Sometimes, link building is more than just searching out sites to request links from.  Sometimes you have to get creative in how you build links. In this article, we look at another way of building links that doesn’t really require you to go out and search for relevant sites to request links from. 

The web is growing at a phenomenal rate. Technorati, a popular blog search and syndication site estimates that the blogosphere alone doubles in size every 5 months.  As of the end of July 2005, Technorati was tracking over 14.2 million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links. Who knows how much the rest of the web grows?  I would bet that while it doesn’t double every 5 months its rate of growth is pretty impressive. 

It is because of this growth in the web that other forms of link building become somewhat easier.  I am talking about building links through content creation and publishing.   Chances are you are reading this article on the Text Link Brokers blog, or one of a number of syndication partners who agree to republish the article with links intact. Through such syndication, you could come across this article through a variety of high profile websites on the web. 

In addition, these high profile sites are industry specific.  This means that any links I embed into this article (which is then syndicated) will ultimately point back to this site on important key phrases.  Think about this, for the time it takes me to write this article, I could have built as many as 2 dozen high quality, keyword rich links back to both the main site as well as the blog site. 

Normally, for me to build 2 dozen high quality links for one of my clients I’d have to start with a list of about 500 somewhat related sites, filtering out those that are lower quality and submitting to 50 to 100 sites in hopes of achieving those 20 or so links.   And it has been my experience that I would be lucky to achieve 5 to 10 links from that initial list of 500 sites. All this would have taken me about 5 or 6 hours ? even longer if I hadn’t used a few tools to help gather those links.  Yet here I am with much less effort, able to achieve almost the same number of links. 

That’s the nice thing about content ? it can do so many things for your site: 
-A growing site helps encourage search engine crawlers to visit repeatedly. 
-A growing site has more pages which have the potential to rank for other phrases. 
-A growing site offers more entry points to searchers. 
-A growing site offers more opportunities for others to link to it. 
-A growing site can help positively influence link popularity (if internal navigation is coded properly 
-And More... 

There are many other great reasons for starting an ongoing content development program.  Aside from the link building opportunities, you can also begin to develop your online reputation as an expert in your field.   Further, as visitors do searches on search engines, there is a greater opportunity for your content to appear for those searches, helping to build your brand. 

If you take you content development program a step further and syndicate your content to a wider audience (via blog pings and so on) you can reach even more people, potentially building even more links and allowing your name (and brand) to reach beyond the ?traditional? web.   For example, when I do a search for my name, I find myself in traditional organic SERPs but also on sites like Google News, as well as most of the main blog search engines. 

This is because this site, and others I write for, are syndicated.  Plus those sites that I mentioned earlier ? the syndication partners ? are also syndicated. So my articles appear numerous times for the same search.  This helps build my reputation online.  Not only does my name appear throughout the web, but articles like these also get picked up by even more sources. Ones that perhaps didn’t read this blog, or one of the syndication partners, but they may have found it on Bloglines, Technorati or any of the other large blog search engines. 

Then, the article gets picked up by even more sources, in its entirety, with links and all.   So, the number of new links I’ve created has now jumped from the original two on this article, to a couple dozen on our syndication partners to ???? 

It’s interesting to see where articles get picked up.  I’ve found myself quoted in PDFs belonging to Universities, on foreign sites where I’ve been translated into Korean, Chinese and even Russian.  And, you guessed it, the links remain intact.  That’s because these articles aren’t like news ? they last much longer than a press release which, while gaining huge exposure for 2 or 3 days, quickly disappears.   The articles last ?forever? because they continue to be circulated by various sites who find them in searches, and either copy them or link to them.  Then their sites get syndicated and found by others who then also link or copy the article. 

You may begin to see that this type of linking can go on almost forever, because what I’m writing here isn’t necessarily newsworthy, but it is an article that people will find useful for months and years to come (I hope).  As it becomes more and more established on the web (and more entrenched, because of the number of high quality related links already pointing to it) it begins to take on a life of its own. 

And the more articles which I write for this site which appear like this, the better it is for the site.  So, what is the downside to this plan? 

The only one, really, is that you have to be able to write.  And not just scribble your ideas down, but make them intelligible and easy to read.  This is what takes the practice.  But I can tell you that while you may (and likely will) labor for hours over your first few articles, over time they do get easier.   So much so that you will begin composing them in your sleep, or while you are waiting for your bus, or any place else where you have ?down time.? 

So if you are concerned that a massive and costly link building campaign is your only option to increasing your online visibility think again.  Sometimes something as simple as an ?I was thinking? article can drive dozens of new relevant links to your site.

Next Website Links Article:
The Do's and Don'ts of Requesting Links
The more PR you have, the easier it is to get links. I know this is a catch-22, but it's the truth. So don't expect much at first. Aim more for sites that have lower PR's and work your way up. Don't expect a website.......