Top 7 Ways to Create Backlinks - With Ease!

Let's take a look at some different ways that you can create backlinks to your site. While some of these may not be entirely new, many get often overlooked.

Indexing Sites: Although these are not your ideal "in content" backlinks, they can be extremely powerful. You can find thousands of these (generally indexing or site-statistics type websites) and manually generate backlinks on them.

OR... if you would rather occupy yourself with something more productive, do what I did and get the Samson Elite WordPress plugin. It not only comes with hundreds of extremely powerful sites built in - it automatically creates these links - for each post - on complete autopilot.

It is a super powerful plugin. I highly recommend it if you have the money!

Manually Built Links: As awesome and as powerful as automated link building is, there is something to be said about manually built links. Although a lot more work on your part, they tend to not only last longer, but have a bigger link-juice boost in the long run as well.

Again, if you're like me and prefer doing something more exciting with your time, there is a really good outsourcing service I use called RankCrew. I've done a bit more in-depth review here.

Aside from the Samson link building automation software and the Manual Link Building service I recommended above, here are 7 more cool ways I get quality backlinks to my clients' websites!

Buy Aged Domains: In SEO terms, an aged domain is one that has been registered for a while and then didn't get renewed. As a result, some of them will have tons of powerful backlinks - making a backlink from that domain (once the site has been rebuilt on it and quality content has been added) extremely effective.

If you hate the idea of building and managing your own network of such sites, consider getting Private Blog Network (PBN) backlinks from someone else's network.

While many such services are expensive, Konrad talks about one he uses that is - in my honest opinion - very reasonably priced.

Get Audio Links: If you do any kind of audio work - such as podcasts - you can easily get dozens of valuable backlinks for free. You then simply submit your podcast or audio recording (could even be music you produced) to audio sharing sites. These sites generally have strong page ranks and will often allow you to place a powerful link on them.

Just do a quick internet search for Audio Sharing sites and you will find ones such as yourlisten.com amongst others. Or turn that audio into a simple video and start sharing it. There are a ton of free video sharing platforms online today. As my friends over at Cardiff Web Marketing would say: "If your business does not have online videos, you are missing out on a huge slice of web traffic!"

Leave Testimonials: If you use a particular product all the time, then offer to write a testimonial for the company you bought it from. Allow them to use it on their main page and provide them with your URL.

Many big companies like to prove that their testimonials are real and so will happily allow you a link next to it. This is a great way to not only get a home-page backlink but also generate some targeted traffic as well.

Submit to Directories: While many people think that using directories is a waste of time and effort, getting listed in large ones can provide your site with a powerful backlink.

Join HARO: This stands for Help a Reporter Out and is another extremely powerful way of creating a backlink to your website. You need to join the site first - do that here: http://www.helpareporter.com/sources

You will receive a couple of emails each day and you simply respond by giving helpful advice, hints, tips and information along with your website. If they use your material you will get business exposure along with a backlink.

Write Guest Post: It is hard to find worthwhile blogs that accept guest posts - but is still a very powerful strategy to getting free WordPress backlinks. Having a guest post on a high ranking WP blog will not only give your business an exposure boost, but give it a solid backlink or two as well.

Twitter is a great way to find guest posts. Make use of the Twitter search function by using a string such as: “your niche” + guest post.

Create & Share Infographics: This is a fairly newer concept but it is one that not many people are taking advantage of when it comes to backlinks. There are plenty of free infographic sites that allow you to make an infographic for free. Spend a few minutes and try this out for yourself.

In Conclusion: You now have a few different ways that you can create backlinks to your site. Now that you have them built, it is time to push them through a link indexing service. After all, what good are all these links if search engines never find out about them?

Here is a quick look at the service I use.

Enjoy!

The Foundation of a Good Backlink

When it comes to backlink building too many marketers tend to just go out and use some type of SEO service without having any real plan in mind. While you may get a few good backlinks you are really just wasting your money. Before using any type of backlink building service you want to know and understand what type of backlink you want built.

See my Top Manual Backlink Building Service Review Here!

There are several factors to take into account when creating backlinks. First these links need to be relevant to your site. Just because you can get a PR4 link to a gardening site you shouldn't proceed if your site is not in this niche. When Google views this link they do not attach any relevance to it, in fact it can do your site more harm than good.

Some of the best and easiest places to get a good quality backlink is by listing your site and business on Google Places and Google+ Local. Then from here you want to plan out what sites and who can offer you the best backlinks.

This is where relevance comes into play. Spend some time researching the key players in your field. Dig out their blogs and social media profiles and see what the best ways to connect with them would be.

You don't want to rush into backlinking instead approach it with a good plan of action in mind. For example don't just start sending out guest posting requests to all the top blogs in your field or niche. Instead start reading these blogs on a regular basis and begin by leaving helpful comments. This will get your name seen by the blog owner.

Then after a period of time you can suggest a relevant blog post topic. Of course you would make your post unique to this person, don't use the same post for anyone else! When you do initiate contact the blog owner is more likely to recognize your name and approve your request.

As you can imagine this process does take more time than just going out and using a backlinking service of any kind. The end result will be a much higher quality backlink that can really help boost your own page rank. An additional bonus is that you could receive a ton more traffic back to your site too.

It really is worth your time and effort to think about the entire backlink creation process. Take the time to research which keywords you want to rank for, look for the top players in your field and visit their blogs. Plus remember to create a variety of links from different sources. This can be links from articles, YouTube videos, guest posts and from social media sites.

This will put your site ranking in a much better position than simply generating hundreds of non-worthy backlinks in a short period of time.

Building Backlinks Yourself vs. Outsourcing

Building backlinks for your site is an important part of the search engine optimization process. The downside to this is that building backlinks can be really time consuming. This may lead you to wondering if you should start to outsource this process. Let's look at this to see if outsourcing backlinks by using an SEO service is a viable option.

Manually Create Your Own Backlinks!

Before you even think about outsourcing your backlinks you need to ensure that your blog or website has been set up correctly for SEO purposes. This includes having quality articles written with keywords. Making use of things such as formatting techniques with Headings 1 and 2. Plus if you use images these should include your keywords in the title and the Alt tag.

When you are sure that your site has all the basic SEO techniques in place, then you can start to think about backlinks. There are several ways to do this. You can use one of the outsourcing sites such as Freelancer, Odesk or Elance. Or you may prefer to use a company that specializes in building backlinks for their customers.

If you decide to use a company then make sure you do your homework and research them. Try and see if you can connect with someone who has actually used them and then you can gauge their results. Going with a company may be more expensive than hiring and individual, so you want to make sure that you will get value for your money.

Also check to see what types of backlinks they suggest you create. There are various schools of thought on this subject and it varies depending on what SEO experts see as currently working.

You can use this as a general rule of thumb, use for anchor text purposes:

1. Approximately 25% of your anchor text should be based on your Brand. This is your business name, client’s business name, etc.
2. Another 25% on your actual URL: http://yourdomain.com/, www.yourdomain.com
3. The next 25% Main Keyword or Keywords - these are the main keywords that you are attempting to get rank for. 
4. Then 25% should be based around Long Tail Keywords. These are longer phrases such as how to start a walking regimen or finding good backlinks online. 

Within all of this you may want to add a few miscellaneous keywords on your site. An easy way to do this is buy using words such as Click Here or Buy Now.

If you use these tips and ask for this type of backlinking combination from any type of backlink building service, either a company or an individual, you should see good results regardless. 

DeConfusing Search Engine Optimization

One of the most common complaints I hear about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is that it is overwhelming and confusing. But is it really?

It isn't. SEO is incredibly simple!

What is overwhelming though is the things being taught about SEO. Gurus try to make it sounds super complicated to help them sell more of their "fix all" products but here's the thing: You don't need their products!

SEO is incredibly simple once you get it, and to truly "get it", you should not look at the gurus, but rather at what has ALWAYS worked to improve search engine rankings.

My good friend and SEO specialist Konrad Braun always reminds me: Susan, you are complicating SEO. Keep it simple! 

And he is right. There is no reason to complicate it!

For starters, you will want good quality content. Content is and always has been the #1 factor for good rankings. Is your content worthwhile? Would someone get what they are looking for if they read it? Are you targeting the proper keywords in it?

Secondly, are sites in your niche linking to you? If not, find a way to get them to link to you. Maybe contact the site owner and ask to do a guest post or ask them how much it would cost you to have them link to you. 

Backlinks are seen as "recommendations". The more recommendations from quality niche related websites your site gets, the better it will rank. Guaranteed!

Simple right? I know. It's basic stuff, but it works.

So as you go into a new year, don't forget to SIMPLIFY your SEO. Complicating it won't make it easier for you to rank!

Using Social Media to Create Back Links

This year saw a huge increase in the use of social media sites by marketers, both online and offline. Companies are realizing the value of having a presence on social media sites and are seeing the rewards from doing so.

If you haven't yet incorporated this type of marketing into your business, then you really should. You don't have to have a presence on every media site. Instead select a couple to start with and go from there.

The most popular social media sites today are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Instagram

We would suggest starting with at least the top 3 that we listed above. This will give you a good base to start from and will help you to attract a variety of new visitors to your website.

Quite often the one thing that distracts people from incorporating this type of marketing into their business is the factor of time. Yes, it does take time to make posts and to find images and short posts to add to your timeline or newsfeed. The good thing is that you can automate a lot of this work.

There are tools such as Buffer, Tweet deck and Hootsuite that will automatically publish your posts for you. Some of these tools post to a variety of places, while others have limitations on them. Try out a few and see which ones work the best.

If you have several employees you could add this as a job function or you may like to hire a virtual assistant to do this work instead.

One advantage of posting content to social media sites is that they are a wonderful way to get links back to your site. So you are killing two birds with one stone. Giving your business a social media presence and improving your websites SEO at the same time.

An important factor to marketing on social media sites is that the people who use these sites love images and graphics. All you really need for content is to add a great image with a one or two sentences and your post is ready to go. What could be easier than this?

If you are stuck with ideas for posts for these sites then use an RSS reader such as Feedly and add your favorites sites to it. Along with industry news sites about your niche or business. Check your reader each morning and discover interesting content which you can post to your pages. This has two benefits besides creating links. You are staying on top of all the hot news stories and you are providing your readers with timely and relevant information.

Are you ready to start using social sites more now?

Discovering the Best Ways to Link to Your Site

If you do any type of marketing online you already know that there is a right and a wrong way to add links to your site. If you link in the wrong way all you are really doing is causing your site to have a quick surge of traffic. This is normally very short lived and does not add any real benefit to your site.

Actually what you are doing to your site is causing a good reason for Google to hit you with a penalty. This could be in the form of taking your site completely out of the search engines or they may just give you a quick slap on the hand. Are you really ready to take the chances and run the risk of all of your hard work.

If you don't provide quality on your website you will see that while your traffic might spike for a while these new visitors are not likely to return. This is not going to be beneficial at all and can be considered a waste of your time and effort.

Instead you are much better of spending your time on generating quality links to your site. This involves a little more work at first, but your results can be greatly enhanced.

It has been shown that by creating valuable links to your site that you are generating 10 times more related traffic to your site. What this means is that your new visitors are more likely to find value in what you have to offer. Plus they will be tempted to sign up to your mailing list and bookmark your site and return to it.

There are a couple of questions that you want to ask yourself when creating new linkable content to your site.

• Does it add something of value for my visitors?
• Does it help make something easier?
• Am I teaching my readers something new?
• Am I offering practical advice?
• Does the content evoke a response in people?

If you can answer yes to at least one of the above then you are on the right track. There are several ways you can add this type of content including:

• Adding content that is visual
• Providing a list of helpful resources for your visitor
• Review products and provide honest feedback
• Allow your material to be shared

Remember that the internet today is all about sharing and discovering content. You are providing great content on your website, so don't forget to allow your readers to share it with their friends. This is why adding social sharing buttons is an important step in your marketing plans today.

Every time something is shared it is providing a link back to your site. This is fantastic for SEO purposes and you will find that your site starts to rank higher in the search engines. Of course there are lots of tools that you can use to help speed up this process as well. Just make sure you do your homework before deciding to use any of these tools. 

Link Building can be Confusing

If you do any type of marketing online you will know that the internet changes at lightning speed. As a marketer it is important to stay abreast of these changes and one of the major players in how link building is affected is Google.

Google loves to do major updates and their Panda update shook plenty of marketers at their core. Their latest Hummingbird update also impacted those who work online.

The Panda update in 2012 really clamped down on quality links. Many article directories and writing mill sites were affected badly. Some even ended up shutting down. The result of this means that the quality of your content really counts and so does the quality of your back link.

At one time it was easy to pay someone to spend all day creating links all over the internet for you. As long as the link pointed back to your site, it didn’t matter where it came from. All of this has changed.

This has been a good thing for visitors to websites. They can now expect to read and receive quality content from the website masters. The higher quality sites are now listed much higher in the search engine rankings, so these will be the first to receive website visitors.

There are various ways to generate back links to your site today. Of course the first is by publishing quality content on other blogs and in article directories. This can be achieved by writing guest posts for other blogs in your niche. As well as the power of the back link you are also gaining targeted traffic. For a guest post to act as a backlink you must have the ability to leave a link in the author bio section of your post.

One of the big players today is Social Media and this is a method no marketer should overlook these days. Every serious company or individual marketer should have some type of presence on social media. This could be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Google+.

By creating interesting and informative content on your social pages your fans will begin to share your content. This will help immensely with your backlinking. One way to jazz up your content to make it more shareable is by adding images, people love to share images like crazy!

Taking advantage of newsworthy topics can also help, especially if you don’t mind getting a little controversial! Just something to keep in mind, that isn’t always for everyone.

Of course there are plugins and software that can help you create backlinks as well. If you decide to go this route ensure that the creator of the software is legitimate and uses correct link building techniques.

Click here for my recommendation:

Checking Your Backlinks

After you have been busy creating backlinks you want to take the time to check that they are actually in place and are helping you improve your search engine rankings. Checking backlinks is a complex subject and this post will attempt to cover the basics of the most relevant things you need to know.

By checking the number and quality of your backlinks you will be able to determine several things.

1. Total number of links
2. Number of unique domains
3. Linking domains vs. total links
4. Anchor text usage  
5. Inbound links
6. Page performance
7. Quality

You will need to use a tool to check your backlinks and there are many available online today. One that I use is opensiteexplorer.org. Just find one that you like and are comfortable with using and then stick to it so you get the same results each time.

Some of the information that is returned is pretty self explanatory such as the number of links to your site. Checking the number of linking domains returns a smaller number than the total number of links. As it is possible to have a good number of links from one domain and your goal should be to have a number of links from as many different sources as possible.

With Anchor text you want to ensure that you are targeting different keywords and terms. A good mixture looks more natural and allows you to rank for variances of each of your man keywords.

For inbound links your goal should be to have a good number of fresh links coming in on a regular basis. Be sure that you don’t go overboard and have hundreds or thousands of new links appearing each day. This will through up a red flag to the search engines for sure.

Page performance will indicate which pages have the highest number of links associated with them. This is usually the home page but you should try to have all your pages showing links.

Link quality is huge and is the one area that is worth spending a good amount of time on. You always want to have solid links from quality sources. A quality link will have the following qualities:

• From a high quality domain
• Come from a relevant site or page
• Natural looking link
• Varied anchor text

It is fairly easy to spot links that have been put in place just to increase your link numbers. These will be from sites that are not relevant and have appeared in high numbers over a very short period of time.

Link building does take time and there is no point in rushing this important job. Instead learn how to build natural links that appear on a regular basis and in a natural number. By checking your links you can identify problem links which need to be removed and you can see if your anchor text is varied enough or not. You can also discover untapped traffic sources that could benefit you.

How to Mix Up Your Back Links

As you know an important part of SEO is in having back links pointing to your site. While most people know that this should be a good part of your search engine optimization techniques do you know that backlinks can be created in other ways than just creating articles?

Let’s do a quick recap of other ways you can create backlinks. Many of these things can actually be created from your main article or blog post! How’s that for re-purposing your content?

Slides - One of the easiest ways to create new backlinks is to take your article and turn it into a quick slide presentation. Use either Microsoft PowerPoint or Open Office to achieve this. There are plenty of templates that you can use and don’t forget to add your logo or image of an eBook if you have one. Try to use something that will help brand your content across any site where your content may be found.

To create your slide presentation simply copy and paste each paragraph from your post onto a separate slide. Don’t forget to make a nice title page and make your last slide one that tells your reader what to do next. Such as Sign Up for My Free Report Below or Click this Link for Additional Information.

Videos – Next you can create quick videos from your blog post or article. This takes basically the same steps as we described above for creating slides. When your slides are completed use a program such as Windows Movie Maker to create your video. It does help if you record the article in your own voice as well and then add your recording to match each slide.

Once you have done this step you simply upload your completed video to YouTube and other video sharing sites. Just include your URL’s in the description area link back to your main site.

Pod Casts – while people love video content audio content is also really popular. Pod casts are good for anyone who doesn't like to do video or who doesn't want to show their face. Plus pod casts are easy to create and they usually load much faster than videos.

As you can see it is very easy to find lots of different ways to take one article or blog post and turn it into different formats. Each format will help you create new backlinks back to your site. Once you have re-purposed your content a few times the entire process will get faster and you will easily have four or five different formats created in one sitting.

Top Manual Backlink Building Services that Work Today!

NOTE: This is a quick RankCrew.com review (see link here) of the facts behind Jon Leger's manual backlink building service and proof of how it still works today!

If you have been dabbling with search engine optimization for a number of years, you will be familiar with automated spam bots that would cost a few hundred dollars to buy, but would then allow you to create thousands upon thousands of low quality backlinks almost instantaneously.

They worked great. People were getting top search engine ranking right, left, and center and their sites would generate so much traffic that they became millionaires almost over night!

Then it happened... Google, Yahoo, and Bing (MSN Search back then) caught on and started to heavily penalize sites involved in these kinds of spammy backlinking behavior.

Site's with these kinds of low quality backlinks got penalized so hard that many Search Engine Optimization specialists (SEOs) started preaching "the end" of backlinks - claiming they did not work anymore.

Nothing could have been further from the truth though!

Backlinks still work, and they work really really well. Not those cheap (low quality) mass-blasted ones that used to work, no. They are done. In fact, the more of those your sites get today, the lower your rankings will go.

If you get high quality backlinks to your websites though, your rankings will improve - not just on Google, but on Bing and Yahoo as well!

Want to know my favorite part though? When you build high quality backlinks, you don't need hundreds of thousands of them (like you used to) to get top rankings.

Depending on the keywords you are going after, you might still need a bunch of links to get to the top of Google, but if the backlinks are top quality - you can keep on building them without ever having to fear getting penalized.

I know what you're asking...

"Ok Susan, I get it. Top quality backlinks are king. But where the heck do I get them from?"

The truth is, you either build them yourself - manually - or you have them manually built by someone else!

I used to always manually build high quality backlinks myself simply because I could not find anyone out there who would do it for me the way I wanted them to.

Heck, I even hired a bunch of people overseas who worked full time - building these backlinks for me. They were great people, but their link building sucked. It just wasn't up to par with what I considered to be "high quality" backlinks.

Did I mention it cost me a fortune to always outsource these tasks? Not to mention, by the time I finished explaining how I wanted my links built, I could have built a few dozen myself. It just wasn't for me!

So I tried fiverr. I used to outsource a lot of my manual link building there but guess what? The quality standard I had set for my own sites wasn't there. So I went back to building all my backlinks myself again.

That was until I discovered RankCrew - a manual backlink building service started by Jon Leger - one of my favorite SEO legends.

I read rave reviews about their service and signed up - added some money to the account - and then went ahead and tried them out. First one campaign, then another, and then another. I skeptically double checked all the reports they sent me and was relieved to finally have found a service that not only matched my expectations, but also exceeded it.

Just about every time they send me a completion report (that shows the backlinks they manually built for me), I go ahead and order two more campaigns. It's not only addicting, but has been a huge help in getting my sites ranked on top of the search engines.

If you're still on the edge - wondering if RankCrew is for you - just sign up already. It is free to sign up and you only buy credits if you see something you really like. I know you will like them - because their backlinks are the best I've ever bought in all my years of internet marketing.

 Join RankCrew Here! 

Sure, there are great automation tools out there that will generate a lot of backlinks on auto-pilot. Some of these are not bad. In fact, I personally use and recommend some of them, but only use them in conjunction with manual backlink building services like RankCrew!

Manual Backlink Building that Still Works Today!

One of the oldest and yet most effective ways of getting a website to rank high in the search engines is to build backlinks to it. Sure, Google has changed a lot over the years and has added hundreds of different ranking factors in its algorithm, but the truth at the end of the day remains the same: Quality backlinks still work today!

Back in the day you could use a piece of software and have it blast your website URL all over the internet and voila you had top search engine ranking for whatever keyword you were using as anchor text. That is no longer the case.

In fact, the only true way to rank on top of Google today is to either have someone manually build backlinks for you or – better yet – to build them yourself. If you prefer outsourcing it, it can cost you a bit of a fortune so it is a good idea to start with a budget.

Only build quality backlinks and your site will stand the test of time!

A service I have been using for a few months now with great success is RankCrew.com (read my review here). What I like about them so much is that all of their backlinks are built manually – assuring quality workmanship.

The best part though – they are not ridiculously priced like you might expect. In fact, I find them very reasonably priced for the service they give you!

However you choose to build your backlinks, check them out and see what they can do for you. If you prefer a more automated approach, be sure to check out some of the cool automation tools I recommend on this blog.

NOTE: I only recommend what I use or have used myself!