social Media approach also plays the viral card. Building a network allows you to communicate with a large number of people that could potentially link their website back to yours. You have to be strategic in how you build your network to make sure links back to your site are as qualified and relevant as possible. You can also leverage social networking sites to create profiles that list your contact information and include a link back to your website/blog.
