Bloggers guide to practical link building

Are you ready for some practical link building? Grab your cup of coffee – put some music on (Earth Wind and Fire is always great by the way) and lets do some practical link builiding. We all know we have to do link building – but where do we start? Well here are 4 easy steps you can take.

First things first

Check out your own site. Why would somebody want to link to your site? If you don’t know that, you will get into trouble very soon. You will need to understand why people want to link to your site. Is it interesting? Controversial? Funny? Educational? You have to write an interesting post with a catchy title. So start by going to www.linkbaitgenerator.com and get yourself a catchy title for your post.

Now why do people link to your site? Start checking it out with Google and type in your URL, say “link:linkbaitgenerator.com”

Write down on some paper (yes, I said paper lol) – What kind of sites are linking to you? Why do they like you? What are they saying about you and your posts? Check out the anchor text they use. Do they link to other sites too (these are your competitors).

Now its time for your strategy

It is important to understand who is linking to your competitors. Who are your main competitors? Who are creating back links to them? Identify their anchor texts and compare it to yours. There are many free websites on the web that can help you. You can try www.backlinkwatch.com.

Begin identifying the websites that are linking to both you and your competitor – that will make your list a little shorter and more manageable. So now we know about our own site and about our competitors sites. Do you still have some coffee left in your cup? Music still on? Ready for more?

Time to get the links NOW

Now go through your lists. Your competitors, your link opportunities, who is already linking to websites like yours, who else are they linking to. Make a top 10 list or top 20. Write them down on a piece of paper. Not in a Word file or Excel file. I want you to see them on your desk. Now its time to do some keyword search. So if you are selling used cars – to get high ranking you need to get links for websites with high page rank, high traffic sites, I would do a search in Google and write down which sites you want links from. You will have to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. If you are selling used cars – what is the customer really searching for? What would they type into their search engine of choice? I would think – used cars – max 3 years old cars – Ford – Toyota – blue cars – cheap cars – quality cars. These different keyword phrases are your target opportunities. To get ideas for keywords you can use Google Adwords Keyword Tool (great tool and free) or maybe Wordtracker.

Time for building

Okay now you know your own site, you have to catchy titles, you know your competitors, you know your link opportunities. I would spend 1 hour a day link building. So every day from 9 to 10 am (yes everyday!) you take out your piece of paper. Go to the website you want links from. Get in contact with them and make it impossible for them not to link to you. You can be sending them an article, writing on their blog, let the webmaster know about something you can offer to the sites customers etc.. And you will see in a month’s time your work will pay off. This is tomorrow’s marketing, guys. Spend your time linkbuilding – not ‘working….’ on Facebook. Now how’s that coffee going?

Best regards Henrik www.SeoCustomer.com