The link request can be a very effective tool for link building but it seems to be underused by bloggers. Many of them are hesitant to ask for links. They think it is too intrusive and spammy. Or they are not confident in their content.

Others have tried sending a couple requests but they didn’t have success so they stopped.

If you haven’t had success, here’s a principle that can help. Also, this principle can build your confidence and help you realize that link requests don’t have to be spammy. read more

You don’t usually hear a lot about press releases when people talk about SEO, but I’ve found them to be a solid link building tactic.  There are sites that publish and promote press releases called newswires.  Some newswires like PRWeb do well on the search results.  These sites provide quality links.

You’ll have to spend some money to get the best links but there are free or low cost newswires that pass a good amount of link juice.

There are other benefits aside from the links.  News search engines like Google News scour the newswires to populate their search results.  And any site that uses press releases gets a boost in perceived authority since press releases are associated with activity and expertise. read more

A couple months ago, We Build Pages stopped buying links for their clients.  This was a big change since We Build Pages is a well known link building firm in the SEO industry and they were notorious for buying links.  Also, just recently, I was surprised to see SEOmoz change their stance on paid links.  SEOmoz had previously recommended paid links.

Why is it that top SEO firms are now changing their minds on paid links?  Has buying links gotten so risky that you shouldn’t do it any more?

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Well, I’m back to continue the Sunday Morning SEO series. I took a little break of three months because I was busy with client work. I’m creating backup posts beforehand so I won’t have to take a break next time.

Anyways, today let’s look at one of my favorite link building tactics. It’s a powerful tactic that involves competitive analysis.

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Last month, I started SEO work for a client.  The client has a website in a pretty popular niche.  As I worked on the site, it surprised me how powerful SEO is especially the activity of link building. Since the client is in a popular niche, I thought it would be hard to get them a front page ranking.  See one of the maxims in SEO is popular niches are very competitive.  And the more competitive a niche is, the harder it is to attain a top 10 ranking.

The client was only a couple spots from the front page but I still thought it would take at least 2-3 months to get a front page ranking. However, after just one month and a couple of links, they now have not one but two front page rankings for popular two word search terms. This surprised me because it didn’t take much effort. read more

I thought it would be interesting to find out the top link building tips of the Blog Herald audience. What things would you recommend for getting links?

Here are my top three tips. Feel free to leave a comment with your best tips. read more

If I had just one SEO tip to recommend to my fellow bloggers, it would be to write guest posts.

I recommend guest posting because link building is so important in SEO. Many webmasters neglect to build links so you’ll have a competitive advantage if you guest post. And the quantity and quality of your backlinks is the most important factor to ranking well for a wide variety of keywords and the competitive keywords with high search volume.

Sure, you can try other link building methods but these days guest posting gives you the best return for your time.  Here are a couple reasons why. read more

Right as I throttle down my guest posting to the lowest in my blogging career it seems guest posting is gaining steam.

This is because it’s not just traditional bloggers who are realizing the value of guest posting, but marketers, SEOs and other webmasters. Rather than looking for profile and personal brand building, these folks are using the tactic for growing their traffic and links. read more

Since Google slammed bought links, more and more webmasters have been scrambling around for a solution. Maybe not to replace their paid links, but to make their linking more natural in appearance, and definitely more scalable and sustainable. As an online marketing consultant I get paid well when called on to help out with this, but I am going to give you one solution for free. read more