What Are The Best Links For SEO And How To Get Them?
Not All Links Are Created Equal
If you want to increase the chances of your website being successful then you need inbound links.
That’s it! Simple. EASY right!
If only it was. The reality is that you can get links from a wide variety of places and each link will have a different value attached to it.
Instead of telling you all the places where you can get links and what value is possibly attributed to them I’m going to share with you what can be considered the…
Best Links For SEO
Content links.
A content link has so much value because it can be considered an editorial link. The search engines can also determine where a link is placed on a page, with a content link coming before a comment section of a page (for a blog) and not being in the sidebar or footer.
A content link is surrounded by ‘content’, usually containing keywords that match the search terms that bring visitors to your pages from the SERPs.
A content link is much more conducive to the user experience because it is likely the content publisher (blog author) is linking to the site as a way of sharing information with their readers; unlike links left in the comment sections on blogs.
So how do you get…
Content Links
The easiest way to get a quality content link is to create something that people naturally want to link to.
Lists, resources, free tools and solid content pieces that are helpful to your readers are the easiest way to get inbound links from other sites.
Alternatively, you can get an editorial content link by writing an article as a guest blogger.
Karl wrote an article for Famous Bloggers on how to get the most out of guest blogging; you will find the article useful if guest blogging is new to you or you want to get the maximum return for you efforts.
To find blogs accept guest posts just do a search in Google for blogs in your niche (I’m going to be writing more about this in a future post).
You can now make ‘content is king and a content link is queen‘ your new SEO mantra.
Best wishes,
Kelly-Anne Foxley
P.s. To get the most SEO benefits out of your content links be sure to use keyword rich anchor text. If you do not control the content (as a guest blogger) you can always ask the site owner if they could use your chosen keywords; you don’t know unless you ask!
Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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- Comment Links: Are They SEO? | Hot Blog Tips - [...] amount of traffic, to be more specific, referral traffic.Kelly at FMSSEO wrote a great article on Links For SEO, ...
- SherylLoch - RT @TIMGuild: Another reason to use the Blog Co-op (http://bit.ly/4TyjWu )- Content Links that YOU control! http://bit.ly/4IKJ5X
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I am not a big fan of guest blogging. In the past i did write few guest posts but it was too early for me to say anything about it. Guest blogging on quality website also earns you loyal subscriber or readers.
Ricky recently posted..Nokia E6 Business Smartphone- Full Specification and Features
Haven’t done Guest Blogging to spread my link yet.
Since everyone recommends it, and also you did it, i might really consider it.
Thanks!
Kimi recently posted..Change Link Color WordPress
Great post Kelly … I’ve been meaning to do some guest posting (I get guest posters hitting me up on my blog all the time LOL) for quite some time and I just haven’t scheduled it yet. I totally agree that those content links are some of the most valuable links you can get and they take some effort (but are well worth it). Thanks for the reminder. *SmiLes* Suzanne
.-= Suzanne Franco´s amazing last blog ..Blogging Idol Secrets Revealed =-.
This is really important to know. My blog is still a baby one, I focus 90% of my energy on content, but I have to admit that I have been a bit neglectful about link-building and SEO! Thanks for the advice!
.-= Steven | The Emotion Machine´s amazing last blog ..How To Combat Work Overload =-.
Kelly you are so right about content links having more value. Advertisers are turning to bloggers for reviews, because of that very reason.
.-= Rose´s amazing last blog ..Hello Kitty Phenomena =-.
Interesting, I didn’t realize that there was a difference between content links and comment links. I had always thought that a link is a link no matter where it is, so this new information is going to have me rethink some thing. Thanks for the great advice!
@Kikolani (Kristie) Totally.
@Chandan Thank you for supporting my point Chandan, always appreciated.
Kelly-Anne
Completely agree with your point. I have read one thread on DP forum where one guy ask one nice question. He asked that how the site like SEOmoz, searchenginewatch get link afterall they do not join in forum or blog community to get link. But they build so many links. Yes this one nice question, As you said above that their “linkbaiting strategy” help to build natural link for their blog. So “content is always king”.
.-= chandan´s amazing last blog .."PHP Dir Submit" Directory submission service =-.
It makes sense that content links are going to be the best for SEO. Considering that links are “votes” which help your site rate higher in SERPs, what makes for a more natural looking vote – a link placed on a page with 100 others or a link placed within an article on a related subject? The latter, of course!
.-= Kikolani´s amazing last blog ..Blogging and Social Media Goals for 2010 =-.
I agree with you that natural link is the best link for SEO. Therefore, content is always the king in link building.
.-= Kok Siong Chen´s amazing last blog ..Prader-Willi Syndrome – Genetic Disorder That Cause Obesity =-.
Thanks for supporting my point Kok and it’s nice to see you visiting the site.
Kelly-Anne
Guest posting – be very careful and ALWAYS ask the admin before placing ANY links within the article itself.
Totally agree. It’s helpful for site owners to add a page with their guest blogging terms clearly outlined.
It seems to be a bit hard work but its worth it! great post!
Thanks Pubudu. When you consider the amount of time that can go into a inbound linking strategy we like to call it ‘working smarter not harder’.
Kelly, thank you for the additional information. Much appreciated. Good to know that they specifically single out comments.
Karl,
You’ll be glad to hear that ‘content is king and a content link is queen‘ IS now my new SEO mantra !
Cheers
Will
P.S. As for snow and exercise and being shattered I always remember the terrible winter weather when I was at University in Ediburgh (78-82). One year we had football training in deep snow and minus 17 degrees – great fun but absolutely exhausting!
That’s awesome Will, but Kelly has to take the credit for writing this article. I need to add a decent author bio section so it stands out more, especially now we are accepting guest posts here.
Re: The weather; sounds like good fun Will and I can. I tell you, Abigail wanted to keep going, I was the one who made all the excuses to get back to civilisation. The cold wind coming of the hills was certainly fresh to say the least.
Those are some great tips.
I always thought content links were better than most links. I tend to add as many links I can (but not enough that it is over doing it and they must always be helpful for the reader) to a blog posting, or an informational piece for a client if I am also doing his SEO.
Nice article, Kelly.
I have a question about comments. You mentioned links within the body tags and implied that blog post links were more important than comment links.
All this stuff is just stored in the database and then DISPLAYED on the page. But aren’t both post AND comments generally displayed within the body tags? If that’s not the issue, then are you saying that Google parses out comments in particular from other body content?
I can see that it might be an issue on blogs like yours, where comments are not displayed on the page by default, but I’m wondering how Google (speculatively, of course) deals with comments as opposed to other single-page data.
Happy New Year.
Sorry Alison I should have been clearer. The comments section of a blog is usual well defined and comes at the end of the content section and this is identifiable to Google. Matt Cutts, I’ll have to dig out the post he made a while back (I actually think it was a video) discussed this and said that they believe links within the main content area of a page is more likely to be an editorial link and will be given more weight than links from other sections of a page.
Hope that makes things a bit clearer.
Best wishes,
Kelly-Anne
P.s. Happy New Year to you Alison.
@Alison,
I’ve updated the page to be clearer, I must have had my multi-tasking hat on at the time of writing.
Time to hire a proof-reader lol.
Yeah no doubt content links are the most credible and valuable links but it takes time to build them.
For some people who wants to see instant result, they’re not building content links at the beginning. Instead, they normal links (e.g. ads with image or anchor text placed elsewhere). But it’s worth putting effort and time into building up our content links.
Kevin Tan
Hi Kevin,
I don’t think you can get any quicker results than content links unless you are buying traffic. We always bring a brand new site up in the SERPs by linking from established blogs through content links. We get the sites indexed quickly and ranked well for the keywords we are targeting using this method.
Although paid for advertising using banners can bring you traffic it isn’t considered an optimised inbound link.
Karl
Nice tip friend.. Content links are the best.. We should write great quality content articles. It will be more effective. Karl guest article at famousbloggers was really nice. Hope to see many articles..
@Deepika,
Thank you for the positive feedback Deepika.
Nice mantra Kelly. I believe in basic SEO and I’m using this technique from October as I started learning about SEO since then.
Thank you Arafat.
Kelly-Anne
I’m glad you agree Keith.
I agree, we use comment and forum links more as a traffic generation tactic rather than a way to get optimised links for SEO purposes.
I think people get misguided on this subject and see any link as just being for the benefit of the search engines, hence the many ‘thank you’ and ‘great article’ comments people leave on blogs.
Example, a link in DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory can help influence the credibility of your site but you’ll hardly ever get any traffic from these sources.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, always appreciated.
Kelly-Anne
I love that, content links are queen if content is king! Absolutely, I’m discovering through the use of the Zemanta plugin that the content links that are suggested bring me more organic traffic lately. I’ve seen a spike in my search engine referrals. Thanks for the post… read about it on Twitter.
@LaTeasa
Glad you liked the article. I really like Zemanta!
Best wishes,
Kelly-Anne
Kelly, I am a firm believer in “content” links, or some people call them “natural” links. What people don’t realize when working on a link campaign is that it takes time to get quality links. To me 1 natural link is better than 100 comment or forum links.
Good tips, good to know that content link is the best!
I congratulate Karl for the great post on Famous Bloggers blog, you have done a good one!
Hesham @ FamousBloggers
Thank you Hesham. I liked Karl’s post also, very helpful for people looking into guest blogging as a form of website promotion.
Best wishes,
Kelly-Anne