Link popularity means life or death for search traffic and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
This is the unfortunate reality in all major search engines.
But link building isn't easy, is frustrating and time-consuming. Webmasters have little to gain
by linking to other websites. Link building could be effortless if you make webmasters feel they
benefit more from linking to external sites than boosting your link popularity.
Link Popularity via Article Submission
Many online publishers are actively looking for good free content for their websites and there're dozens of sites where you can submit your articles. If your articles are reasonably good,
many websites will publish your articles in days. Good articles offer original thoughts, not just
cute sentences and wording.
If you have links in body of articles or your bio, one good article will get you dozens of high quality
links in a few days. It's common for SEO professionals to charge $10 - $30 per link, so good enough article
of 300 -500 words can easily worth a few hundred dollars.
The recent Google Panda update has resulted lower rankings for pages from many top article directories, such as ezinearticles.com and articlebase.com.
It is evident that links from top articles directories are not as strong as they are used to be. On the other hand, articles syndicated on other sites are ranked better than before, especially those which are published a few years ago. Article submission is still a valid link building strategy after Panda update, but they are more for long term success than short term and quick ranking boost. Article submissions will help you get links that are not accessible via other link building techniques.
Appreciate Webmasters' Efforts and Time
Most paid directory inclusions aren't worth the money spend as they bring little traffic and may or may not
boost your search engine rankings. For well-established authority sites, you have no choice but to spend
money on advertising. The challenging part is to get small sites that are really relevant to your site to
link to your site. Sending blind emails is a waste of time since the webmasters have little reasons
to spend their valuable time to add links to their sites even you think your sites are exceptionally
good. However, if you value their time by sending a small gifts it's a totally different story.
Build Good Content, Quality Links will come
This is old-fashioned way of building links. The strategy still works but it may take months or years even
if you have exceptional content. Back in mid 90s, emails and online banner ads could generate double
digit CTR, and webmasters virtually linked to any sites of some interests. That was then, this is now.
Related Topics
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Search Engine Update vs. SEO
The power of link building via article submission
A High-Quality Site Hit by Panda, too? Why?
Google’s Real Time Search Strategy
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