There are quite a few bloggers out there that will review your site if you review theirs. Blog reviews can help you to make a name for yourself, especially in the beginning while you don’t have a lot of other options.
Most blogs, even the ones in your niche will have a totally different set of readers from the set you have. Exchanging reviews can help you both to gain a bigger share of the internet users that are interested in your topic.
The best way to find blogs to do exchanges with is to look at blogs in your niche. You will want to find some blogs that have traffic similar to yours, because bloggers with a lot more traffic than you have won’t benefit that much from the review exchange with you. Bloggers that have similar traffic will likely see that the exchange will be mutually beneficial.
A very effective way to generate links is to write about hot topics and issues. There isn’t anything wrong with polarizing your traffic. If everyone loves you, you probably aren’t doing everything exactly right.
In order to write about the hottest topics, you should watch the top blogs in your niche. When they write about something that the internet is buzzing about, it would be wise to also write about it. If you don’t provide your uniques ideas on the issue it probably won’t do any good. You have to make sure to be opinionated. Bloggers without a backbone rarely do well online.
If you have a fundamental problem with a top blogger in your niche, don’t be afraid to criticize them. Be fair, but there’s nothing wrong with calling out someone that is in the wrong. Sometimes a good burning can prove to be very effective link-bait. Make sure that your post is accurate though, inaccuracies could get you into trouble.
Adding an HTML sitemap is criticial and crucial for proper search engine indexing and link weight. A search engine bot will follow links to find all of your pages, and pages that aren’t linked to will simply never get indexed.
An HTML sitemap will quickly and efficiently link to each page within your site. To ensure that the sitemap gets the proper link weight, make sure that you link to it in your main navigation. This will pass a fair amount of PageRank to the first page of the sitemap, and this will make it get indexed often.
To create an HTML sitemap, you will need to add a link to each page and post in your site. If you’re using a WordPress blog, a quick and efficient way to do this is by using the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin. It creates a sitemap for you, and updates it whenever you add a new page, post, or category. Installing the plugin is very simple, you download it, upload it to your server, activiate it, and paste a snippet onto a new page that you can name sitemap.
Yahoo, Google, and MSN will all react positively to your new addition.
In the web 2.0 generation, innerlinking has nearly become a lost art. The influx of successful blogs has created a firestorm of copycats and wannabes. There isn’t anything wrong with copying great sites, the problems lie in the lack of knowledge of those trying to copy.
One fundamental problem with blogging is the lack of link structure that most blogs have. I say most because some of the better blogs have a solid link structure are therefore can be just as successful as any other site in generating traffic from search engines.
Every page in your site should be linked two from at least two or three other pages. Blogger.com blog entries are usually only linked to from one other location, and since that location isn’t the homepage, most of the entries are lost in search engine outer darkness. Bloggers must be very careful when they design the link structure of their sites - they must plan effectively to ensure that each page and post receives the proper link weight.
If you have a blog, first and foremost make sure that your blog is organized into categories. Many blogs that are setup at Blogger.com aren’t, and this will create a lot of problems. You should also use tags that point to tag pages within your site, and use and HTML sitemap. Finish it up by linking to your old posts within your new posts, and you’re well on your way to achieving a good innerlinking score.
In my last post, I explained how using the related post plugin for WordPress can really help you to get more links. The plugin is a very effective method for doing this, but this should also be done within your posts themselves.
Deep-linking happens when you link directly to a post or page in your site that adds to the value of the post or article you’re currently working on. This action has multiple search engine benefits, and also can help you to get a lot more links.
When you deep-link to an older post or page, you bring it to the attention of your readers that missed it the first time around. You could easily have current readers that didn’t link to an older post, simply because they haven’t found it yet, or missed it for some reason. When they find it this time around, they may quickly link to it, if they like it enough.
Exposing your good work to your readers is a very important step in link building. People can’t link to articles and posts they don’t know about.
