There are many things which are needed to be considered when we work in the world of SEO, one of them is by creating a strategy of building links. Building links are not merely spreading links across many sites, as true experts in the field need to know on what kind of sites your links can be useful and lead you to get the right target since there is a good chance that selecting the wrong sites will earn you a penalty and set you back weeks if not months. Below are some useful collection of sites that you should look out for when selecting safe link building sources.
1. Educational Site
Currently, there are some domains ending with “.edu” where you can acquire some of these links educations which are popular among search marketers. For the most part, these educational sites are completely safe. Offering a scholarship and then reaching out to individual institutions is a great way to acquire some of these hard to get links.
2. Government Site
Another site, besides educational which can help you learn about building links is government site, with a “.gov” extension. Even tough, getting on these types of sites is very difficult, but this site is considerd very safe and can provide you with valuable strength to your backlinks. To get these types of links, sponsoring a public event and becoming involved in your community is a common wa.
3. A Niche-Specific Industry Directory
Many directories get bad reputation after they are de-indexed by Google since the rollout of the first penguin algorithm. However, there are still good sites that can be used. If you can search directories that are suitable with your niche, you can take advantage of them. Some of high quality examples are The Open Directory Project and the Yahoo! Business Directory. You could say that since these directories have survived the various Google cleanups, then there is a good chance that their offering is good for you.
4. A Forum Related to Your Industry
Get involved in a forum that is related with your industry can bring advantages to your business, but interactions shouldn’t be to get inbound links. Ensure that you are participating in discussions which add value by placing your name, title and website URL in your signature.
Using a question that you can answer with an in-depth blog post and publish it on your blog, then respond to the discussion and link to your post in this sense you will get three advantages, build your brand, have inbound links and also grow your traffic.
5. A Blog Related to Your Industry
Have other blogs that are related to your industry as external blogs are such a perfect opportunity to build links. Furthermore, these external blogs can be used as a placed to post contents where you will be a guest author or a regular columnist or contributor.
6. A Blog Covering a Topic You Have Expertise In
Blogs which are not focused on your industry can also be used as an advantage spot to leave helpful, valuable comments in the discussion areas, and remember to contact the editors to ask for filling any opportunities as a contributor for their sites. You can use this to bring attention to your “other” ventures once you have a following.
7. A Sponsorship or Contributor Page
Someone can make nonprofit organizations through sponsorship pages to recognize businesses that have made donations or contributions in the past. A donation may be needed but it will be worth it as the page usually becomes permanent and highly authoritative.
8. Any Social Media Platform
Embracing as many social media as you can since it will gain you many places to promote your links, branding value and other benefits. The direct benefits are not huge, but, as everyone is on Social Media these days, it means another channel that you should fulfil as part of your collection.
9. Any Video Sites
Any video sites, such as YouTube, Vimeo and similar sites will also provide you with great opportunities for link building. You will have more chances to place links to your website each time you upload a video to your channel. Moreover, if your videos go viral, it will bring you more links on them which can be useful to strengthen the value of the links to your website. Please make sure you watch out for the Return on Investment when attempting videos, as doing video production can be an expensive exercise.
10. A Journalistic Site
Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a program which exists to help webmasters find journalistic opportunities. In exchange for volunteering some information, expertise or an opinion, you’ll get a juicy link and a mention in articles.
11. A Social Bookmarking Site
If you are looking for great sources for building links, social bookmarking sites such as Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon are some of the popular ways to get what you want and make some additional visibility.
12. A Wiki Site
Same as Wikipedia which is opened for public editing, so did wiki site. This makes you have an opportunity to control over the links you are building, but you still need to obey the site’s rules. If it makes sense, you can use your website as a citation of the context in the article.
13. An Audio Sharing Site
Joining in Audio sharing site, such as 4shared, soundcloud, and many others sources can bring benefit, since you will get a free backlink to pass relevant authority to your site if you upload a sound file.
14. Make others do it for You
Let others do it for you is the best and safest way. Perceiving your reader to make them publish and share your content on their own blogs, then encouraging more links in turn. Moreover, make sure that you diversify the sources and the types of links you build as it should appear natural in each context. For this, you need to show that are a genuine player, and that trust will build into more and more important links for your business.