Build Backlinks using Blogs and Forums
Did you know that there are ways you can easily build backlinks and improve your website rankings just by taking the time to post on other people’s blogs and forums? Yes, this is true and it can be done only by spending just 1-2 hours online everyday, posting on other people’s blogs or forums. However, there is a way to do it to get the maximum effect. The common thing you see many people do is they search for just any blog and start spamming them. It doesn’t work that way because most of the bloggers now have an anti spam plugin installed on their blogs so, any spamming just gets deleted from the blog and then the link inserted is flagged as a spam link and sent to google or any other spam authority. This kind of silly tactics can hurt your rankings and destroy your website’s credibility.
There is a way to do it and that is by posting something thoughtful. Now, the most common question that comes to mind is “How do I post something so meaningful that even when I insert my link, the blog owner would just ignore it regardless of my limited knowledge in that field?” It is simple… Go to the forums and ask questions or just lurk around reading people’s posts. This would give you an idea of what to write on and how to write it.
Remember that forums are a complete goldmine because this is where you have everyone interested in a particular topic. There aren’t so many time wasters there. The second option you might have is do a quick search on the topic, look for what no one has previously said, and say it. Avoid stupid one-liners like “nicely said, You can visit my website for blah blah blah” and you will find your links left on the blogs and forums.
Also in terms of relevance to your site niche and content, it would be much better to look for related resources. If you have for example a medical website, try to find medical related blogs and forums. There is a word saying that “any clean link is a good link”, agree with that but apart from the general backlinks you build, you will need backlinks related to your niche. Avoid the low quality, spammy websites and don’t post in there – the last thing you want are backlinks coming from untrusted sources as all these will create a bad neighbourhood around your website…
Marius,
Great advice. A couple of questions – should there be a page rank minimum that you should pursue or is it really any link (without nofollow?) as you say above.
Also, how would you recommend asking for links when someone is re-using your post or site content without linking back? We’re soliciting beta testers for a free product that identifies links for you and points you towards email to request the links. They can be customized, but email seems a little tenuous. What do you think?
Rich
Rich,
Page Rank has been a beautiful project at the time when has been created…lately became just another manipulative tool. You should know how many people manipulate PR…also I’m sure you know that Google manipulates PR as well. I’ve seen a website which used to be PR6 with lots of PR inner pages. It has been stripped of PR on all pages apart from the index.php page. How would you explain that index.php has PR6 while all the other pages have PR0? I also know an old, well established web directory which used to be PR5…now it’s PR0 on the homepage while many inner pages are PR2 or PR3.
Both of the examples above are still doing fine in SERPS so we can’t talk about any penalty…it’s just a manual PR downgrade.
Don’t worry about PR that much – better work on rankings and traffic. Any page that is indexed is a good place to link to if you get the chance, no matter if it’s PR0 or PR8…
The best way to request links is still via email. Usually most of the serious webmasters will keep the links in place there are only a few kids or silly people that would remove them. Personally I won’t worry that much and I won’t waste my time chasing this kind of people. I would rather preffer to have only 5 quality sites linking back to my site than 75 low quality resources.
Hope this helps
Thanks Marius – good to know as we’ve been struggling with link value of PR2 and PR3 sites.
btw, if you are interested in checking out our backlink tool for beta testing purposes, more info is here http://www.attributor.com/link_building_beta
Do you believe there is a difference in the benefit of a) having a website referenced in your blog posting name (such as the link associated with my ‘Gaming’ name), versus b) specifically including a website name in the text of your blog post, such as ‘visit my website at http://www.abcxyz.com‘.
Thanks for your blog post.
I know that most blogs are not ‘nofollow’. Is that the same for forums? Google won’t show you ‘nofollow’ backlinks, but yahoo does? Is that correct? Thanks.
My question is how do I get my site included in blogs. I see other companies similar to mine that are included on blog sites. It looks like the blogger reviewed their site and included it in their blog with keywords through out the post? I would appreciate any help or suggestions. Thanks
Building backlinks is just a slog……
I spend a little time reading the Blog leave a comment that contributes something it’s about making quality comments not just chucking in keyword and links ….
Thanks for the post Marius. For fellow folks out there who wants to find out which of these blogs use nofollow and which don’t, there is a firefox plugin named named Searchstatus, which will show you nofollow links highlighted.