Search Engine Journal

For a follow-up to the post on link-building techniques, I’ve decided to take some articles off of my compilations for creative link-building ideas on the Search Marketing Wiki. I hope you enjoy these ideas for more and more are coming — Feel free to add any ideas you feel relevant in the comments field of this post and I will add them to the Search Marketing Wiki. I am constantly combing the web for more ideas, feel free to let Search Engine Journal and the iMarketingGuru wiki know of your ideas.

Here are the following top tactics to creative link-building:

1. DO give as much away as possible - If you’re a designer, create WordPress, Mediawiki, Joomla, Drupal, Pligg and other highly authoritative CMS solution themes. If you are a programmer/know a bit about how to code some cool gadgets/widgets, make a Firefox plugin, make Facebook Applications and iPhone applications.

There are also various open source scripts and apps out there you may put your name on. There are the Firefox plugins and themes of course, but have you thought of Thunderbird plugins, SalesForce/vTiger/SugarCRM plugins, Feedburner add-ons, Del.icio.us. Add-ons and creating API-related widgets/tools?. Are you an expert on a given subject or niche?

2. Submit guest posts at other blogs and network within the community of your niche — Grouping up with others results in higher levels of synergies concerning both linkability as well as monetization of your site(s). What about joining a site network or blog network and contributing content as much as possible? This Does work. Look at Engadget and the WebLogs, Inc. blog empire. Build up a lot of bad authors, slap on a brand with a whole lot of link building and networking = high advertising revenues and exponentially increasing levels of revenue.
3. Aggregate all of the stories that made it to the front page on the Social Bookmarking Sites — Post them to your blog and resubmit remixed copies of them every 3 months or so while giving attribution to the original author. Wikipedia is also a great place to find great articles for submission to the social bookmarking sites — Just add a bit of viral social media content to the ideas found in the articles, and you’ve got yourself some SERIOUSLY authoritative content.




4. The Amazon Book Review Trick (links & traffic) - Write reviews for all books in your industry in order to get your reviews out there very well (Make an “About Me” page, which includes your email or even something like “Webmaster of iMarketingGuru.com”). If the book has an amazing sales rank, your review will be read hundreds to possibly thousands of times a day. *Hint* Of course, there is that whole section of Author blogging with commenting systems on most after all…*Hint*
5. Exploiting eBay for Traffic - Figure out a legitimate way to auction something that actually promotes your site. Have a gift certificate or store credit, or a sample product of some sort / lists of tips, etc. The second step is to get people to find your auctions. Use the eBay Marketing article for ideas…
6. Do Co-operative advertising online with others - what about building links by riding the links of other authors through their newsletters or co-marketing to get more newsletter/blog subscribers.
7. Promoting your website on the P2P File Sharing Networks — You can name it “Complete_Guide_To_SEO.mp3″ or “Top_10_Secrets_to_SEM.mp3″. When naming, it’s important to remember that people will be searching using keywords, so you must try and incorporate those keywords into your title. (Get a list of all P2P Networks & just get your site names EVERYWHERE - spam these sites/networks if necessary (this is VERY black-hat, be wary))
8. Become an Expert : Yahoo Experts, AskMe, ABuzz - New York Times, AllExperts.
9. Free “Radio” Advertising… Online Submit your music requests on behalf of your URL once to several times per day. For a pretty comprehensive listing of stations on the internet, visit Internet Radio List. Get your URL out there as having the song requested by the staff of yourdomain.com
10. An Interesting “Twist” on Message Board Posting (Stories on Publicly Traded Companies) If you have an article or idea on your site, especially a TIMELY article or idea, that relates even indirectly to the operations of an important publicly-traded company, you can post a brief note, including the page’s URL, to the Yahoo! Finance/Google Finance message board under their ticker symbol. You can also post this to Raging Bull.
11. Get interviewed on podcasts, the radio, TV and various venues including print and web content. – Get as many links as possible from these sources for extra link love.
12. Exploit the Corporate PR Agencies and PR depts. - All major corporations have PR people devoted to combing the web for positive (and negative) mentions of their company. Most of their web sites have press centers or press rooms. If you target large, reputable companies, you can incredibly increase your PR. This will result in both traffic and more links — Just have the content on your site to support this affluent traffic. Publish book reviews, product reviews, etc. –> Manufacturers, software companies, authors and publishers will generally consider posting a link to positive reviews.
13. Courtesy Website Reviews Visit & critique a few of the sites these sites have listed for review, and then submit your own URL to be reviewed. Coder.com, Critics-Corner.com, SiteOwnersForums.com. Followed by this tactic, you should visit the webmaster forums and review sites in exchange for even more reviews of your site. The DigtialPoint forums are excellent for this as well as Sitepoint and all other forums dedicated to Webmasters.
14. The eBay Leveraging Idea - The main idea: objects that get LOTS of attention on eBay: original Van Goghs, Lambourghinis, Paris Hilton/Celebrity memorabilia, houses in the most elite places in the world, etc. — Of course, most of us don’t own any of these items, but if you know someone who owns a Ferrari or any of the above item(s), hit him/her up (you could possibly even place ads of products you don’t own, for the products would NEVER sell - their only purpose would be publicity). He/she would likely let you try to auction it on eBay if you set the reserve at, say $1,000,000. You could then place your URL in the image prominently so as to gain more traffic — Anyone else have ideas on this tactic? I’m sure there are more creative inputs than this.
15. Make your audience into Superstars — Start by doing profiles of the other webmasters and sites in your niche — Also, do biographies and profiles on the BIG names in the media in order to influence even larger people — Can anyone say, fan site networks solely created for links?
16. Make’em laugh. Hire a comedian to do a great Youtube video. GIGMasters or Entertainment Unlimited may be a good place to look for someone. (This is in attribution to Trafficology.com)
17. Give testimonials - If you have a favorite software solution you use or you love someone’s product/service, contact them, they will love to have a testimonial from you on their site (with a link back to your site of course). You can also do this for content developer sites who post great content and put up great information for their users.

The list does go on and can be added to in the Link Building article on the Search Marketing Wiki — Feel free to give yourself link credit for your idea(s) and man, the list is a mess so try to keep it clean.

Miles Price is the publisher of the iMarketingGuru Search Wiki and President of iCluck SEO Services, a Buffalo, NY based search marketing firm.