I have done plenty of backlinking for various client’s sites. Whether it be woodturning, beauty supplies, or clothing websites, I actually increased my ranking in the SERP’s by just doing backlinking. I wouldn’t advise it for every site – I would like to do backlinking and SEO for all sites that I work on, but there are times that my clients feel that their site is optimized tightly, and they request only one way links.

So how do I move a site up in the Google ranking in only doing backlinking? There are a couple things that I do – one is sort of a secret – but I’m going to reveal it anyway. I’m not expecting any SEO specialist to grab my ideas and use them against me. More than likely, they are competing in different niches, so I’m not worried at all.

One of the first things I do in my link campaign is look for relevant sites. Like I explained in my other article, Linking And SEO, if my client’s site is about classic cars, I don’t go to a forum or blog that is about pets and link from there, I go to a site that has a similar subject as my client’s. Quality linking is not leaving a signature link from an irrelevant blog/forum. Google will not award you as much.

When I am on a relevant site, I make sure that this forum/blog is “DoFollow”. I have a special tool on my laptop that will highlight links in red if it is a NoFollow link. I look at other people’s sig links, and if it is highlighted red, I move onto another blog. I used to go into the source code and look for “rel=’noFollow'” by the sig links, if there were none, then I would leave a comment. But those were the old days. The tool I use to show the NoFollow links in red is called “SEO for FireFox” – and obviously use the FireFox browser. This little tool has saved me so much time – and if I don’t want to see any noFollow links when I’m not doing any work but just surfing the net for fun, I can turn it off. This is a must have for the serious minded SEO professional.

The second thing I do in finding new DoFollow blogs is by going to a Do Follow Search Engines. I type in my client’s website subject and get a list of blogs that are DoFollow. Here is where I have to watch what site I choose. There are a lot of blogs that may have an article concerning that is relevant to my client’s site, but the whole site is really about something else. I will still add a comment and leave a sig link there, but I still prefer a site that is totally relevant to my client’s site.

After I start linking from different blogs/forums, I start going to a few directories. It’s very true that Google doesn’t look at directories as being effective anymore, in fact, some low rank directories Google could consider as spam. But there are some very reputable directories that are still out there, and it wouldn’t hurt applying your site to them. I just wouldn’t spend a lot of time and I never have made them a huge priority. Sure, you have DMOZ and Yahoo directories which will help your sites, but I’m sorry, if I have to pay Yahoo $299 to submit my site, I’m going to bypass it. Unless you have a client (or yourself) that’s willing to plunk down that kind of money for one submission – fine. As for me, I’ll make up for it by getting a few quality links and call it a day.

Social BookMarking Sites – my favorite backlinking technique. Why? Because I can build links from them very quickly. When it comes to the ones that I like least, it would be Digg and StumbleUpon. I know everybody goes crazy over these two big monsters – but remember – they are NoFollow BM sites. Sure, they are great for temporary traffic, but they won’t do squat for you in the SERP’s. I stick to DoFollow sites such as DZone, LinkaGoGo, BackFlip, and a lot more. Actually, for every social BM site that I have, on my FireFox browser, there is a button for each of them, so when I want to bookmark a web page, I just hit the button that is related to one of the BM sites, a box pops up – put in a couple sentences about the site you are bookmarking and boom! Your done. Move to the next Social BM button on the browser and repeat.

There is this one BM site I really love, it’s called LinkVault.com – I have its button along with the other social BM buttons. I hit LinkVault – three seconds later, it automatically registers it. No logging in, no writing about what the page is, nothing! My absolute favorite right there! Plus, it has a high page rank!

Now we move onto article submission sites. These are very good as well, but a lot more work has to be involved. Again, as usual, make sure you grab high PR and DoFollow submission websites. These would be the likes of GoArticle and EZineArticles. Write an article about your client’s site and then submit it to one of these sites. The end of the article should contain a one way link back to the website that you are trying to get a valuable link for. Now here comes the waiting part. EZineArticles, you will have to wait for about a week before someone approves your article. Sometimes, they may not approve the submitted article. They will usually tell you why. One time I submitted an article to Ezine and they didn’t accept it. I half to admit – I didn’t really put my heart into it, and I just did it to get a quality link. Well, needless to say, my article was rejected. Believe me, your not dealing with dummies here. If they see that you just put some words up in hope of getting a backlink – your going to lose and waste your and their time. Put some effort into the article, submit it, and more than likely, most article submission sites will accept your writing.

Now with GoArticle, it’s a little different. Here you can post an article and a backlink and it automatically submits it. I still say, do a good job of writing. You don’t want to have your client’s website associated with a piece of crap article that you wrote. People do read these articles, so please do a good job.

This is about it for one-way links. It’s a lot of hard work, but once you know where to go and what to do, you’ll get better and quicker in posting articles, backlinks, and bookmarking your client’s websites. Believe me, it will help your site (or client’s site) move up in the SERP’s.

Visit the next article – Linking And SEO.