This is just something I'm finding more difficult by the year, as someone in the internet marketing field. It seems like the only options are: -Bookmarking services like Delicious.com (which suck these days, and do little to help influence your SERPs, even in terms of funneling traffic) -Writing articles and using keyword-inserted anchor links (still the best option, IMO) -Posting in blog comments (horrible strategy, seen as "spammy" most of the time, and a great way to get other competitors & marketers to discover the niche you've found) -Hoping people will subscribe to your RSS, which the probably won't, or definitely won't if you're hoping for such a thing for an affiliate site. -Directories (I question the benefit that major paid directories like Yahoo and Busienss.com give, as well as the effort put into listing sites on free directories) -Paid links (don't even think about it...) -Facebook & Myspace (who the hell is going to fan the page promoting your ebay affiliate site, and help promote you? Nobody). -Creating niche blogs on separate URLs on separate Class-C servers, writing articles and linking to your main site (are you really gonna pay to have separate hosting accounts do to this? Or, would you use free hosting services that will eventually hijack your page with popup ads?) - regardless of this, it's still a very valid option. It's just frustrating Especially when you truly have found a great niche, and can't beat those "Last Updated: 1998" websites that dominate Google page 1 even with the best of SEO tactics and link building. A lot of it is all about social networking, which usually equates to "nofollow" and extreme amounts of time & dedication that could be spend on writing content. Maybe I'm just bitter and having a bad week Any comments/opinions/thoughts are welcome
Why "Paid links" don't even think about it? I see tons of bought links all the time and those sites that buy them rank well.
I personally use & rewrite my own articles on Squidoo, Hubpages, Wordpress.com, Blogger and a few other services, and hyperlink important sentence fragments that have keywords I want to rank for, and point those back to my main site.
That is because you need to focus on finding RELEVANT pages to link from. From my experience, the directories where I've listed in the Sub-Category entitled "Weddings", nearly ALL of them show up in GWT, YSE, and Alexa link counts. Google is also evaluating the ANCHOR TEXT of all these inbound links from directories, even the ones that are No Follow. (They all show up in "What The Google-Bot Sees") Some directories don't seem to be categorized properly.....those are the ones that are USELESS from an SEO standpoint (and don't get counted by Google). If you can't find a Directory's sub-category list to contain at least ONE of your site's Key Words.........MOVE ON and place your link elsewhere. I learned the hard way....... in the early days of my web existence, I was placing my site under the category of ENTERTAINMENT. (Unfortunately -- Entertainment also encompasses Strippers, Lap Dances, Porn and XXX sites. SO the bottom line is: DIRECTORY LINKS are only useful when you link from a relevant sub-category, matching at least ONE of your site's KW
I agree with you on how difficult it can be to find good dofollow sites. That was why I decided to create prospotlight dot com. It makes it possible for you to quickly create 5-10 pages or more of relevant content that you can link to your sites. Each profile on the site is called a spotlight, and you can have multiple spotlights - one for each topic or site you're trying to promote. Spammy stuff will get deleted. Script and Style tags are not allowed, but other than that, it's set up to be a great way to build backlinks.
Many large websites pay for links where they rank 1st or 1st page for VERY high traffic keywords. So yes if you have the budget and know how to do it right then paying for links can prove pretty lucrative.
About that third point: Blog commenting is not spamming. Visit blogs that are related to your website. Read the articles and leave really good attractive comments. Instead of visiting hundreds of blogs, focus on 4 or 5 blogs, and regularly comment on them. This way you'll not only build links on that blog but also some good relationship with the blogger. One arrow Two Targets.
Well, are you going after links on high page rank forums and edu sites? It's still easy to get quality backlinks from sites with pr 6 and 7 - if they're authority sites, they give a hell of a lot of power to your site. Mix up links to your main page as well as some internal pages and you'll be kicking the crap out of your competitors - even the older sites. Not on all keywords of course - you still have to be very strategic. And when I say high ranking forums and edu sites, don't try to match your site content to the content of the forums - it's not always possible to do this. So for instance go onto a general, webmaster related, high page rank forum with tons of page rank power - make some nice posts with your site in your sig file - and give it a month or two. You'll see a lot of magic happen even if your niche is something like "aardvark collars" and the forum top is "css stylesheets." Dan