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Where to get backlinks

June 3, 2008

The most valuable backlinks are those from pages on reputable, relevant sites that include a keyword phrase in the anchor text and contain few links to other sites.

General web directories

An easy place to start is to submit your site to web directories. But be careful to avoid sites that are simply links pages. These are low quality sites that will accept free-for-all links to anywhere. There are many reputable web directories and the best two are Yahoo and DMOZ.

Yahoo

Yahoo is a paid-for-inclusion directory external link . The current cost is $299p.a. For this, Yahoo will evaluate your site and confirm its acceptance or rejection within 7 days. If your site is rejected, the fee is not refundable.

DMOZ

DMOZ is the Open Directory Project external link and is the source of the Google directory. Submission to the site is free but it can be notoriously difficult to get listed. This is because all sites are individually checked and the directory editors have enormous volumes to deal with. It is very important to get the submission criteria correct as this can further slow down the submission or result in rejection.

There are plenty of other sites that can be considered as well. Some charge a fee and some are free. But the value of these listings will tail off at some point.

Vertical market directories

Look for relevant industry or location specific directories.

Forums and blogs

Participate in forums and blog discussions where you can include a link to your site in your comment signature. Providing opinion and advice is an ideal way to build reputation and credibility, thus possibly gaining more links from other participants. But don’t post comments just for the sake of the link, if you can’t add value to the discussion, keep quiet.

Press releases

This is a very good way to get links. The search engine spiders pick up press releases quickly, the sources are generally considered to be reputable and they usually remain on the web for a long time. Seek every realistic opportunity to issue press releases that will be published on the web.

Competitors

Find out who’s linking to your competitors. Maybe they could link to your site as well. Enter:

linkdomain:www.competitorname.com -site:www.competitorname.com

into the search engine, where competitorname.com is your competitor’s domain name. Yahoo is better than Google for this as Google deliberately withholds more of the inbound links.

Write articles

I would only recommend this route if you can publish original, interesting work to highly reputable and relevant sites. Anything less has low value and may even be seen as borderline spam.

Blog

Your own blog is a better way to get your message out there and accrue backlinks. If the content generates enough interest, other bloggers will start linking. And the search engines tend to treat blogs very favourably.

Filed in: Search Engine Optimisation