How Much “Link Love” Do You Have? Link-Building 101

First I’d like to thank all of my readers for the great comments that have been submitted lately. It is clear that I have some very bright and inspired readers and I want you to know how much your comments mean to me and how much they help other readers – so THANK YOU!

Now for the subject of this post – link love.

So there’s a good chance you’ve heard this term before, link love – it has to do with how many people are sending “do-follow” links to your site and thus helping your rating, and as the name implies – showing their love.

The core of Google’s ranking algorithm is links so if you don’t have any link love you might be missing-out on some great Google rankings. Yahoo seems to be less picky…but wouldn’t you rather focus your efforst on the #1 search engine online rather than the #3 (yes You Tube is actually #2!).

So I thought I’d put-together a series of posts this week about how to build links and improve your site ranking over time. I’m going to do a 101 and a 102 post (or at least that’s my plan now) so I thought for the first post I’d start with the basics.

As you’ve probably learned by now I like lists – so for Link Building 101 I’m excited to share three of my fundamental link-building strategies.

  1. Twitter – Twitter is a great way to build links to your site. Search on Twitter for the keywords you are targeting. Reach-out to 5-10 people a day and ask them to check-out your site and let them know if they link to you, you’ll link back. Twitter can help you grow links much faster than sending a million emails to bloggers and website owners in your niche.
  2. Article Services – You can create some nice link-love yourself by writing articles through services like eZineArticles.com and Helium.com – just make sure to pick your anchor-text carefully so you end-up having links that match the exact keywords you are targeting.
  3. Friends – So many people miss this step! Reach-out to your friends that own websites and blogs and exchange links with them. I find that so many people reach-out to complete strangers before asking friends for a link. This is the low-hanging fruit and let’s face it, your friends will link to you!

This is far from an exhaustive list of link-building strategies, but it is the perfect top-three list for my link-building 101 post. Stay-tuned tomorrow for Link-Building 102 where I’ll go one step deeper and help you get the link love you deserve!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton