Domain Name Blog

How many methods of link building are there? And how many of them are effective? Would it be easier to get a link from someone who hates you or from someone who loves you? If you are nodding with the latter, then read on for a good advice on link building.

Asking your competitor for a backlink is not always a good idea. Instead find somebody who has good emotions about you. I hope you understand - it is your client or customer.

If you have ever run an online shop you know that it is a challenging job to find the customers, to keep them and to get them talking about you in order to attract more buyers. Only few people realize that the customer list is a goldmine in fact. Even when it comes to link building.

The plan is to ask your customers to link to you. Just as simple as that! You will be surprised to learn that about 20 - 50% of your shop visitors will have a personal blog or website. This is a real example, I just implemented a link building strategy for one of my clients - he is running an online shop, selling giftware.

You will have to make it easier for yourself at the very beginning of the link building campaing. Some people spend lots of cash on data mining, you will do it for free. All you need is to create a custom field in your order form (or contact form or newsletter subscription form) asking for customer’s/buyer’s personal web address. After a while you will have a neat list of web addresses and blogs. Fancy a backlink from them?

Again, I am here to save you money. It may be hard to get a free link but we should always try. I assume that apart from the shop catalog pages, you already have some valuable content on your web-site. If no, start creating now. Whatever you sell, you must have non-sales content too, which is: interesting pictures, facts, history, glossary, just about anything. Once you have this non-sales content, send out a letter to all customers who have their own websites and ask if they would kindly link to your non-sales page (they will not link to your catalog, that’s for sure).

My experience shows that at least one fifth will agree to privode a backlink.

If you have some extra dosh, you can go the easiest way. Work with the stubborn part of your clientelle. And this is where the free stuff ends. You will have to dish out some bonuses to get those stubborn people link to you. Option 2: now ask to link to your catalog pages BUT promise a gift. Don’t pick the cheapest item from your shop as this will insult the customer. Pick something that is nice, has a value but is not too expensive. I guess £10 worth a gift is good enough (Ah, Lord, am I advocating link buying here? ).

You will be surprised - majority of the customers will link to you. Everyone likes freebies. Just be advised that holding a competition is not the best idea in client based link building. I have seen webmasters going: “Link to me and he who provides the best traffic will get a gift” - that’s not nice! See, what I mean? If you hold a competition, everyone provides value for you but only one of them will get something. It just leaves hundreds of customers somewhat disappointed. Can you afford to disappoint your customers? Eeh, no!

Now, this was a link building example for shop owners. A similar strategy can be used by almost anyone. Even if you work on business to business level, you can still provide incentives to get your partners (wholesale customers) to link to your web-site. The easiest way is to collect your visitors web-site details via a newsletter subscription form.

So from my perspective, what are the best ways to build backlinks:

• Relevant blog comments
• Forum signatures
• Asking clients/customers to provide a link
• Exchanging links with info-driven websites
• Creating satellite minisites of your own
• Article marketing
• Social networking (Digg, Stumble, etc)
• Word of mouth

Did I ask you to choose the link building method you love most? No I did not. Wanna know why? Because you will build a successful website only if you implement ALL of them!

• How To Snoop Into Link Building Strategy...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.