1. 12
Link
Building
Strategies
to
Improve
Your
Off-­‐Page
SEO
Skills
This
article
explains
12
link
building
strategies
you
can
use
right
away
to
earn
quality
backlinks
to
your
site
and
increase
your
search
ranking.
1. List
your
website
in
relevant,
highly
authoritative
directories.
Research
online
and
find
specific
directories
related
to
your
industry
and
the
keywords
you
are
trying
to
rank
for.
If
your
business
is
restricted
to
a
small
area
where
you
sell
your
product
or
service
also
look
for
local
online
business
directories
and
get
listed
there
too.
It
is
important
to
remember
anchor
text
when
you
are
putting
your
business’s
information
in
these
web
directories,
often
the
‘title’
or
‘name’
field
ends
up
being
the
anchor
text
linking
from
their
website
to
yours
so
chose
it
wisely.
For
really
great
directory
backlinks
look
at
the
Google
Page
Rank
(PR)
over
3
and
a
mozRank
score
of
over
5
(research
these
terms
online
for
free
tools
that
calculate
a
score
for
you).
To
start
off
with
I
recommend
getting
your
website
listed
and
a
profile
set
up
on;
Google
Places
business
directory,
Bing/Nokia
directory,
Yahoo!
business
directory,
DMoz,
Foursquare,
Yelp
and
LinkedIN.
2. Create
a
company
blog
According
to
Hubspot
two-­‐thirds
of
marketers
say
their
company
blog
is
‘critical’
or
‘important’
to
their
business.
Each
individual
page
on
a
website
has
the
potential
to
rank
well
in
search
engines
and
draw
traffic
from
other
sources.
Whether
a
page
draws
traffic
depends
on
whether
it's
optimised
and
how
remarkable
it
is.
Blogging
is
a
great
way
to
add
interesting
content
to
your
site
so
you
can
earn
high
quality
links
doing
so!
When
blogging
it
is
ideal
to
include
your
selected
keywords
within
the
blog
post
copy.
Increasing
the
density
of
keywords
on
your
site
will
make
it
slightly
easier
to
find
through
search
engines
as
it
helps
the
crawling
robots
understand
what
subject
your
pages
are
about.
As
discussed
in
the
‘page
architecture’
section
make
sure
you
place
your
keywords
in
all
the
right
places.
Using
the
keywords
you
know
people
are
searching
for,
create
a
blog
that
will
be
of
interest
to
those
people.
Doing
so
you
will
create
a
limitless
supply
of
link
opportunities!
Post
at
least
one
well
thought-­‐out
and
researched
article
a
week,
and
if
you
can
-­‐
try
and
post
6
or
7
articles
a
month.
A
useful
and
insightful
blog
about
your
industry
will
be
rare,
so
creating
remarkable
content
that
will
be
useful
will
generate
a
large
amount
of
quality
links.
3. Turn
your
blog
articles
in
to
presentations
and
videos
An
online
resource
that
is
currently
being
underused
as
a
link
building
and
lead
generation
technique
is
the
use
of
presentation
sites
such
as
Slideshare.net,
AuthorStream,
Powershow,
Brainshark
and
SlideBoom.
Create
a
simple
template

2. with
your
branding
in
Powerpoint
and
then
convert
your
blog
articles
into
short
presentations.
As
well
as
the
advantage
of
adding
a
backlink
back
to
your
website,
for
each
presentation
you
upload
this
idea
will
also
create
the
impression
that
you
are
an
authority
figure
in
your
industry.
Once
you
have
made
your
presentation
record
a
short
video
of
you
presenting
it.
You
could
either
point
a
camera
on
you
presenting
it
or
use
a
screen
capture
program
and
a
microphone
and
just
talk
through
the
main
points.
Upload
your
new
video
to
YouTube
and
also
create
another
blog
post
on
your
site
with
the
new
video.
This
content
once
again
will
help
you
be
seen
as
an
authoritative
person
in
your
industry
and
increase
the
likelihood
of
people
linking
to
your
useful
content.
4. Make
it
easier
for
people
to
link
to
you
If
you
want
people
to
link
to
your
site,
make
it
easy
for
them!
At
the
end
of
each
of
your
blog
articles
you
could
include
a
simple
HTML
snippet
that
will
show
a
link
to
your
website
when
posted
on
their
site.
Once
again
make
sure
the
anchor
text
here
is
chosen
correctly!
Also
make
sure
you
have
social
sharing
buttons
enabled
at
the
end
of
each
article.
If
your
website
is
built
in
WordPress
there
are
several
free
plug-­‐ins
that
allow
you
to
quickly
and
easily
add
these
in.
5. Make
sure
people
are
seeing
your
content
so
they
can
link
to
it
–
use
Social
Media
If
you
have
recently
launched
your
website
and
you
do
not
have
much
traffic
coming
in
make
sure
you
are
using
social
media
to
its
full
effect
to
bring
in
visitors.
As
a
start
make
sure
your
business
is
set
up
on
Facebook,
Twitter
and
LinkedIN.
Write
down
50
messages
with
a
link
to
a
page
on
your
website
in
less
than
140
characters.
Use
a
URL
shortener
such
as
bitly
or
Google’s
URL
shortener
to
reduce
character
length
of
links.
Use
‘#’
hashtags
to
tag
your
keywords
in
your
messages.
Sign
up
to
Hootsuite.com
and
spend
an
hour
or
two
scheduling
at
least
3
messages
a
day
for
the
next
month
to
be
sent
out
automatically
through
your
social
profiles.
This
very
simple
technique
will
bring
you
in
hundreds
of
relevant,
targeted
viewers.
The
people
who
have
now
seen
your
content
can
rate
whether
it
is
shareable
or
not.
Repeat
this
every
month
and
until
you
feel
your
messages
are
becoming
boring
and
repetitive.
When
you
do,
come
up
with
some
more.
6. Find
out
where
your
competitors
are
getting
links
from
Using
the
Open
Site
Explorer
website
tool
mentioned
earlier
research
the
‘link
profiles’
of
the
top
performing
websites
for
your
keywords.
Write
down
a
list
of
these
sites
and
try
securing
links
from
the
same
places.
You
will
notice
they
may

3. have
numerous
links
from
blogs
and
forums,
which
brings
me
on
to
my
next
point….
7. Participate
in
online
forums
and
blogs
related
to
your
industry
with
Google
Alerts
Research
your
selected
keywords
and
find
online
forums,
websites
and
blogs
related
to
your
industry.
Start
participating
and
creating
conversations
with
the
other
readers
and
where
applicable
leave
a
link
back
to
your
website.
A
fantastic
way
to
find
relevant
sites
is
to
use
Google
Alerts.
Create
an
individual
alert
for
each
of
your
keywords
at
http://www.google.com/alerts.
Now,
according
to
the
preferences
you
selected
when
creating
your
alert
you
will
receive
an
email
from
Google
showing
the
latest
pages
on
the
web
that
include
those
keywords.
These
will
often
be
new
blog
articles
which
will
allow
you
to
comment
and
leave
a
link
back
to
your
website.
Remember,
each
of
these
articles
you
comment
on
should
be
relevant
to
your
keywords.
8. Write
articles
for
content
aggregators
and
Social
Bookmarking
websites
You
can
submit
the
blog
articles
you
have
already
written
to
article
syndication
sites
such
as
Ezinearticles,
About.com
and
iSnare.
Although
they
don't
pass
on
much
‘SEO
juice’,
they're
still
worth
submitting
to.
In
return,
you'll
get
a
link
in
your
author
bio
back
to
your
site.
Similarly,
Social
Bookmarking
sites
such
as
StumbleUpon,
Digg,
Delicious
and
Pinterest
allow
you
to
build
links
to
your
website.
The
effect
of
these
on
your
search
engine
ranking
position
is
once
again
minimal,
but
every
little
helps!
If
the
content
you
are
bookmarking
is
somehow
remarkable
this
particular
link
building
technique
could
also
build
a
tremendous
amount
of
traffic
to
your
site
from
the
social
bookmark
(rather
than
the
search
engines).
These
sites
in
many
cases
have
helped
thousands
and
thousands
of
pages
go
‘viral’.
This
happens
because
people
search
for
fantastic
content
on
these
sites
and
then
share
what
they
find
with
the
rest
of
the
web.
9. Write
guest
blog
posts
Find
bloggers
who
have
a
high
level
of
authority
in
your
industry
and
pitch
to
them
an
interesting
blog
idea
that
you
will
write
for
them.
Professional
bloggers
always
feel
the
need
to
post
regular,
quality
content
so
many
times
they
will
be
willing
to
listen.
The
key
here
is
in
actually
building
a
relationship
with
the
blog
owner
by
commenting
intelligently
on
their
blog
posts
for
several
months.
After
you
have
built
rapport
with
the
owner
they
may
be
more
inclined
to
allow
you
to
write
a
guest
post.
10. Create
how-­‐to
guides,
ebooks
and
videos
With
your
hopefully
expert
knowledge
in
your
particular
field
create
an
in-­‐depth
tutorial
or
guide
in
to
a
specific
aspect
of
it.
Offer
good
advice
and
you
will
find
your
website
becoming
a
hub
of
information
that
people
will
willingly
link
to.
Be
creative
here!
There
must
be
something
of
value
you
can
offer
your
customers.

4. 11. Aggregate
useful/helpful
content
Create
a
page
or
several
pages
on
your
website
that
bring
together
numerous
useful
resources.
Alternatively,
if
you
found
you
couldn’t
find
a
solution
online
to
a
certain
problem
you
faced
in
the
past,
create
a
page
based
on
that
issue
and
explain
how
you
overcame
it!
12. Ask
business
partners,
family,
friends
and
customers!
Finally
(and
most
simply),
just
ask
your
business
partners,
friends
and
family
if
they
would
mind
sharing
a
link
to
your
website
on
theirs
somewhere.
Many
of
their
sites
will
have
a
‘links’
page.
Once
again,
if
you
don’t
ask
you
don’t
get!
For
more
information
on
SEO
head
on
over
to
Kent
SEO
Improve
My
Search
Ranking.com.