Thread: How do you build links?

Following Michael's thread, I was wondering how are you building links these days.

Do you buy them?
Do you exchange?
Do you hire a SEO team/company?
How much do you spend on a monthly basis?
How is your ROI?
How long does it take for you to breakeven your link investments?

Just wondering...

Nice post Shenron.

To be honest this is where me and my sites fall down. When I first set them up I did spend time building links to them both my wiriting in forums and adding a link in my sig and also blog commenting.

Now though I'm lucky if I spend an hour a month on this. I'll be reading through this thread to see if someone can inspire me to start it up again.

Do you buy them? No.
Do you exchange? Generally, when others approach me.
Do you hire a SEO team/company? No.
How much do you spend on a monthly basis? No record kept, varies from project to project / amount of money that I have at the time.

How do you build links? Through article marketing. Two links in each article, one article created per page that there is on my Web site (meaning that each page gets it's link in two articles). I pay $2 per article -- and submit it over at iSnare ($0.83 per article) and Ezine Articles. That's $2.83 per page.
How long does it take for you to breakeven your link investments? Not long at all. I Howd was 106 pages when I sold it to Will -- and was earning $400 per month... I spent 6 months in total developing it (mainly because I did not have enough cash to do so)... But, it worked out... I had actually only article submitted 11 pages.

- If it's a new site, I may try to buy/get some trusted links first. I think best way to buy links is from on topic sites where they offer donations/sponsorship. This way google cant call you a linkbuyer (a new term I just invented.. must read with negative connotation lol), because you merely sponsored and got a link back for that. Also good way to buy links is embeded in blogs/articles of other sites

- article submissions/distribution.. I must do that more often! Just as soon as I find a way to outsource the task successfully and at good rates.
- directory submissions. Don't tell me they don't work, or I'm gonna show a bunch of sites that the bulk of their links come from directories and they rank on top. However doing only directory submissions, or too much of them related to other methods might be less effective or even dangerous, so keep the right balance.
- social bookmarking, same as above
- my other sites
- link exchanges. I actually don't do any, it still works if you do it the smart way (whatever that means here)
- I use many of the seo/links services on DP. Yeah most are crap, but some are also good. Usually the ones offered by more reputable members and costing more there are good, not always though.
- Most important is try to diversify your links, to have a bit of everything there and make it look natural and growing over time.

Originally Posted by DomainMagnate

- link exchanges. I actually don't do any, it still works if you do it the smart way (whatever that means here)

Incontent works very well imho.
Instead of just dropping a sitewide I try to exchange incontent links with highly related articles, and that works quite well.
(I've a link exchange thread btw )

I just blog comment, join up forums I like. Im starting to make youtube videos as a promotional technique as well

Originally Posted by mack77

Im starting to make youtube videos as a promotional technique as well

All seos say it's good and it's the new best thing in seo.
But can you actually get links with it? I mean real links to help rank, not quite for traffic

question:

when you write article for article directories do you submit same promo article to all directories or you change after few submits?

Originally Posted by Hellas

when you write article for article directories do you submit same promo article to all directories or you change after few submits?

Submit the same.

Originally Posted by DomainMagnate

All seos say it's good and it's the new best thing in seo.
But can you actually get links with it? I mean real links to help rank, not quite for traffic

http://www.netbuilders.org/content-b...trial-162.html -- that appears to be doing very poorly for Net Builders. It was my first ever video, and took about 2-3 hours.

Do you buy them? sometimes,
Do you exchange? with good sites
Do you hire a SEO team/company? no
How much do you spend on a monthly basis? not a whole lot
How is your ROI? could be better
How long does it take for you to breakeven your link investments? 1 month