4 Free Link Building Techniques for Amateur Web Site Owners

Having made the bold and somewhat reckless decision to try and help get a small website off the ground recently, I was forced to research techniques for promoting a website for free. I'd never done this before but I've since found a few simple ways of building good links across the internet to a website (backlinks) without spending any money.

Search Engine Submissions
It's amazing how many people don't realise that you have to tell the search engines about your site.The major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc) all have a link on their site that will allow you to submit your new site's URL into a queue for their robots to index. This can take anything from a few days to a few weeks. So don't be disheartened if you don't show up in search results right away - it's not that easy!

Free Directory Submissions
There are literally thousands of directory sites on the web, many of them accepting submissions of URLs for free. There is a drawback here though. Most of the directories are not well known, get little traffic themselves and so will not supply you with much, if any, visitors. That's not where the benefit comes from though. The benefit is in the creation of a backlink that can be seen by the major search engine robots. As you will probably have gathered in your linkbuilding efforts so far, the quantity of backlinks, even low quality ones, is important. You should, however, always aim for good quality backlinks wherever possible as links from high Pagerank directories will be 'worth' much more in the eyes of the search engines.

Do a web search for sites publishing lists of free directories - there are plenty. Free submissions to as many directories as you can manage will help establish your site's initial visibility on the web. Look for the 'submit link' button and follow the guidelines particularly around the allocation of a category to your website. Some directories will look for a reciprocal link before publishing your link. Decide whether you want to provide a reciprocal link as one-way links can be seen to be more valuable.

Article MarketingArticle marketing is a much misunderstood strategy. It involves writing articles and submitting them to article directories where other webmasters can go to find free content for their sites. These articles are then picked up by webmasters and reprinted in other websites. The link benefit for you, the author, is in the 'about the author' section - the bio. Here you should include links to your website. The terms under which the article can be reprinted from the article directory generally require that the author bio is reproduced, including all working links. This will provide you with a growing set of links on sites related to your subject matter - something else important to search engine results.Some tips for article marketing though:- stick to subjects you can write authoritatively on.

This helps you build a reputation which your website will become associated with.- make sure your articles are of good quality, informative and well written. This is crucial for you to establish a reputation for quality and for them to be reproduced often.- make sure that the subject matter can be related to your website or niche in some way. The search engines look for relevance in links and place more value on content-relevant links.- keep your articles a consistent length where possible. Shoot for approximately 400 - 800 words. Any shorter and they offer little substance for other webmasters and may not be reproduced very often. Any longer and you should ask yourself whether there can be two articles from it instead, giving you the benefit of two sets of links.Forum, Blog and Comment PostingLook for discussion forums on your subject matter or on related subjects.

Sign yourself up as a user of the forum and start contributing to
the discussions. Make sure the forum is a good quality one, frequented by users who know the subject well. Also, make sure you can have links in your signature. This is generally allowed but only after you have been a user for a set time period and have a minimum number of posts under your belt.Like forum posting, many blogs allow comments at the end of their blog posts. Look for blogs on your subject that encourage comments and allow links. Many of these, however have their scripts modified to deter the search engine robots from following the link. This is to avoid off-topic spamming from commenters just looking for linkbacks.To avoid being seen as a spammer, you MUST ensure that your contributions are good quality. Avoid, where possible, the pointless one-liners like, 'nice post'. These may get your post count up but they offer nothing to the forum or your reputation.