Every few months you see yet another thematic website proclaiming the death of link building. Yet it still out there, and will, most likely, remain alive and well for years. For one reason – Google still doesn’t know a better way to rank pages. As a result, the core remains while the methods change – so let’s take a look at them.
1. Skyscraping
Skyscraper method isn’t exactly new, but it perfectly suits current situation in the world of link building and firmly belongs to the domain of white hat techniques. It consists of three steps:
- Find a website in your niche with a lot of backlinks;
- Create a website that would cover the same topics, but make an effort to fill it with content of much higher quality;
- Contact the webmasters of those sites that linked back to it and inform them that you have something better to offer.
The best part is that everybody wins: you, your clients, and the market in general.
2. Guest Posting
Guest posting is another thing that sensationally thinking SEOs like to bury, but the rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, black hat methods used by many guest blogging networks a couple of years back won’t get you far these days, but legitimate, high-quality content spread through relevant blogs is still fair game. If you use a well-reputed guest posting service, carefully choose who you partner with and make sure to put some effort in your content, everything will be alright.
3. Directories
Yes, it is true that many directories hold little to no value to end users, and Google removed them from search results – being on one of them is not only useless, but potentially harmful as well. If, however, a directory provides some useful information for your potential clients and allows you to leave a backlink, like DMOZ, you should at least consider it.
4. Infographics
Attention span of a modern human is notoriously short: a long article will likely remain unread. But a short one doesn’t look trustworthy and serious enough! What should you do?
The answer is: use infographics. They allow you to compress a great deal of information into an easily digestible form, attract attention and potentially can go viral. People simply like sharing them.
5. Create Long-Term Content
There is link-bait, and there is long-term content. Link-bait is a flashy, interesting, probably controversial post that inspires debate but doesn’t hold long-term appeal. In half a year it won’t interest anybody.
Long-term content is a piece of information that won’t lose its importance a year or even several years later. It may be a comprehensive manual or another kind of ‘pillar’ article that people will reference for years to come. You won’t be capable of writing all posts in this manner; but try to do it at least from time to time.
The bottom line is this: you should strive to attract links by means of top-notch content first of all, with all these aforementioned methods either being completely dependent on this maxim or using it as basis. Without amazing content all maneuvering will be useless.