Easy Inbound Links

August 14, 2007 // Drew Stauffer

Here’s a Quick Tip:
Getting easy inbound links (IBLs) isn’t always the easiest assignment. The most straight forward way is to create good useful content that other users will naturally want to link to. This method is great but it takes time. Another technique for getting easy inbound links is to follow the leader. Just like with keyword research, it’s often suggested that you look at your competitor to see what terms they are targeting. This works the same way for inbound links.

Use Yahoo Site Explorer and analyze your competitor’s links. If you take some time and go through their list you can get a lot of the same easy inbound links for your site. Download SEO for Firefox from Aaron Wall and you can also analyze which links are passing PR. Visit each one of these sites and look for your competitor.

Are they in the Top Commentators list?
Often this list is only on the homepage and it usually passes PR. Contribute to the blog and you can make the list too - a quick and easy strategy for building inbound links.

Are they in the comments for that blog?
Not every blog uses the nofollow attribute, but the ones that do should be on your radar because they present a very easy opportunity for attaining inbound links. Comment on these blogs and the link back to your site will count.

What if I can’t find them?
If you can’t find them in either place, try a find and replace for either their company name or the name of the person you’re stalking (thanks for making stalking cool again Sphinn).

I still can’t find them on the page
If you still can’t find your prey, view the source code and search again for their company name or personal name. If there’s a link to their site you’ll find it in the code.

Once you finally find their link you can decide if a little amount of effort can get you the same link.

Other Easy Links

Directories are typically recognized as sources for attaining easy inbound links
Post of Job Opening…easy inbound link (not the most ethical choice if you don’t actually have a position available)
Contact your alma mater. There always happy to hear how great you’re doing and often have alumni pages that offer easy inbound links

If you’re in a competitive market, you can easily find sites with thousands of links in Yahoo Site Explorer. Studying these links and going after the same sources can be an effective and easy way to establish inbound links to your site.

Technorati Tags: easy inbound links, blog, marketing

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Speak your mind

30 responses so far ↓

1 Sujan Patel - Link building Tips // Aug 14, 2007 at 7:53 pm

Great tips. Link building is never an easy thing but good tips on making it less confusing
2 Sue K // Aug 15, 2007 at 3:21 pm

SEO for Firefox stopped working for me when I upgraded Firefox, someone else on a forum said they had the same issue.
3 Drew Stauffer // Aug 15, 2007 at 5:50 pm

@ Sujan

Thanks Sujan I saw that you just wrote some posts on link building too and it made me think of so many new points to add to my list but I thought I’d just link to yours.

@ Sue K

hmmm…I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.6 and mine seems to be working fine on both the mac and pc. After you upgrade Firefox does it ask you to check on updates for your older plugins?
4 Sue K // Aug 15, 2007 at 5:56 pm

Drew, no it didn’t ask me that.. I need to check that out!
5 Drew Stauffer // Aug 15, 2007 at 6:04 pm

@ Sue

I guess worst case scenario…you could always remove the plugin and just download it again.
6 Charles // Aug 16, 2007 at 3:19 pm

nice article thanks, I have to say that link building is an extremely time consuming task, sometimes spending hours finding the right site that will accept the link. A good idea is to use a website promotion company.

Also I think that keyword research is vital becasue there is no point in using a keyword that no one searches for.
7 Drew Stauffer // Aug 16, 2007 at 3:55 pm

@ Charles

I couldn’t agree with you more. I find it amazing when clients just HAVE to use a certain keyword, even when I show them that it doesn’t get any traffic.
12 Donna // Apr 19, 2008 at 1:25 pm

I have used Yahoo Site Explorer to check out how many inbound links my competitors have but hadn’t thought to actually check out which inbound links they had. Thanks.
13 Drew Stauffer // Apr 19, 2008 at 6:13 pm

@Donna

Yeah you can get some good leads by following their leads. You just gotta keep hunting
14 Alan // Jun 12, 2008 at 8:02 am

Great Articl as always

Alan
http://www.lettingsmatch.com
15 Gary // Jun 18, 2008 at 8:11 am

Interesting Article

Gary
http://www.stortfordlocal.co.uk
17 Web Development India // Sep 24, 2008 at 10:31 am

I used to check back links through Google webmaster tools. And thanks for such a nice article.
18 SEO Firm // Sep 25, 2008 at 6:21 am

Hey Drew, Is there any much more difference between “nofollow” and “external nofollow”? My Google webmaster account showing me so many external nofollow links, are they all going to be counted as my website back link? Awaiting Reply.
19 caricature online // Sep 25, 2008 at 8:34 am

Thank you very much for this.
20 Drew Stauffer // Sep 25, 2008 at 1:04 pm

@SEO Firm

Sadly “nofollow” links don’t count towards your page rank. The search engines will still follow the link and you’ll still get traffic from the link, but you aren’t going to get any page rank value from it.

From what I can tell…the difference between “nofollow” and “external nofollow” is that a “external nofollow” is like a target_blank attribute on a link. It opens up the link in another browser window.

Now I only did about 2 mins of research on the external nofollow so I could be wrong. I personally have never run into the external nofollow link.
21 SEO Consulting // Oct 6, 2008 at 10:43 am

Thank you for your reply Drew, In external nofollow you may be wrong because i checked several of external nofollow links and found it does not use for opening a link in new browser window or tab. Thanks for the information.
22 annie // Oct 9, 2008 at 2:10 am

I am excited when you say that “Not every blog uses the nofollow attribute, but the ones that do should be on your radar because they present a very easy opportunity for attaining inbound links. Comment on these blogs and the link back to your site will count.”

Recently in a social community site, they talk about not supporting this sort of sites. Cus they think the engines do not search through their weblinks.
23 iSeoTools // Oct 29, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Some great info here thanks for sharing..
24 Comet Ipod Nano // Dec 5, 2008 at 4:23 pm

Another good place to get a lot of links is via forum signatures. If you are not a member of a forum you can either join an on topic forum and buy peoples forum posts at places like digitalpoint for very little money.
25 Web Design // Jan 20, 2009 at 8:32 am

Nice Tips. Yes Google Webmaster tool show me My Back link. Thanks For Sharing Nice Information.
26 AdamH // Feb 15, 2009 at 2:20 am

“Contact your alma mater. There always happy to hear how great you’re doing and often have alumni pages that offer easy inbound links”

Excellent advice - amazing timing as I just worked this one out for myself about 10 minutes ago. Very practical.

I would offer one more for your readers - if you have a product for sale that you can offer affiliates a percentage for each sale, this can also increase your inbound links.
27 Golf Clubs // Mar 20, 2009 at 7:33 am

Hmmm, I read your post as well other comments and most are right, some’s are wrong. Here now I am also sharing my experience to getting inbound links. the most easiest way is your web linking structure. With good link structure you can get inbound link for your each page.

According to google: We can get inbound links with well linking of each page particularly in the content of web pages. If we are doing linking in the content and create a website that have each page good linked to othe pages then we can get inbound links for most of the page and improve PR as well SERP’s frequently.
28 johnn Peterson // Apr 20, 2009 at 12:27 pm

All the time content is the king. The information provided is nice. thanks
29 Truth About Melayu Boleh // May 25, 2009 at 11:33 am

Another Great Tips From You Drew Stauffer. those who do not know what is Inbound links i will try to explain “Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site”. Thats All. If this Fact wrong Drew Stauffer please do not published my Comments
30 SEO Tutorial Videos // Jun 29, 2009 at 11:41 pm

Another great tool that’s well worth the money, imo, is linkscape. It can help you find a lot of backlinks that are just missing from the free SEO tools. And it provides a lot more information about those links.