Patience with Link Building - Go Organic

Patience pays off with link building.  With the advent of Google Panda and the subsequent decline of rankings of a number of web sites that lack good content and have relied on an SEO strategy of building many links on totally unrelated sites.

It seems that many people still don't get the message that automated link building is an outdated strategy of SEO.  If programs like Akismet and others can detect spam content better than 99% of the time, then why can't Google do the same thing.   To these people I say WAKE UP!
 
Be patient and know that if you do good work, you will be rewarded.  Here are some tips on organic link building and a video session with Matt Cutts is included at the end.

 

Organic Link Building

This is a white-hat SEO strategy that helps people with sites that have good content become recognized as an authority by Google.

1. Link to sites that have keywords for which you want to rank for, in other words a relevant site.

2. Have a blog or blogs that generate content related to the keywords you are working with.  Hyperlink sparingly back to your site.  One hyperlink per blog entry and no more.  Otherwise it will look like too much self-promotion.

3. List your blogs in directories within your subject area.  The higher the rankings of the directories, the better for you.

4. When possible, do guest blogging with people who have related content.  Of course, you will have hyperlinks to related sites to help create an authority network.

5.  When making links on other sites, make sure that they have a higher ranking to leverage the amount of manual link-building you do.  Comments with significant contributing content to the web page helps as well.

6. Submit articles to article submission sites like Ezine. 

7.  See the video below where Matt Cutts is answering a question about how to build links that meet Google's ranking criteria.  I have covered a couple of his points, but he also talks about occasionally using contoversy, participation in related social groups, giving away free stuff and making tutorials and videos.

Creating Links with Photos

All types of links help your web page's position.

Creating links with photos is a resourceful way to increase your web site's visibility on the Internet.  Up until recently, I haven't used this technique.  Now, when I am in Photoshop, I click on File > File Info and fill out the information for each photo that I upload.  The copyright information for each photo refers back to the site which the photo or illustration relevant to, so I have an automatic link in the photo after I upload it. 

Sites for putting in these links include Red Gage, Flickr, Facebook, Google Plus and any other sites where people upload photos. If the photos are special, reduce them in size so when people copy them (it's a tought act to control what happens once they are on the web) they won't get a high-resolution photo like the one you have on your computer.

Regarding the photo information:  Put in a description in the photo to make it unique.  Use at least 3 sentences in the description and don't copy the information from other sites. 

Another advantage of uploading photos with this information is that you can increase the visibility of your work when people are looking for images.  Good keywords are important.  Good information leads to more people being familiar with your work.