Link Building

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi is there any free ways of link building where you do not use exchange link sites. Also are there any free tools and paid tools that you can use to increase your links to your site.

I have a couple of new sites and i am trying to bring more traffic to them through link building and other methods and trying to find the best way of doing this.

I have heard of people talk about free tools and paid tools but not sure which ones they are.

any help would be great

[Bevelwise]

There are a couple different strategies I would mention here that may help you out.  As far as "tools" I believe they are best used to find link prospects, because there aren't really any tools that will just get links for you (at least quality ones).  I would use OSE, which has free and paid versions.  Another free one would be Yahoo's site explorer.  In each of these cases I would say do some competitive analysis to see what links your sites competitors have.  Then contact these websites to see if you could get a link on their site as well.  A paid tool I have used and would recommend to help find link prospects as well is Raven's SEO Tools.

Another free link building technique I would recommend is trying to find guest blogging opportunities.  If you haven't made an account on MyBlog Guest then there platform might help you out to find these opportunities.  I hope these strategies can apply to your business/website because it really depends on what is available on the web and what will work for your website.

[RyanKent]

The best free link building is, and always will be, great content.

Let's assume we both start SEO sites tomorrow. You spend a week submitting your site to 100 different free directories, adding your link to various asian blog comments who allow followed comments, etc. At the end of the week you have 150 new links which you know wont ever really be seen or used.

Meanwhile, I take the time to write the best article ever seen on the topic of "SEO 2011 - Guide to Panda and Google updates". The article is published on my site, then I visit 25 SEO sites, make a topical reply to a relevant Q&A, forum post or blog article leaving a link to the article which is often nofollowed. I also tweet the link to a few SEO-related accounts.

If the article I wrote is truly helpful, many people will +1 / Like / Tweet the page and link to it. In the end I would gladly take a dozen authentic links earned from real people who generally appreciate the content over the 150 links from free directories and linking services. Those links are crap, you know they are crap, Google knows they are crap and are actively working to improve their system.

Time spent improving your site for the best user experience is always time well spent. Write ONE article that is the best ever written on a topic, and let it do the link building for you.