My onpage SEO is at a good spot and now I'm ready to start working on my offpage SEO. However I'm stuck, not knowing where to start. My niche is travel and in that niche I looked for: Directories: all no-follow links Forums: all no-follow Social Bookmarking: I don't want to buy links because I fear getting penalized by Google. I hired a freelancer SEO and all he was doing was posting a bunch of poorly written posts in completely irrelevant forums and directories so I told him to stop after 1 day, also fearing being penalized by Google. Any help appreciated.
You may have already thought of this, but have you tried using something like Moz's Open Site Explorer to analyze the backlinks of your competitors to get ideas?
We worked in the travel niche recently: We offered holiday discounts to organisations - some educational. Did lots of outreach to local attractions - can you list us on your places to stay page and we will promote your attraction We bought sponsored posts on high quality travel blogs We ran holiday competitions and promoted through the media and travel, lifestyle bloggers. We listed in industry specific directories and got links that weren't necessarily no follow (I can provide that list if you want)
There's a forum on this site where you can do link exchanges and find others with travel sites you can trade with. Or you can write a press release (like an article) and post to webwire for $30 which goes to Google News, etc. If its well-done, you will likely pickup some links from reputable news sites. Also add a legit link to Wikipedia and you will be rewarded greatly.
Try to analyze how your competitor build links with tools such as ahref and Buzzsumo. You can try guest blogging opportunities for no-follow links for authoritative sites. You can try to interact with traveling communities in various platforms such as TripAdvisor, Fodor's etc.