Free, easy way to build additional backlinks with blog posts

This does require an extra 2-3 minutes of your time when preparing your blog posts because the two plugins that are supposed to automate the job didn't work. That said, I'm glad they didn't work and I'll explain in a moment.

I had been looking into buying a copy of WP Syndicator because I wanted to try building backlinks on other websites automatically when I post a blog post. The problem is that I didn't have the money to spend for it.

So, I was looking for free alternatives and stumbled across Ping.fm and Hellotxt. These services are designed to let you automatically update all your social networks at once but they also let you build a backlink very easily for every blog post you put out.

Now theoretically, there are two plugins that should work for Hellotxt, but I found neither one worked properly for me.

That said, I'm glad because it gave me a chance to experiment with a cool feature at HelloTXT. They have a feature called tags which looks similar to Twitter hashtags.

Basically, you set up your various accounts (I have 15 of them set up right now, though they do support many more than that) and link them to HelloTXT. Then, when you write a blog post, you simply put the update in HelloTXT and it blasts it to every social network you're a member of. This creates additional backlinks automatically for any dofollow networks they offer.

However, I was always bothered because I was using a plugin for my Wordpress blog to send out a tweet when I updated and the tweet would automatically get filtered to my FB page as well. However, since FB lets you write much more than a tweet, I felt as if I wasn't putting up what I really wanted to put up at FB. At the same time, doing updates manually for each system is too time consuming.

However, as I said, HelloTXT has these tags. What they do is let you choose which networks get which updates. So, I set up two tags, one is #twitterblog and the other is #blog (I actually have additional ones for the things I'm doing, but these are the important ones for this discussion). The #twitterblog tag goes to Twitter (obviously) as well as the other micro blogging sites such as Delicious, Jaiku, etc. Sadly, I don't see Digg listed. Then, I just tweet my title along with "check out the latest at the PFHC" (That's the Personal Finance Help Center BTW). HelloTXT automatically shortens the URL for me and blasts it to around 8 different networks, all of them now offering me backlinks (at least those that are dofollow -- though I see no harm in putting it onto all of them anyway for the same amount of time and money).

Then (and here is where the 2-3 minutes comes in) I write a 50 word or so blurb about the blog post which goes to the #blog tag. This sends it to FB, Blogger, Wordpress, Livejournal, Tumblr, etc.

Since you can have around 30 different networks on HelloTXT, it allows you to easily add backlinks to every blog post you put out with very little effort.

Now, here's why I prefer this method over the plugins (which didn't work anyway): because I can put up a longer update on FB and other platforms that support it.

While my primary goal is to create additional backlinks, I also know that human beings may see the material I've put out and I want them to have a reason to read it as well and hopefully click through, which I think will happen more readily when I have a longer blurb than I can put on Twitter.

A word of caution regarding the tags though: make sure you put a space after the tag. Otherwise, HelloTXT doesn't recognize it as such. I screwed up my first posting because of that.

Anyway, I'd love to know what people think. I know it's not mind blowing, but it does seem like a solid idea for getting extra backlinks in a relatively painless way.

Eric