Smart Link Building Tactics and Techniques

Design Feedback

This is one of the lesser-known methods for attracting backlinks. It involves submitting your website, logo, banner or some other “design element” to a feedback website, at which point users will share their comments about it. There are several different feedback websites that fall under this category, the most popular being ConceptFeedback.com. Just create an account, add your website, and you’ll receive free criticism as well as a backlink. Pretty good deal, huh?

Social Media

Who says social media isn’t helpful for link building? While most people use sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for personal reasons, social media is also an invaluable tool for building links. Whenever you publish a new article or blog post on your website, try to get into the habit of creating a link to it on all of your social media accounts. Doing so will provide an initial boost of traffic to the content while also helping search engines find and crawl it more easily.

It’s important to note that most social media sites use the nofollow attribute on external links, meaning Google will not pass PageRank to your website. With that said, most online marketing experts will agree that even nofollow links are beneficial, so don’t assume they are useless.

Guest Blogging

Although Google has devalued the SEO benefits of guest blogging to some degree, it remains a time-tested — and most importantly, safe — link building tactic. Guest blogging involves writing and submitting blog posts to other blogs within your niche. At the bottom of your post, you can include a link pointing back to your website.

It’s a win-win scenario for everyone involved. You (the guest blogger) benefits from free exposure and an additional link, whereas the blog owner benefits from free content. Just remember to use guest blogging sparingly, as focusing most of your marketing efforts on this technique could raise red flags within the search engines. As long as it’s just a part of your overall marketing plan, it should be OK.

Press Releases

Another great way to build backlinks is to submit press releases. I know what you’re probably thinking: how do I submit a press release if I don’t have anything newsworthy to share? The truth is that every website and business has something newsworthy to share. Perhaps you redesigned your website, or maybe you added a new line of products or services? These are all newsworthy topics on which you can base your press release.

Don’t Pay For Links!

This isn’t necessary a link building tactic, but rather a warning. The allure of obtaining several high-PR backlinks for X amount of dollars may seem enticing. After all, it would save you time and energy by creating links automatically. In most cases, though, paid links will have a negative effect on your site’s ranking, bringing it further down in the SERPs.

Know of any other smart link building tactics or techniques? We’d love to hear them!