This is a guest post by CT Moore.

Developing a solid linkscape is a big part of ranking well in search engines. But building solid links back to your site isn’t always easy. While social media links can be good for driving traffic, they are mostly no follow links, meaning that they don’t pass any Google juice.

Similarly, buying links doesn’t really work well anymore, either. For starters, if Google suspects that you’re buying links, they’ll penalize your site. More to the point, most of the sites that sell links have been flagged, so the links they sell you won’t pass any juice.

Lastly, blogroll link exchanges are also impotent. Google got wise to reciprocal linking ages ago, and once they notice to sites linking to one another, those links count for a lot less.

So how do you get links? Simple: by developing killer content. After all, content is king. Here are a few straight-forward linkbait ideas that can help you grow you linkscape and boost your rankings.

How-To Tutorials

Wanna attract some backlinks and organic traffic to boot? Try publishing some how-to’s or tutorials on your site. Seriously, type “how to” into the search bar on Google.com and just see how many suggestions drop down.

If you really want to get the most out of some how-to linkbait, though, keep it relevant to your niche. Develop 5-10 step tutorials on how to do something that pertains to your field.

If you’re a designer, consider some basic photoshop tutorials. If you’re a programmer, try writing tutorials on basic scripts or server configuration.

And remember: don’t forget screenshots. Having visual aids is what’s going to help make your tutorial popular. In fact, if you set out to write one of these tutorials with screenshots every week or month, in a year, you’ll be pulling a considerable amount of traffic.

But don’t just wait for the links to flow in. Go out and let people know they exists. Find other bloggers in your field and send them a friendly email to let them know that your tutorials exist.

Top 5 & 10 Lists

People love to 5 & 10 lists. I mean they love them! For some reason, it has to be 5 or 10, but develop a few of these, and you’ll surely attract some links and traffic over time.

Again, keep it relevant to your niche. If you’re in the health industry, consider the top 5 or 10 worst foods or best ab exercises as a post. If you’re in the auto industry, consider the top 5 or 10 cars of the year, or classic sports cars, or SUVs, etc. And if you’re into music or movies, the potential for to 5 or 10 albums, songs, films, or soundtracks ideas is quite limitless.

Set yourself up for weekly top 5 or 10 list every week, and you should start seeing a solid return in your organic rankings and traffic within 3 months.

That is, of course, if you let a few people know that they are there. Reach out to a few of your connections in your niches and let them know about your lists. Most people find top 5 and 10 lists entertaining, and will often link to them just to share the fun.

Contests

So you can’t buy links directly. But who’s to say that you can’t pay for them indirectly?

To attract backlinks, have a contest and give stuff away. And you don’t even need to have a massive budget.

For instance, give away current, popular books by ordering them through Amazon and having them shipped to the winner. The books are already current and have a lot of buzz around them, and it’s only costing you about $25.

And make it part of the contest that contestants blog about their participation and link back to you. That way you’re guaranteed at least a few links off the bat.

Just make sure that whatever your prize of choice is, it pertains to your niche. That way, you’ll be getting backlinks from relevant sites, and not just random hobby bloggers. Again, Amazon is good for this because they have books on every subject.

Definitive Guides

So you’ve been blogging in your niche and you think you’re some kind of expert, eh? Well prove it!

It’s great that I can learn everything you know by subscribing to your RSS feed and reading your blog everyday. But what if I’m in a hurry and need to know most of what you know in just a few hours?

Write the definitive guide on something in your niche. It can be as simple or complex as you like, but make it definitive. Make sure that the reader walks away knowing everything about that topic that they can.

Also, include graphics! Whether they’re chart or graphs or screenshots or pics, make sure there are plenty of visual aids to help reader along. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, and your guide won’t be very definitive if users can see what you’re talking about.

Granted, definitive guides are a bit more time consuming, but they can be well worth it. First of all, Google seems to love anything over 1,00 words. But more importantly, they’ll attract links and traffic for a long time to come.

And, of course, once your guide is published, let other know it’s there. Contact peers and colleagues in your industry and ask them for their feedback. By involving them in subsequent revisions, they’ll be more likely to link back to it.

White Papers

Last, but not least, there are white papers. Now, white papers are a bit more formal than your average piece of linkbait, but they can also earn you a lot of credibility in your niche.

Simply put, a white paper is an in-depth essay on some topic that is backed up by hard data. The data can be original or aggregated by other sources, but it should be relatively current.

Like definitive guides, white papers are time intensive to prepare, but they are well worth it. And once they are done, you should do two things with them: (1) publish them in their entirety on your site so that Google can index all that content, and (2) add a big button so that users can download the PDF — because, let’s face it, no one wants to read thousands of words off of a web page.

Finally, email all your peers and colleagues to let them know about the white paper. In fact, you might even want to attach the PDF version for them just out of courtesy. Because that’ll make them more likely to actually read through it and develop enough of an interest to link back to it.

Link Building Strategies

Google has gotten much more sophisticated than a mere backlink counter. In addition to going after those who buy and/or sell links, things like personalized search are changing the way we see search results.

Nevertheless, if you don’t have any backlinks to your site, you’re not going to rank for anything. This is why we have to adapt our link building strategies to have much more of a content focus.

In a nutshell, content is king, and the most reliable way to get a backlink is to have something worth linking back to. Besides, if the goal of a link is ranking, content also gives the search engines more to index and rank in their results.

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An accomplished writer, blogger, and speaker, CT Moore is a new media strategist who helps brands reach their business goals by building and optimizing their online revenue strategies. By day, he is an account manager for the interactive marketing agency, NVI.

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