Using New Content to Build Links
Sometimes, link building is more than just searching out sites
to request links from. Sometimes you have to get creative in how
you build links.
In this article, we look at another way of building links that
doesn't really require you to go out and search for relevant
sites to request links from.
The web is growing at a phenomenal rate.
Technorati, a popular blog search and syndication site estimates
that the blogosphere alone doubles in size every 5 months. As of
the end of July 2005, Technorati was tracking over 14.2 million
weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links.
Who knows how much the rest of the web grows? I would bet that
while it doesn't double every 5 months its rate of growth is
pretty impressive.
It is because of this growth in the web that other forms of link
building become somewhat easier. I am talking about building
links through content creation and publishing.
Chances are you are reading this article on the Text Link
Brokers blog, or one of a number of syndication partners who
agree to republish the article with links intact.
Through such syndication, you could come across this article
through a variety of high profile websites on the web. In
addition, these high profile sites are industry specific.
This means that any links I embed into this article (which is
then syndicated) will ultimately point back to this site on
important key phrases.
Think about this, for the time it takes me to write this
article, I could have built as many as 2 dozen high quality,
keyword rich links back to both the main site as well as the
blog site.
Normally, for me to build 2 dozen high quality links for one of
my clients I'd have to start with a list of about 500 somewhat
related sites, filtering out those that are lower quality and
submitting to 50 to 100 sites in hopes of achieving those 20 or
so links.
And it has been my experience that I would be lucky to achieve 5
to 10 links from that initial list of 500 sites.
All this would have taken me about 5 or 6 hours ? even longer if
I hadn't used a few tools to help gather those links.
Yet here I am with much less effort, able to achieve almost the
same number of links.
That's the nice thing about content ? it can do so many things
for your site: -A growing site helps encourage search engine
crawlers to visit repeatedly. -A growing site has more pages
which have the potential to rank for other phrases. -A growing
site offers more entry points to searchers. -A growing site
offers more opportunities for others to link to it. -A growing
site can help positively influence link popularity (if internal
navigation is coded properly -And More...
There are many other great reasons for starting an ongoing
content development program. Aside from the link building
opportunities, you can also begin to develop your online
reputation as an expert in your field.
Further, as visitors do searches on search engines, there is a
greater opportunity for your content to appear for those
searches, helping to build your brand.
If you take you content development program a step further and
syndicate your content to a wider audience (via blog pings and
so on) you can reach even more people, potentially building even
more links and allowing your name (and brand) to reach beyond
the ?traditional? web.
For example, when I do a search for my name, I find myself in
traditional organic SERPs but also on sites like Google News, as
well as most of the main blog search engines.
This is because this site, and others I write for, are
syndicated. Plus those sites that I mentioned earlier ? the
syndication partners ? are also syndicated.
So my articles appear numerous times for the same search. This
helps build my reputation online.
Not only does my name appear throughout the web, but articles
like these also get picked up by even more sources. Ones that
perhaps didn't read this blog, or one of the syndication
partners, but they may have found it on Bloglines, Technorati or
any of the other large blog search engines.
Then, the article gets picked up by even more sources, in its
entirety, with links and all.
So, the number of new links I've created has now jumped from the
original two on this article, to a couple dozen on our
syndication partners to ????
It's interesting to see where articles get picked up. I've found
myself quoted in PDFs belonging to Universities, on foreign
sites where I've been translated into Korean, Chinese and even
Russian. And, you guessed it, the links remain intact.
That's because these articles aren't like news ? they last much
longer than a press release which, while gaining huge exposure
for 2 or 3 days, quickly disappears.
The articles last ?forever? because they continue to be
circulated by various sites who find them in searches, and
either copy them or link to them. Then their sites get
syndicated and found by others who then also link or copy the
article.
You may begin to see that this type of linking can go on almost
forever, because what I'm writing here isn't necessarily
newsworthy, but it is an article that people will find useful
for months and years to come (I hope). As it becomes more and
more established on the web (and more entrenched, because of the
number of high quality related links already pointing to it) it
begins to take on a life of its own.
And the more articles which I write for this site which appear
like this, the better it is for the site.
So, what is the downside to this plan?
The only one, really, is that you have to be able to write. And
not just scribble your ideas down, but make them intelligible
and easy to read.
This is what takes the practice. But I can tell you that while
you may (and likely will) labor for hours over your first few
articles, over time they do get easier.
So much so that you will begin composing them in your sleep, or
while you are waiting for your bus, or any place else where you
have ?down time.?
So if you are concerned that a massive and costly link building
campaign is your only option to increasing your online
visibility think again. Sometimes something as simple as an ?I
was thinking? article can drive dozens of new relevant links to
your site.
About the author: Rob Sullivan - SEO Specialist and Internet
Marketing Consultant. Any reproduction of this article needs to
have an html link pointing to http://www.textlinkbrokers.com