One of the main criteria Google uses to rank a website is by the amount of incoming links to that site. Or more specifically by the amount of ‘quality’ incoming links. This is why it should be the goal of anyone with a website or blog to try and get as many good quality links coming into their website as possible. This can be done naturally over time by offering good quality content that other webmasters will want to link to but if you want to speed things up a bit then you need to work on other methods.

#1 Article Distribution

There are two ways to do this:

1. Submit articles to article directories. This isn’t entirely effective as Google no longer ranks them highly except for a few notable exceptions like Ezine Articles for example. Even then, what we have found is that when our articles have been picked up by other webmasters to use on their own websites, in general they were of low value or Adsense-only sites with little value in the eyes of Google.

Plus there is the problem of duplicate content. Google doesn’t like it and will only disregard multiple pages with the exact same content. It is still worth submitting to a site like Ezinearticles.com however as you can often get some good traffic from them.

2. Submit articles to websites. Instead of article directories, we submit our articles to other websites. This can take some work but the value of the link is in our opinion a hundred times better than submitting to an article directory as you get to pick and choose which websites you want to submit your article to.

So this is what we do.

Firstly, we gather together a list of websites that meet the following criteria:

• Must be on topic – in other words if the page on your website that you want to rank for is about dog beds then you would start looking for sites related to dogs and pets.
• Must have a pagerank of at least 3 or 4 on their homepage and a pagerank of at least 2 or 3 on their article pages. In other words, if your article is going to go to this site, you want to get some pagerank from it and if their articles are already getting a pagerank of at least a 2 or 3 then you know that your article will most likely get a similar pagerank once Google finds it.
• Avoid merchant websites and big companies. They most likely have their own writers and if they don’t then your request to add an article probably has to go through a committee first before anyone is likely to approve it
• Look for a site that already has articles on their site – they obvious already see the value in articles and would most likely love another article written specifically for them.

Once you have a list of potential websites then email each of them to see if they would like an article for their website or blog. Ensure that you let them know that the article will be free and unique to their website. You will also need to let them know that you will be adding a couple of links in the article back to your website.

Don’t submit the same article twice. I have already discussed the problems of duplicate content in Google so once you have submitted an article to a website file the article away and don’t use it again.

#2 Blog Comments

Find blogs or blog posts that are on topic and add a comment. Adding comments to blogs works in three ways. Firstly, it is a way of making friends with those who have blogs in the same niche as you. It creates relationships and you may eventually be able to set up a business arrangment that benefits both sites.

Secondly, it can bring traffic into your site – albeit not very much but each person into your site is yet another potential customer. To get more traffic ensure that you are at the top of the comment list. You can use a free program called Comment Sniper to alert you when a new post has been posted on a particular blog.

Thirdly, you can get valuable inbound links to your site, but there is a trick to it. You need to find blogs that don’t have a nofollow tag. This can be hard work if you do it manually so you can use a dofollow search engine or you can use a piece of software called Fast Blog Finder.

#3 Social Networking/Bookmarking

Submitting to social bookmarking and networking sites is an easy way to get links to your site. There are social networking and bookmarking sites that don’t use the nofollow tag so you may be able to get some link juice from them. These include:

• Blinklist.com
• Mister-wong.com
• Backflip.com
• Bibsonomy.org
• Linkagogo.com
• Jumptags.com
• Furl.net
• Diigo.com
• Rawsugar.com
• Myjeeves.ask.com

#4 Directories

Google really doesn’t value directories much these days so don’t go crazy adding your site to them. Stick with the best of the best. Again it all comes down to quality not quantity. If you can, find directories that are specifically on topic. If you have a craft site for instance then add your site to a craft directory.

#5 Develop Good Quality Content

We’ve already mentioned that content is a good way of bringing in links but it is perhaps the most important. If you develop good quality content then other webmasters will naturally link to you.

What Not to Do

• if you have multiple websites then don’t link between them. Google doesn’t like it and could ban your site completely from their search engine.
• Don’t add your link to just anywhere. Stay focused and look for quality links. You are better off spending a day looking for one very focused pagerank 5 page to add your link to than adding your link to 20 pagerank 1 sites who are all off topic.