Not all unusual techniques are considered black hat.
Let’s face it. Link building is being too mainstream over these past few years, and promoting one’s website is plagued with different problems due to the high competition since now everyone knows about SEO. Especially in highly competitive niches like finance, business, marketing, and technology, the war between blogs and websites will continue to wage until no one knows when.
Are you looking for a solution to gain an edge among the rest? It’s about time you change the usual link building game plan and include new strokes to your campaign that really puts your website among the rest.
I co-own a finance blog whereas I apply the usual techniques along with some unconventional but overlooked methods to boost my campaign.
Products and Services Reviews
This is a timeless, evergreen content that you can use in your campaign. On my website, I provide the top binary options brokers and each has a corresponding review of the different facets of their services. People appreciate reviews, and so do businesses too. You can offer reviews on your site, in exchange of having a link back to your site on theirs.
Freebies
Everyone loves free stuff. Provide freebies over your website. Give them the reason to link back to your website and not just beg for links. Once webmasters realize the usability of your free tool, or whatever freebie you provide, they’ll surely refer back to your site with a link. Easy, right? Meanwhile, another freebie that would be of tremendous benefit are ebooks. Ebooks that consist of advanced and well-researched information would also reap link backs as people find it useful. Moreover, infographics can also reap in backlinks; research valid data related to your niche and create a cool infographic. Then, at the bottom of the post, prepare a code that anyone can copy along with a link back to your website. Infographics are easily shared by people, therefore you can expect a boom in readership too.
Stalking Competitors
Yes, stalking competitors are another great idea to get links. Why? You can earn links from them too! Enough of the rivalry, and get down to business! You can assist them in exchange of links. Hunt down for broken links, missing features, or even provide any content that they would be glad to receive. You can also stalk competitor sites for any links they have; you can also gain links from those links they got from other web sites.
Offline Efforts
Link building isn’t all online work; you can manage to do offline marketing too. If you’re in business and you can afford to sponsor a couple of events, then do so. Not only would your website benefit from the link back of sponsors, earning a reputable and high PR link would be the greatest prize. Plus, it helps your branding efforts too. Increased exposure can entice people to search for your website, thereby driving leads and possibly sales; a good conversion strategy.
Relationship Link Building
Nothing beats a good ol’ friendship with bloggers in your chosen niche. Some suggest building microsites, but there’s nothing more solid than building relationship with real people. It’s all natural and organic; you can promote each other’s content. Moreover, your audience reach will widen when combined with your friends’ sites. On the other hand, don’t just focus with other bloggers, but also commend your subscribers. Some of your audience may own a blog, while others have social media accounts. Sharing content through social media is proven to increase readership as people share things that they find interesting, and in the process, will attract their friends because of their common interests. You can reward these faithful and loyal commenters with the badges they can post at their own blogs.
Last but not the least, never ever venture into the dark side. Black hat techniques are quick fixes to achieve rankings that will ricochet you to the top page of Google, but as it is quick, its also temporary. The bad side of it is, your site will be devalued or even worse, deindexed by Google. All your efforts and money flush down the toilet; never attempt to go for quick solutions. Link building may be a long term, tedious process, but it’s all worth the wait and effort.
Do you have any comments, or suggestions for other unusual, but natural link building techniques? Leave a comment below!
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About Amit Shaw
Relationship building is a nice way. But the thing is, if you ask a blogger to add your URL on his blog, he might demand the same. And Google is against Reciprocating links.
Freebies, well this is obvious reason for one to build traffic, community and backlinks but over spending is not an ethical way.
Off line efforts, yes. You can sponser some events in your local area. I had got a request from some college students on sponsering their event and i will get my name and URL on their banners. but who will visit the links after going home?
Relationship building simply means befriending influential people in your chosen niche. As an owner of a binary options blog, I must be in touch with people who are influential in the finance niche. If the foundation of rapport is enough, I can ask my new friend to help promote one of my linkable assets that might interest his audience too. I am very much aware of reciprocating links, but that’s not how I intend to do.
Relationship based link building seems to be on the rise. It will definitely give a competitive edge over competitor as relationship based backlinks will be difficult to replicate.
Hi Jason, am not sure if one can agree with all the above points –
1. Why would you offer product reviews just for a link back and not go for paid reviews?
2. Getting back link with inforgraphic freebie is fruitful than other methods.
3. Relationship building is good but Google is against reciprocating links. It used to work during 2002-2007 phase where blogs used to have huge “blogrolls” but not anymore.
Where link building is concerned, one should only focus on commenting, authoritative-editorial guest contributions and product reviews, if any.
Otherwise, a majority of the effort should be given on email marketing and its monetization.
~ Chitra
Hello Chitra, let me answer these for you.
1. Why would you offer product reviews just for a link back and not go for paid reviews?
Paid links:
A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links. Search engine guidelines require machine-readable disclosure of paid links in the same way that consumers online and offline appreciate disclosure of paid relationships (for example, a full-page newspaper ad may be headed by the word “Advertisement”)
Source:
On the other hand, it’s more useful for bloggers who are into affiliate marketing. As for me, it works since I’m an affiliate of banc de binary. Why settle for one-shots when you can continuously earn as an affiliate?
2. Getting back link with inforgraphic freebie is fruitful than other methods.
But this is becoming too mainstream. I’ve seen infographs that definitely do not communicate to me. A poor layout and a cluttered design are to an infographic what convoluted sentence structure and poor grammar and spelling are to the written word. Who would like to link back to such a crappy inforgraph?
3. Relationship building is good but Google is against reciprocating links. It used to work during 2002-2007 phase where blogs used to have huge “blogrolls” but not anymore.
Again, please refer to what I replied to Anchit.
From all these link building techniques I prefer “Stalking Competitors” . There are many backlinks analyzing tools which makes my work more easy .
That’s true Narender. I myself used this against my competitors for certain keywords. Example, in order to check out on how to rank “best binary options brokers”, I dig deep since it’s a big keyword with a huge competition, but all’s worth the effort.