18 Ways to get free backlinks for your blog

Content will always be king, but when you’re lacking in link love there is no way your dynamite blog posts will be seen by anyone. If you have been spending countless hours on blog commenting campaigns or submitting your latest blog posts to all the social bookmarking directories in hopes of getting a couple of up-votes, this article may be for you. You don’t have to spend money getting links to your site, and you don’t have to spend hour after hour on grassroots link building methods.

1. Comment on other blogs

One of the easiest ways to get backlink for your blog is to leave comments on other blogs. Almost every blogger allows you to hyperlink your name to your blog these days. Try not to be spammy about it or you run the risk of being blacklisted. One link per comment is plenty.

Some blogs have the “nofollow” attribute, which tells search engine spiders not to follow your link, enabled on comment URLs. DoFollow blogs are better for your blog’s PageRank, but nofollow links still increase your link popularity.

Remember that the comments you leave represent your blog. Try to add something useful to the conversation already in progress. Be friendly. Offer advice when you can and your link will get clickthroughs from other bloggers and readers.

2. Post in forums

Most forums allow you to include a signature at the end of your posts. It is a high priority to find and post in popular forums with high volumes of traffic, but it is equally important to seek out smaller, more niche oriented forums where your link will be most relevant. If you offer sound advice and help out other people in the forums they will probably visit your site too.

3. Offer free advice

This goes along with posting in forums, but people often underestimate the power of sites like Yahoo Answers. Although you can’t include a signature, if you are an active source of expertise in your niche you will be surprised how often the chance to link one of your posts in an answer arises.

4. Link to your other pages

Something that few people realize is that Google and other search engines rank your pages individually and do not rank your website as a whole. That means that a link pointing to another page on your blog is just as good as a link coming from another blog.

If you use the name of your blog in a post, hyperlink the name to your homepage. If you mention something that you’ve covered in a previous post, link the word to that post.

5. Exchange blog reviews

This is much more effective than a simple link exchange. A link within a page’s content pumps out more link juice than a traditional blogroll or links page. A review also grabs the readers attention and recommends your blog as a trustworthy source.

6. Offer RSS Feeds

Although RSS feeds do not directly increase your traffic, they do allow different types of aggregators to crawl your site. Many bloggers rely on their feedreaders for ideas and fresh content, so if you offer a feed in their niche they will likely subscribe to it simply to expand their info range.

7. Use Ping Services

Ping Services notify blog directories and search engines know that you’ve updated. Pinging these sites regularily increases your chances of getting traffic from them. You can do this manually by visiting Technorati and Google Blog Search and other such sites and submitting your site or you can use an mass-ping service like Ping-o-matic.

8. Use Free Blogs

What better way to stand out in your niche than to provide yourself with relevant backlinks from related blogs. There are now hundreds of thousands of sites offering free hosted blogs to their visitors. If you could even set up 10 of them a month thats a huge amount of targeted links over the course of 6 months.

They can even be simple, one-page blogs that offer a few tips and recommend your site in a call to action. You can use these mini-blogs to highlight the different category and tag pages of your main blog with a little copy and pasting of your blog’s sidebar code.

9. Use Squidoo and HubPages

Squidoo and HubPages allow you to create one page micro-sites about a given topic of your choice. You can literally create hundreds of these ‘lenses’ and ‘hubs’ and include links to your blog as a source of more information.

You can even monetize your micro-sites and recieve royalties from the traffic they produce. By optionally including Amazon, and eBay widgets you can earn a portion of the commission they generate. With hubpages you can even include your own adsense ID to earn money. Effectively paying you (however modestly) to promote your own blog.

10. Contribute to Wikis

By adding to user-edited Wiki sites like eHow or Wikipedia you have the chance to site your own blog as a source on related topics. Resist the urge to abuse your editorial control in any way as it will annoy other contributors and is just bad karma.

Aside from a major site like Wikipedia or a copy-cat site, with a little searching you can probably find more targeted wikis that are related to your blog’s niche. Contributing to these wikis should be a breeze for you if you are passionate about your topic and really know your stuff.

11. Submit to Article Directories

Article Directories are sites that offer free articles for webmasters to reprint in exchange for the article’s outgoing links and author bio remaining in tact. This is a great way for authors to get free backlinks from a number of sites by writing a few simple articles.

Article Marketing is still a relevant and effective practice. Although Google has cracked down on duplicate content and not as many people pick up reprint articles anymore, the article directories themselves still hold a lot of authority and get indexed quickly. If you submit enough articles to enough different directories it will drastically increase your SERPs.

12. Write Press Releases

Are you having an incredible sale? Sponsoring or holding a contest? Launching a new product, service or even another blog? These are all things that you could be writing press releases about. You can send these out manually to news sites or related blogs, or you can submit them to PR directories and get plenty of worthwhile links in the process.

By doing a quick google search you will find hundreds of directories that you can submit press releases to. Many press release distributors show up in Google News, which is a great place for your link to get indexed.

13. Create ‘linkbait‘ content

Create some content that other blogger’s can’t resist linking to. A good example of this would be writing a “Top 100 blogs” list in your niche. The authors of the blogs on your list wont be able to resist letting their readers know they are one of the top 100 blogs on their topic.

However you don’t have to limit yourself to just ego-fanning. If you can offer a lot value and insightful or original advice write a post outlining the top 100 ways to do something. Bloggers will be happy to show that kind of post to their readers.

14. Submit to newsgroups

Many bloggers submit their posts to social bookmarking sites like reddit or Digg. This is great for a few hit and run visits most of the time, but these links don’t have any lasting factors. A great way to get relevant links is by finding newsgroups that are catered specifically to your niche. Submitting your link to a news group gives you a more permanent link that brings targeted traffic in as well as producing lasting results.

15. Write guest posts for other blogs

One of the best ways to dominate a niche is by having control of more of the content produced within the niche. Many bloggers are frequently on the lookout for new blood and will jump at the chance to have a post written exclusively for their blog. Guest posts are an easy way to get new links, and many websites are even willing to pay you to write for their blog.

16. Design a theme

Releasing your own free theme is a great way to bring in more link love. There is no better way to get your link live on several websites as quickly. You can add your link to the bottom of almost any open source theme or template. Not only does giving something away for free bring more people to your website, but there are also hundreds of theme directories you can submit you work to.

Although many people start by creating a free WordPress theme (it is one of the most popular), branching out and releasing themes for various platforms is a great way to get your link popularity to its’ maximum.

17. Create a widget

There are plenty of web sites that allow you to create a widget without knowing any complex programming languages. You can create a simple widget that displays your latest blog posts or you can try to create a widget that solves a need. Perhaps if you had a blog about weight loss you could create a simple body mass index calculator that people could use as a widget on their blogs or social media profiles

18. Create a digital download

Whether you offer an ebook, audio file, video or a simple computer application, there are hundreds of thousands of directories hungry for new downloads and they will share your link.
Offering something for free is the best way to bring in new traffic. Not only does offering digital downloads allow your site to be listed in certain directories, it also produces a lot more organic traffic as the word of your free stuff gets around in various ways.

Have you had success or failures involving any of these methods? What are some tricks you use to gain back links to your blog? How might you use these tips on your next online venture? Please add your comments and let us know.