Web Directory

Last month I wrote an article on Creative Link Building to help give some insight into “thinking outside the box” when it comes to your linking campaign. Now it is time to take it to the next level.

Quality Content is King

It does not matter what niche your marketing or audience your trying to reach. If you want to really see a significant traffic increase and watch your natural links start to evolve, then content really is king. I would like to enrich my statement “quality content is king” with a little explanation. One thing that I have discovered in my few years as a SEO entrepreneur is people are hunting your quality content everyday as a source to link to. So people who take the time to write original quality content will definitely succeed in this area. Take for example, if I copied every article Andy Beard wrote with my own little re-write of it, then I would probably not see much results from that.

However, if I take the time to research my own related information I can still use Andy as a source and it will produce much more results.

Donations to Projects and Charity

This one is really no big secret, but I feel with the latest Google fiasco about Paid Links it might become more relevant. In most cases if you donate to a project they will list your site. It may be a loop hole in the paid link penalty. I tried to figure up a way to make these kind of deals easy to find, but had no luck. Maybe that is what has made them so effective. Usually these pages have high pagerank and this option can be very affective while it last.

Be cautious of pages that have more than 50+ links on a page – To me that is a clear sign of over exposure and likely to be a bad investment.

Press Releases and Article Submissions

This is another oldie that I feel is going to make a real strong comeback due to the evil Google. I believe this to be a must for new sites who are trying to attract a new audience and still branding their new product / project. Just for example, sit down write 5 quality articles about your niche (yeah everyone should have a niche in my opinion) and find a list of sites that accept such submissions like Directory Critc’s Article directory database. Submit your content and test the results for yourself. A good search in your favorite engine for “directory of directories” might provide a few more sites with a great list.

Free Stuff / Tools

Anytime you can offer free stuff / tools to people you are guaranteed to create some type of buzz somewhere which will result in a link for your site. Once again this is an oldie, but it has proven to be affective over time. Granted, it might not take off right way. People in general love free stuff, period.

Social Bookmarking

This is something I am fairly new too, sorry to admit. However, I am going to steal an article from Cornwallseo.com regarding Social Bookmarking and SEO. I have tried these methods and they are starting to show results, definitely worth a read.

Do you Sphinn?

If your reading this article then you are for sure interested in SEO/SEM. Let me suggest one of my new found discoveries, Sphinn! Often, I find it hard to stay in touch with the most recent discussions and hottest industry topics. Sphinn, offers that resource and much much more. I suggest reading SEOmoz’s article, The Social News Site for Search Engine Marketers.

Promotions for niche marketing

I almost hate to give this one away, but I will. I guess it is no big secret, but I am seriously surprised by its success. What I did was work out some promotions with large sites related to one category / niche in my directory (ie, search engine optimization). The way it works is the larger site gives me an article review, site wide link, blog review or just etc. In return, I offer free submission related to that category or related resources. I then advertise / promote my sponsors through multiple article submissions / forum announcements creating hundreds of inbound links and traffic. Since every submission would literally pay me $6+ it works out fairly if you can find 2 or 3 sponsors.

Keep in mind, most of the links to me whether review, site wide, etc are directly to that category and use a related term. This doesn’t alarm mean Google and still builds link domains for me. This method offers obvious keyword advantages.

In Conclusion

One of the most effective methods of link building is naturally. No one could deny that. This short list focuses on creativity and more on a link campaign built naturally over time. SEO is time well spent in the long run.

Posted in Link Building • Tags: article submissions, link campaigns, linking, organic traffic, search engine optimization, SEO, social bookmarking, website content