Link building is the backbone of search engine optimization and you need to know how to leverage many different strategies in order to beat your competition. In one of my series, I was going through the Top 25 Link Building and Traffic methods online. If you want to learn how to leverage some of the best than take a quick look at that series. However, I want to focus on directory link building and why this is so effective in boosting your website up the SERP’s. First, many of these websites have been around for years and built credibility with Google over the years. Secondly, they can be targeted to almost any niche and country which Google loves especially after the introduction of Google Places. Third, a majority are do-follow so they actually do count as a backlink to your website. It’s an awesome concept and I’ve done very well boosting my website in the SERP’s by utilize the strategy I’ll be discussing below.
I’ll quickly go through my link building strategy as it applies to local citations and link directories. Let’s get started…
Setup Your Citations
This is probably the most time-consuming task because you have to go through each directory looking for do-follow websites. However, doing a quick search on Google will produce several of them and you can start with them. I’ve installed the SEOQuake browser plug-in which will put a line through no-follow links however it’s an excellent way to find out if the links are do-follow as well. When adding your website to citation directories go to the homepage or category and enable SEPQuake to find out if the links on the page are do-follow. If they are then you know to focus your attention on adding your website to these directories.
Here are a few things to pay close attention to when setting up…
- Add all relevant company information
- Make sure all profiles will be do-follow
- Add images if possible
- Fill out all corresponding information
Natural Links Building
Now that you have a directory listing approved and ready to go it’s important to boost the rankings of each profile. This is why I encourage you to build links to each profile using the following methods. These are a combination of do-follow and no-follow. However, this is the natural way to build links. Here are the “3” I recommend.
Blog Commenting
One of the best ways to build a combination of do-follow and no-follow links is through relevant blog commenting. By performing a quick search in Google, you’ll be able to find relevant high authority blogs where you can leave comments. The key is to link back to these business citations and profiles so you can increase the authority of each one. Remember, your profile is already linked to your main website so you are simply increasing the authority of this link which is pointing to it. Start no by doing a search using “keyword + blogs” and skim through looking for reputable blogs with authority.
Fiverr.com
There are many Fiverr.com gigs which are perfect for building links to your profiles. I focus on the ones which provide an entire package because some actually have solid links being built from social, wiki, .edu and others. The primary objective is to find creative ways to increase the authority of the citation profiles. This means over time these Fiverr.com gigs will add value since they are profile links on other blog domains. Your objective is to find reliable gigs with a proven track record and those which provide a complete package. If you don’t, it will take enormous time to built momentum on your profiles.
Guest blogging
I have used guest blogging in the past and have been very effective. However, you have to be careful because you don’t want to make it look like you are guest blogging for the sole purpose of your citation link. I have been contributing content to many blogs regularly and sometimes change the author bio to point to my directory link. This has been proven to be very effective and boosted the authority of my business link. In the end, I saw a huge jump in my keywords within the SERP’s, but it’s important to pay close attention to relevance always. Be careful always when guest blogging because you don’t want to lose the opportunity you have because of spam link building.