Note: I’ve tried to give examples on as many as possible. Some sections are littered with examples, while others were too difficult to find.

Creating content on a consistent basis not only builds links internally (by linking out from your posts), but also gives you the ability to build links naturally, because content is your greatest asset when attracting links. A blog is essential to many strategies we’ll outline here, such as linking out. You absolutely need a blog in today’s online environment to survive.

You have pages and posts on your website, so make the most of them. Internal links are huge for link building because you can control everything about them, from the location on the page to the anchor text.

        This is something that most people overlook—please do not! Make sure to steer your content in the direction of other posts or pages so you can link to them.

        Warning: Do not use exact-match anchor text in your site’s navigation (sitewide links). This will most likely be another spam filter from Google.

Other webmasters have created links, or resource, pages, and these are legitimate opportunities to get links. If the links on that page are relevant, you’ve got a chance.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as just asking for a link. The following are specific strategies to help you get webmasters liking you before you ask, and greatly increase your chance of getting the link.

Whether it’s your friends, relatives, employees, colleagues, business partners, clients, or anyone else, ask them for a link. Someone you know has a website or blog, so take advantage.

If you want people to link to you, make it easy for them. Create HTML-ready snippets that people can plug right into their content to link to you, because some linkers in your community might not be too web-savvy. Either create a “Link to Us” page or use a little JavaScript to generate the HTML at the end of each article or post.

Note: This might not be the best option for every community. Are you in the cement niche? Then this is perfect. Are you talking about internet-related business? Then this might not be your best bet, because the majority of your audience probably already knows how to link.

When it comes to finding new link opportunities, competitor research is one of the first things you should do. Essentially, you’re piggy-backing off of their success. While some links are unobtainable (i.e., a random mention in a news post), others can be diamonds in the rough (a high-quality niche directory).

I suggest using SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer for this. Plugin your competitors and export their backlinks to a CSV file. Do this for all your competitors so you can get all of their links in one place in a spreadsheet workbook. Then you can sort them by various link metrics to find the best opportunities.

Linking out is huge. Don’t be a link hoarder; you’re going to create content, so use it to gain favor with other people. I’ll go more in depth below with specific strategies on linking out.

This is the #1 link-building strategy in the world. Get to know people! Build relationships with them, because it’ll come back to you in the form of links (that is, if they’re the right people).

        The best part about this is that it’s just like real life. Remember how people say, “It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know”? The same goes for link building.

As opposed to general web directories, niche-specific directories only accept sites that meet a certain topic criteria. For example, one directory might only accept sites about arts and crafts. Some of these directories are free, while others are paid. One example is Business.com, a directory for business websites. Cost is $299/year.

Some directories ask for money before accepting your link(s) in their listings. Once again, while some of these can pass legitimate value, others pass little and aren’t worth your time or money. For example, Dir.Yahoo.com is a paid directory.

You can use your content to build links. Most of these strategies don’t necessarily attract links, but they can if the content is good enough.

Bloggers sometimes have trouble cranking out content on a regular basis. That’s where you can help. Pitch bloggers to ask if you could guest blog, because if they say yes, you can get a few links from the post, and if the blog is popular, you can drive a bit of traffic to your site, too.

        If you want, use sites like BloggerLinkUp.com and MyBlogGuest.com to connect with bloggers who need content. It’s scalable, but the bloggers you get in touch with aren’t usually very authoritative (they’re mostly mid-level bloggers).

If you’re trying to get links from colleges, create content targeted at them that you can use during outreach. There’s usually something you know that you could write an entire tutorial on that would interest college webmasters.

Seek out pages on .edu websites that feature similar content, then do any of the strategies listed under “Helping Webmasters” on page 207 to help get on their good side.

Just like educational content, create something that targets a specific community (in this case, environmentalists). They’ve got hoards of link juice just waiting to be tapped into.

        Simply outreaching to green bloggers and letting them know about your content usually does the trick. If the content is good enough, and if it’s a complete conversation (i.e., a huge infographic on the environmental impact of drift nets), they’ll usually dedicate an entire post to it.

An infographic or something similar would work great, because all a community has to do is embed it in their content. If there’s any community willing to embed an infographic that’s€relevant€and worth sharing, it’s the green community.

Something so frequently overlooked is the use of images for link building. Bloggers just like me struggle to find images relevant to our content, so why not take advantage? When people use your images you’ll get an attribution link in return (that’s if they’re honest).

        A great idea is to always have a camera with you whenever you’re at an industry event. Imagine if you took 100 pictures at PubCon of all the different speakers and published them on a certain portion of your site.

Hotlink your images (see: pointblankseo.com/book/hotlink). Make it easy for publishers to copy and paste HTML code right into their posts. This not only makes it easier to use your images, it also makes it much more likely you’ll get a link from each.

If you’ve got a few tidbits of data lying around, make them into charts and graphs. Just like images, you’ll get attribution links. For example, look at SEOmoz’s free charts: SEOmoz.org/dp/free-charts.

Right now, list any services or products you’ve bought recently. As long as it’s not a product or service from a massive company (i.e., Walmart), there’s a good chance you can get a link in exchange for a testimonial. You can find writing testimonials at StartLogic. com/startlogic/testimonials.bml.

Just like you should interview others, seize opportunities to be interviewed, no matter how small the audience is. The 5 to 600 words that take you 15 to 20 minutes can turn into a few highly authoritative, contextual links.

        Contribute to crowdsourced posts—just like with interviews, if someone reaches out to you to participate in a crowdsourced post, make sure you contribute. The questions usually don’t take more than five to ten minutes of your time, and you’ll get a decent link or two from it.

Outreach and submissions only go so far. Sometimes you have to let your content attract links naturally to get the results you want.

        If you create content that naturally attracts links, it not only saves you time getting them manually, but it also increases engagement on your blog (if it’s worth linking to, it’s usually worth reading). This is where your content and link-building strategies meet.

It’s a fact of life: People like to look good. If you’re featured as one of the top bloggers in your niche, you’re probably going to spread the word. By appealing to the egos of people, companies, and communities, they’ll help spread the word about your content.

        For example, I wrote a post that appealed to some of the authorities in the SEO industry, who all helped me spread the word, and you can read it at: pointblankseo.com/ book/ego.

If there’s controversy in your industry, or if someone has one particular view on a topic, don’t be afraid to write up a post on the opposing view. If you do it quick enough, and enough people agree with you, you could attract links from your supporters like there’s no tomorrow.

        But if the greater community doesn’t accept your view, don’t let that stop you from voicing your opinion. This could actually work in your favor, because when opposers write on the topic, they’ll probably link to you as to what they don’t agree with when they make their case.

        For example, this post by Rand Fishkin in response to Kris Roadruck’s post (pointblankseo.com/book/kris) attracted more than 1,000 links from over 180 root domains: pointblankseo.com/book/rand.

If you’re at an industry event, blog about everything that’s taking place. If you’re the only one, you’ll get loads of links. If you’re not, you’ll still get a lot of attention.

        Yes, the following is Wired.com, so it’s a little unfair, but hopefully you can learn how it’s done from this example online: pointblankseo.com/book/live (451 links from 140 root domains in three months).

Whether it’s a tool, DIY project, or anything else, showing people exactly how to do something is extremely helpful.

        For example, this RSS tutorial (mnot.net/rss/tutorial) attracted more than 8,000 links from over 600 root domains.

Newbies in your industry probably don’t know all the jargon you and other bloggers are using. Do them a favor and create a glossary of industry terms and acronyms.

        This glossary of internet terms (matisse.net/files/glossary.html) landed more than 2,600 links from over 1,200 root domains (imagine if you made an updated version!).

You might be thinking research and white papers are the same, but they’re not. Someone writing a research paper doesn’t know what the outcome will be; someone writing a white paper has a clear understanding of the objectives and intended results from the beginning.

        For example, you could outline an entire sector of an industry from top to bottom.

        This one (bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) outlined the company and its services and got more than 300 links from over 100 root domains. If a boring one like this could get links, imagine what you could do with more exciting content!

Testing your reader’s knowledge and letting them share their results with their friends is always a great idea.

        OKCupid’s 2008 politics test (okcupid.com/politics) attracted more than 1,600 links from over 500 root domains.

Going all out and diving deep into a subject is a great way to establish yourself as an industry leader. It’s also a great way to attract a few links. If you make any major discoveries, you’ll get at least a few citations from scholarly and news websites.

        For example, this paper, which attracted more than 7,600 links from more than 1,500 root domains, might look a little familiar: pointblankseo.com/book/paper.

Creating the right content at the right time can get you a ton of attention. Creating an infographic on the statistics behind this year’s Super Bowl the day after the event is a perfect example.

        The same goes for seasonal content. Whether it’s Valentine’s Day, Christmas, or Halloween, you can create holiday-themed content that can get a ton of attention over a short period of time (and every year after).

        There aren’t any link statistics of this at the time of this writing, but this is a great example from TurboTax: pointblankseo.com/book/timely.

Everyone loves a good case study. Real results with real numbers can instantly catch people’s attention. If you offer a product or service, this is a no-brainer. If you give out advice, find someone who’s used it successfully.

        Although this particular case study didn’t attract more than 200 links, it’s still a great example of what one should look like: pointblankseo.com/book/case.

Creating a parody, spoof, or industry jokes list is a great way to loosen up your readers. People love sharing things they can laugh at.

        The Onion, a fake news network, is built on humor. This story in particular attracted more than 4,400 links from 1,200 root domains: pointblankseo.com/book/onion. No, you’re not a major site like The Onion, but making a similarly funny industry news story is something worth thinking about.

People like hard copies of useful guides. By creating a printable resource with an awesome design, you can almost guarantee a few links will come your way.

        For example, check out this case study about how Brian Flores created a printable HTML5 cheat sheet that got shared by the Google Developers G+ page: pointblankseo. com/book/printable.

Entering contests is great for link building, but creating them is even better. By requiring your participants to write about and link to the contest from their blog, you’ll not only get links from them, but their posts will increase the exposure of your contest, thus growing your number of contestants at an exponential rate (and thus, the amount of links you get).

        I’d give you an example, but they’re everywhere; contest creation isn’t a secret.

This one’s tough, but remember to always keep it in mind. If you see someone talking about a developing story, and no one has covered it yet, start mashing on your keyboard at lightning speed.

        A good way to do this is by making sure all of the news sources are in your RSS feed reader. For example, if I wanted to cover the latest development of search engines, the Google, Yahoo, and Bing blogs would all be in my reader.

        It’s difficult to give an example for this because when it’s all said and done, it’s not easy finding the original story that covered the news first.

People love data, but sometimes it’s hard to digest. Creating an infographic on it is a popular way to change that. Not only will it naturally attract links, but you’ll also get other bloggers embedding it, which means even more links! Not to mention you have control over the anchor text of the embed code.

        Here’s a fantastic case study on an infographic that not only netted a ton of links, but also some serious traffic and social traction: pointblankseo.com/book/ infographics.

Creating free online tools, such as specialized calculators, is a fantastic way to attract links. They don’t even have to be complex. If it could save me five minutes, then I’ll probably use and share it.

        A fantastic example of a simple, yet effective free online tool is this one by Solo SEO: pointblankseo.com/book/tool. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen SEO bloggers like me link to it. It’s netted almost 500 links from almost 200 root domains.

The next big thing in linkbait is interactive content. The reason: because it’s flat out cool and few people are doing it.

You can see what Thomson.co.uk did with this at: pointblankseo.com/book/interactive.

Instead of creating an infographic, why not create a video that displays the same information? It’s a lot different than what most are doing, and that’s a good thing. The best part is that it works the same way as infographics; the video can be embedded and can act as a post by itself. Check out this animation at: pointblankseo.com/book/animation.

Just like with news, if you’re the first to review something, and if it’s awesome, your review will get tons of attention.

        You can also use this to gain favor with the creators of the product or service you’re creating.

        I reviewed Domain Hunter Plus, a new link checker, and not only did I get a few links to the review, but the creator of the tool worked out a deal with me by linking to the review and my homepage from the tool’s homepage, which now has a PageRank of 5.

Whether it’s a national day, week, month, or event, they can all be used to build links. You could create your own, or you could help promote an existing one. If this is something you’re serious about doing, then check out this post: pointblankseo.com/book/national.

Using drawings to appeal to emotion can work great if it strikes the right tone with your audience.

        This drawing attracted more than 15,000 links from more than 350 root domains: pointblankseo.com/book/drawing.

Spending a couple of hours every month doing a webinar is a great idea for attracting links over the long term. Set up a page on your website solely dedicated to webinars, and as you create new ones, the links will roll in each time.

        HubSpot has done a great job with this, having more than 1,000 links from 100 root domains to their Webinars page: hubspot.com/marketing-webinars.

Creating exciting games to keep visitors content is not only a strategy to attract links to the game itself, but if you make it embeddable, other webmasters will put it on their sites (if it’s good enough), which means even more links.

        Travelpod made a “Traveler IQ Challenge” that’s netted 7,800 links from almost 1,000 root domains: pointblankseo.com/book/game. Better yet, they made it embeddable!

There’s generally a two-step process to attracting links with surveys.

        The first step is asking people to participate. If it’s on a particularly interesting topic, reaching out to bloggers, experts, and industry news sites to ask to spread the word both on their blog and on social media sites is a great way to attract your first wave of links.

        The second step is releasing the results. Combine the release with some nice visualization and a bit of controversy, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic piece of linkbait.

Creating fun, quirky microsites is a great way to attract links. While some people might naturally link to your main site to give credit, they’ll most likely link to the microsite, which should have at least one link back to you on it. One classic example is pointblankseo.com/book/microsites. If you’re thinking they might be too big of an investment, know that they don’t have to be fancy.

Google Maps is a great tool, and you can use it to attract links if you get it in front of the right audience. A great idea would be to map out all the industry events taking place this year.

For example, Mashable linked out to 100 helpful mashups in this post: pointblankseo. com/book/mashups.

If you create rankings or scores of people, companies, or anything else, and if it’s decent enough, then trust us, you’ll get a few links. The best part is that they don’t even have to be accurate (of course it would be great if they were).

For example, visit Klout.com and this list of Top Blogs on Startups at topblogs. onstartups.com. Again, both aren’t exactly accurate (Klout isn’t the best depiction of your influence on Twitter, and the #1 blog on that list is no longer active), but people care about numbers and rankings, especially the ones that make them look good.

Getting answers from a group of industry experts is another fantastic way to attract links. If the piece is good enough, and if you have the right influencers involved, the amount of links you’ll attract can grow exponentially. This is because your contributors will do the promotion for you.

SEOmoz did a study on ranking factors, getting input from more than 130 different experts. You can read about it online at pointblankseo.com/book/factors. You can probably guess it was a huge success. It’s attracted more than 27,000 links from more than 3,300 root domains.

If you and your community are passionate about a certain issue, start a petition. If you can gain any traction from an industry news site, it could catch on like wildfire.

        A petition on ec-petition.eu received more than 1,100 links from more than 200 root domains.

        Note: Although not recommended, because it isn’t hosted on your site, one option is to use Change.org to start your petition. It has an easy setup process, and because it’s hosted on their already popular site, you get all the added benefits of professionalism and exposure.

1. People.

2. Love.

3. Lists!

Why? Because the content is super easy to digest.

This simple list of water conservation tips received more than 1,900 links from more than 400 root domains: pointblankseo.com/book/list.

If there’s a common misconception in your industry, make sure you let everyone know. If it’s big enough, and if your statements are bold enough, you could get some serious attention.

This debunking of 9/11 myths attracted more than 4,000 links from more than 200 root domains: pointblankseo.com/book/debunk.

By collecting data on just about anything, you can attract links. Why? Because, like lists, people absolutely love data. One reason is because they like to make conclusions from it that support their arguments.

If your data supports a side of an argument (i.e., nature vs. nurture debate), reach out to those that it would support. People love telling the world how right they are.

Take it one step further. Release it as straight data, then release it again in a way that makes it visually appealing.

This study on sexual harassment in grade school attracted more than 1,000 links from 125 root domains: pointblankseo.com/book/data.

Troll bait is a great term. While we are not sure who coined the term first, it’s a better way to say, “Create something controversial.”

Remember Godaddy’s SOPA fiasco? They originally supported SOPA (which stirred controversy), but then they stated they would now oppose it (which stirred even more controversy).

Creating controversy for the sake of controversy is a dangerous game. If the opportunity presents itself, go for it, but don’t go in cold looking just to create controversy; people can see right through it.

Interviewing industry experts will always be a fantastic way to attract links, but getting them to interview is only half the battle. The other half is asking great questions. 

A good way to find out what questions you should ask is by holding a Q&A with your blog’s community, whether it’s on Google+, Twitter, or any other site. Ask what kinds of questions your readers want to see answered.

Mixergy.com is home to more than 600 interviews, and more than a few have over 100 links.

One of our personal favorite link-building strategies is helping out, or adding value to, webmasters. By doing something for them, they’ll be much, much more likely to give you a link. Here are a few ways to help out webmasters.

Out of all the strategies listed, this is our favorite. The scalability of finding broken links is astounding. In a nutshell, you’ll be finding pages that could potentially link to you, looking for broken links on the page, and if there are any, you’ll let the webmaster know and ask if the broken link could be replaced with a link to you.

It’s just as simple as it sounds: Look for grammar and spelling mistakes, notify the webmaster, and ask for a link on a relevant page.

If a site is missing information on a certain topic, whether it’s an article entirely or a portion of one that should be better elaborated on, reach out to the webmaster and ask if you could help fill that gap. Of course, ask for a link in the article in return.

If information is out of date, do webmasters a favor and help update it for them. If you’re in a rapidly changing industry such as SEO, look for articles and posts written a few years back that still get traffic (i.e., rank high for a decent keyword). This is because if many people no longer see the content, the webmaster probably won’t care enough to have it updated.

        Remember, when you do update the content, make sure you add a link to you in it.

Take broken links one step further by recreating the content found at those URLs, then outreaching to not only that specific linking site, but also other sites linking to that broken URL.

        For this, use Archive.org to find what content used to be found at that URL.

A decent website usually has some sort of logo, graphic, and web design. If you have any experience with any of these, reach out to webmasters and ask if they’d like any of the above services at no cost.

        Sometimes it doesn’t have to be a major website makeover. Michael Kovis has helped me make a few CSS tweaks in the past, something that I’ve been very, very thankful for.

        If you don’t know design, you can get someone on Fiverr.com to create a logo for five dollars. No, it’s not going to be amazing, but it’ll get the job done.

Use ScrapeBox to find sites with malware, reach out to those webmasters, let them know, and ask for a link. There are other ways to find malware, but Scrapebox is pretty handy for this.

Don’t go to an infected site to get contact information for its webmaster! You might get a virus. Use a whois look up such as whois.net to find contact info.

There’s a huge issue on the internet that I didn’t realize could be used to build links until recently. Hackers (most notably trying to get links with anchors like “buy cheap viagra”) are infiltrating blogs, college sites, and regular html websites in order to get the links they want. A lot of times, the webmasters of these sites have no idea it’s happening.

        Find sites that have been hacked, let the webmaster know (a lot of times they honestly don’t know it’s happened) and tell them how to make the quick fix, then ask for a link or two once you’ve helped them out. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they’d be more than happy to.

If you have a little room in your budget, then consider some of the below paid strategies. Google is against paid links, but there are some out there that are acceptable, such as most of the ones listed below.

If you’ve got a product or service you want reviewed on a blog, you can pay for one. By using sites like SponsoredReviews.com, ReviewMe.com, and PayPerPost.com, you can pay for blogger reviews. Of course, they’ll link to you in the review.

        It’s not exactly white hat, but it’s something to at least be aware of.

It’s a paid link that cannot be detected, it increases brand awareness and trust, and best of all, it can be used to get natural embeds.

        For example, if you get one of the two bloggers in the industry to embed a badge of

“Featured in Top 10 X Blogs in 2012” on their blogs and you outreach to a few mid-level bloggers that you also included (exactly for this reason), they’d be more than happy to embed it, because if the big-time blogger did, they’d be honored to.

        Honestly, if you’re going to pay for a sitewide, this is the way to go. There are so many added bonuses.

        And just in case you’re wondering, this isn’t white hat.

        Note: If you go for spammy anchor text, and not branded or partial, it could send spam signals, so don’t play around there.

Blogging contests usually don’t cost more than 50 to 100 dollars to sponsor. Make sure to look for ones that require participants to post about the contest on their blog and link to each of the sponsors in the post.

Most colleges have a wide range of clubs, and if you ask one to sponsor it for a link in

return, they’ll probably say yes. You can usually sponsor one for $50.

Whether it’s a local meetup, industry conference, or anything in between, event groups are always looking for sponsors, and you can usually get a link in return for a 100- to 200-dollar sponsorship.

The moment the event is over, ask if you could sponsor next year’s. The event committee will be so excited that they’d instantly say yes, and in the end you get the link for close to two years instead of one.

Charities and nonprofit organizations almost always have a donors page. The amount you need to donate to get the link should be between $50 and $100.

While only some link out to funders, there are a ton of crowdfunding opportunities that you can use to make small investments in various businesses. For link building, make sure you get in touch with the individual business so you make sure that you can get a link in return for funding their project.

There are usually more than a few local animal shelters you can sponsor, and sometimes the sponsorship (for a link) can be as low as $10.

Ask webmasters if they’d give you a link on a relevant page in exchange for between $10 and $20 worth of StumbleUpon Paid Discovery traffic. Sometimes they’d be willing to link regardless of the PD traffic, so this just encourages them to link even more.

Relationship building can be hard. Find people in the industry you can hire who can tap into their list of contacts for links, because they’ve already built up those connections. This can be extremely helpful for those who are just starting out in an industry.

Just like industry veterans, experienced link builders have built up little black books of contacts (at least the good ones have). Chances are they’ve dealt with people in either your vertical or a very similar one. In that case, they can get in touch with those contacts, saving you the time to initially build those relationships.

.Edu links are some of the best, yet toughest links to get. Here are a few specific strategies that work great if you’re willing to try them out.

Reach out to universities and let them know about your expertise. By writing curriculum for courses (the more basic, the easier it is to get involved), you can get a few citation links from their site.

If you have any job or internship opportunities, you can get a few easy .edu links. For those looking for an example, if you work in anthropology and you’re looking for an intern, here’s an easy link: pointblankseo.com/book/intern.

By offering discounts to faculty, teachers, and students, you can easily get links from pages like this: pointblankseo.com/book/discount.

Most universities announce speakers on their website, and when they do, make sure a link to your site is included.

Scholarships can become the bread and butter of your .edu link strategy if it’s in the budget. Give out a decent-size scholarship, such as $500 or $1,000, and reach out to multiple colleges and high schools. You don’t have to settle for just a couple here; usually there’s not a limit on this one.

        You could take it one step further and set it up as a contest; the finalists have to write blog posts on your blog on why they deserve it, and half the voting is done socially (i.e., tweets, +1s, Facebook Likes, and so forth). Heck, you could probably get even more creative at that point.

Most colleges dedicate a part of their site to their alumni, and some of them link out to their alumni’s websites.

        For example, a client’s competitors had a link from one of the Harvard Business School’s most authoritative pages, only because they got listed under “HBS Entrepreneurs.” No, you probably didn’t graduate from Harvard, but an edu link is an edu link.

Students are allowed to create blogs on their respective college websites, so get in touch with them. They’re a lot easier to get links from than a regular college webmaster. Whether it’s buying them lunch or making sure you get a link from a college intern, you can always get links through students.

By interacting in communities, not only can you build links, but also relationships (remember how important they are?). This is a great way to get to know people in your industry while snagging a few links at the same time.

There are a number of online newspapers that are run by the people, for the people. By contributing, curating, and adding your insight, you can get links from these sites on a regular basis (you get the chance to promote yourself in your bio on most of them).

Here are a few for example:

It’s definitely classified as low-hanging fruit, but you can still get value from commenting on blogs. To get the most value, comment on relevant blogs, do-follow blogs (blogs that offer followed links to their commenters), and CommentLuv blogs (blogs that have the CommentLuv plugin installed).

        If you do it right, you’ll build rapport with bloggers and links at the same time.

Forum posting is a great way to find the people in your industry that are really passionate about your niche. Again, you’ll get links when you post in the right forums.

Using sites like Yahoo! Answers, you can build a few no-follow links that should also send a bit of traffic to your site. Make sure to cite pages on your site when answering questions in order to guarantee a link.

Interacting in communities is one subset of strategies, but why not create your own?

        Creating a new project in your niche not only can help build your authority and trust, but it can also get you a few links if you know where to put them. Here are a few examples of what you could create.

Whether it’s a niche forum, Q&A site, or social network, you can probably create it without much trouble.

A few options are vBulletin or Simple Press for a forum, Buddy Press for a social network, or qHub for a Q&A site.

If you want to go above and beyond the call of duty, create a community from scratch. Inbound.org, created by Rand Fishkin and Dharmesh Shah, is exactly that.

Wikis are great, but only if you get people involved. Having a little influence to begin with helps a ton. By outreaching to influencers to contribute and by incentivizing contributions, you can build it up as an authority. Again, make sure to link to yourself with it.

Creating a human-curated, quality niche directory is something worth looking into if there isn’t one in your industry. If the design looks like every other directory and the submissions you’re accepting are subpar, you’ll have little success, but if you’re accepting only quality sites, it could get listed often on resource lists.

        Start with directory software, then customizing from there. Just Google “directory software” if you’re looking for one; most don’t cost more than $100. Obviously, since this is a link-building strategy, link to your main site.

Chances are there are links out there that are already yours that you just haven’t gotten yet. For example, if someone uses your content, you should be able to get a link back. Here are a few existing opportunities for you to snag a link or two.

If someone just bought something from you, then this is the perfect time to ask for a link if they have any influence online. Ask them to write a review of your product or service, and then offer to help promote it to spread the word. It’s a win-win!

By using Google’s reverse image search, you can easily find other websites using your images or infographics. Politely outreach to each and ask if you could have a link back for using them. If they don’t, make sure to let them know it’s copyright infringement to use your copyrighted images without permission.

If your brand gets mentioned on the web, then make sure you ask for a link. For example, if someone mentioned “Point Blank SEO” on their blog, I might ask if they could include a link so the reader would know where Point Blank SEO is located on the web. You can easily set up free alerts with tools like Google Alerts to find who’s talking about your brand.

If you’re a part of an association or organization, chances are they have a website. If they do, find out if they link out to their members. Get included if they do.

If you’ve got too many links with generic or branded anchor text, reach out to those webmasters and ask if they could alter the anchor text to either exact or partial match. You could also do just the opposite if unnatural link signals are hurting you.

People will sometimes link to your Twitter account, so take advantage. You can do this by going to the Twitter widget page (pointblankseo.com/book/widget), building a full-page-size widget and placing it on its own page, then asking webmasters to link to that page rather than directly to Twitter.

        If you’re still confused, you can find a guide online at: pointblankseo.com/twitter.

If someone has linked to you in the past, chances are they might be willing to link to you in the future. Get to know them, and make sure they’re up to date with your content, because that only leads to more links.

        Try using Linkstant.com to instantly see who’s linked to you. Make sure to stop by those sites and leave a thank-you comment.

If you’ve built up influence, you can definitely use this to build links. If I got an email from Aaron Wall asking to review his toolset on my blog, I’d be more than willing to.

        Outside of outreach, you can use your influence for a ton of things. For example, Ann Smarty used her influence to get a chance to write posts for Mashable (no lack of quality links there).

        In general, you can use your influence to get a much higher success rate with every other strategy explored in this book, but remember: If the person you’re contacting doesn’t know who you are, then your influence is worthless (e.g., a .gov webmaster couldn’t care less if you’re a big-shot travel blogger).

Sometimes links to your website break over time, whether it’s because you’ve moved the intended page, or because the webmaster messed up your URL. Go into Google Webmaster Tools to see which pages are getting 404 errors, then redirect those pages to either the homepage or the implied intended page.

You have something that people want, so give it away. Here’s a list of things you can give to get links.

There’s no better way to connect with bloggers than by giving them your product or service in exchange for a review. Usually there are a lot of mid-level bloggers in big industries more than willing to, so this can be quite scalable.

Give out free e-books and products using services like PayWithATweet.com or Cloudflood.

com. In order to get it, you have to tweet or share it, thus causing a landslide of social shares.

        No, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a link, but it’s a great way to get your stuff in front of a lot of potential linkers’ eyes.

        Note: Don’t forget to submit those e-books to e-book directories!

Giving out discounts and coupons is a great way to get mentions in lists like this one: pointblankseo.com/book/coupons. Make sure to reach out to writers who dedicate posts to discounts and coupons; usually they’d be more than happy to include your offers.

Sites like Living Social and Groupon allow you to include anchor text links in the description of your coupons. If you’re wondering, Google does cache the pages, so we’re 99 percent sure these links are indexed.

If you have a product or service, and if there’s a relevant blogging contest taking place, reach out to the blogger running it and ask if you could give your product or service to the winner. They’d be more than happy to, and they’ll give you a link on the contest page if you ask.

Links and relationships are directly related. The more bloggers and webmasters you know, the more links you’ll get. Here are a few great ways to build relationships.

Whenever you can, be nice to people. Always be on the lookout for helping those in need. This isn’t exactly an actionable strategy for link building, but you’d be surprised. These random acts can turn into lasting relationships.

Actually care about people. Show them you’re not just a bot with a picture, but that you’re somewhat human. If they share on Twitter that their daughter just graduated, congratulate them. Something as simple as that can open up your chances to build a relationship in the future.

If someone is conducting a survey or testing something, get involved and participate. Those are great chances to start conversations with new people.

Whether you find one or start one, meetups are a fantastic way to get to know people close by. For example, if you live in a big city (Seattle, NYC, Philly) then meetups are absolutely perfect. I highly recommend Meetup.com if you’re looking to find or start one.

A great way to get to know people who think like you is by finding those who use the same products or services you do. A great example is the Hubspot User Group Summit.

Seriously, go to them. At the time I’m writing this, I’ve only gone to one, but it was awesome and I highly recommend it.

Yep, I said it. Get them on the phone. Make your contacts hear your voice and know that you’re a real person.

        Ben Wills was the first to do this with me. I now know a lot more about him and Ontolo (his toolset), something I’m extremely grateful for.

If you want to get to know someone on Twitter, first retweet them a few times. Then respond a couple times to a few of their tweets, then continue the conversation as direct messages. Finally, ask to email (because 140 characters is never enough), and now you’ve got the ball rolling.

Answer questions on Twitter, Quora, and anywhere else people hang out. People ask questions all the time, so being at the right place at the right time by helping them out will definitely put you on their radar.

Not all links that we build are for search rankings. Some are for traffic. We are getting high rankings so we get more traffic, right? Besides, having all your eggs (links) in one basket (Google) is never a good idea. Here are a few examples of links for traffic.

Including links back to your site in newsletters is a great way to get traffic, but take it one step further. Find influential newsletters in your niche and try to get a link included. For example, I’ve gotten a link in Eric Ward’s Link Moses Private. An even bigger target (that could potentially crash my site) in our industry is the Moz Top 10 newsletter, which has 220,000 subscribers. Yeah. I know.

Find out who’s sending out the newsletters, and get to know them.

If you send out 100 emails a day, having an email signature with a link back can drive an extra 50+ people a day to your website. It’s not much, but it requires zero effort.

Based on where you’re located, you can get a few links from local websites. Here are a few ways to use your location to build links.

We don’t often suggest an individual site, but when we do, it’s the Better Business Bureau. This link will pass more trust than almost any other link in your profile. The price is determined by state/region/city and by number of employees. The St. Louis BBB ranges from $370 for one to three employees all the way to $865+ for 100 to 200 employees. Anything over that, as well as additional websites, incurs as additional charges.

        That being said, you are supposed to get a “do-follow” link out of all this. You need to check on your listing once it is published as each region has their own rules regarding their directory of businesses. There have been some instances where your business’s website URL in the directory listing was not a live link, only text. All you have to do is contact your BBB representative and ask for that to be changed.

Getting a link from your chamber of commerce is a guaranteed link just waiting for you to get. In some cases, though, it takes a little bit of time to find the right person to get in touch with.

Submit your site to local listings. Here’s a fantastic list created by Peter Attia of all the best sites for this: pointblankseo.com/book/local.

        Another example is Yelp.com.

Most local libraries have a website, and most of them have somewhat of a link profile. Nonetheless, get in touch, and do what you can to get a link; it’s going to be a link from one of the most white hat sites in your profile.

Linking out is a great way to build links, because when bloggers see they’ve been linked to by your blog (along with 50 visitors coming over from that post), they’ll at the very least check out your content, if not tweet and link to it.

Why? Because people are much more likely to help out others that have helped out them. This is the exact same idea as helping out webmasters in the strategies I listed above.

As opposed to giving trackbacks, find blogs that allow you to get trackback links. For example, the Google blog gives out trackback links, and even though they’re no-follow, they’re still worth something.

Whether they’re monthly, weekly, or even daily, doing roundups of great posts in your niche is a fantastic way to put you on the map. Mid-level, and even some high-level, bloggers take notice when they get links from these.

Make sure you add a little insight to why you listed the post. It helps the bloggers being linked to know that someone is actually taking the time to read their posts.

Reward people who link to you by giving trackback links. Take it one step further and make them do-follow. When they sort through their backlinks and see these, they’ll be a lot more likely to link out to you in the future.

Medium-level bloggers are the best audiences to target. When they get linked to, they go bananas (I did when I got my first few links!).

        Linking out and letting them know you did so is a great strategy for this large group. Usually the best natural link profiles come from blogs that have control over this middle group.

Whenever possible (and we mean whenever possible!), mention specific people. People love getting mentioned. Link to their site (so they know they got mentioned), and when they find out, they’re usually more than willing to share the post at the very least (if not link to it!). Again, this is a great way to put yourself on their map.

Find people on Delicious.com, or other social sharing sites that have saved similar content to yours, outreach to them, letting them know about your content (i.e., an upcoming infographic), and let them do the rest; they’ll share it or link to it if they like it.

Yep, I included it. If you’re going to exchange (reciprocate) links with a website, don’t do it as if you’re living in 1998. Make sure they’re the most relevant, trustworthy websites you’ve ever come across. If they’re not, don’t do it.

Building links to pages that link to you can be awesome if you do it right. You not only can pass more juice back to your site, but you can also use it for reputation management and to drive sales.

Do second-tier link building to trustworthy sites linking to you, such as a guest post on a highly authoritative blog. For example, if you’re doing some broken link building, asking for the replacement link to be to a highly trustworthy site will get you accepted a lot more often than if you asked for a link to you.

This is because the site is more trustworthy (webmaster is more willing to link) and because you’re not asking for a link to the domain that hosts your email (i.e., jcooper@ pointblankseo.com asking for a link to pointblankseo.com), meaning it looks more natural in the eyes of the webmaster.

Use some of the relationships you’ve built to create a network of similar noncompeting blogs. Link out to them, and ask them to do the same. A good number to have in your network is five; it’s not too much, but it’s not too little.

        For example, make sure everyone links out to each different blog in the network once a month. Heck, make it once a week.

        It’s like reciprocal linking, but way better, because the links are relevant, contextual, and natural in Google’s eyes.

HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, connects journalists with bloggers & industry experts. By becoming a source, you can get big-time links from news sites.

        From personal experience, this is one of the best ways to get high-quality press mentions without much work.

Good ol’ fashioned PR outreach is always a great idea if you’re buzzworthy. If you’re not up for hiring a PR company for this, make sure you research who you’re pitching, and make sure to keep it short and to the point. If you do it right, you’ll build up a relationship with the person you’re pitching long before you pitch them. This will also result in you being able to tap into that relationship multiple times, and not for just a one-off pitch.

Take things one step further. If you write something up for a news publication, ask if you could regularly contribute by creating a weekly column. If they say yes, then you’ve just landed yourself a fantastic long-term link opportunity.

Some blogs have a top commentators widget that displays the top commentators in the sidebar of their blog. All you have to do is make it up on that leaderboard and you’ll get a sitewide link. Granted, it might take 10 to 15 comments, it’s still worth it.

        Make sure you don’t drop all the comments on the same day; you’d look like an idiot. Do one or two a day for a couple of weeks until you get that link.

There will always be a new strategy or two every once in a while, but this list should keep you for quite some time.

        As time passes, understand that some of these strategies will be thrown out as new algorithm updates are introduced, so always keep up with the latest search engine news, whether you read it by scanning the press, reading SEO blogs, or subscribing to a newsletter.