WordPress Internet Marketing Tools » SEO & Link Building

Link Building Techniques: Directory Submissions, Press Releases and 3 Way Links

Jason Keith — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:11:38 +0000

This is the final part of my series called "How to Build Backlinks to Your Websites." In the past several weeks, we have discussed:

Article Marketing
Social Bookmarking & Web 2.0 Sites
Guest Blog Posting
Profile & Forum Links

Today I want to wrap up the series discussing a few other strategies including directory submissions, press releases and link exchanges. Let's get started.

Directory Submissions

Directory submissions are one of the oldest link building techniques on the web. There are thousands of online directories where you can submit your website. Although directory submissions are not as powerful as they used to be, it is still a good technique for diversifying your incoming links.

The best of all directory submission sites is DMOZ, but it is also one of the most difficult to get into. The next best are the Yahoo Directory and Business.com, but both of these are expensive.

I personally normally submit to DMOZ and then also submit to a few hundred other sites. I normally outsource this for a few bucks with Article Aware's Manual Directory Submission Service. Depending on the project, I will either get all of the submissions completed at once or sometimes I will use their ongoing service where they submit to a few each week over time.

Like I mentioned earlier, directory submissions are not as powerful as they once were, but they are still effective. Don't let other marketers fool you into thinking the method is dead.

Press Releases

Press releases are like article marketing in the sense that they are good for backlinks, but can also deliver targeted traffic directly to your site.

For bigger sites, I will sometimes submit to paid press release sites like PRWeb or PRLeap, but more often than not I submit to the free and low cost sites.

Keep in mind that press releases should be newsworthy and not sales pitches. If you follow the proper styling, you can even sometimes get lucky and get publicity from news sources.

Link Exchanges

Like directory submissions, the link exchange is one of the oldest link building techniques around. Unfortunately, the traditional link exchange is DEAD. It is a waste of your time to exchange links directly with other sites.

However, three way link exchanges are effective. This is where three sites agree to exchange links. Below is how a common three way link exchange might work:

Site A links to Site B
Site B links to Site C
Site C links to Site A

This structure helps insure every site gets an incoming link without losing credit for it in the search engine's algorithm.

Getting three way links is a bit challenging though. Sometimes you can find other webmasters on search engine forums who are looking to do three way link exchanges.

I personally like to use a service called 3 Way Links to accomplish this task. Three way links makes the process of three way link exchanges automatic. I have seen some websites achieve top Google ranking for competitive keywords using this technique.

Profile Link Building Strategies and Techniques

Jason Keith — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 19:51:14 +0000

This is part 4 of my 5 part series entitled "How to Build Backlinks to Your Websites". Today I want to talk about profile and forum link building techniques.

Before I dive in, let me define what I mean by profile links. There are literally tens of thousands of websites that will allow users to create accounts and have an online profile. Usually in the online profile, the websites will allow users to post links to their website or blogs. That is what we are targeting.

The same holds true with forums. Most every forum or message board allows users to have a profile page where you can post a little about yourself normally including a link to your website or blog.

From an SEO link building standpoint, we can utilize these linking opportunities to grow our incoming links to our websites.

To find these links, just search Google for forums and message boards then create accounts. There are also many places online where you can purchase lists of sites that allow you to add profile links. One example of such a site is 5000 Links. Here you can purchase a list of 5,000 websites that allow you to create online profiles and leave links back to your websites.

I personally use a combination of software and outsourcing to get my profile link building done.

One quality, affordable service to use is Article Aware's Manual Profile Link Service. Here you can outsource your profile link building for rock bottom prices and get a detailed report when the work is finished.

As far as software goes, one really cool program I like is called Profile Link Robot. It automatically creates accounts for you at these sites then submits your profile. It is an automated system for creating quality one-way links.

In general, profile links are not as high quality links as other types of links. But you can overcome the quality with sheer volume. It is not out of the realm of possibility to build thousands of one way, anchor text links to your sites using profile link building.

How to Get Backlinks to Your Websites from Other Blogs

Jason Keith — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:19:14 +0000

Welcome to part 3 of my special series entitled "How to Build Backlinks to Your Websites". I hope you are finding the information useful.

Today I want to talk about blog posts. I'm not talking about blog posts on your own sites. I'm talking about getting your content with links to your site on other people's blogs.

This is similar to article marketing, but even better for SEO because you are able to get your links into the body of an article instead of just the author resource box.

The challenge to this technique though is getting other webmasters to agree to post your content and your links. It can be done, but requires a good amount of emailing back and forth to get done. The best tip is to locate other blogs in your niche or in related niches and email them about posting your content.

I personally don't do that much anymore. Instead, I use blog networks that allow me to post my content to a network where other bloggers will post it. This costs me, but saves tons of time and effort on emailing other webmasters.

I have used four different services to date. Below is a link to each and a brief overview:

Backlink Solutions - this network contains over 400 blogs on separate servers in a variety of niches that you can post your content and links to. I personally have had the most success with this service, but it is often full and not accepting new members. You will have to get on the waiting list if you want in.
1 Way Links – This network is HUGE. It currently contains over 6,000 independently owned and operated blogs in its network. You can submit a certain number of posts each month and earn more submission credits if you add your own sites to the network.
SEO Link Vine - this is a fairly new service that started in the past year. It also contains a ton of sites to post to and I have seen good results from it.
My Article Network – this is another massive network containing over 10,000 blogs in its network. It is similar to the 1 Way Links site mentioned above.

All four of the above sites allow you to submit a spinnable article so that each blog gets a unique copy of your content. They also allow you to use anchor text to link directly to your website.

By no means do you need memberships to all four sites above. I just wanted to give you options. I personally only keep a membership open to two at a time and then switch up every so often.

This is an incredibly powerful backlink building technique that will help you rank for long tailed keywords.

How to Build Links to Your Websites: Social Bookmarking & Web 2.0 SEO

Jason Keith — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 18:57:36 +0000

This is part two of my special series called "How to Build Backlinks for Your Websites". Today we are going to talk about social bookmarking and web 2.0 sites.

Social Bookmarking

Let's first discuss social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to organize, store, maintain and look for bookmarks of useful resources online. It is not like file sharing where the actual resources are shared. With social bookmarking, just the bookmarks that reference the resources are shared. It is basically like everyone sharing their web browser favorites with other like minded people.

As search engine marketers, we can use social bookmarking to advance our link building efforts. The more we get our websites bookmarked, the more backlinks we have to our sites.

I personally use software like Bookmarking Demon to get this done. This type of software allows you to create accounts at bookmarking sites then share your websites into the system.

The goal is to get your site bookmarked by many different users using your primary keywords if possible.

Web 2.0 Sites

Web 2.0 sites are basically websites that allow you to create accounts or blogs where you can share information. Examples of popular web 2.0 sites include Squidoo, Hubpages, Weebly, WordPress, Blogger plus many others.

To use web 2.0 sites for backlinking, you simply create accounts at the various sites and add articles or other type of content to them and link back to your website.

To save time, I typically use The Best Spinner to spin one article and create unique versions for each web 2.0 site. Then I will cross link the web 2.0 sites between each other and link into my main site. This creates a "link wheel" effect.

In summary, web 2.0 and social bookmarking are two very powerful link building techniques to add to your SEO efforts.

How to Build Backlinks to your Websites Part One: Article Marketing Strategies & Tips

Jason Keith — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:41:12 +0000

I'm excited today to bring you this installment of my new series called "How to Build Backlinks to your Websites".

Today I want to talk about article marketing. Article marketing is one of the most time tested SEO techniques. What I like most about article marketing is that if done right, it not only helps build backlinks to your website, but it also can drive targeted direct traffic to your website. Not all backlink techniques can do that!

If you are new to article marketing, the very first thing you need to do is to open an account at EzineArticles.com. It is hands-down the best article directory on the planet. After you get comfortable with EzineArticles.com, you can start also submitting articles to some of the other good article sites.

When you are writing articles for submission, there are three main areas to focus on:

The article title
The article body
The author resource box

The article title is very important. You will want to write a headline that includes your keywords as search engine bait, yet is still enticing to actual web users to click on.

The article body is the actual part of your article where you list your content. I personally like to keep the article body somewhere between 350 and 500 words to provide good content, but to also leave the reader wanting more so he or she will click through to my website for more.

The author resource box is maybe the most important component of your article. This is the area you can leave a link back to your website. Most article directories allow you to insert anchor text here which means you can use the actual keyword you want to rank for!

Below are some frequently asked questions I get about article marketing:

I am not a good writer. How can I do article marketing?

First off, there is no requirement that you be "good" at writing to submit articles. It does help, however, if your article is readable. If you find it challenging to write articles, I recommend you checkout Instant Article Factory. It is a great product that will help you crank out high quality, informative articles in under 10 minutes.

Where should I submit my articles?

As mentioned earlier, the first place you will want to submit to is EzineArticles.com. After that, there are a number of good sites.

I personally like to use Submit Your Article to submit to all the second tier article directories. This service uses a system called ArticleLeverage to rewrite portions of your article so that each article directory gets a unique version of your article. This is good strategy for getting by search engine duplicate content filters.

Another good service to use to submit unique copies of articles to various directories is Unique Article Wizard. This service is similar to the Submit Your Article service mentioned in the previous paragraph, but requires a bit more work on the front end. It is incredibly effective though for link building.

Should I Submit the Same Article to all Directories?

A few years ago, I felt you could get benefit from submitting the same exact article to 100's of article directories. Today, that is not the case. You need to submit an altered version of your article to all the major directories to get past duplicate content filters so your links pass along the juice you need them to.

A quick and easy way to get multiple copies of your article to submit is to use an article spinner such as The Best Spinner. This software has a massive built-in thesaurus that is constantly growing. Creating unique versions of your articles won't get any easier.

DirectoryPress WordPress Directory Theme & Plugin Review

Jason Keith — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:05:36 +0000

Using DirectoryPress to Run a WordPress Website Directory

One of the most effective ways to promote a website is to submit it to directories. A website directory creates backlinks to your website, which in turn improves your site's performance on search engines. By running a search engine directory, you can charge the owners of websites money in order to be listed.

While this is a great way of earning some extra money, running a directory can be time consuming. You would need to set up the site, organize a payment system, and constantly weed out dead links. That is why the WordPress Directory Theme is so handy. With this easy to install WordPress theme, you can run your own directory and make extra money without a lot of coding knowledge.

Wordpress has made blogging and content management much easier to manage, and now it is doing the same thing for website directories. The WordPress Directory Theme allows your customers to choose from a variety of packages that you can specify.

It is completely Adsense and SEO friendly, and it supports payment from most major payment gateways. You don't need to worry about spending hours adding and removing links from your directory – the theme does all the hard work for you. This will give you plenty more time to actually promote your directory rather than spending that time maintaining it.

What's even better is that one purchase of this theme gives you unlimited installations. You can set up as many directories as you would like. You essentially have unlimited earning potential from simply purchasing this one theme from both ads and membership payments.

Website directories are useful for anyone who runs a website, and by owning and operating your own directory you can earn money by promoting these sites. WordPress Directory Theme makes running your directory faster and easier than ever.