SEO For The Common Webmaster

One of the best means of building back-links that will also equal traffic is by joining forums related to your topic. On forums you can converse with people who share a common interest in your topic and you will have a chance to promote your website to them.

The key way to promote your website on forums is through the signature line. Some forums limit your links to a certain number of links and a certain number of characters. Others allow as many as you want. There are some forums that offer only no follow signatures. Do not overlook these! The important thing when promoting your site is to build traffic. By using both do follow and no follow links, you will be able to spread your links to places where like minded people will see them.

When using signature links from forums, be sure to read all the rules of the forum. Some forums have a certain amount of posts or time as a member before you are allowed to use the signature line. I was very active on a forum once and when I started a new site related to that topic, I added my link to my signature. I received a nasty email stating I could not add a link of a competing site. Seemed crazy since mine was a related topic but not a forum. This is why I say to read all rules carefully and try to stick with in the rules.

Most forums that offer signature links do so to provide and extra benefit to their members. It is a way to share your site and discover new sites. Please do not spam! It will ruin the benefits for everyone. Become an active member and really be a part of the community and you will gain many benefits from the forum signature.

One of the good ways to increase your back links is to leave comments on blogs that allow do follow links. Of course this should be done in a professional manner and not done as spam. Many blogs, such as mine, moderate all comments to ensure that they are not just spam.

The proper way to leave a comment that will be accepted is to first read the post. Your comment should be relative to the post and not just a random comment. Comments like “thanks”, ‘interesting post”, “good information”, and other generic comments are often discarded as spam.

The URL you are trying to promote is to be placed in one place only! That place is in the form where it request you to put your website URL. If you try to slip URLs with in the comments, they will be often rejected and tossed away with the spam.

If you respect the author of the blog with genuine quality comments, most bloggers do not mind giving you a back link to your site.

In this post, I am compiling a list of blogs that are do-follow blogs. Please do not spam them as they work hard to write quality blogs and do not need a bunch of garbage.

If you have a do follow blog and would like to be included in this list, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog and I will include it in my list. Please do not list adult or spam blogs.

Here are my do follow blogs to start, I will add others as I get them sent to me:

SEO For the Common Man

That Blozzz: The Fun Blog

Acts of Random Kindness

Other’s Blogs

Random Blog 

Disclaimer: The blog list is for informational purposes, we make no claim to the information contained in the blogs or any results from linking to any of these blogs. All blogs listed were provided by the owners of those, please respect that fact and do not spam. Once this list is compiled, you may republish this list only if you include a link back to this post.

One of the ways that many webmasters build their sites back links is through submission of articles to article directories. This is said to help build links when someone uses the article on their own site.

I am not a big fan of this way of building links. However, many are very successful at this. The basic concept is that you write an article and include links back to your site in the source box. When someone uses your article on their website or blog, they are required to keep the source box which includes your author information and links.

If you decide this is a method you wish to try, there are some rules. Most articles should be in the range of 500 words or more. Most directories have a set range that you must abide by. The article should be of very good quality. This means that you should be able to write good articles or hire a professional writer to do it for you. Cost for such an article would range from $.01-$.05 a word. Do not submit junk because no one will use the article and your reputation is on the line by being on the source box.

Write about a topic that is related to the topic of your website. When people place the article on their site with your links, you want links to sites that are going to interest that audience. For example, you would not write an article abut new video games if your site is about elder care. You want to target the people who are most likely to visit your site.

Here are my problems with marketing through submitting articles. First, I always want my best articles on my own site for the enjoyment of my readers. Second, many articles are used without including the links back to the original owner. There is no real enforcement of requiring the use of the author’s links. The user of the article could face copyright problems in the form of their host suspending their account but this does not always happen and your article could be floating all over with no credit to you.

My final problem with this form of marketing is that many of these articles are simply stolen by slight rewriting of the article. There are people who rewrite articles for a living and resell the article as their own or are hired in the first place to rewrite an article. I take too much pride in my work to have it stolen by others with no credit to me.

That is my opinion; many others are very successful at this form of link building. One could generate a bunch of traffic if the article is well written and a topic of mass interest. If you do not share my concerns or you hire someone to write the article, this could be a great way to market your website and build both back links and traffic for your site.

I will be working on compiling a list of article directories that are free to submit to and post the list here on SEO for the Common Man.

Please feel free to share your opinion about article marketing by leaving a comment.

I am asking my readers if they could benefit from a directory added to our site. This would be a free directory and the only fee would be for featured links. The directory itself would be a sub domain of this blog but I would promote it separate from this blog.

I know there are thousands of directories already on the Internet so I am wondering of there is any need for another one. Will it add value to this blog? Will it benefit the readers?

Please leave a comment in support of a directory or stating that you do not think you and the blog could benefit from a directory.

Also, what is a fair price that I should charge for featured links?

One of the best ways to increase back links for blog and website owners is by adding comments to related topic blogs. Of course, some are no follow links and some are do follow links. I explained in my post Checking for No Follow Links how to tell the difference.

The key to getting good back links from a blog comment is to offer something in return. People write blogs so that they are read and hopefully appreciated. With that in mind, when you leave a comment, read the post and comment something constructive about the post. Stuff like “thanks for the info”, “wow that is interesting”, and other small meaningless comments will most likely get your comment deleted or marked as spam.

Most blog owners do not mind giving a back link to you when you leave a quality comment. Speaking for myself, I own 7 blogs and I moderate all comments. If they are on topic with my post and not just trying to spam, I will approve them. When I leave comments, I always read the post carefully and I will comment with my opinion on the post either agreeing or disagreeing. This shows the blog owner that you are not just spamming his/her blog.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there is only one place to get a link in most blogs. That spot is where it asks for your website URL. Putting links in your comments will only result in no follow links and could result in having your comments removed.

Blog owners are not stupid and they know a majority of comments are done so the commenter can get a back link. However, they will not tolerate spam and will only approve comments that mean something and offer a value to the conversation. Leaving quality comments will not only benefit you with a good back link, it will also keep your reputation intact.

With all that said, get out there and leave some quality comments and build up your back links. It is a very important key in Search Engine Optimization.