How to get relevant inbound backlinks?

[amitramani]

I am a new member of the MOZ community. I have been working with a retail website, specifically the SEO part for about 2 months now. While I have addressed most if not all on-page factors, I still do not understand why Google does not rank the site higher for certain keywords.

The website is:

www.vrtack.com

Keywords: exercise saddle, jockey saddle, freejump stirrups

At this point, I have done some analysis looking at competitive data from MOZ. The only thing that stands out so far is the lack of inbound links , i.e. backlinks.

Anyone here can help me understand how best (and ethically) obtain links from sites that have a high Domain Authority? I have been sending emails to the webmasters of the various websites, but no word yet.

Any help is much appreciated.

[Ron_McCabe]

Well I would do a few things:

1. go to get listed.org and sign up for all the local directories.

2. I would use the Open Site Explorer tool to find inbound links on your competitors and sign up for any applicable directories and start following(and providing useful comments) on blogs that relate to what you are doing.

3. Utilize your G+ account to engage your client base in a Google Air web seminar and publish a recording of this to Youtube.

4. Use Presenter on the mac (or a similar program) to create a presentation with voice overs and export to video and upload to video.

5. Create an engaging infographic that people will share on the web.

6. Get 10 reviews on Yelp, google, and Bing.  These reviews create in bound links as well as improve your overall local search rankings.

What I am saying is that links are created by doing a variety of things over time.  You have to be creative, have fun with it ;)!

Ron

[ReferralCandy]

One good way to start obtaining quality backlinks is to look for blogs or online magazines related to your niche and guest blog for them. Of course, you should be ensuring that your guest posts contain relevant and useful information, not just another method to promote your product, otherwise Google may just treat such backlinks as link-farming.

This article on guest blogging might be of interest to you: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2194396/How-Guest-Posting-Propelled-One-Site-From-0-to-100000-Customers

Another method which can potentially be explored is the idea of "collaborating" with other ecommerce stores that are related to yours. For example, since you are selling equestrian products, you can collaborate with stores that are selling health products for equestrian riders (not sure if there's such a thing, but it's just an example). You can have a mini-entry below your product pages that goes "Looking for health products to go with your training? Check out Shop B to complete your equestrian experience."

Likewise, if Shop B writes the same about your shop, you would be able to receive a backlink from their store. Better still, consumers coming through that backlink will likely fall within your target audience. This becomes a win-win for both stores.

Hope that helps!

[amitramani]

I have been approached by several SEO companies that are offering to place inbound links on several websites. I have heard this is considered unethical and even black-hat, as I do not know whether those sites are relevant to my website.

Furthermore, Google penalizes for links that are out of context. Am I correct about that?

I will try the suggestions provided by you. Thanks for your responses. I have been blogging on a free wordpress site. I usually write about products with backlinks to my website. The blog posts I write are hopefully educational and informative.