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.

Link building is an effective online marketing strategy and the key to your company’s success. If you strategically place your links, you’ll be surprised with the qualified traffic you get and how those links build and grow over time.  More links equals more sales and customers!

Keep the following “link building formula” in mind when building your campaign:
•    Links from related sites are worth more than unrelated sites – This is basic common sense. If you have an e-commerce site that sells running apparel, you don’t links from sites that sell cars.  Choose links related to running apparel/running-related products.

•    You want high authority websites linking back to you – A link from a reputable news source such as CNN is worth more than a link from your friend’s parenting blog. It’s also advised to check the authority of the URL linking to you (and the page where the link to your site is located). Sometimes if a site is new they don’t have a PageRank yet. You can easily tell the reason behind why or why not a site has a PR.

•    Quality and Quantity of Links – You need to be aware of the quality of your links, where they originate, the quantity (are you getting a lot of links?) and your anchor text. Are you getting links with keywords you want to rank for in your anchor texts?

Remember that NOT all link building strategies are appropriate for EVERY business/company. You need to figure out what works best for your industry/niche and create your campaign accordingly.

Add Value to Your Content
The KEY to effective link building is to always, always add VALUE to the content you create. If you create bad, irrelevant content, no one will link to your site and you will have stopped your campaign in its track.

You also have to look like an authority in your field. You want to show visitors that you KNOW more than your competitors.  Remember to always add value with your content – how will your content solve a problem or make a person’s life easier?

Links will come to you VERY easily if you stand out with your content and make a unique statement. Link building is contagious and if you become well-known as an industry expert, friends of friends will tell their colleagues and the links continue to BUILD!

Create Natural Looking Links
The worst thing you could do is to make your links LOOK unnatural. Make your links look natural – do NOT create links with the same anchor text because the search engines will throw up red flags. Mix up your anchor text with “click here” or “check it out.”

Common Link Building Tools
•    Web Directories – Add URLs to web directories such as DMOZ

•    Blog Directories – List in blog directories such as Blogarama

•    Article Directories – Add articles/content to free article distribution sites i.e. EzineArticles

•    Press Release Distribution Sites – Utilize free press release site such as PRWeb

•    Video Marketing – Post videos (include links) on YouTube

•    Social Media Sites – Don’t forget to post on all the social media sites such as Facebook, Digg, HugPages, etc.

•    Online communities/forums – Interact with online communities and forums – answer questions and participate (another way to be seen as an expert in your field)

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