How to Build Whitehat Backlinks on 3 Hours a Day?

[Rvinyl]

Hi Everyone,

I've been lurking for some time and really appreciate the combined expertise of everyone here. Forgive me for beng a noob but, despite having searched the forum for relevant questions, I still can't seem to find the exact advice I'm looking for. Here's the deal:

We are a small, aftermarket automotive tint and accessories store and are completely online. We have been in business since 2003 but primarily on eBay and Amazon. Our site was always tertiary but we have really begun to ramp it up in the last 12 to 15 months. I have only really been tracking our PR numbers and backlinks using Alexa, Site Explorer and Majestic SEO for the past 3 months but the numbers don't seem promising.

I read as much as I can and have posted a number of articles, press releases, commented on blogs, started a ring of blogs and participate in related forums but am having trouble adding backlinks. How to do so when you don't have a big budget for it? Any tips or blind spots that I'm just not aware of?

Thanks in advance!

Best,

Mike

[larry.kim]

hooboy. link building has changed quite a bit over the last year. the blog commenting, article marketing, press releases, etc have been devalued quite a bit over the last year. Actually I don't think those tactics are even worth pursuing.

Getting a link is now not only about getting links from relevant sites, it's also about getting social media shares, like tweets, Facebook likes, google +1's, linkedin shares, etc.

If you're a small business and are looking for low hanging fruit, maybe just try to leverage your own personal network. For example, are you on any boards (for charities, churches, groups, schools, etc.) - could they add a link to your website on your Bio page. Or your vendors - could you be featured as a testimonial on their site with a link back to your site (not sure if this is still legit or not).

Otherwise the way that most companies do this these days is to write valuable content, which can be challenging if you're just getting started.

[Rvinyl]

Thanks so much for that Larry. I do have about 3K likes on our FB page and 139 on our site and I've done my best to leverage the personal networks I belong to. I also distribute my blog posts to FB, Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Tumblr but I'm sure there's more I could do. Any suggested reading?

[GBC]

Go back to your keyword research. Try looking for the terms that have the highest volume (Google keyword tool) but are least competitive (look at number of results in the Google SERPs).

Create a piece of content for that term and you have much more chance of ranking highly quicker, especially if you submit it to social bookmarking services like Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit, which can also be good sources of traffic.

I'd disagree with Larry - press releases do still have some value, particularly building links into your homepage, even if the just the press release aggregator places the link on their site they are decent white-hat links. There are companies that can distribute your press release to the various aggregators relatively cheaply if you don't have the time.