White Hat Link Building Tips
There are plenty of articles about white hat link building tips that will tell you abou the kind of websites you should get links from, the kind of websites to avoid, etc. What most articles fail to do is to actually help you go and find these links. Our article about link building myths will dispell some of the common misconceptions about white hat link building in the post-Penguin era. Reading most articles on link building tips, one begins to wonder — if I cannot buy links, and if I should not get links from most sites that would link to me, then how do I get these white hat backlinks? This article goes one step further and provides you five specific white hat link building tips that will help you get backlinks.

Link Building Tip 1: How to find free backlinks
There are many websites that will allow you to submit your website for inclusion in their database. Finding these websites can be a challenge. Intelligent use of search can help you find many of these websites that you can submit your website to. Try this: In Google search type the following exactly as you see it here:
allintitle: “add your site”
This will restrict the search results to web pages where the title tag has “add your site” in it. You will find a number of websites that will let you submit your website for free this way. You can refine your search by replacing “add your site” with other terms like: add site, submit site, suggest URL, etc.
Similarly, instead of allintitle, try allinurl, inurl, and intitle.
Link Building Tip 2: Filter and Select Relevant Sites
Ok, so now you have thousands of websites that you can submit your site to. Do not submit yet. How do you know that a certain site hasn’t been penalized or is safe to submit to? There are some simple things you could do to filter this list:
- Check the website’s Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank
- Check what other sites are present on that site to see if other high quality sites are present
- Check whether the site provides a dofollow or nofollow link
- Make sure the site doesn’t ask for payment or reciprocal link
Link Building Tip 3: Get published
Publishing on other websites is an effective way to get links. There are many article sites out there. You need to be careful while selectig the sites you publish on to make sure the site hasn’t been penalized, has good editorial standards and provides a dofollow link. One thing to consider about article publishing is this: If the article is good, publishing it on your website could get you visitors directly from search engines. By publishing on other websites, you could be sending visitors to them in order to get a link. You need to weigh the pros and cons of doing that. Another way to achieve this is to become a guest blogger on other reputed websites. This can take time because high quality websites will be selective about their guest bloggers and you would have to invest the time and effort to build your reputation and relationships with sites you want to be a guest blogger on.
Link Building Tip 4: Press Releases Work
Press releases are an extremely powerful way to get credible links from high quality news websites. Read our article about press releases and SEO for guidelines on how to write good press releases that will help your SEO efforts.
Link Building Tip 5: Social is potent
Social signals are increasingly influencing search results. You can see tweets featuring in Google search results within seconds as a result of real time search. Being active in social media is a good way to build a community of followers through blogging, building a social community on relevant social sites, etc. However, it is important to note that social media is an extremely potent channel. It is better NOT to do social media than to do bad social media. If visitors post on your Facebook page and do not get a response it can hurt you. Social media is about building relationships with your target audience and this is an extremely high-touch effort that calls for sustained involvement, care about brand image and messaging, and more. It is advisable to retain the services of a social media consultant or strategist while executing most of the social media work in-house where you can control the messaging.
Partner with SEO specialists
One way to ensure that your link building is ethical, effective and successful is to partner with an SEO or internet marketing services company like Flying Cow Design either for consulting and strategy or for also executing your link building strategies. With a history of professional web design and online marketing for over 20 years, Flying Cow Design helps clients not just with the link building strategies, but also with execution of the link building strategies for our clients. As a business, we only practice ethical white hat SEO and have helped many business not just by designing great websites, but by building a strong online presence through our search friendly web design services. Talk to us today, not just about your link building needs, but also about your needs for building a strong online presence.
CEO, Flying Cow Design
Attended University of Auckland
Lives in San Francisco Bay Area