Link Building Tool #1: Link Diagnosis
Excellent tool to evaluate your incoming links and the incoming links of your competitors. By far, my favorite link building tool.

Link Building Tool #2: Xenu’s Link Sleuth
Not really a link building tool, but a great tool to find broken links on your site, 404 error pages and duplicate meta descriptions and page titles.

Link Building Tool #3: SEOMoz LinkFinder
Amazing free tool to find link building opportunities all over the web.

Link Building Tool #4: Majestic SEO
Another great competitive link intelligence tool that I use all the time.

Link Building Tool #5: SEOMoz Open Site Explorer
A much better alternative to Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Link Building Idea #1: Ask Business Partners
I’m sure you know a lot of people with websites and/or blogs. Ask these people to link to you! It doesn’t get any easier than this. These are some possible link sources: customers, vendors, co-workers, employees, business partners, relatives and friends.

Link Building Idea #2: Organize Events and Charities
People love supporting good causes and you can get a lot of links this way.

Link Building Idea #3: Give Awards
Organize contests and give the winners badges to put on their sites. These badges will naturally link to your site.

Link Building Idea #4: Get Links from Sites that Mention You
Sometimes websites mention you or your company but they don’t link to your site. Sometimes they even include your URL but it’s not clickable (not a link). Use the SEOMoz LinkFinder to find these sites and ask the webmasters to include a link to your website.

Link Building Idea #5: Ask Past Linkers to Link to You Again
Keep a list of people that link to your content and let them know when you have more similar content. If they linked to you in the past, they’re very likely to link to you again.

I use several link building tactics, but there’s one that I prefer over all the others. This is how it works:

I Make a List of Sites that Link to My Competitors

1. First of all, this is what I mean by competitors: the top 10 ranking sites on Google for the keywords I want to go after. I don’t care if they’re direct competitors or not. I’m talking about search engine rankings competition, not business competition.
2. I use Tattler, a tool that gives me a list of sites linking to my competitors. It pulls the data from Yahoo! Site Explorer, but because it gets backlinks for each page of a site, it gets a lot more than the Yahoo! tool, which has a 1,000-link limit.
3. There are a couple of paid tools that let you see what websites link to more than one competitor. This is great because when a website links to more than one competitor, they’re much more likely to link to you too. I use Competitive Link Research Tool and HubFinder.
4. I create a separate list with the top 50 ranking websites for each of the keywords I want to go after. I use Google search (customized to show 50 results per page) and SEOQuake for Firefox to export the results to a spreadsheet.
5. I’ll end up with two lists: one will be a list of sites that link to my competitors and the other one will be a list of sites that are at the top of Google for the keywords I want to go after.

I Start Getting Links the SMART Way
People are sick of those emails saying “I saw your website and I love it. I’d like to link to you if you want to link back to me.” One-way links are a lot more valuable.

This is how I do it:

1. I use a broken link detection tool to find broken links on people’s sites.
2. I contact webmasters to let them know about the broken links I found on their sites. Their contact information should be on their websites or you can use DomainTools.com to get it.
3. If I couldn’t find any broken links (this rarely happens) I spend some time on their websites and send them a few suggestions, which shows I really care.
4. Once the conversation is started, I don’t spoil it all by asking for a link. I spend some time on their sites and offer to write an article about something their readers might care. Do you see the difference? I’m OFFERING something, not ASKING for something. I make sure that the articles I write for them are great.
5. If I’m dealing with a major website, I won’t even ask for a link (although they usually ask me for a byline and link back to my blog). However, this is not the kind of link I want, because the anchor text will usually be my URL. After sending them a couple of articles I ask them to start using my keyword as the anchor text, so the link doesn’t say “http://www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog”, but “Internet Marketing Blog”.
6. If I’m dealing with a small website that doesn’t have a lot of visitors, I usually ask for a link the first time. Because they can’t offer me a lot of exposure, they’re usually happy to give me a link instead.
7. A word of warning: you’ll be managing 100’s of relationships at once, so don’t rely on your memory. You won’t remember all the conversations you’re gonna have. Use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool such as BuzzStream (my favorite) or HighRise.
8. Another tip: using the phone instead of email works a lot better. Think about it: if someone calls you to let you know a link on your site is broken, won’t you be surprised that someone actually took the time to do that? Phone is a lot more personal and a great way to differentiate yourself. I don’t call everybody; I only call when I see a great link opportunity (20% of the time) and I email everyone else.

Have you ever noticed that when faced with competition that you usually perform better? Think about cyclist Lance Armstrong and his tough competition – do you think he doesn’t push himself to WIN when he’s cycling against other world-renowned cyclists in the Tour de France? Look at his huge successes over the years!

Competition makes us WANT to perform better and push ourselves to be winners. This same theory is applied to link building tactics.

Whether you like it or not, you have online competitors out there but don’t think about your competition in the negative sense. You can TAKE advantage of your competition. They have something YOU WANT –  LINKS!

It’s easy to find out what your competition is doing online – just follow these simple steps:

1.    Run a Google search and see what sites rank in the top 10 for the keywords you want to rank.  For example: the keyword phrase “California river rafting” brings up the top 10 “California river rafting” sites on Google. The #1 ranked site is http://www.arrafting.com

2.    Use Yahoo Site Explorer to find out who’s linking to these top 10 sites.

3.    Submit the site’s URL http://www.arrafting.com. Click on “Inlinks” (the second tab) to see a listing of linked sites – over 700 links are found. Site Explorer allows you to click on the “Explore” button for each URL and find MORE links/information. This is a great resource tool because you literally have hundreds of your competitors’ links at your fingertips!

How to Get the Same Links as Your Competition
Your ultimate GOAL is to get the SAME links as your competition. Easier said than done but armed with a link building strategy, it can be accomplished!

Don’t reinvent the wheel. There are MANY link building tricks you could use but the following tips will bring you high ROI (and SAVES TIME!)

•    With a little research, you can find your competition on discussion forums and directories. Submit your sites to the same directory listings and play an active role on discussion forums. For example, if you are a copywriter and you found your competition’s links on copywriting forums online, you need to be there as well. Make yourself known on these forums and remember to add your link in your signature.

•    Blogs are another great way to get the same links as your competition. For example, if you are a real estate broker specializing in short sales and found your competition’s link on a short sales blog, you need to be there too. Email the blogger and request that they write an article about you and include your link. Make sure these are active blogs (you want their subscribers to link to you!)

•    Free article distribution sites are another great way to build links. If your competition’s links shows up on article sites, you need to be there too! Submit great content and make sure to include links in your byline/bio.

•    If you found your competition on opinion/review sites, add your two cents worth on these sites and include your link. Make sure you don’t come across as “spammy” when you include your links – provide good information/feedback on these sites.

•    Your competition is bound to be on social networking groups/pages such as Facebook so you also need to make your presence known. Add your links to these  groups. Join appropriate groups/sites according to where your competition is hanging out! Add a REAL, interactive presence to these social networking groups – don’t just spam links!

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“No man is an island,” said English poet John Donne centuries ago. And neither is your website. With no inbound or outbound links, what’s the point, really? It is worthless. Merely decorative. It won’t work for you. So you have made good use of competitive keywords and included them throughout your website. Big deal! If you can´t go the distance, your business will never thrive, and while good keyword usage is recommended, it just isn´t enough. Link building is perhaps one of the key aspects to search engine optimization, along with keyword usage. And here are 33 of the best link building tactics, guaranteed to increase traffic to your website and boost your profits.

1. Just ask nicely. Simply ask visitors to your site to link to you. And they will, as long as you have an engaging website, with relevant information, a unique view, in other words, if you offer something that not many others do.
2. Provide a “link to us” page. Make sure it includes stuff like URL(s), logo and an anchor text they can use.

3. Create interesting lists (ahem!). Write a “101” list or a “Top Ten Tips to…” list. This kind of document becomes an “authority” opinion and will naturally get links.

4. Offer to be a guest writer. Send an email to a magazine, ezine, blog, or online journal, and let them know you’d be interested in contributing an article to share your valuable expertise.

5. Offer testimonials. If there is a tool you’ve tested or bought recently, go to their website and see if there is a testimonials section. Write in with your review/opinion and kindly ask them to link back to you.

6. Get your website listed. Submit it to several directories, but remember that quality matters, so submit it to the good ones.

7. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed. Submit to Blog directories and RSS submission sites.

8. Make use of Web 2.0 resources. Use MySpace, Facebook, MSN Spaces, whatever you feel most comfortable with, to promote your site.

9. Write articles for Hubpages. Submit quality articles, comment on other hubs, post in the forums, and you’ll get a hubscore plus quality links.

10. Post free ads. Websites like Free Ad Blog and Free Blog Post allow you to post two to three links to your site.

11. Participate on Blogs. Leave your comments, network with them, email them, link to them, and they’ll surely link back to you.

12. Make many different Blogs. On sites like Blogger or Wordpress.

13. Post on forums and groups. Find the largest and the best in your field.

14. Post in Ebay Blogs. Post your link within your blog, and you can actually say you have a link from Ebay!

15. Acknowledge the contribution of experts. Write about them, review one of their books or articles, or even compile a list of experts like, “The Five Definitive Experts on…”. There’s a good chance they’ll notice you and link back to you.  Interview a guru or get permission from him to post his work, articles, e-book.

16. Make use of local resources. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.

17. Sponsor an event. These all link to their sponsors.

18. Offer useful tools. Calculators, conversion, translation tools; they’re naturals for getting lots of links, as people are often in need of good, quality tools.

19. Find out which websites link to your competitors. And get them to link to you, as well.

20. Join an affiliate program. But make sure you choose a good one.

21. Win awards for your website. There are plenty of reputable award sites like webbyawards.com or webaward.org.

22. Article submission. Submit articles to websites like Ezine Articles or Goarticles. Just contribute quality, relevant content and send it in.

23. Write reviews. On sites like Amazon or ePinions.

24. Become an authority. It is most likely you already are an authority in your business, so answer questions on Yahoo Answers and post your content everywhere.

25. Post in classifieds sites, like Craigslist and USFreeAds.

26. Create a Squidoo lens. Advertise one or all of your websites on Squidoo.com.

27. Submit guides to Work.com. The nifty thing about this one is that if your guides are approved, you can include as many followed links as you want.

28. Write an article for Wikipedia. Although you may not be able to directly link to your website, include links to other pages that link to yours.

29. Exchange links. Link to other blogs/websites from yours, but which provide relevant content, and ask them to kindly reciprocate.

30. Use your forum signature. Please leave your name, message and link! There are lists of directories that allow signature links.

31. Oops! You forgot my link! Find websites that mention your company or products but don’t provide the direct HTML link. Simply send them a friendly email and request the link.

32. Submit your design to CSS directories.

33. Give exclusive scoops. Provide newsworthy stories to bloggers who’ll be dying for the exclusive and will be more than willing to post it.

There is one thing that must be stressed and it cannot be emphasized enough. As long as you provide quality, relevant, useful information and treat other website owners/users or bloggers with respect, you’ll never go wrong. There’s nothing wrong with asking for links (ask and ye shall receive, right?) as long as you don’t badger people into it. Sometimes a little flattery goes a long way.

Links are essential because they connect us all so we may form one global community. It’s not about competing to get more links or taking links from others. It’s not a link popularity contest. It’s all about sharing the link love.

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