Link Building – The Best Links in Life Are Free

Whilst it’s true that the importance of back linking has decreased somewhat it is still an important slice of the SEO pie. Link building, whether we like it or not, hasn’t gone away and should be an objective that never falls out of your focus. What has changed though is the type of back links that we want to build to our sites – they have to look “natural”.

With the Penguin and Panda updates the line has been blurred about what is an unnatural back link – Matt Cutts has gone so far as to suggest that even getting a link from a guest post could be deemed as unnatural which has made link building an exercise fraught with doubt. One type of back link that still hasn’t gone out of fashion though is a free back link.

Link Building – The Best Links in Life Are Free

Now, I suppose it’s time to tighten up my definition of a free back link. The best “free” back links won’t cost you in monetary terms but should take some time to procure. Now, I suppose it’s time to tighten up my definition of procure. When I say procure I don’t mean sending countless e-mails to webmasters in your niche asking them to link to you or to add you to a blogroll but rather I mean that it should take time to create the content which itself will procure the back links for you.

And, I can hear the groans in the back of the class already, “Rob is about to drop the ‘quality content‘” chestnut again, and you’re right, I have just dropped the quality content chestnut again.

And I drop it with good reason.

When you have a content marketing plan in place and create content that is genuinely good – be it from an informative, educational or entertainment point of view, you’ll find that you start to procure the best types of back links for free.

A quick check of my back links shows that my most linked pages are:

• The Google Plus Awakening – 1,948 links
• How To Make Money With Your Blog – 896 links
• Onsite SEO Tips – 757 links
• 5 Quick PPC Tips – 689 Links
• Best WordPress Mailing List – 551 links

By some standards that’s probably not a whole ton of back links but for my relatively new site, in the niche that I’m in, I’m happy with that amount of back links for now. The thing to note is that my posts which offer the most amount of value to the reader have gotten the most amount of back links.

What makes me doubly happy is that the back links were “free”. Instead of having to e-mail people asking for back links I got to message them and say “thanks for linking to me!” – a very different type of message to send, which, I hope, will increase the chances of future back links.

All in all, the best links in life are free – once you spend the time creating content that will spread.