Powerful Link – Blogs and News

Finding good, free links is the chore every webmaster agonizes over. Simply asking works sometimes, but not for the huge authority sites that really count! So what should you do? Yopy your competitors and try the same places they have links from? Or strike out on your own and find your own good sources?

A possible danger you encounter by following others is also that you end up with a basic set of sites all linking to the same people and here comes Google’s anti-spam team. Realtors networks have been wiped out, then ticketing network, al because they inadvertently used the same sites to link from.

Lateral, creative thinking is needed to get strong editorial links. A great strategy is to do things offline that you know will have some effect online. You can still offer products to bloggers to review – just be careful and don’t abuse this old and tested method! First, identify the regular bloggers in your vertical, then offer them something to review for your own market research purposes. Make sure to let them know you aren’t ‘payiong’ or ‘bribing’ them for a good review – you want brutal honesty in their review.

Do NOT ask for a link when you ask for the review. That way any links will be all on their side, adn you are not required to ‘no-follow’ them – plus, reverse psychology comes into play. Thsi sounds kind of at cross purposes from your real needs and wants, but the actual result will be that they review your product, they  generally try and be nice with constructive feedback (free tips on how to improve! no need to hire a consulting team!) – and often they fill out space by covering your other products.

On the other hand, if you go in asking for a link you’re more likely to get a blah post with a single link, because the blogger doesn’t think you really like their blog or style so why bother – you just want a link! Blogging works well in many B2C and B2B verticals to boost your profile.

Guess where the biggest and most powerful links come from? You get them from traditional media. Being newsworthy is the number one most powerful link building method there is, and this concept should heavily impact your lead generation process.

All the links won’t be keyword targeted – but quality can be through the roof when it comes to authority. Consider running your own news aggregator, and getting others to link to yo9u. Tie in social networks, and maybe you’ll go viral!