Creative link building strategies for commercial business sites.

Creative link building strategies for commercial business sites.

• I've noticed that it's much easier to get links when your site is a resource, nonprofit, or otherwise non-commercial in nature. That being said, how can you get people to link to you when you're trying to sell something?

  For example, I was trying to get a blog to link to my company's site but they've been reluctant to do so.

Answer: This is a very common problem for commercial sites. Here's the approach we've found most effective...

We design every site so that it has two aspects:

1. A commercial aspect that drives revenues.

2. A viral or authoritative content aspect designed to build links.

The commercial aspect varies depending on how your site makes money. If you're an ecommerce site, this would include your sales pages, your product pages, your shopping cart, and so forth.

If your site makes money through contextual advertising (aka AdSense) or lead generation, then the commercial aspect of your site might include content pages which are designed to rank for specific keywords but are not necessarily designed to be viral or highly linkable.

We call these utility content pages. For example, MoneyFacts.co.uk might create a page which is well-written and keyword-rich and designed to target specific keywords, rank in the search engines, and funnel the user to money pages such as their credit card search engine. But it's not designed to go viral and build large numbers of links to the site.

These utility content pages can often be outsourced via sites like Craigslist.org or Rentacoder.com for fairly cheap—typically about $10 or $20 per article. Utility content pages are where you would place your contextual ads, your affiliate or lead gen links, or other commercial monetization methods.

On the other hand, the viral content part of your site generates buzz, targets those people most likely to link to you (aka bloggers and the media), creates relationships, and establishes your authority in a topical niche.

Often a blog is used for the viral content part of your site. The benefit of blogging is that if you consistently produce interesting content, link out to and comment on related blogs, and spend some time networking with other bloggers, then it's fairly easy to integrate yourself into the community of sites blogging on your topic.

For example, sites like TheSimpleDollar.com and GetRichSlowly.org also write about financial topics, but their content is designed to build a community, get abundant links from other bloggers, and routinely show up on the front page of sites like Digg and Delicious.

A blog makes this process easier, but is not absolutely necessary. You can also simply publish articles on your site and promote them through social media outlets, as well as by sending bloggers in your niche the occasional friendly email letting them know you've just published an article they might find interesting. Try not to do this so often you become a nuisance, though ;=)

For your viral content pages, avoid making them look commercial. Don't use AdSense or affiliate links or prominently feature the more commercial aspects of your site. You want the page to appear authoritative and/or highly viral—not like you're just looking to make a buck. Once you've promoted the page and it's generated inbound links for you, then you can go back a few months later and add your AdSense, affiliate links, or integrate links to your site's product pages.

For more on creating a blog, see Chapter 10 in our Unfair Advantage Book, Harnessing the Power of a Blog, and to learn how to create viral content and build links via social media, be sure to read the following reports:

How to Create Content, Build Links and Increase Search Rankings by Marketing with the Digg Effect

An Online Marketer's Guide to Link Building with Digg

In our approach to optimization, every commercial site has a non-commercial content section tacked on to it that builds links and drives rankings. In fact, when launching a new site, we'll often keep it non-commercial for the first several months until it's built up enough links and traffic. Once we have the site consistently ranking, then we add the commercial aspect.