Anyone can make a site. No matter how much was invested in the site (ex. time, or money), and how good it looks or even how it is structured, alone it will not build the key traffic with internal and external links.

If a webmaster wishes to drive links, there are some options out there. However, there is one that is not recommended, but an easy way one for novice webmasters. It is link buying. Link buying is highly discouraged by Google. Link buying places the site on varied sites that the submitting webmaster has no control over. That does not mean advertising is frowned upon. Using proper advertising with places that have related content to the site to be advertised is very immportant. Already visitors are on the site and not only will it benefit the webmaster offering advertising (monetarily and content-wise), but it will drive the necessary traffic already geared to the topics offered on the website.

There are several ways to attract linkage. I will address them in the importance, like a top five list.

5. Free-for-All linking (FFA): An easy way to explain what a FFA is, is like a weblisting or web directory. While there may be reciprocal linkage involved, pretty much there is next to null on traffic. The real traffic lies in webmasters adding their link to the link directory. If this technique is used, it is best to text link and not use the offered banners. It is also better to not link it on the main page of the site if the directory requires a reciprocal link. There is no quality coming from the site. There are few exceptions like resource directory sites. They can be beneficial as it provides links to quality sites.

4. Linking out: Do feel free to link quality interest sites without expectations of a reciprocal link. However make a section explaining why the link is important so visitors will know what to expect before venturing to that website.

3. Affiliating: This is a fairly okay technique to drive traffic and link building. However, it is best to remember to link relevant sites. Of course, linking friends is nice, but interesting sites not only interest the webmaster, and friends, but if that should be link exchanging. Affiliates should not be friends. The misconception of affiliates is that it is a link exchange that the webmaster expect the other webowner to visit on occasional. No, it is not! Affiliating is exchanging a link in order to share relevant content and drive visitors to both websites. While one site might talk on a subject (ex. Fashion), perhaps the other with relevant topics has a slightly different opinion.

Link exchanging is nice and for friends, but it differs as it is simply a reciprocal link from another person. The site from a friend may not even have relevant topics. For example, ‘Person A’ may have a site about music while ‘Person B’ might have a site geared as a personal weblog.

In affiliating it is important not to be excessive in linking and make sure the links lead to a quality website.

2. Blog Commenting: The art of blog commenting is important. Simple comments like “Hi” or “I love your site” are often skipped over, but detailed, and relevant comments attract not only the webmaster of the site that the comment resides, but also the visitors to possibly click to go to the commenter’s site.

1. Link baiting:

Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites
from Wikipedia

This method is quite potent as it puts relevant linkage on quality content. This works great for bloggers. While a blogger might have specific focuses on blogging, they can offer interesting articles for visitors to read. Some of the articles may not always coincide with the main focus of the webmaster’s content (ex. hosting business has side articles on SEO and other tips for clients to learn how to harness more resources to build their site.)

There are many more methods to link building, but in the end always remember that quality is the key ingredient. What do you use in your own linking building methods?

A lot of times when I go to my WordPress administrator panel, I look at the trackbacks. Sometimes it may be someone referenced a post in twitter, or another person’s blog.

According to Wikipedia,

A trackback is one of three types of linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents.

This can be great SEO for you and other bloggers who bounce ideas back and forth over similar topics. While you could definitely use the person’s comment system, in blogging about the conversation and sharing your point while including a reference to the original source will allow your visitors to not just respond to you, but also possibly respond to another.

I find that a lot of times when I have written articles filled with opinion based on another’s article, that I often receive feedback. It is in no way an underhanded tactic. As said, it is a way to share the conversation with other people and encourage more interaction on a topic. This is one way to use trackbacks successfully.

However, it can also backfire and seem like an underhanded and obvious search engine optimization tactic if I were to just blab out a bunch of related subject links without tying them together with valuable thoughts. I would just have to make my site some type of robot that published random stories within a certain niche.

Although posting frequently can create more possible trackbacks, it could prove tiresome and also look to be a desperate SEO tactic. The point is to try to entice quality trackbacks. Those will be sites that have people who are looking to give more feedback on a particular subject if the original article only says so much.

Above all, make sure to give appropriate anchor links when credit original sources. Sometimes listing the article’s full name or specific keywords will do, but if those keywords are quite vague. For example, when I blog about Google webmaster tools, I put ‘Google’ in front, instead of just ‘webmaster tools’. Webmaster tools can be quite vague as there are plenty of sites – in fact over 29,600,000 listed in Google when searching for webmaster tools. Although the link it listed at the top, with ‘webmaster tools’ only the first 2 listings on the first page list what I am exactly looking for while the other lists more relevant links.

Do you like to use trackbacks? How do you use this linking method successfully? Got any pointers?

I have been busy writing some things that I have been implementing into my site as of late. I truly believe as a webmaster that for those wanting to get their material out there and seen, that there are some things that you need to know, especially on Search Engine Optimization, otherwise fondly known as SEO. SEO is all about keywords and how the search engines find and index your site in the places you hope people will find when typing the relevant words that describe your website.

My article on Search Engine Optimization gives a little bit of my own insight and tries to explain it.

I have a few articles in my Webmaster Information section that explain other ways of enhancing a website.