Awesome Internet Marketing and Link Building Ideas
How many times have you thought about starting a website or an online business but drew a blank in your head when it came to deciding how to start or execute your marketing campaigns. A lot of agencies and marketers are good on paper and dominate in discussions, but when it comes to execution their minds go blank. Digital marketing is all about brainstorming great ideas and then implementing them, if you cannot walk all the talk you make, you need to read this post!
Today’s topic is to list some top marketing strategies for acquiring links, which are not only sound good on paper, but are actually implementable. Prior to moving down to the list, the best tip I can give you about executions is to roll your sleeves up and get practical, if you are stuck somewhere then ASK for help! You won’t be able to execute and steps for creative and safe link building until you kill your fear of not being able to do it.
Create Local Events For Public Awareness
A lot of educational organizations, charities, local councils and media encourage and give coverage to events which are created purely for public awareness. Profiles Creative is a creative marketing recruitment agency have been planning to run graduate schemes and create local events in universities to help new graduates get jobs in creative verticals.
This is a good strategy where you can observe mutual benefit, if such campaigns are well thought out and are based on high moral grounds, they can definitely secure traction, traffic, branding and backlinks from highly authoritative websites and media outlets. Think about helping others and good things will happen to you in return.
Take a look at sites like MeetUp.com to find out what others are doing in your local area. You can take advantage of the platform to organize your own events too.
Here's the perfect example of this type of event. Ms. Ileane attended the AWEBER GRAND OPENING!
Create Useful Resources
This one is hectic but extremely practical and productive methodology. If you are expert in your niche, look around for educational and or government portals and read through their resource sections. If you find weakness in there or observe that their content lacks depth, you can go ahead and create a great guide or an Infographic and then use that for your content marketing outreach. Approach targeted high authority websites and present them with your content and explain to them how this can benefit their readers. There are a lot of examples where marketers successfully executed similar link building strategies and applied effective principles of marketing and so can you.
Offer Free Design or Development Service
If you are kick starting a company and have good set of design or development skills what you can do is reach out some sites in your vertical and offer them your service for free in exchange of a link. Think of a holiday season or some upcoming important event and offer your target site to design a new logo.
For example, Christmas is coming! What I would do is revolve my marketing campaign around the idea of Xmas and send out emails or approach owners of relevant sites on Twitter or Facebook and offer to make them a unique header, logo or graphic adorned with Santa, Lights, Xmas trees or snow in the design. This has worked for me previously and I am sure it can work for you too. If you don’t have design skills, you can go to a freelancing site or even better try Fiverr and pay someone 5 dollars to do the job.
Use Social Media For Marketing Out Reach
Now a lot might think this strategy is probably not worth all the time and hassle, but my friend you cannot be more wrong. If you don’t have strong social media presence then you are missing out on a lot. First thing is to go ahead and register on Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Pinterest and any other social media website of your choice.
Most of the editors, journalists, bloggers and site owners have social media profiles and using JustRetweet, Followerwonk or Triberr, you can narrow down your target audience and follow the power users like @Ileane communicate to people in your verticals, be polite and don’t be pushy!
Get their attention by sharing their content, replying to their Tweets and making valuable suggestions. Once a contact is established, reach out them and suggest how you can write a great piece of content for them and also let them know how you plan to promote their content. Remember the ego bait works like a charm!
Offer Incentives to Kick off  Your Link Building Campaign
If you are working in a boring niche, the conventional marketing strategies might be counterproductive. You must not use template based emails for your outreach approach. Recruit smarter ideas, that is offer incentives and other types of help. This strategy works really well if you are a power user on social media.
So lets say you are an individual marketer or an agency with hundreds of thousands of followers under your Facebook or Twitter page, you can use your pages as a bait to attract webmasters to let you write on their websites. To make this work, you can pitch your email with something like this.
Hello XYZ, (use real names if known)
My name is XYZ, i have been writing on ($niche) for $X amount of years. I have been reading posts on your blog for a while and I must say they always tickle my innovative bone. I was hoping if you would be interested in a guest post, I can prepare a unique post supported with a lot of images and possibly a video, I will make sure it is engaging enough and compel your readers to share it around.
Beside that, I hold $X amount of fans on Twitter who are passionate about such content, once I have posted on your blog, I shall make sure I post it around on social media and bring in direct traffic to the article I post. I hope you see the opportunity in it and get back to me.
Regards ABC
Conclusion
If you can implement these creative link building strategies then good enough, else use them as food for thought!
Great tips. Offering something for free in exchange of links always work and will continuously work for the years to come. Who can resist freebie? Right?
Does offering or starting an online/blogging contest can be considered as a good creative link building idea? Thoughts about it?
Hi Ahmed
Thanks for explaination, I think this should be helpful for everyone, a naive as well as seasoned blogger.
I would surely prefer Social media to promote my blog.
Thanks for sharing this great info.
Sapna
RonLeyba, sure why not. It might not be unique enough, but you can add your personal twist based on your niche and make it creative. Search out for what has worked for people and repeat what they have done, remember you are not copying their idea, but their success. Good luck!
Ahmed, liked these out-of-the-box link building strategies, but loved your bio/About Me! 😀
I am glad you liked my write up and the author bio 🙂
I just can not leave without any words. Definitely a great post! BTW, it would be better if you offered some posts about backlink removal. thank you
This post is about marketing and how you can execute your marketing strategies. I shall try to cover link removal strategies in some other post.
Hi Ahmed, these strategies of building articles are just too great. Social Media is the best place to drive traffic and we can very easily find new friends from it. As there are too many benefits from Social Media, it is so great to build links from there.
Thanks – Ferb
Ok here you go… the GOODS.
So you want to build quality back links huh?
…and not get attacked by Google animals?
Ok. Here’s all you need to do:
1. Make a list of all the top blogs in your niche.
2. Subscribe to ALL their email lists.
(Click Sign me up below to get EXCLUSIVE blogging tips from Ms. Ileane)
3. Watch your email for new post notifications.
4. When you see a new blog post read it thoroughly and post a comment that adds value, you know like this one.
5. Share the post on social media. (connect with the writer/blogger)
6. Continue until you have responded to all new posts in your email.
7. Now write a guest post and submit it to one of the blogs on your list.
Complete this EVERY DAY and you’ll be shocked with the results.
#BlogSoHard
Hey Jacko, thanks for taking some time and adding your valued input, highly appreciated. You have written a short step by step guide and i am sure it shall be helpful to some.
Ahmed, I like all your Marketing and Link Building Ideas. Thanks for sharing your views.
@ jacko – I like the your techniques of creating backlinks
A lot of agencies and marketers are good on paper and dominate in discussions, but when it comes to execution their minds go blank. Digital marketing is all about brainstorming great ideas and then implementing them. Learn how to develop a good strategy where you can observe mutual benefit, if such campaigns are well thought out and are based on high moral grounds, they can definitely secure traction, traffic, branding and backlinks from highly authoritative websites and media outlets. Think about helping others and good things will happen to you in return.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Would of been better if you had not copy pasted and break the natural sequence of comments!
Ahmed — I like the JustRetweet suggestion. I just launched a new blog and Twitter account, so I’ll be giving it a go.
Thank you!
Monique
Is guest posting really that crucial in link building? I know it would possibly share audiences from two different blogospheres, but how does it affect the Google PR or SERP? How does it affect in a SEO standpoint? It might give you an increased audience, but you would want to make sure it translates on visibility from a search engine perspective as well, I would think.
Hey Lauren, guest posting is crucial when it comes to branding, bou can try alternate strategies, such as viral marketing campaigns that can create some buzz in the industry. The issue is, kick starting a viral marketing campaign is hard to pull off, that leaves webmasters with other options and guest posting is one of them. You can pick on as many blogs and write on them, this will not only fetch you nice juice backlink but also help you brand yourself as a marketer.
I am using the strategy to offer free tutorials on my blog, I cannot afford any other strategy listed above so I opted for the information sharing one.
That is one good model. If you are low on budget, use brain and come up creative marketing ideas, necessity is mother of invention 🙂
Some new tips (free service) here along with the familiar ones. Thanks Ahmed Raza!
I love the offering something for free – just have to get creative for the offering. Guest posts are always great. Helps both the guest poster and the blogger who has the guest person post. Thanks for the great tips on link building. It’s not like it use to be link building 🙂
Yes, agreed. One can offer different kind of services or even goodies if they can afford. Just need to be creative i guess. Building links with influential people in the industry and then utilizing them effectively in your marketing outreach can have long lasting results.
Thanks for this valuable post. I just use Social Media for online marketing and i seem this is great post for marketer. It would be helpful for link building.
Agree, now it`s time for online businesses to go out and start offline marketing too. This will definitely going to help us out.
Ahmed, thanks for sharing these out of box tips.
~@Khajamoin1
This will help you with branding, branding shall take you to certain height. It is a good thing, but in a marketing mix you apply all possible strategies, which means you still cannot neglect the importance online marketing.
Indeed a post with different idea. Now a days many blogger just keep rewriting rewriting others posts and don’t have any innovative ideas. You have mentioned some creative ideas and it is important to implement instead of saving ideas on paper
Hey dani, good that you think that way. My job was to present couple of ideas, but then again it all comes down to execution of these ideas. I hope people become more practical.
Great tips.Many tips are new to me.Right now I am planning to change my marketing strategies for new year.And i like few of yours especially local event and approaching for guest posting.I will definitely use them.Thanks for sharing such useful information.
Guest posting is very powerful if used rightly, you need to network with right set of people and have strong social media presence and slowly things will start to work out for you.
i think best way is to give design services. . . … . . u earn money & u get link too
Thank you, I am using many of these methods but I liked the idea of free services or downloads or some useful content for marketing purposes – think it can help the site and will cerrtainly try it
Create Useful Resources” – I think that this is the most hardest thing to achieve lately.
It is very hard to be honest. You first need to have a great idea then hours or days of research finding relevant data and then presenting it in best possible way so that it can make the type of impact you want.
Thanks for reply Ahmed Raza, indeed it’s hard that’s why not many people are able to do it.
Offering Freebies is really a great source to boost marketing campaign!
Nice Post Ahmad Raza !
Thanks salman, yes freebies often work like charm, specially for the social media marketing.
Other thing to kick off your link building is to make a contest with very appealing prize. Contestants will write an article and should put your link on it. The contestant who created the best article will get the prize.
If there are lots of bloggers that joined the contest then surely link building is easy.
Yes Matt, that is a feasible idea.
Hey Matt, that is a feasible idea, i like it.
You have mentioned some very good ideas, I really like the idea of holding a public event.
I’m working on a project at the moment where I will run websites for football clubs around the world, how would you market that? Someone suggested contacting clubs by email offering the service but isn’t that spam?
While it is a good idea to keep the offline marketing on the table, i think you should probably start off by doing a press release, if your service is good enough you can get featured on some newspaper site. Then make sure you have social media presence and then start doing guest posting on popular and prominent blogs. Reach out top blogs and sites in your niche and offer them a nice guest post, suggest couple of ideas and explain how beneficial this can be for their readers! show some previous samples of your writeups to them. Also try to get listed in local niche directories, only qualitative ones!
Linkbuilding to your site/blog needs to be of up most quality, if not the best.
Your campaign needs to consist of high quality links since Google is rewarding those who favor the quality aspect of SEO.
Thanks for some of the ideas and how they consist of quality methods!
Don’t forget the relevance, there should be some relevance in the backlinks you acquire.
I have been reading that directory submission could be a thing of the past? Then I see in another blog that its fine if the directory is not banned or penalized with Google. Also that anchor text must match on all directories submitted too?
There are only handful of decent directories. The best idea would be to search for “Key word Keyword Web directory” and the sites showing for top spots are usually decent directories.
Another wishful way of link building. Good luck doing all these when you work as an in house SEO for a large company when changing simple text on a site takes forever and needs to go through multiple layer of audit and approval.
Very nice post Ahmed, using social media to promote a product is essential nowadays. Also Fiverr idea is really cool, getting some work done in only 5 USD 😉
Hey Raj, nice to see you here 🙂 i really like fiverr idea, have used it couple of times to my benefit.
Yeah many trusted people offering very good services on fiverr, really useful site, I always recommend it to my friends.
Ahmad,
This is real nice post. Offering free design and development’ can be a game changer. Although, putting up the right words on a blog will be enough to get huge following in upcoming years…
very nice tips to create backlinks and increase your visitors thanks for sharing.
Regarding your point about creating useful resources, I’ve noticed an increased trend in infographic creation and white paper writing in 2012. Am expecting this trend to increase going forward.
Well, I like your bio more than the post. These are some new useful tactics that everyone should apply. Thanks for the awesome share. 😀
I am glad my bio is making the readers excited 🙂
thank you for your very informative article really helpful to me. 🙂
Ah wassup “playboy”?! You from the streets? Holla back then!
Okay seriously man you have str8 skilz for link building success, well maybe great tips on how to become a “Billionaire” like you! haha , sorry man your BIO is killer!
Social media has become primary for most traffic, but I still love the guest post on other blogs relating to your niche the most. Great post!
Thank you for liking the bio, its all for the laughs, wish i was a billionaire lol!
I have friends who make pretty decent living out of social media traffic, so yea, social media works. It should be part of your digital marketing plan any way.
Creating infographics, illustrations and free themes can also be the best idea. You can also create free icons or contribute in the development of some ” Open source ” web based program. This method can bring you backlinks from news websites. Their are hundred of more methods to build backlinks.
Thanks for the post..
I agree, icons can be a good options, also the free vectors, theme/event based graphics. If you offer them for free, you can earn some repeat visitors and backlinks.
Dont forget forums! Post on forums that are relevant to your blog subject and drive folks to check you out!
Hi Brett, posting links around on forums is a risky game, however, if done rightly it can definitely help. It is better to talk about your product/service in general and mention brand name instead of embedding anchor rich text links, that would come to your disadvantage later.
Thanks for the info. I always thought it was a good idea depending on your product/forum. How can the text links came back to be a disadvantage? I am wondering if I have done any harm…
Thank you a lot for valuable tips. I agree with most of your ideas, especially Offer free design. I will consider and make a plan with that idea.
Offering incentives works, and it is one of the best ways to get more traffic, or like you’ve said, as the focus of your marketing campaign. However it may require some investment on your part, but that depends.
Hey,
I think that you have missed Guest posting, Info Graphics and web 2.0. I find these methods useful because they have more value and more quality as compare to those methods which you have stated above.
I guess you should be updated with the things which Search Engine loves.
Thank you
I’m Pretty Sure That The backlinks are one of the most important factores that help the website need to be succefull that and also the creative content
I think using social networking to advertise your blog is a great idea! Also, Linkbuilding to your blog needs to be of good quality, if not great. Your campaign needs to consist of high quality links since Google is rewarding the good ones!
Really useful tips,
Using out of box link building techniques actually helps you to acquire quality backlinks. Such backlinks also helps you to get great exposure in limited time period.
Something new for a change, some of them are really creative
I always see tips like Guest Blogging, Blogging Directories and what not. Something fresh here for a change. With Google Hangouts, organizing events is much more easier locally and globally if need be.
Smart use of Social Media is a great tool as well.
Thanks for sharing.
Aditya
I would try organizing a local event. That seems like a brilliant idea.
This article has a lot of good ideas. You say “You must not use template based emails…”, that is great advice. I know autoresponders offer them but it not only is impersonal but teaches us to be lazy with our businesses. Used as a simple thank you for signing up is ok, but definitely create personal, relationship building emails. Thank you.
early to bed and early to rise…Drewry keeps those “puters puting” in creating unique content and uses social media to build links effectively and advertise! 🙂
Hello Ahmed
The ideas which you have shared in this article is undoubtedly unique but it is really time taking and one needs to really work hard, go to every blog/website, find their review them , find their flaw, create a report and then ….. Wont it take a lot of productive time?
There are many other easier ways to get links. What do you say?
Sanjib
The idea of local event seems good and i think to organize it for my site.
Hi Ahmed,
These are really creative ideas for link building. Engaging local events, useful resources, providing free services in return of link backs, simply great.
Excellent tips and since the new Penguin update outsourcing any link building activity is gone. Other site owners have to understand that ranking in the search engines if going to take even more time and the emphasis now is quality links, which again is gong to take time and effort and a longer time to return search engine results
This is a great post which so many could benefit from. A lot of bloggers and small businesses are looking to get their name out there, but don’t know where to start. These are several GREAT places to start!
that was really helpful, can u plz suggest that out of directory submission , article submission and press release which method is most effective for link building.
An article can be submitted to how many sites so that it is not considered as spam
This is awesome and very helpful.. hope to implement the tips here..
A good piece of work Raza, I really liked the offering free service tip.
People are not aware of the power of the word FREE. If something is free they want it no matter they need it or not. But actually providing services for a backlink is not free as a backlink is more precious than a few dollars and those professional who understand won’t easily accept the service proposal.
But people will love to try these free service. We never should under estimate anyone. Do doubt most of the time free service are not worth to consider, still they help a lots of newbies.
I am going to build links for my blog and this is surely a gift for me. I will be doing the same things you suggested above. Simply Awesome…
Great tips! I use social media for promotion and these are some very good ideas.
I feel the most valuable information you share is right here: “…Communicate to people in your verticals, be polite and don’t be pushy! Get their attention by sharing their content, replying to their Tweets and making valuable suggestions. …”
So many people join Twitter/Facebook etc and just start blasting annoying, unrelated content it’s ridiculous. Want to get ignored and unfriended quickly? Start posting links to your blog on someone else wall about unrelated content. If you have something that’s well thought out and worthwhile, then share it. If not, then avoid hitting the “share” button.
Good post, excellent points, you’ve gained a new reader.
You are right rich blogger. This is the reason most of these types of blogger are not properly connected with the community.
I am glad that you spotted the essence. I cannot force it further that communication is the key to breaking the ice and it can help you build relations with power bloggers in your niches. Once the relation is established, both parties can reap the benefits.
It is true that new business owners or bloggers can plan everything to the last detail on paper but when it comes to implementing the marketing strategy they fail dismally. i was also like that when i started but as i kept failing i learnt a lot of new things and i’m improving on the skills. thank you for the blog post, it is rather informative indeed.
I tried many of the stragedy for link building but my page rank is not even increasing. I tried a lot of method till now but i am not able to get amount of visitors i want. I want to ask if we will put our site at advertising in paid to click site do our rankings increases in search engines or not.
interesting ideas, how do you go about finding blogs to email to seeing they would be interested in Guest posts?
Very nice list. I am always looking for more creative ways to build links. I had not really thought about creating local events before, I might just go ahead and try that out.
I like the idea of offering something for free to get a good quality backlink in exchange. I run a car detailing business which operates in Sussex Kent and Surrey so finding a good quality backlink and offering a free valet in exchange could be very difficult!!
This is really a GOOD INFORMATION that every writer or online Marketer should realize…
Thanks for sharing the best information Ahmed Raza. These are awesome ideas for everyone. Everyone must try to innovate or get new ideas to become more fruitful in marketing their stuffs.
These ideas are a great help to your website visibility status in major search engines.
Thanks for this post! Have a great link building!
These are some really creative ways to build links. Its so important to build links for your website because Google will help rank your site up higher. And if your links have a keyword in them than Google will see this and it will help. Social Networking, Forum Signatures, Article Marketing Sites, Video Sites are great ways to build links!
Good technique. When I build links for my website I am always aware about google panda and penguin. I will try your link building strategy.
Building a network is first and the formost requirement to kick off all these idea. All these means are automatically get viral advertisement if your social network is so solid. Thanks for this beautiful article my dear friend.
I have seen many tips about creative link building and this is one of the best. Link building is very important in SEO and getting traffic. I will implement this tips as soon as possible. Thanks Ahmad Raza for great posting
Everyone loves free products and giveaways..That’s gotta be working for sure…
Nice Tips. Your blog is a source of invaluable knowledge.
hey Ahmed,
Nice post and Thanks for sharing these important tips with us. I think creating events is a good way for making links with others and Yes, social media sites really helps in promoting our business and helps in making links with other.
Hello Ahmed..
Marketing is an important part of any business.Online and offline both type of marketing are good.Link building with the help of marketing is a awesome Idea.Thanks for sharing nice tips and points.
As you said..write resourceful content…yea you are absolutely right, even in my opinion content plays an important role in any blogs success.. Google also keeps sites up who are having valuable content..and beside this..we can also get some authority back links by writing valuable information.
Nice tips … I like basicblogtips very much. I learned all the blogging techniques here.
Thanks to the blog Admin Ileane.
Ahmad! I see that you have put a lot of efforts into this article and really it worked out for me. Ileane herself referred me this article.
What I have noticed is that initially any domain with zero history ranks very high, although you do some link building with it. But after a couple of months its graph goes down and which can’t be improved without some real Hard work. Normal link building strategies will fail against that particular website.