How to Get Great Linking Without Spending a Thing

You have your new web site, and now, you have to get people to it.  This means you have to get your link out to the world and on other sites.  Yes, you can link trade, and while this should be part of your strategy, it's not the best you can do.  What you need to do is get great linking without spending a thing with the venerable one-way link.

What's a one-way link?  It's someone pointing a link at you without you having to point one back.  Search engines love one-way links when calculating the importance and worth your site, which is good for search engine traffic.  Plus, you can make one fairly quickly and they can also generate click-through traffic.  So, how do you go about doing it correctly?

- Write articles:  I have sung the praises of article marketing for a while now, and I'm going to do it again.  Basically, you trade content for links.  You write an article (like this one), and put your link in the resource box, along with a short description and a call to action.  Then you post it on free article sites where anyone can use it on their site, blog, or ezine.  If they do, they have to keep your resource box intact in exchange for using the article, and this gives you the one-way link.

- Post it on Forums:  Participate in a forum and put a link in your signature.  This signature will appear any time you participate in a thread.  People see your link and possibly click through, directly generating traffic.  Post intelligent comments when you do this, as trying to spam a forum is a bad idea and won't get you anywhere.  Just remember that if the forums on which you're posting don't allow links in your signature, this won't work.

- Post it on blog comments:  You go to a blog, read the post, then leave a real comment with a link.  This is easy to do if you can track your favorite blogs with a service like Technorati.  Don't do the no-class spam comment technique (one short, meaningless sentence followed by a ton of backlinks), because you'll just irritate everybody, not get any click throughs, and, well, it has no class.

- Write testimonials:  If you like a product, write a short testimonial which the owner can post on his sales page as social proof to help them make more sales.  They'll post this with your name, link, and possibly your picture.  At this point, two things happen.  First, anyone that lands on the sales page with your testimonial will see you and your link and become aware of your site.  Second, if you've recommend a product that's bad, anyone who sees you there won't want to visit.  So, only use the testimonial method for products or services you've used and think are worthwhile.

- Viral web site applications:  This trick is only open to people who know how to code web site applications to the point they're user-friendly to the less initiated.  Examples of this I've seen include referral scripts, WordPress templates, and an HTML page rank checker.  But the general idea is to program something useful to a web site owner that can be pasted on a web page with your link in it.  Then, you put it into circulation for free or sell it with Master Resale Rights.  Anyone who uses your code on their site also posts the link you embedded in it, generating a one-way link for you.

But while there are good ways to get one-way links, here's one to avoid.

- Free-For-All sites:  Also known as FFA sites or link farms, this is where a whole lot of people submit ads to be posted.  These sites do nothing but list an ever-changing page of links to other sites.  If you submit to one, your link and a description gets displayed free for some period of time without requiring a reciprocal link.

Even given this, there is still no benefit to using a FFA site.  These links won't help you because search engines hate these sorts of web sites and no one visits them but people posting their own links.  There may also be some fine print involved, such as the right for them to send you email because you're on their list.  They're a bad idea, so avoid FFA sites or FFA site blaster services.

There are also paid options for one-way links, but if you don't have much of a budget to start, use some of the free techniques I mention here instead.  You can exchange time and effort for money and still get results.