Efficiently Building Backlinks

Edit: Since this is becoming a popular post about backlink building I want to include some talk about other ways to get backlinks. I’ll leave the original post below.

The absolute best way to gain backlinks is to get them based on merit. Editorial backlinks are links you get when a webmaster links to your site in their content (usually as some sort of reference). The search engines want to give the most weight to these types of links because these are the links that deserve to pass link juice. There isn’t really a trick to getting editorial links from webmasters and bloggers; you just have to write awesome content and hope someone reads it and loves it.

Another wise way to think about backlink building is to think about this quote.

Build trust, not links.

That phrase is trying to tell that if you try to forget everything about search engines and links and simply build a trusted name for yuor site you will do great with link building. I love the phrase because it’s true advice. Forget about nofollow and dofollow, forget that search engines look for links, forget about pagerank and all that. When you go to a site just focus on making a good reputation. When you do that, you’ll naturally get high quality links.

Below is the original post.

Let’s talk about building backlinks. How can you build them more efficiently? I want to discuss two methods of building backlinks and why each method is efficient. These two methods are blog commenting and forum posting.

Forum Posting

If you post at a forum, you will get lots of backlinks very quickly. Forum posting for backlinks is also efficient because you can find a nice forum which allows dofollow links in signatures and gets indexed frequently (what a perfect example of TechGeeks Forums ;)) and all you have to post in the discussions. If the forum’s niche interests you you can find yourself making hundreds of posts every day. Now that;s quick backlink building :). Another reason forum posting is great is because you can change your signature at any time and the change will be reflected on all your posts.

Blog Commenting

Commenting on blogs is also a great way to build backlinks, but don’t expect big numbers like you would with forum posting. Finding a nice blog and checking for dofollow will take some time. Reading the entire article will generally take longer than reading a forum thread. You’ll also have to write a nice, specific comment for blogs where comment moderation is enabled. Here at TechGeeks, don’t expect a short thank you comment with a link to get approved on the blog, even though it could be acceptable at the forum. The good news about blog commenting is that while it takes longer it is still efficient. Many blog posts (where your comments will appear) have some pagerank on the page. Remember that pagerank is assigned per page and not per domain, and very few forum threads have the amount of PR that blog posts will have. A backlink is much better off on a page with PR2 than a page with PR 0.15.

You see that both methods of building backlinks are efficient in their own way. Finding a balance between the two is up to you. We invite you to try out both at TechGeeks, where everything is dofollow. We have a reputation of being a site where backlinks are picked up very quickly ;).

Techie

I am Techie, the webmaster and main author for the w3techie blog.

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27 Responses

  1. Huey says:

    There are quite a few good forums that allow signature links, the reason you might have problems finding them is many people try to abuse the forums so the webmasters just disallow it rather than spending time clearing the spam.

    Article submission is another effective way to build good links, it’s only worth doing if you can spare some time to write content for a site other than your own, since links are pointless if your site has no content.

    • Please note: you should know a thing or two about SEO before reading this. Too many posts on link building repeat the same tactics over and over – I’m trying to avoid that and bring you something original.

      This blog post is ideal for agency owners, or consultants who currently have clients and are looking for ways to scale their link building process.​

      After working in many SEO agencies I’ve realized that the #1 issue that comes up is an inability to build quality backlinks. It’s time consuming, costly and is hard to teach to new employees.

      Throughout my time as an SEO I’ve figured out a few ways to build affordable links, at scale, that increase search rankings. Now that I’ve taken a job here at Agency Analytics, I’m willing to share some of the tactics I’ve used to get fantastic results for my clients.

      https://mobotak.com/Categorygrid/id/1071/%DA%A9%DB%8C%D9%81%20%D8%AA%D8%A8%D9%84%D8%AA

  2. Guest says:

    Blog comment and forum both good, but we need to manually post one by one to get one backlink. I think backlink from blog roll much more efficient. Because you put one link that take effect fo all page. But blogroll usually paid link.:(

  3. Seth says:

    Along with finding forums that allow links in the signature page, another challenge with getting links from forums is that it is more time consuming. This is because you may make multiple posts but the links are all coming from one site. They also are all going to the same page on your site. With blog commenting you can leave a comment more quickly and if you post another comment on the same blog you can even link to a different page in your site.

  4. Techie says:

    Article writing is good for SEO because you're getting in-content links. It can also get you more RSS readers and followers if you're a good author. But I think it loses it's effect when you spin articles and do that fake linking and stuff to them. Anyone who does some analysis on your site will be able to see that you're trying to cheat and competitors could use that to report you to Google and get you banned. The links could also look like paid links if you do article spinning.

  5. Patricia says:

    I find it hard to find forums relevant to my niche but there are heaps of good blogs to read, learn from and comment on so I tend to spend more time visiting other people's blogs. It does take time to find the relevant ones but once I have found them and revisit, I am building relationships and interacting with other bloggers which I think is a positive in building trust and also authority in my small niche.

  6. Craig says:

    I always try to treat commenting as a relationship-building exercise. You aren't just creating back-links; you are connecting with other people who may become future friends or business partners. Focusing this way helps me remember to add value when I comment.

    @james – I've seen links from non-related sites carry a lot of weight. However, there could be a slight bonus for sites that are related. But I wouldn't worry about limiting yourself; all links are good, just don't be spammy or blackhat.

    @Michael – I agree with Techie; articles are great if you stick with original content. I've seen posts rank quite well with article links, and when an article gets syndicated you can pick up some great backlinks. Also, you get traffic from people reading the articles.

    Great thread!

  7. Techie says:

    We're discussing page authority vs. domain authority in the forums right now 🙂 If you're interested in deeper discussion of backlinks from domains.

  8. Guest says:

    I think blog commenting is best for link juice and forum posting is best for traffic, with any juice being a positive side effect. I say this because I have known forum sin the past to change the rules, so all posts become nofollow, or you need at least a certain number of good posts for a signature, etc. Considering more 100 links from 1 domain is not as good as 1 link from 100 domains, blogs are much better for authority. However, if you use a forum for traffic, use a popular one with low Alexa rank and become an authority for quality posts in the forum.

  9. I have been doing this research for some time, but what is frustrating, my industry is difficult to gain entry to in terms of bloggers. Does PR Juice work on comments which are posted on non related industry blogs? Or do they only hold more weight within same industry? This is the question I can’t get answered.

    Your reply would be helpful! Thanks

    • Techie says:

      Strictly with PageRank it doesn't matter what page you get a link from. It also doesn't matter from which region of a webpage (header, content, footer) or the anchor text of the link. You'll get the same amount of pagerank on your page.

      However, if you want to rank higher you'll do better with links from related sites and having your links with proper anchor texts.

      And you can also look at it from a person's point of view. You would want to build links at related sites because that's where people will click your links. 🙂

  10. Guest says:

    I care about the nofollow or dofollow because we all do this for a reason but blogs give you the most content per hour, i guess that's a good way to put it. Overall you should have about 33/33/33….meaning 33% referring sites, 33% organic traffic (from search engines), and 33% direct traffic. If you get high amounts of each but keep it in the same percentage your site will be optimal for Google.

  11. Don Preece says:

    I used to build all my backlinks with blog commenting because I enjoyed surfing blogs and learning seo tips and such, I still do, but these days getting a blog comment approved seems almost impossible to me, especiall with anchor text, which I have found to be very, very important with my new > website. With the few blogs that I have been approved at in about 1 1/2 years, I have been able to take this site to page 2 of google for a highly competitive keyword where other sites have 10,000s of backlinks, my site only has around 300, but each one has good anchor text. I have learned a lot of my tricks from commenting on seo blogs which are completely out of my niche which also says something Lately, I have moved more to forums, because of the above mentioned, I agree that they are probably better to spend backlink building time on, but there is so much to learn at other people's blogs that the extra time can still be beneficial in one way or another, Oh, well, I better quit here in hopes of getting this approved, long comments rarely make it. Peace, I hoped I added some value though.

  12. Steve says:

    Along with finding forums that allow links in the signature page, another challenge with getting links from forums is that it is more time consuming. This is because you may make multiple posts but the links are all coming from one site. They also are all going to the same page on your site. With blog commenting you can leave a comment more quickly and if you post another comment on the same blog you can even link to a different page in your site.

  13. Ken says:

    The best kinds of backlinks to get today are contextual backlinks on the homepage of a high PR site. Google gives these the most value and yes they are much harder to obtain (unless you're paying for them) which is not recommended. So the only way to really obtain these high valued backlinks in an ethical and safe way (avoiding getting Google slapped or deindexed by Google) is like the article said above- to write killer content on your site and hope that other high PR sites reference you in their articles. This strategy, in my opinion, is kind of like shooting in the dark. It's not ever guaranteed that some other high PR sites are going to reference you and give you some awesome PR juice back to your site. So that leaves those of us who want high search engine rankings looking for ways to do that on our own terms without having to really rely on anyone else i.e. blog commenting, forum sigs, forum profile links, article marketing, etc… I read in some of the comments of above that some of you were having trouble finding dofollow forums and some of you were having problems finding enough forums and blogs in your particular niche. I have to tell you that the relevancy of your backlinks does not matter at all when it comes to backlinking. To prove it just get you a free copy of the SEO spyglass software and type in a popular search term like "fish oil", grab the first three or four results from that search and plug in the URLs to SEO spyglass and take a look at where their backlinks are coming from. The majority of them are irrelevant to their niche. I just used "fish oil" as an example, you can do that for any niche but it just goes to prove that the relevancy of backlinks is not important in Google's eyes. Matt Cutts even says that backlink relevancy is not important in one of his videos in Google"s Webmaster area on Youtube. With the issue of dofollow forums, I've been using Terry Kyle's forum packages and they are very good. Just look up the name Terry Kyle on Warrior Forum or Backlinks Forum and you'll find him. He's the creator of Backlinks Hydra as well. To anyone that is a noobie at backlinking I would definitely recommend getting his Backlinks Hydra course and then getting his monthly forum packages. He gives you a whopping 400 forums to join and build backlinks from a month. Another issue I saw being talked about was nofollow links and dofollow links. The truth is that you do not want only dofollow links in your backlinking portfolio. If you have nothing but dofollow links pointing back to your site that sends up red flags to Google and believe me Google is super smart and not easy to fool. If you're making nothing but dofollow links to your sites then chances are you're going to get sandboxed or worst-case scenario- deindexed. Google likes "natural link building" and the best way for your site to look natural in terms of backlinking is to build both dofollow and nofollow links and also it's very important to build link diversity such as links from all different IP addresses and not only high PR backlinks but also links with no PR- remember it has to look natural. Also build backlinks coming from different countries. Also keep in mind that on-page SEO is just as important as off-page SEO. You don't hear many "SEO experts" talking about the importance of on-page SEO but if you just look at Google's guidelines of what they want to see in a website than you just tackled a large portion of your problem with not getting good SERP's. A really good tool or plugin to look into for impeccable on-page SEO is a plugin called SEOpressor created by Daniel Tan. Just type in "SEOpressor: or "Daniel Tan" into Google and you'll find it. I can keep going but I think I'll stop now my hands are getting tired 🙂

  14. I've been using your tips and working on it for a while now. I have about 130 posts in one forum and a hundred in another. The hardest part, your right, is commenting on blogs. I had a question. Let's say that a blog id dofollow and then they decided to be no follow, does that mean that all the links from that blog suddenly become nofollow. so does that mean months of work could go down the drain if the person decides to switch over?

  15. Kamil says:

    That's the problem this days ,it is just harder and harder to find decent blog like this one. Most of the blogs are nofallow. But I agree blog commenting it is a good way to get backlinks only if you really read post and write a comment with some sense. If it is interesting enought someone may even visit your website.:)

  16. Chris says:

    Very good ideas, simple but effective. I read that the creator of zen habits did the same thing when he started out. He just left comments on different blogs, but not the, "click here to check out my site", kind of comments; but the kind of comments that truly made people question and ponder. One day he said that a blogger had posted a link to one of his articles and then he suddenly had a flood of traffic. I guess we can all learn something, in that if we forget about trying to create backlinks and try to leave value, in this case a good comment. It may somehow come back 10 fold. Nice post!!!

  17. Guest says:

    I think what the writer means is that you don't have guarantee that your blog comment will be approved. Always check for moderated blogs. Unmoderated blogs are always full of spam comments and Google doesn't like "bad neighboring". Also with blog comments you can not always use anchor text because many moderators also see this as spam eventhough you contributed to the story. That's the downside of blog commenting. The upside is that you can find many blog pages with high pr and with forum threads it's not possible to find many. But with commenting in a forum you will definitely get your anchor text seen. And i think that's the most important thing when building backlinks.

  18. Guest says:

    With the Google Panda updates a new set of problems have brought me to the conclusion that backlinks are pretty hard to come across nowadays. Due to scrapebox, Google has gotten picky about blog comments. Due to SENuke and Xrumer, profile links have now lost weight. Due to BMD, social bookmarking has kinda lost its value.

    Your editorial idea is good and definitely my point of focus right now. What can a site do that isn’t a blog in order to get these? I sure am not of interest to the general blogger because I’m clearly a landing page and they wouldn’t want to help me make money. What it comes down to is, what can I do for them?

    What I once considered white hat link building is really no longer white hat. I will have to come up with new strategies and the in content links are definitely something I’m currently interested in.

    • Techie says:

      Profile links and blog comment links may be devalued but I think there are still some great sites where getting these links are worth it. For example here at TechGeeks I go through all the members with under 15 posts and if they have any links anywhere (signature, their “about” page, website URL field, etc.) I remove them. Right now it’s also set up not to allow website URLs to be shown to guests. Since blog comment moderation is also strict, we have few external links but Google must give them some great value to be so “unique” and “valuable” that they are the few we link to.

      If your site isn’t a blog I think you just need to exceed people’e expectations and ask them to share their stories with friends. For example, if you tell a person their product will be delivered in 3 – 5 days but deliver it the next day, they’ll love that and they’ll recommend you. If you charge someone $10 and then give them a 20% off coupon on their next order you’ll still be making money but they’ll love your service. You just have to stand out from the competition and get people to love you if you want to be recommended.

  19. Mike says:

    I’ve really started “pounding the pavement” when it comes to backlinking over the past few weeks. As several other people have commented it can be hard to find blogs that are not only relevant to my site, but also blogs that allow comments with the ability to add URL’s. It’s these darn blackhat spammers that really ruin it for everyone. Every day on my own blog, I must clear at least 10-15 messages out of the ‘spam’ folder in WordPress for every 1-2 legit messages.

    I honestly don’t care about people advertising their sites as long as they have something to contribute to the site. The more relevant thought-out comments that are posted, the more likely people are to continue the conversation and bookmark my pages.

    The good news is, I’m working on linking to some high PR, high Alexa ranked sites and I think it’s better to have 20 of those high PR backlinks than 200 low quality ones.

    Oh by the way, one way to give yourself some quality backlinks would be in the form of Ghost Posting. Creating original articles for other sites with a backlink to your site at the end is right up there with some of the best ways to get quality backlinks.

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