Linkbuilding 101 - How to never be lost for links again

Ok, I know many of you reading in here feel frustrated with SEO and particularly linkbuilding.

Linkbuilding is THE most important thing you can do to get that profitable Google traffic (after on page SEO optimization, but that's another topic).

So why is it that so many feel like linkbuilding is such a chore?

I believe it is because most of you don't organize linkbuilding well enough. So you might say to yourself: "I'm going to spend 2 hours linkbuilding for my site", but then just stare at your screen with no idea of where to go. "Maybe I'll write an article or maybe I'll do some blog commenting".

That's not efficient at all. Face it, unless you outsource your linkbuilding, your success in the Google rankings come down to efficiency. How many and how good links can you get pr. hour?

The first thing you want to do if you're serious about linkbuilding is to actually be serious about linkbuilding.

That includes getting organized.

Set up your own Link Resource excel sheet

What you're going to do to begin with is open up Excel and make a workbook called Link Resources or whatever name you prefer. This spreadsheet is going to become your go to resource for linkbuilding.

What you're going to put in here is a list of all link opportunities that you find when you're linkbuilding or just browsing the web.

So you may make some titles for your columns like 'Website Name', 'URL', 'Page Rank', 'Notes' etc.

Then every time you come across a place to put a link, like a do-follow blog, forum with signature or forum profile, guestbook, niche article directory or other social site you put your link in that spreadsheet.

There are tons of tons of places not specifically mentioned on this forum, where you can get links.

So maybe I found a blog with the CommentLuv plugin installed which gives you a do follow link. I might not even be building links, but I'll take that url and put in it my Link Resource sheet and the next time I'm building links for a website I only have to look there and there's an instant link.

Over time, your link resource sheet will grow huge and you will find that you will never be lost for where to get a link.

Naturally, you'll want to organize the spreadsheet in a way that makes sense like Do-Follow Forums, Blogs etc or based on niche.

Look for footprints not websites

Footprints are certain phrases that can be used to identify good linking opportunities. It can be stuff like: "This blog is powered by Wordpress" or "This blog is CommentLuv enabled" or "Thanks for visting my site, please leave a comment in the guestbook below".

These innocent phrases hold a treasure of linking opportunities for the linkbuilder.

Why?

Because if you happen to come across a website that is do-follow because of a certain software or plugin, then you haven't just found one link opp, but likely thousands or even millions.

CommentLuv is a good example. This is a Wordpress plugin which shows the title of your blog commenters latest blogpost along with a dofollow link to their blogpost. CommentLuv have several footprints one of them being: "Commentluv Enabled". Knowing that information we can find thousand of relevant blogs to comment on just searching Google for:"CommentLuv Enabled dog training".

So when you're creating your linkresource spreadsheet, try to look for these footprints instead of just putting in individual sites. Then the next time you're looking for a link for your blog on Chicken Soup, you'll be able to take those footprints and just add your keyword and there you go. Lots and lots of places to get a link from.

Conclusion

Efficiency is key when building links. There are people out there building 1000's of links in the time it took you to build one. Fortunately, they are far between, so if you follow simple steps like the ones above and eliminate that fruitless staring at the screen, then you're one step ahead.

Remember to always be looking for link opportunities also when you're just browsing the net. Use a plugin such as Search Status to instantly see if a link is no-follow or do-follow.