Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar

If your site isn’t a back-link superstar, you’ll never be an internet mogul! My sincere desire is that you can use this article to find more success in your online endeavors.

Why most articles about getting links aren’t worth time it takes to read them:

• Most (I’ve seen a few exceptions) don’t have a single original idea.
• Most contain too much technical jargon that no one understands. What’s the point of creating a list for the 3 people in the known universe that know what a ‘meme tracker’ is? The 3 people that know what a ‘meme tracker’ is can now proceed to close their browsers and start making fun of this article.
• Most are lists of links to other lists that have links to other lists that have links to other lists that list the links - ok, you get the point.
• Most don’t tell you why you need to do the things on the list. Who implements ideas that they don’t understand?
• People don’t know where to start because the ideas people should implement first aren’t necessarily listed first.

Why this article isn’t worthless:

• On this list, you will see original ideas that you have never seen before.
• It doesn’t have the above, annoying characteristics.
• If you find technical jargon, you will find out what it means.
• It doesn’t link to other lists; this is the end-all of lists on the subject.
• The methods you should do first, appear first.

102 Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar:

1. Provide more value than other blogs and sites. This is by far the most neglected area by all of us! We want to market our sites like crazy, but conveniently forget that we need to offer more to our readers. We want to have 300,000 hits a day but we only want to write five 300 word articles per month. Steve Pavlina said that it should be easy to make a million dollars if only he could figure out how to provide a million dollars worth of value. Sites that have that kind of value don’t have any problem getting the link love.
2. Add a blog to your site. Blogs are capable of getting a lot more back-link love than regular websites. There are several reasons for this:
   • Blogs are tracked in real-time. Blog search engines publish the most recent blog entries they can find. This means your new entries get linked to instantly.
   • Blogs are much easier to update than regular websites. You can create a lot more content in the same amount of time. There is no need to design a new page for a new article. You simply write a new article and publish. Your increase in content will increase your visibility and ability to get links.
   • Blogs get links from other blogs. If you run a regular website that isn’t a blog, you will have a harder time getting links from bloggers. Bloggers mostly read and follow blogs!

   If your site is or has a blog, well done. If you have no idea how to setup a blog you should visit the following entry of this site, “5263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog.“

3. Post relentlessly. The more you are able to post, the more you will appear in blog search engines like Technorati, Google Blog Search, and Blog Search Engine. Note: People aren’t going to link to posts that are garbage so don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. If your site isn’t a blog, update often and then go back to #2 and add a blog.
4. Make sure that your blog is set to ping. If you’re using a WordPress blog you will find this in your admin section: Go to Options and then Writing. Make sure that you have some blog search engines in the Update Services box at the bottom. The ones I’m using are:
   http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
   http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2/
   http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
   http://ping.feedburner.com
   http://www.bloglines.com/ping
   http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
5. Use Technorati tags (follow the link to the left for a lesson on what they are and how to implement them. Opens in a new window.). Getting into more categories in Technorati and other blog search engines will get you more links from them, exposing you to other bloggers and webmasters that can link to you. To easily create Technorati tags, use this simple tool: Tag Generator. All you have to do is type in the keyword, and the tool will make the code for the tag.
6. Create authority posts. An authority post by my definition takes at least 10 hours to write. These are posts that people are likely to be linked to. My post, “5263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog” has already been linked to quite a bit. Authority posts are more thorough than most other posts. They’re usually longer than other posts. Authority posts must be easy to find (follow this link for a lesson on where you should put your authority posts) on your site, getting them more exposure than other posts.
7. Have your friends tag your best work in Digg. (Digg is a site that allows people to vote whether they like and article or not.) Your friends can get the article moving in the right direction. There are also other social bookmarking sites that are very popular. Here are a few of the biggies: Reddit, Netscape, Del.Icio.Us, and StumbleUpon. This won’t do a whole lot of good if your article isn’t good, but if it is it can bring you thousands of visitors per day, which will link to a good amount of links.
8. Encourage readers to Digg authority articles. If they like the article or post, they will vote for it for you. It only takes a few seconds.
9. Make your articles easy to Digg. If you look at the end of this article, you will find a button for Digg, Reddit, and some other imporant social bookmarking sites. These can make a huge difference and can add to a lot more exposure and links. To install those buttons I used the Sociable plugin for WordPress.
10. Creating list-posts. Examples: “Top 10 Ways To Stop Being A Lazy Pig”, “Top 5 Internet Marketing Gurus”, “Top 25 Reasons Why 99% Of Bloggers Don’t Make It”, “99 Ways To Make Your Blog Or Site A Backlink Super Power”. People love linking to that stuff. Place your list-post in a prominent location on your site (follow this link for a lesson on where you should put your authority posts) or people will never find it.
11. Recognize your field’s gurus. Link to them often. They are going to watch closely the source of their traffic and will definitely see if you’re sending some their way. If you send them traffic, they may start reading your site. If they find something they like, they might link to it. One link from a guru in your field could mean more than 100 weaker links. Gurus are usually pretty generous in spreading the link love. That’s a hint, hint to Darren Rowse, Shoemoney (Jeremy Schoemaker), John Chow, and Steve Pavlina, all of which I read daily.
12. Publish an RSS feed. An RSS feed is a news feed that people can subscribe to. They can see if you have written new entries on your site without having to go there. Many webmasters stay up to date by reading RSS feeds from the sites in their industry. If you don’t have a feed, these webmasters will never see your updates. If you have a WordPress blog, it creates an RSS feed for you. Other sites will naturally syndicate the feed. (They will post it in their site) Some of them will link to you as the source.
13. Setup your feed on feedburner. This makes your feed subscriptions easy to track and allows you to encourage users to subscribe. After you have quite a few subscribers, it makes getting additional subscriptions easy.
14. Comment on other blogs. Always fill in the URL box so that the owner can find your site. Good comments will spark more interest than dull ones. Answering other people’s questions in comments gets them excited - one of the most effective ways to spark an online rambling about you and your site.
15. Respond to comments left on your blog. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to get full write ups about this site just because I responded to people’s questions and comments. When people’s questions are answered, you become the authority. People can’t help but link to the authority.
16. Respond to your email. Be kind to people. Be cool to people. Help them with their questions. If it’s a hard question to answer, post the answer on your site so that you get the content. Email the person that asked and give them the URL to their answer. Being helpful to others will earn you respect and link love.
17. Link out to other blogs like crazy. If you link to interesting articles on other blogs, they will link back to interesting articles that you have. Bloggers usually check their site stats every 30 seconds, they’ll see that you have linked to them. (It’s an addiction!) Many people don’t want to link out because it spreads their pagerank thin. Would you rather have pagerank or money? I, personally would rather have money. Pagerank will come. It won’t do you any good to have high pagerank if you don’t have any traffic, and most people don’t realize that the two aren’t as tied together as it seems.
18. Offer to be a guest blogger. If you can write for someone’s site, you will certainly be able to link to related resources on your site. If you’re going to do this one, write a killer article and submit it to an A-lister (leading blogger in your field) who has a high-traffic site.
19. Timestamp your posts. (Timestamping is adjusting your post entry so that it is posted on a certain day, at a certain time. You can finish an article on Saturday and set it to post on Monday.) There are more visitors at Technorati, Google Blog Search, and Digg on weekdays. Never publish an really good article on a weekend, you’ll be off the front page of Technorati before all the visitors are there. If you’re using a WordPress blog, there is a Timestamp option on your “Write Post” page. You can set the date and time you want the article to publish, and then click publish. It won’t show up on your site until that date and time.
20. Show related posts in your blog entries. A blogger might find your site via one article but find a different one that they’re really interested in. Showing your related posts can help them to be found more easily. Interest+Visibility=Links. If you’re using WordPress, you can find out why and how to use the related posts plugin here.
21. Use deep-linking. Deep-linking is when you link to older posts or pages in new posts or pages. This article links to quite a few of my older articles that I think are good resources for the people reading this one. This can help your readers and expose your good work to them.
22. Use meme trackers to find hot topics. Meme trackers are sites that track information published on blogs and news sites, and provide information about which topics are the hottest. The big meme trackers are Memeorandum and Techmeme.com. Technorati also has a type of meme tracker. They show you the hottest tags in real time. When you find hot discussions, contribute to them. Your opinions can bring valuable visitors to your site, and will get linked to from other opinions on the topic. If you’re posts are tagged properly, people will be able to find them easily, so make sure you use tags on your articles, as you learned earlier.
23. Do blog reviews. (Follow the link to the left to find a list of blogs that do review exchanges.) Tons of webmasters will link to you in exchange for reviewing their site.
24. Do link exchanges. You never know if a sitewik or blog will exchange links with you, unless you ask. Since most bloggers won’t have traditional link pages (thank goodness), you should probably find one of their posts that is interesting, and link to it in one of your articles. Ask them to do the same.
25. Add a page that invites people to link to you. Offer to link back. Ask them to link to an interesting article on your site and tell them that you’ll link to an interesting article on their site. Create a contact form so that they can let you know quickly and easily that they have taken you up on your offer. You have to be willing to help others or this method will never work.
26. Trade blogroll links. Some bloggers will trade sitewide (this means on every page) or blogroll links. I would only do it if I felt that the site truly had something special to offer to my readers.
27. Ask me to do a link exchange. Better yet, link to me first and then ask me to linkback. I will! Even better, link to me everyday and don’t ask for me to link back. You can get a link from me here.
28. Get a MyBlogLog account. MyBlogLog.com is like MySpace for bloggers. It it a place where bloggers go to meet each other and find new blogging friends. You can link to your blog(s) from your profile page, and other bloggers will have a chance to check out your work, which could lead to additional links.
29. Start a MyBlogLog.com Community. You can create your own community that members can join. Be extra social and invite members to join your community. This exposes a lot more bloggers to your site.
30. Do article exchanges with webmasters on your field.
31. Do a scheduled, recurring guest blog exchange with someone from your field. Writing for each other can give you both exposure to a new group of individuals that are interested in your field. You can link to resources on your own site each time.
32. Read your posts before publishing. Edit, edit, and edit again. Make sure they’re right before you show them to the world. Make sure your writing is easy to read and grammatically correct.
33. Run spell check. This probably sounds stupid but I’ve been called out in my comments a few times and I doubt that I’ll get any links from the people that noticed my spelling errors.
34. Learn more about your field. If you’re site doesn’t have any good material, you probably won’t have much luck getting links from other bloggers.
35. Create walk-throughs. I created a walk-through for one of my cell phone sites that teaches people how to connect their Motorola Krzr cell phone to their computer. People love me for it, and I got links from Cnet, Mobiledia, and HowardForums because of it. These are 3 of the biggest cell phone sites! You can walk people through installing ads, writing a good post, starting a blog, baking banana bread, riding a bike, or anything related to your field.
36. Use giveaways. Hold a raffle where you give away something cool. The participants have to link to you in order to get in their name into the raffle. If you gave away an Xbox 360 you would probably get a lot more links than you would if you gave away a snickers bar. (This method is only down this far because it costs money, otherwise it would be very near the top because it works like crazy)
37. Write articles tailored to beginners. Most people in your field are beginners! Most bloggers in general are beginners. You can’t connect with them by writing about PHP scripting and dynamic server protocols. You have to assume that your readers know nothing about the topic without talking down to them. They will show you their appreciation.
38. Submit articles to article sites like: Article Dashboard, GoArticles, and Article City. They will also allow you to place a link to your site at the bottom of the article. You can write an article about anything in your field. Most article sites like the articles to be about 500 words.
39. Submit stories to news sites. Even huge sites like ESPN.com accept stories from free lancers.
40. Review products on your site. Most brands are trying desperately to get more exposure. If you provide a thorough, fair review of a company’s product, it might get linked to. For best results review products from new, up-and-coming companies.
41. Review products on other sites like ePinions. You can quickly establish yourself as an expert by writing thorough reviews of products in your field. Some of the traffic that hits your review will follow the trail back to your site, leading to links.
42. Write testimonials for sites whose services have helped you. The testimonials themselves will often turn into links, and the webmasters will surely check out your site.
43. Write a testimonial for me. I’ll let you link to yourself in it. You can see other testimonials that people have left here.
44. Write and submit a press release. Sites like PRWeb will publish them and link to you.
45. Alert webmasters in your field when you write solid content that will be useful for their readers. Don’t bother webmasters by updating them on every little thing you add to your site. Alert them when you have authority articles.
46. Alert friends when you create something that will help them. If you’re helping them they should definitely give you some link love.
47. If you don’t have any friends, get some fast.
48. Write to help others. If you can help other people to find more success, you deserve a link from them. You will probably get one.
49. Mentor other aspiring bloggers. I help out quite a few friends and most of them have me on their blogroll. They also link to me from time to time, and read my site often. Some of them will probably get really big eventually and those links will pay off enormously!
50. Try to meet other bloggers offline. Every city has bloggers and other internet marketers. These relationships can lead to ‘mutual plugging’ and idea swapping.
51. Create surveys. A good survey can make a person (or a group of people) feel important and could lead to some free marketing from them.
52. Poll your readers. People like to participate in polls and are super interested in the outcomes. Many times they will link to the outcome post of a poll just because they participated in the poll.
53. Comment on online newspapers. Most of the links you make won’t have direct SEO benefit thanks to the “no follow” command, but the writers will follow the trail back to your site.
54. Interview other bloggers. Many bloggers want to be famous! They will jump at the chance to be interviewed. Add a page to your blog that let’s people in your field know that you are interested in interviewing them. Tell them how to sign up and they will. I can almost guarantee that they’ll be linking back to the interview once it’s published.
55. Cite the source of your information. This good will often sparks reciprocation. Webmasters and bloggers love to be talked about.
56. Use forums and discussion boards. I sometimes try to find something that people are really confused about. If you answer their question they will automatically start to wonder who you are. Most of the time I have to research the problem myself to be able to answer them. The best way to answer their question is by creating a short walkthrough on your site that teaches them. Show them where to find it and you have yourself a link. That technique will also work on the next few suggestions.
57. Ask your local, public library to link to you with their website.
58. Answer people’s questions on Yahoo! Answers. You are able to link to resources on other websites that will help answer people’s questions. If you don’t already have a resource on your site that will help answer a question, create one. Link to from Yahoo! Answers. You have a link, and some more valuable content for your site.
59. Answer questions on Google Groups. Very similar to the one for Yahoo! Answers.
60. Submit to free web directories. The biggie is DMOZ. (Don’t even bother unless you have at least 100 posts on your blog.) Directories are lists of thousands of sites. One of them should be you!
61. Submit to blog directories like BOTW. Blog directories are thousands of blogs, listed in categories.
62. Submit to paid directories. Don’t do it unless you have to budget. The biggie is Yahoo! Directory.
63. Write controversial content. Sometimes you can really get people talking by criticizing famous people and brands.
64. Write about celebrities. People eat that stuff up and if you write something that people don’t know, you will get links from all over the place.
65. Write about the leaders in your field. Tell others why you think they’re successful.
66. Attack the leaders in your field. (This one I would never do.) Write why they should do things differently. I’m sure I could get a load of links by attacking Darren Rowse, Shoemoney (Jeremy Schoemaker), John Chow, and Steve Pavlina, but I wouldn’t do it because I have too much respect for them. That said, I have to admit that I could get some serious traffic by getting some dirt on them or attacking their business practices.
67. Write in English. English is the major language of the internet and blog written in English cater to a much larger audience.
68. Install a text translator on your site. (I haven’t done this one yet but it’s one of my ideas for the near future.) Surely people that blog in other languages would tell their readers about www.mysite.com that has a version that they can more easily read. I would love to have a version of this site in Chinese, which is the second biggest language of the internet. It will eventually be the biggest.
69. Create a contact page with a contact form. If people don’t have to open up their email to get in touch with you, it will be easier for them to ask you for a link exchange.
70. Create a testimonial page. Allow people to link to themselves in their testimonials. Add your site to our list of sites that want testimonials.
71. Create a Wikipedia page about yourself or your business. Wikipedia links don’t count due to a “no follow” command, but you will gain some exposure that will surely lead to additional links.
72. Create a Squidoo page about yourself.
73. Join the Better Business Bureau - for this one you have to have a business!
74. Join local clubs that have websites. Maybe give them a few pointers for their site and find out if they list members. Include a link on your member’s page.
75. Check for local government directories - it should be easy to get into local, online listings.
76. Donate to an online charity. They usually list contributors. Make sure you donate using the name of your site.
77. Place an ad in Craigslist. (Craigslist is a very large, online classified site)
78. Market your site as a free resource for local businesses. I told an attorney friend of mine about this site so that he could get some promotional ideas for his company’s site. Sure enough he linked to me.
79. Better yet, hire a publicist. They can probably get you on the news so that lots of people and businesses can use you as a resource.
80. Hire a link building consultant. Andy Hagans is a great one. This one is down this far on the list because it costs $ and isn’t guaranteed.
81. Hire a starving student and pay them $8 an hour to do everything on this list for 8 hours a day.
82. Get some interns that you can teach to build links. Create an LLC called MyCompany Marketing, LLC. Set up an internship program with the marketing department at the local university or college. Get 2 students to work 4 hours a day doing everything on this list for free.
83. Get some interns to write for you. Start a second LLC called MyCompany Publishing, LLC. Set up an intership with the journalism department at the local college and get a few free interns (writers) for your blogs. That way you can start a few new blogs that you can use as valuable resources to get links from.
84. Start a few more blogs. You can create free blogs on Blogspot if you want. Give your main blog a link once in a while. There isn’t any reason to make 1,000 links with it, just link once in a while. Maybe you could even update the blogs once a week. Who knows, you might make some money with those as well.
85. Encourage your friends to start blogs. Some of my friends have started blogs and I have links from all of them. I actually didn’t really encourage them, but they asked me and it has worked out great for my blog.
86. Create images and tools that people can use on MySpace, FaceBook, and other social networking sites.
87. Link to your blog from your MySpace page. If you don’t have one, set one up. Try to get a lot of friends in there, because the more friends you have in MySpace, the more traffic your space will get.
88. Ask your friends to link to you from their MySpace pages. These links won’t be majorly valuable from an SEO standpoint, but could bring some extra visitors, which lead to additional links.
89. Create a new MySpace page for your site. Become friends with other pages like yours.
90. Create a WordPress template. I’m not a designer, but if I was I would create hundreds of these. If a person uses your template they will be linking to you with every page of their site. There are millions of pages in the world running WordPress.
91. Create a Mambo template. Mambo is a content management system like WordPress that allows users to create websites.
92. Hold and sponser a writing contest in your field with a giveaway to the winner. Make the contestants publish the article on their sites while linking to yours.
93. Create a certification program for sites in your field. Design a trophy that people can use to display on their sites if they pass the certification. Host the image. (This means that you will not allow them to download the trophy picture. They will just install a peice of code that you will give them that will reference the trophy picture from your site.) You need to save the image on your site and them use this code to give them:
    

    Insert the URL where your image is saved where it says, “yourimageurl”.

94. Buy links. You can email webmasters asking them to link to you in exchange for hard green. You can also use a service like Text Link Ads to purchase and rent links.
95. Rent links. Same as buying links except the links won’t be permanent. Usually you pay monthly for this type. Check out Text Link Ads for details.
96. Buy posts from other bloggers. You can offer to pay them directly to post about your site, or you can buy posts through services like Pay Per Post and ReviewMe.
97. Start a design company. Add the design service to your site. You can create small sites for individuals and people, adding designed-by links at the bottom of their pages.
98. Donate sites to non-profit organizations. Non-profits usually get a lot of links from government sites, and so they would be ideal to design for. Make sure to include a “design donated by MySite.com” at the bottom.
99. Setup blogs for other people. Make sure you include, “Designed by MySite.com” or “Inspired by MySite.com.” Help them to achieve success and their links will become a lot more valuable.
100. Help students that are taking HTML classes in college. Your help can probably be traded for ridiculously valuable .edu links on their student accounts. Make sure you link to their little student sites so they get indexed. You may want to link to them from another site you have, or from a forum. I’ve missed the boat on that one a few times with friends that I actually helped. Oops!
101. Donate some time every week to hold Q and A sessions for beginners in your area. They’ll link to you naturally, or you can ask them to.
102. Encourage friends to bring friends to Q and A sessions. Help them all out. You may get some good ideas yourself and some links from your group.