Links are one of the top 3 ranking factors of Google; its not a secret. Google use links to determine whether your website has significant content or not. Links made Google’s PageRank algorithm superior to other search engines like Yahoo and Bing. With this being in mind, link building techniques are integral to any search engine optimization efforts.

Whether you have been blogging for a long time or you just started your new website, building links to your website should be one of your main priorities. Without links, your website might still get traffic through social media promotion but it will never be enough to be on Google’s first page.

That’s the goal isn’t it?

Link building takes time and effort. It has lots different strategies and one does not simply take a day to master it. But you shouldn’t be fazed at all. Whether you have knowledge about SEO or not, you should follow these 4 basic link building techniques that will help you get ranked higher by Google.

Blog commenting

Blog commenting is grey hat SEO, its good but its ugly. It is one of the easiest link building techniques for your website. But according to many, blog commenting is dead.

Why? Like other SEO strategies that are easy and effective, it is being abused and in result, Google considered it to be spam. At the same time, it only gives out NoFollow links.

But wait, don’t count blog commenting out yet!

As a blogger, blog commenting could still give you value for your time. It might give you NoFollow links, but you might get some direct traffic from it. You could also build a relationship with the owner of the website if you frequently visit and interact through the comment section.

So how do you do it?

Its simple. Look for blogs with the same niche as yours and read the post. Go to the comment section and make sure that the form has a line to input your Name, Email, and Website (most wordpress blogs have this). Write a comment, as long as you can, but make sure that it is relevant so that webmasters would approve your comment.

Once your comment goes through moderation, your comment will be live and your name will bear a link towards your website. Your name will be the anchor text of the link, but that’s alright. Some blogs also use certain wordpress plugins so that your latest blog post will appear when you comment to drive community interaction.

Remember to be kind enough to leave a meaningful and relevant comment and never, ever, leave spam comments.

Forum Posting

Forums are a great way of getting traffic through a community. Most forums would have specific audiences like business or blogging and so finding a forum for your niche is easy. The hard part about this link building technique is finding an active forum and getting through moderators.

Once you find a forum that is related to your niche, simply register and activate your account. It wouldn’t take you 10 minutes to do this. After account activation, edit your profile and introduce yourself in general discussions. Make your profile as authentic as possible so that people would see you as a real person, not just someone who have bad intentions on the forum.

You could start your own discussion or look participate in active discussions. Most forums gives you the freedom to fully customize your post. You could add images, your signature, and of course, links.

But be careful. As I mentioned, the hard part about this technique is getting through moderators. If your post or answer to a thread is obviously promotional or the link you attached to your keyword is irrelevant, you will probably be marked as spam. In worst cases, you could be permanently banned from the forum.

Remember, when building links through forum posting, be as natural as possible. Interact with the community and don’t post solely for link building. In this way, moderators might give you a little bias, people might go to your website, and proper link insertion and keywords will help you rank up.

Directory Listing

Directory listing is the easiest and fastest way to get backlinks to your website. There are thousands of online directory that will allow you to create a page or profile for your website while there are some that are solely made to list links and give out backlinks.

Directory sites are easy to find whether you have a blog or an e-commerce website. Simply register and fill up a form that asks for information about your website and submit. While some have instant approvals, some would put your submission on pending and would ask for a amount to instantly approve your submission.

This is a technique that should only be done frequently and never rely on it to build all of your backlinks. It is good to have many backlinks on your website but Google will penalize you if you abuse these kinds of websites.

Conclusion

SEO and link building techniques are for a long term game. You don’t rank up the next morning you start SEO and you don’t get a thousand backlinks in one week.

These link building techniques only scratches the surface of the many creative ways you could get backlinks to your website. Besides off site efforts, you also need to have on site SEO technical optimization and create good content on your website.

Link building takes time and effort. If you are looking to build influence online, link building is something you should lean on to.

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