I've been writing a bit about link development and incoming links on my site over the past few days and these are 4 I've been working on and which have given me alot of success. They wont be for everyone since they require at least basic knowledge of HTML and some basic programming skills, but hopefully they'll be useful to some of you. 1. Create themes for websites. You can find many sites which accept themes and give them out to the public. If you include your link in the theme you'll see a traffic increase. 2. Create themes for applications. There are countless scripts and interfaces out there, phpBB and WordPress are two very popular ones which have custom theme creation and sharing options. Link building with themes is so popular in WordPress that there are now several plugins available for generating custom themes. Which leads me on to the next point. 3. Write a script or plugin. If you have programming ability put it to work making scripts or plugins for other applications or sites. Include your link where appropriate. Again, taking WordPress as an example, you can find out what people want and what will work by checking out their plugins forum then simply generate something that'll be used. 4. Submit PAD files. This is one of the lesser known SEO wonders that can generate huge amounts of links. A PAD file is a Portable Application Description (http://www.sharewarepromotions.com/glossar/pad_file.html) and is great for shareware or open source applications. Using free, automated PAD adding software you can add your PAD file with your link to vast quantities of sites in a matter of minutes. Assuming your site is somewhat technically orientated then these links will be seen by Google as relevant too.
Well the themes market is certainly far from untouched, i would argue that it is without a doubt over-saturated currently.
Agreed, in WordPress themes are primarily built for link building, it's a big market. So I was a bit misleading there. Link building on social networks is good if A. The page you're sending the link from is actually indexed and has some value and B. It's accessible by Google. This isn't always the case because on sites where you need to log in to see someones profile Google's spiders don't see the page and hence don't see the link. Certainly Facebook applications can bring lots of incoming links and traffic, and free blogging platforms like tumblr.com etc are still worth posting a few articles on and adding your link.
I wouldn't call them 'virtually untouched methods'. People have managed to get their websites banned by using excessive wordpress and phpld themes. Aviva directory and mikey's fruitydirectory come to my mind.
Forum posting is a more standard method than the ones OP has mentioned. It's a very effective method to get backlinks as well as traffic.
There is a surprising number of non-nofollow'ed formus out there, especially in non-techie subject areas. And many of them allow you to put sig links in straight away. My approach is to participate in the forum for a while and ADD VALUE to it so as you gradually introduce sig links, the moderators won't even mind as you have become a valuable member. Just cynical spamming of forums is not a long-term tactic in my opinion. You wouldn't want people doing to your forum, don't do it to others... However, I have noticed that a number of forums are ranking high for "my" keywords, even though they are not really even about the topic. I think I need to "divert" that link juice in my direction
I don't really like using social networking sites because unless you run a social networking site yourself they're virtually never relevant. Though they are free so it doesn't hurt to try.
I agree about the social networking links. Very few of them really count as relevant links. I do see some traffic from Facebook if I post an article on my profile, but that's just from friends clicking to read the post.