Are you tired of building links the old school way? You know, the methods that require you to send out emails to thousands of webmasters begging for links. Don’t get me wrong, they still work well, but they get boring after a while.
So what other ways can you build links?
Well, there are a handful of creative strategies out there. Here are 11 fun ways you can build links without burning yourself out :
Strategy #1: April fools
April fools is coming up soon, so why don’t you leverage it to build links. You shouldn’t do an April fools joke that’s obvious, instead you should take a page out of TechCrunch’s book and follow their strategy.
They wrote a blog post on March 31st a few years ago on Richard Rosenblatt’s yacht, which was called “The AdSense”. A lot of people believed the post was real and over 600 people tweeted about it and some even linked to it.
The key to creating a good April fools joke is to make it realistic. Do something the day before April 1st and go above and beyond to make it seem realistic. TechCrunch got Rosenblatt to record his voice talking about the post, which made it seem more realistic.
If you want your April fools idea to build links, it has to be good. You can’t do something mediocre.
Strategy #2: Interview experts
One of the easiest ways to build links is to interview experts. If you email someone on how great they are and how you want to interview them, it’s rare that they will say no.
I myself get asked to do around 4 interviews each week and I never say no. I’ve also emailed dozens of other people to interview them and it’s also rare that they say no… this even worked when my blog wasn’t popular.
So how do you build links when you interview an expert? Well most experts have a website, so once you interview them you can ask them to share it with their readers or even tweet and post it on Facebook.
I’ve found that over 90% of the time people will at least share the interview on Twitter and Facebook and over 40% of the time people will link to it from their website. One trick to boosting your link percentage chance is to look and see if people have a press page before you ask them for an interview. If they have one, the chance of them linking to your interview is over 95%.
Strategy #3: Infographics
This is my favorite method of building links, as I love making complex data easy to understand. Mint used this strategy heavily in their early days, in which they made complex financial data easy to understand through beautiful graphics.
We also do this at KISSmetrics as our infographics have received over 3741 links.
So what’s the key to generating links from your infographics? Well you first need to have an embed code at the bottom of each infographic so people can link back and secondly you should follow the promotion strategies in this blog post.
Strategy #4: Quizzes
You may know Matt Inman as the guy behind the Oatmeal, but most of us SEOs know him as the master of quizzes. He got his start at SEOmoz in the early days and then the started getting into link creation through linkbait.
He ranked Mingle2 for all of the online dating terms by creating viral quizzes such as: how many 5 year olds can you take in a fight. He then took that same strategy and got a payday loan site ranked for all of the payday loan related keywords.
Matt currently has quizzes on The Oatmeal and you should consider replicating the strategy if you want to build thousand of links. Just be careful as both his dating site and payday loan site got dinged by Google, but you shouldn’t have that problem if you follow these rules though:
- The quiz needs to be related to your website – don’t try to create a quiz about fighting 5 year olds if you run a dating website.
- Don’t use rich anchor text – at the end of each quiz is an embeddable badge that shows off your score, that badge shouldn’t contain rich anchor text. The anchor text should be the name of the quiz.
- Link to your quiz page – don’t have the badges link to your homepage, they should link back to the quiz.
Strategy #5: Personalized videos
Do you remember Elf Yourself? JibJab created that campaign for OfficeMax and hundreds of thousands of people Elf’d themselves. In which they uploaded a picture of their face and JibJab created an Elf video out of it.
At the end of the video, you were given a link that you can share with others or post on your blog.
According to Open Site Explorer, Elf Yourself has over 10,000 links. Not too shabby for a Christmas promotional video.
If you can come up with a creative video concept that allows people to personalize the video, you can leverage it to build links. People love sharing funny personalized videos.
Strategy #6: Sponsor an event
One of the simplest ways to build links is to sponsor an event. Conference sites list out each and every single sponsor and in most cases they link back to their sponsors.
This may not seem like a fun idea or creative link building strategy, but just think about this… you’ll be able to go to the conference. 
If you work in the corporate world you may get a bit tired of working in the office, so it will be a nice for you to get a break by attending a conference. Plus, you’ll get a link out of it.
When getting links from conference sites, keep in mind that they maybe taken down in the future, which means you will have to continue to sponsor the event each year. The cost can quickly add up if you are a small company, but it’s fun to go to conferences.
Strategy #7: Sponsor a non-profit
I love the non-profit world because it’s a great way for you to give back to the rest of the world. If you sponsor a non-profit in many cases you can get a link back.
When I used to own KISSinsights we used to give away our product for free to non-profits and they would link back to us. We came up with this concept when a non-profit asked us for a free account in exchange for press on their blog.
The beautiful part about this strategy is that it doesn’t require an exchange of cash. You can volunteer your time, your products, or even services for a link. Whatever it maybe, I’ve found that non-profits are open to almost anything as they don’t have a big spending budget.
Strategy #8: Take some pictures
There are always people looking for images, especially high quality stock photography images. I myself don’t mind paying for images, but it can get expensive really fast.
If you have a really good digital camera, such as an SLR, you can go out there and take high quality photos of anything related to your industry. Then pop them up on a page on your website and let people know that they are royalty free images. Just make it a requirement that people need to link back to you if they decide to use any of your images.
The cool part about this strategy is that you are going to get highly relevant links, as people in your industry are most likely to use them.
Strategy #9: Scholarships
Ross Hudgens is an SEO that’s known for building tons of high quality EDU links. And he is doing so without spending much money… so how does he do it?
Well he creates scholarships related to your company. It’s a great way for you to give back and get links at the same time. For example, if you are a marketing agency, you could create a digital marketing scholarship in which you give 1 student $1000 a year.
Once Ross creates the scholarship, such as a marketing one, he would notify all colleges that have a marketing department about the scholarship. The end result is hundreds of EDU links as colleges will put it on their website to notify students.
The one thing you have to do if you want to create a scholarship is make it a “real one”. SEOs are trying to create them just to build links. Make sure it is legitimate; you have to give money away each year, and if possible try to help the winner of the scholarship out. For example, if I created a marketing scholarship, I would give away money and even provide the winner with a paid internship.
Strategy #10: Get press
The side effect of getting press is that you’ll build more links to your website. It’s rare that a site like Forbes would write about your company and then not link to it.
That’s just not user friendly, which is why reporters always link to you when they cover you or your company. If you want to build links, why not get press for your business or your entrepreneurial success?
Hit up your local PR agency and see what they can do for you. Or if you don’t have a ton of cash, learn how to get your own press or just use sites like Help a Reporter Out.
I myself just hire PR agencies like PRserve in which they run a pay per performance model. If they get you press, you pay. If not, you don’t pay a dime.
Strategy #11: Give away swag
Some people love free stuff. It doesn’t matter if it is expensive or cheap stuff, people love getting gifts. One person who talks about all of the free stuff he gets is Shoemoney.
Every Friday he takes a picture of him wearing a new t-shirt that someone gave him. He then blogs about the shirt and links back to the company who gave him the shirt.
Get creative and start giving bloggers swag. From shirts to hats, to items, to anything else that is related to your brand, just start giving things away. Not only will bloggers love you, but they will start blogging about your company and linking back to your website.
Conclusion
The possibilities of link building are endless. You can build links in many different ways, you just have to be creative. What I’ve learned over the years is the best link builders are the creative ones.
Just look at Matt Inman, no one would have thought that he would rank a site for online dating, but he was able to do it in a matter of months because of how he built links.
All you have to do is think outside the box as the list above is just scrapping the surface. What other creative ways are you building links?
This amazing course will teach you, step by step, how to double if not triple your traffic over the next 30 days.
Definitely these are one of the Best and Creative ways to build Links for any Website..
I am definitely gonna spend some nights finding my own creative way to build links.
Thank you for the great post..
Chirag, glad you found it helpful. Thanks for reading
Hi Neil,
Thanks for the great tips, I like the April fools and Quizzes tips.
Sarah, try them out. Let me know how they work
Hello Chirag,
Yes, you are absolutely rite in saying that these are the best and creative link building ideas..I have personally used 4-5 of them,
What Neil said about interviews is absolutely rite. When I asked him for an interview…He said a straight yes…Neil, I will keep you posted when I am gonna host your interview on my blog..I hope that you will share the link to your facebook and twitter followers. I don’t see a press menu in your website..So I think you may not be able to give a link from your site…You are a generous man and when you see a possibility please see whether you would be able to link to your interview.
Posting in ad sites has given me some traffic. I don’t know whether it is no-follow or do follow..Creating an account in social sites that provide do follow links is also a good option. example – linked in…Endorse your close friends in linkedin and ask them whether they will be able to add your blog to their favorite sites column. This is something I have personally used and found successful.
Sincerely,
Rafi
These are great ideas, Neil. I especially like the one about hosting Creative Commons photos on your site. You could also upload those images to Flickr and Wikimedia Commons, and ask for a link for attribution.
Andrew, thanks for the additional tips!
Great Tips @Neil Once again you have proved it that you are a great leader.
Glad you found the info helpful !
I love the idea about the scholarship. What a great way to give back and get great links for cheap!
Jake, glad you found it helpful
Giving stuff away! Never really thought about that since I don’t have a physical product, but good concept and will try to implement.
Glenn, let me know how it works!
Ross is such a ninja.
Very useful post, Neil
. I like the April Fools and the Interview Experts tips. Are you interested in doing an interview for my blog? I am in the process of creating an interview series with successful entrepreneurs.
Jennifer, thanks for reading. As for the interview, sure. Shoot me an email at neil@neilpatel.com
Thank you so much, Neil
This is now another incredible post on this website. I have been working on link building from last several weeks and this is absolutely going to add tremendous value to my errorts.
Neil- Thank you for doing such an amazing job of sharing wealth of information in each post. I am thrilled after reading this article. Wow!
Regards,
Kumar
Kumar, awesome! Glad I could help
Hi Neil,
Awesome X 3
I think this is the best possible detail you have shared today, I’ve been doing few thing as per your post but I think I need to play around with few more things to see which gives the better results.
Matthew Inman is a charm, he created something which is beyond imagination.
I like the idea of getting edu links, I will surely try this one.
Thanks for this awesome share, you rock. Have a great week ahead.
Sapna
Sapna, glad you found everything helpful. Thanks again for reading
Hi Neil,
You really think a great deal about your readers and reply to their comments. I really appreciate this.
Thanks once again.
Sapna
Great post neil… i love d way u use anchor texts to link to other pages. its so natural..
Infographics work best for us.. One of our Infographic got above 25k views. . more than 4k tweets and around 3k likes on visualy and lot of links to our website..
thanks again for sharing this..
This is some genuine and realistic link building ideas I have read here. The first strategy is the best because April fool day is not so far.
Neil, one thing I would want to know regarding I/Fgraphs.
Kissmetrics is an authority figure so it becomes relatively easier for an infograph from you guys to fetch you decent links. How does one go about the task when this is from an unknown player? Where does he submit those infographs? Or should he just put it on his networks and hope that they get passed around?
Try tossing it on the networks..
Spare no efforts in promoting your first infographic. Use your networks, ask your friends to pass it around, send it to bloggers in your niche. On your second one, you’ll no longer be a new player.
Dan, couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks for reading
Hey Neil any good quiz makers out there you would recommend? I was thinking of using Formstack but it gets rather complicated trying to make quizzes thay gives scores on a sliding scale. I’m looking for one I can that embeds on my site and lets me mess with CSS. Thanks!
Hmm.. shoot me an email and we can discuss.
Hi Neil,
Thank you for sharing with us these great ideas. As you said is all about creativity, doesn’t matter how big is your marketing budget, if you are not creative, for sure the success will not be the one you expect. Personally I think that doing great info-graphics and funny videos can be a good way to get high quality backlinks.
Thanks,
Chris
Chris, glad I could help. Thanks for reading!
I once had a competitor who was driving up my PPC costs (back when Yahoo was Overture). I decided to give away my product instead of charging new customers the usual $35 fee and drove my suddenly furious copycat competitor mad, and out of business in that arena. Never under-estimate the power of free.
Free 99 is an awesome number!
Great Ideas, Neil. Another way to build links is to establish yourself as an Authority in your niche and people will definitely link to you.
Michael, great point!
The methodology is great and best I like is about interviewing as everyone likes the idea of being elevated to a level of a hero. Regards
Thanks for reading..
I like the idea of strategy #11. But do bloggers pay attention to a small company ( a startup) if so …not many I would think . but definitely worth a shot!
Great post Neil.
Ashok
If the idea is creative enough.. everyone will pay attention!
Sound advice here Neil and some great strategies as usual, backed up by some fantastic examples… Interviewing is always a good one, although often overlooked. It’s really easy as you can just do it by email as well.
I like the scholarship example as well. I’m just wondering whether it would work in the UK? hmmmm, what do you reckon?
I am sure it would. Try it out, let me know if it works!
Great post Neil
I really liked the offering a marketing scholarship in order to get some edu links
Jenny, it’s a very creative idea.
Why do you have to make all your posts so awesome ? hats off !!
Haha, thanks
Neil, genius ideas. I’d completely forgotten about HARO. I received their emails, but tend to skip over them. Now I’ll read with far more attention. Thanks so much for this.
Angela, glad I could help. Thanks for reading!
Neil – Link building without creative ideas costs a lot, I like the April fool strategy. There is so many other ocasions one can use for link building
You should try it, let me know how it goes
Awesome tips as usual Neil. I’m going to hit you up for an interview now.
Sounds good!
Really good ideas. Will try to find new ones. That’s a challenge!
Please share if you do
very creative ideas for building links
Thanks!
Neil,
I’m sorry but I really don’t see anything creative & new in the strategies you’ve laid out here.
To be quite honest they are more tactics than strategies but then I’m just getting into semantics.
Get Press – wow that’s a novel idea, businesses haven’t been doing that for 100′s of years.
I mean infographics? That’s just a bread & butter tactic in 2013 surely. I know 90% of IG’s are rubbish but still.
The scholarship tactic has also been done to death & has a much higher barrier to entry now, plus this is nothing more than a link buying tactic which is very high risk.
Giving away freebies – erm yep against Google ToS.
Sponsorships – erm yep that’s also a paid link
Sorry Neal but this is a very poor post.
Chris, sorry you feel that way. Thanks for reading though..
You see, Chris here doesn’t just get it. I understand y Neil had to be diplomatic, its his blog and ethic demands that.
Now let me analyze Chris statements.
One his tone is rude that shows he is manner is quite poor.
His critiquing is way out of line.
Not one positive comment in this splendid article.
When you critique you should be able lay out the positive alongside the negative.
This he hasn’t done.
When someone like Chris sits somewhere invisible and lam-bast people it shows insecurity.
If he is quite good, the least I expect of him is to show us some us his exceptional work by introducing a link either to his blog or facebook Fan Page. At least, it then shows he is someone we know. This goes to show he is a a freaking guy or I await for him to prove otherwise.
Place a link to your site in the website column
Hi Peter
Yes I am insecure & have severe mental issues the only positive I found in this post was the picture at the start it was very pretty, I didn’t once make a comment about Neil personally, like you did about me.
The points I am making are the tactics aren’t all that creative & just about any SEO list of top 50 tactics contain these ideas.
The other issue is risk vs reward I’ve helped 20+ businesses in the past 12 months with link removals due to them failing to understand the risks of paid links and being cautious & attributing risk.
If you want to read my stuff you can
tripleseo.com
Or you can pay me $49pm & join my link building training group. Sadly I didn’t include a link in my comment as I don’t need a nofollow link from Quicksprout.
PS Neil invites us to speak our minds at the top of the comments – so I did
@ Chris,
If you assume that everyone has been in this business for a long time, then sure, you could say that some of these ideas are nothing new. But for newbies, these are some creative and solid ideas.
Regarding the Get Press idea, he specifically mentioned HARO. Many people have not heard of it, so it would be new to many.
Regarding giving free stuff away, since when was that against Google TOS? I’ve never heard of that. And, why does that have anything to do with Google? If someone wants to give free stuff away, why not? People do not need Google’s permission to give stuff away. And, if the receiver chooses to give you a link in return, then that is their prerogative.
In your SEO world, everything seems to be too risky.
@Steve
Yes, maybe I am coming across as a little risk averse, but I just think people need to be reminded that once tactics like these become common place and are talked about openly on large blogs like Neil’s the bubble has burst.
If you are giving away free products and scholarships they are classed as paid links and if you rely solely on these methodologies to get links and rank in Google, you need to be prepared for the day Google may devalue your links or slap you with a penalty – I just want people to be aware of this fact as it will cost you more to get these links removed than it did to ever build them.
Just Google search “free gifts paid links” you’ll find lots of articles dating back 6-7 years about penalties being handed out.
Also giving away a free product for a review can be against advertising laws in the UK if the reviewer doesn’t declare it, just another thing to think about.
I just think people who are experienced in these matters such as Neil have a duty to declare a tactic as “high”, “medium” or low risk as you mention a lot of people reading this are new to the industry and as such need some guidance to the impacts of said link building tactics.
There was a time when you had top comments in your sidebar. There was a time when you used some top dollar design, pitching six figure services, and now, you use Genesis. Is it the best?
It definitely has it’s pros..
Hmmm…. good tip with free stock photos. I need to try it, thanks for sharing
Thanks for reading
One question…
When you do the scholarship idea (which I love) do you have to provide a scholarship for each school or just one scholarship per year?
Thanks.
It depends on what you think would work best. It’s all up to you..
Your posts are always full of great freemium tips. I religiously read and try to implement them. Thinking of an interview session with experts. You happen to be one of such expert I will love to help the world and I get to know a lot more from. Putting together the interview guide and will contact you once its ready. It will be soon though.
Once again thanks for sharing. I realize the article teaches 2 things. SEO and content creation tips.
Let me know how I can help
That is a very informative post, Neil. And you are right, creativity is always rewarded and very inspiring for the others.
Definitely
Impressive new and never thought ideas neil.
Yes! there are endless opportunities. I think it’s just being smart to discover them
Definitely, go find them!
Neal, where DO you get your interns from? So many fantastic brand new ideas here, how do you get such high quality interns?
Please share with all your fans. You’re the best Neal.
There are a lot of sites that can help you find great interns. Or you can just head out to any coffee shop and network
Neil: I cannot believe how prolific you are in this space in production and sharing. I would add one idea to your mix. Podcasts. They still bring in traffic. I also use Odiogo as an automated way of posting each of my posts.
Thanks for your contributions and occasional superb linkbait
Rob, thanks for reading
Great tips Neil, Thanks.
I like tip no #1 and #8 and must try no #1
Let me know how it goes
Big points Neil, you rock!
Hugs from Brazil!
Glad I could help
Or do what Neil has done in this post to build page authority by linking to his own pages. If my math is correct there’s 7 links to quickspout (and kissmetrics) pages in this post and 12 to other sites. Can we call this #12?
Joe, good eye
One more creative way I say yesterday from Mashable…They somehow convinced Bill Gates to write an article on their site. Now when Bill Gates has written an article on mashable, then most probably several people are going to link back to them..because as far I know Bill Gates hasn’t written for any other blog so far..!
Yeah, he did a great job on that. Mashable really capitalized!
Are you saying that guest posting is not good?
It depends on where you are posting..
Excellent Post Neil. I never thought about creative link building methods in my seo life so far.You woke me up.Keep it Up
Thanks!
Link Building is a chief SEO Practice for attaining quality Backlinks. Be careful that the links you attained are thematic and are of a good quality….
Bilder, thanks for these additional points
nice post neil nice information about link building i really like it and i am waiting for more update keep writing.
Glad I could help
I personally love being gifted and it’s very true people do love gift, the amount does not matter, so do give away swags. I also like the first point April fools, though I have not tried it but it sounds very exciting.
Shilpi, we all do
Wow. So far I read about 100 articles regarding backlinks, but the uniqueness of this post is I am reading every point for the first time in my search. Thank you.
Tarun, glad I could help
hi…very interesting post….thanx for sharing
Thanks for reading
I’ve got another tip for you..
search the internet for link building strategies, pick out the ones that everyone has heard about before, put it into a blog post, maybe 10 or 11 of them, and boom!!!! You have some quality content that will no doubt pick up links and loads of social mentions!
You can use this one Neil if you want.
Thanks for the extra tips
But WHY do people link our Quizzes didn’t get that? :S
Read the article
there are a lot of tips and tricks..
I just Love the photography idea and what you had described it and personally experienced that one also. Photography is my passion and at my spare time i love that job specially. I have a page about my photography, and when i uploaded the new photos grabbed by me only at my facebook fan page the visitors were arrived very frequently and i just get wonder that most of the photos have less bounce rate!
I agree with you Neil that creativity can lead us to get tons of back links…its working a lot for me Neil..:)
Bukan, awesome follow your passion with photography then and get people’s eyes looking.
When we start using some creativity looks more interesting and fun. I really like the way you put all these ideas together.
Some of them are more advanced and the majority is a little bit time consuming… but it is worth trying.
Thanks for the article Neil.
Felipe, glad I could help
These are great ideas neil but you know indians love to receive free stuff not to give, this is the main reason. if we follow this strategy, i am sure i am going to be a big hit in my country
. Other ideas are equally creative and engaging. Thanks for posting this article, will try to follow some other ideas also.
Rakesh, that is very true
. Thanks for reading!
Hi Neil,
Really like the photography idea. Definitely going to use that one. Again another great unique post. Thanks for writing!
Will
Glad I could help
Sending shoemoney a t-shirt now.
Awesome, thanks!
I liked this tip Interview Experts and gonna try it out today for my blog and other tips are also just outstanding…hope it works for me to build links!!!
John, the tips helped. Good Luck!
Great post as usual Neil I like strategy #2 and #3 (interview experts and infographics) as this way you can get backlinks from sites related to your industry. Neil I wanted to ask does no-follow links like commenting on blog posts matter at all? Is it ok to get 10’000 + backlinks from non related sites, I mean does it help or will your site get penalized as one can get 10 – 20’000+ backlinks for any number of sites or any nuber of posts within hours which obviously not ethical, but does it help or will this do bad to your site? Thank you
I would suggest building out links slow, then as you scale and know where you are accomplishing positive link value move faster..
I really liked the Strategy #1, Strategy #3 and Strategy #4. All out of box ideas.
Thumbs Up!
Glad I could help
Hey Neil,
Great article, although I’m a little late picking it up.
Which app do you use to create your infographics? Keen to ensure can provide embed code with link back to section of my site.
Many thanks,
Will
I don’t use an app. I have an great agency I use.. Email me if you want more info..
Infographics is one of the recent strategy I used. And it absolutely works for me aside from it does not bore me.
Connor, awesome!
wow that was very refreshing i should say. We have launched a meme website(pickogram.com) and we needed link creation and Neil i should say that was really educational and indeed refreshing.
Prince, glad I could help
Hi Neil !
You have always innovative ideas. In this time you shared really creative, constructive and concise ways to building links from authority site. Thank you for your guideline.
Glad I could help
I was thinking of some real post ideas to write on 1st April but now I have to think what could be the unreal post
Thanks for reading
These strategies of building articles are just too great. I’m looking here is totally different and unique Ideas of link building ….!
Anderson, awesome. Let me know how it goes!
these methods of link building are simply outstanding and very new to me. I like the photography idea and would definitely implement it.
Great, best of luck!
Excellent tips, thank you for sharing them. I will definitely try some of them.
Let me know how it goes..
Hi Neil, I really appreciate the creative ideas (especially the “April Fool” one) you shared on link building to your website.
Have a wonderful business. Best regards….Sami Kar
Glad you enjoyed them
Really amazing tips. I don’t know where is your knowledge well, but I would certainly like to get access.:)
The above mentioned ways are not too complicated but very effective. I have tried sponsoring events and people love to link you for this.
Fernando, glad I could help
Btw, lately I see people creating backlinks through ‘blogspot’ links, on the right hand side they have their anchor text and link, does anyone knows how this is done?
Shoot me an email and we can discuss. Unless, anyone wants to help on here..
What is your email adres?
neil@neilpatel.com
Hi Neil..
Really enjoying your article with great sharing. I like to read Interview experts topic, it really different and i think it should be implement.
Thanks for reading, glad I could help
Great post Neil. The most creative methods of link building are always the most effective.
Creativity breeds success.
So informative.. I would like to try out the infographics way
so cool
Manilyn, let me know how they work for you
Thanks Neil,
I only just found your site. Some very cool and creative tips here that I will be following.
Dave, thanks for reading!
Holy smokes you have a massive following! Props, you clearly have put in the work! I just wanted to say thanks for the thorough advanced SEO Guide. I love that you did it all visually/graphically! Talk about extra work, but getting on SEO Moz’s list, I’m sure was worth the effort!
And thank you for being one of the few exemplary examples of allowing the user to minify the top bar. Not allowing that is a huge pet peeve of mine! I’ll certainly be coming back, thanks for being awesome!
David, thanks for reading. I’ve definitely had to work at gaining readership.
Some great ideas there. The best thing I ever did was sponsor a non-league football (soccer) club. I paid them £200 (about $300) and for that I got my URL on their home and away kit for two seasons (playing over 80 games), promotion in their match-day programme, pictures in local newspapers of players wearing the kits and links on their site.
I got a ton of traffic from it and thought it was a very wise investment and am looking to do it again.
Dean, awesome. Looks like a little investment really paid off!
Awesome Dean,
I’m learning a lot from this post & before started reading comments of everyone I knew someone will definitely share some more ideas too in the comments..
Creative link building is the way to go. I love that april fools prank. Great idea!!
Mike, try it out! Let me know how it works
GREAT post! I think many people on the web have very useful and unique content, but they struggle when it comes to building traffic to their website. I’ve learned a lot in the past few months and I’m sure there’s a lot more I will learn.
Blake, you are spot on. Thanks for reading
Thank for sharing! Great post! I am trying to practise building link too. Learn a lot from your post.
Tonny, glad I could help
You have alot of useful information. this give me more knowledge about SEO strategy. thanks for sharing. another post page that i should to save on my bokkmark browser.
Wisnu, thanks for reading
This is such a nice post for my business. I was looking for this type of information and strategy. Hope for more ones from you.
Thanks
Tasha, thanks for reading
Awesome findings Neil. All findings were great but for corporate point of view scholarship one was awesome. It won’t only give you links it can help you make your organization famous among students & you can find the great resources from those academies too. So another great blog post.
Sheheryar, glad I could help. I liked writing that portion as much as you enjoyed reading it I am sure
nice information neil thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading !
The idea about Edu links was fantastic.
Glad you found it helpful
This was an awesome post! So I tried #1 tonight and here are the stats so far:
Posted the first announcement on Facebook Fan Page 1 hour ago: http://on.fb.me/YpEMMj
Got 30 Likes, 15 Shares, and 3 comments so far.
Then just posted it here (for the links): http://bit.ly/12625dD
Gave them 4 ways to share it:
Facebook Fan Page
Pinterest
Twitter
and a textarea link for copying and pasting on other sites.
This is a great test and a perfect time to try it for link building purposes.
Thanks again for the great tips!
Update:
2 hours later we’re up to 43 likes, 18 shares, 6 comments, and 1,746 people reached on Facebook. We’ve had 3 comments on the blog post as well and got a couple direct messages of people saying they want to add the “April Fools” product to their shopping list. We’ll keep you posted on the link building too. Thanks again for the great ideas.
Last update:
It’s been 12 hours and here are the stats:
4,274 people have seen the prank on Facebook
72 likes
28 shares
14 comments
Thanks again.
Awesome, glad it worked!!
“Linking” outside the box
You have a good list of some creative ideas for link building. Some of them do not translate into my field but others are definitely relevant and worth a shot.
Kandid, I like that “linking outside the box”
What a great idea Neil! I never thought about a personal video. I’m hearing more and more that people are not reading the texts on websites. Video can just be that option to grab their attention.
Definitely, video is a great eye catching digital medium..
Really amazing tips. Thank you!
For me the best way are interviews with experts – so i can get good social-media-backlinks too!
Sabrina, great strategy!
Those are brilliant ideas.i love the swag T-shirt idea,sounds very cool.Also the interviews with experts gives your blog a boast.Will try the methods.some of the methods you have outlined are very unique unlike the normal ones every guru tells you to use
Zack, glad you found the post helpful. Let me know how it all works out for you.
Thanks for the ideas, Neil. Looks like “Viral SEO” is the future of search engine marketing.
Glad I could help. Also, viral content is king!
Awesome excellent post! I like to share this post to my friends too.
Andy, thanks. Appreciate it
I was actually thinking of the April Fools part, but the day passed away so quickly!
Next year!
Infographics really is a cool strategy to use!
Tony, definitely!
Thanks for sharing some out of the box legitimate ways for gaining back links i will definitely give it a try from your suggestions
Fleming, great let me know how it works out!
Neil…you rock! We are going to start creating infographics…they’re awesome! And you do always say yes to be interviewed…thanks!
Kate, awesome
. Also, yes I do…
We have done strategy #9. Last year we started a contest with the University of North Texas. We had their art department take on the task of trying to create an art piece with GPS tracking devices. We did this with the intent to drive traffic to the site, where we hosted the art gallery. We did voting through social media. So, visitors could vote on their favorite piece of art by voting with a tweet, pin, like, etc. We were able to drive more traffic with that contest than we had done all that year. Reddit became our #6 referral to the site in all of 2012. We rewarded 4 of the art students with $500 scholarship for their hard work. It was very successful!
Awesome! I love hearing positive case studies like this. You should write a blog post about it.
Hey Neil,
Awesome stuff here. It’s such a relief to see some creative and different link strategies than the normal ones that are posted everywhere. I specially liked the scholarship one, that’s very very cool. I am def going to look into that, as I am in South Florida with tons and tons of technical schools and computer schools. Such a great idea, really Neil, thank you!!
Glad you found the post helpful. There are a ton of ways to really boost your link juice
Once again thanks alot for sharing this innovative information. Now am going to try the infographics method to my website.
James, let me know how it works out!
The post is pretty fun and informative in some sort of way. But I got a question.
Why do I find so many articles of yours ending up on shitbound.org?