Where do you find your link opportunities?

[jsteele823]

Seems a recurring theme is the ego involved of the person linking.

If you can pitch a link so that having it will make the owner of that link look smarter, more professional, more handsome, or richer, then they're more likely to place it.

It's all about presentation.

[Dr.Marie]

Just thought of another one. A member of seochat successfully got a link from me by offering me some of his customer's product in exchange for a testimonial. I benefited because I got free product and I wrote a blog post about the stuff and his company got a link. Win-win.

[gazzahk]

There have been some awesome ideas shared here so I will add a few comments/suggestions…

Please people keep adding those methods you have used to find link opportunities.. ie not the links themselves but the opportunity to get links…

I will start here by mentioning “link profiles” as compared to just “links”….. Rubbish links may have a place in making a link profile more natural looking and less manipulative looking…. Link exchanges, blog commenting, directory submission, cheap 3 way linking services can be a way to vary your overall link profile (just do not overdo it or expect these type of links to help rankings much). This may be especially true if you are buying powerful links. The ‘quantity’ can be used to hide the ‘quality’. This may make you less susceptible to competitors identifying your paid link scheme and thus less likely to be reported to SEs for breaking their TOS.

Using other peoples links – many use 301 redirects of expired domains as a way of getting links. This can be difficult if you do not know what you are doing and can result in a fair bit of wasted money… A better version of this for someone wishing to start a new website or have a new website with no/few links of its own is to troll your main keyword search terms and look for a stale website ie one that has not been changed in a long time (can use wayback machine to help here) that has significant links (or a very amateurish looking site). Approach the owner and see if you can buy the site. Develop your site on this site. The closer to the original theme the more likely you will to keep the links.

Joining organizations / Government listings – It may be possible to join a reputable organsiation and get a link back to your site in a membership list ie chamber of commerce in the area, professional association etc. It is also possible that a particular license may allow you to get a link on a government website. I found for example one place I was listed by the government simply asking if they would include my web address in my listing resulted in them adding it. I got an excellent 3 links from just asking…

Enough for now.. People please keep the ideas coming and I will add some more later….

[Lb1878]

Sticky? I think this is well worth it. This is so far from your typical link building post and answer session. I knew this was going to be a good thread as Dr. Marie noted.

Something I've done in the past was wrote up a small blurb about another site within the industry. It was a site we did not have any information about and his blog had high PR and related links pointing to it. We linked to his site and in return, we got a link back from him on his home page. I believe it than became a blogroll link so I'm not sure how well that helped us out from that point on.

It turned out that he wrote for a magazine in our industry and he contacted the bosses and they did a webinar. We saw a nice boost in the SERP's for many terms.

Something else I like along the same lines are writing quick summaries or profiles about another company, manufacturer, in your industry, etc. We than contact them and let them know about it. I won't necessarily ask for a link but feel out the conversations and than approach them for a link if the opportunity is there. It typically came automatically.

[Prof.stan]

Some add I see in internet resources for instance, links from PR 9, 10, 000 do-follow Blog URLs each month. Getting links from big hub or networking sites. Getting links from high PR web directory or corporate sites. I always exited to knew how these are beneficial for traffic and rankings, but I got many example for corporate sites who had being penalized by Google due to this. So now I really don't want test on this approaches.

[NathanielB]

First of, great tips guys, I will have to look into including some of those into my link building practices along side what I already do

lol from the two pointless posts above, it looks like you spoke too soon Lb1878

myblogguest.com was mentioned on the first page, and I would just like to add, that I am a member of that site because I have a couple of blogs I need guest posters for, of which I have got some great guest posts/content from MBG but...

As well as getting some great free and unique content, I also managed to score one of the best links I have for my guest blogging site from using MBG (paid a little for it but thats beside the point), so it is highly worth joining such sites, not only for guest posting (be that getting posts or giving them away) but also for networking!

Talk of networking, I have also been playing around with twitter and linkedin lately, both of which have scored me some links from relevant sites as I have been adding people and they tend to check out my site as the look over my friends request.

So my link building tip is...
Don't forget to keep up with networking, be it on social sites, community sites, membership site and so on, you can get to know some good people and gain highly relevant links if your site proves to have quality content your new contacts like!

I will add some more later, but right now, got to get back to building some links

[googler]

Stickied, thanks everyone for the great information!

[NathanielB]

Nice work on the sticky guys!

This is possible the simplest and oldest method of link building but how many people do it right?!

I will do this in steps as i do it myself:
1. Search the keyword you want to rank for, the hardest keyword in your niche, yes thats what I said the hardest one!
2. Go to the link profiles of the top 3 (you can do more later if you want)
3. Get the top linking 'domains' (thats domains, not links)
4. Check who links to those domains and with what anchor text.

Once you have those details you can keep pushing back as far as you want, which in most case should give you plenty of links to working on getting your hands on which should (in theory). Will add more details tomoz as off home now

[rickeliason]

If you are an authority in your niche you could set up some form of recognized awards scheme. I have seen this working between cooking/food blogs particularly, where a good blog is awarded a "stamp of approval" or digital trophy that they can display on their blog (which craftily links back to the awarding website).

You could be that awarding website dishing out badges of honour to a hand-selected best-of-the-best within your niche. The recipient will be happy that their work is being recognised and you will get link back to your site.

[jsteele823]

this is only half the job. What do you do with your fancy lists after the fact? Generic email spam? Phone calls? How do you find the right person to contact? What success rate do you have at getting these links? My guess is very very slim chances. fact?

Nice work on the sticky guys!
This is possible the simplest and oldest method of link building but how many people do it right?!
I will do this in steps as i do it myself:
1. Search the keyword you want to rank for, the hardest keyword in your niche, yes thats what I said the hardest one!
2. Go to the link profiles of the top 3 (you can do more later if you want)
3. Get the top linking 'domains' (thats domains, not links)
4. Check who links to those domains and with what anchor text.
Once you have those details you can keep pushing back as far as you want, which in most case should give you plenty of links to working on getting your hands on which should (in theory). Will add more details tomoz as off home now

[distinctseo]

People have already mentioned mine. In terms of SEO

1) Easy way to grasp your market is to do competitor research and see who links to them.
2) Acquisitions of existing and expired domains, the former far more valuable on average.

Of course, at the end of the day getting really great links is built on a foundation of great content. That's what people fail to realise, you can have all the schemes in the world, but good websites don't link to junk.

[SEO_AM]

...getting really great links is built on a foundation of great content. That's what people fail to realise, you can have all the schemes in the world, but good websites don't link to junk.

This is the best and most valuable hint.

I have written before that we no longer look for links (except under very special circumstances). Due to our ever improving content, between 9/15/2011 and yesterday our link count on Google webmaster tools increased by 602 to 16,205 backlinks. All one-ways and none of them asked for or purchased. The secret: CONTENT.

[Dr.Marie]

SEO_AM...how long did it take you before your website got to the point where its content attracted so many links without you doing promotion?

[gazzahk]

So my link building tip is...
Don't forget to keep up with networking, be it on social sites, community sites, membership site and so on, you can get to know some good people and gain highly relevant links if your site proves to have quality content your new contacts like!

I will add some more later, but right now, got to get back to building some links

I would love to hear from more people how they use social networking to gain links. I have been trying to look at ways of implementing it for my business and just see heaps of problems in trying to do so.

So my friends please share exactly how you use social networking to generate linking opportunities...

[SEO_AM]

Ok here is a bit of our story...

We have been online since 1996. Until January of this year we kept our original design with excellent static content. To get backlinks in the beginning we had to get the word out using various techniques. By December of 2010 we had approximately 725 one-way backlinks and ranked on first page (mostly #1) on very competitive keywords. Our site had about 400 pages.

In mid-2010 I decided to go with a brand new design using our massive databases on US companies and their industries to create dynamic reports on the fly. In addition we broke up our 3,600 term glossary into a database allowing us to create individual pages for individual terms that are also created on the fly. The old text content was mostly retained with new graphics and navigation.

We launched the new design the first part of January, 2011. Going dynamic from those 400 indexed pages has seen us increase our pages indexed in Google to over 40,000 pages. We get links to the individual company reports as well as the individual term pages in the glossary. It took us totally by surprise on how well the new content has been received.

I project that the backlink rate of increase will remain and possibly increase as the pages go more viral among college students.

No matter what subject your site is built upon, I highly recommend creating a glossary. I recommend going dynamic on the terms and creating individual pages for each term. Students like that approach and it is great for Adsense.

EDIT: In creating your glossary DO NOT list all terms with definitions on one page. It is too easy for the creeps to copy and paste. We had to fight content theft for years until we went dynamic with individual pages on the glossary.