How to Link build for our site

[BobGW]

Hello,

A client of mine has a site that gives advice to people. It's moderately competitive. It's a content site.

Using Open Site explorer, I looked up competitor's top pages and backlinks, and there were things such as sites that were heavy on directories, sites heavily on editorial mension, sites on juicy topics that I don't want to cover, and the rest was pretty much junk.

Just so that you know, I only link build with quality websites that look strong, long term, have a nice design, are high quality, and are not a directory (with a few exceptions)

What's the standard way to link build with a site like this? We've got 7 articles of good content that is from me spending hours learning about the subject and using my skills as a life coach.

Right now I'm just adding quality content and social media. I am not a top expert in the field, but I'm learning as much as possible.

How do we link build?

[KaneJamison]

I'd say that standard link building strategy for a content site is split between:

• Proactive: doing webmaster outreach by email and asking for people to share the content
• Passive: encourage people to share the content on their own (social sharing buttons being the easiest way to do that)

Depending on the value of the content (you'll have to be honest with yourself as to whether it's amazing content, or just decent content) you can have great results from proactive outreach to other site owners. Think of who would find the site valuable and start looking for sites like that. The best place to get started is by reading up on link building / outreach posts here on SEOMoz: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=outreach - Pay attention to email templates and how you might be able to use them for your own situation.

Competitive analysis is a great place to start, and there's nothing wrong with spending a little time on directories if it's a one and done thing. I wouldn't spend days on it but there are plenty of high quality directories, especially for specific niches. Don't be scared off without researching each directory first, here's a good article on testing their relative value: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-blekkos-seo-data-to-evaluate-web-directories-14678