Best Ways of Building Backlinks in 2013

Apart from some of the traditional methods of building backlinks, which we can still use with great effect in 2013, here are is my list of a few great ways of building valuable backlinks in 2013:

1. Create Great Content: Great content was, and will always be the most effective backlink building strategy. If you consistently create excellent, high-quality and highly-relevant content on your website, and then market your content effectively, it will provide you with the opportunity to build backlinks effortlessly, as people that come across it will want to link to your content, or share it on social mediums. Create content that your readers simply cannot resist sharing, and other bloggers find so invaluable, they are forced to link to you!

2. Share Great Content: Another solid strategy to build backlinks includes sharing content from other (external) sources. One great way to do this is to perhaps share the top stories from your niche on a weekly basis, or set a day, any day in the week, for a ‘best of the week’ post, where you could put up some of the best links, resources and articles that you come across. Doing so will not only provide your readers with excellent information (and hence giving you more shares and backlinks), the people you link to may also return the favor by linking back to you. (As is probably clear, it is important to post content that is relevant to the people in your niche).

3. Guest Blogging: Guest blogging rose to fame in last year as one of the most effective ways of building backlinks. However given the fact that it’s been started to get abused as a backlink-building strategy, AND the fact that Google will introduce measures to counter this abuse sooner rather than later – which may change its effectiveness – safe guest blogging, following the best-practices, will still yield excellent results as far as building high-PR backlinks goes.

4. Make Videos: Making and sharing videos was, is and will be one of the best ways of creating backlinks! It’s incredibly simple to make videos, and you don’t even need expensive or high-end equipment for it, contrary to popular belief. Above all, a single video can be put up on a multiple number of video-hosting websites, which means that not only do these videos have a lot of potential to be shared by users of each of these websites (Youtube, Vimeo, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, etc), your videos also have the potential to go viral (and be seen by thousands!). Look into making videos to build backlinks.

5. Blog Comments: Like guest posting, posting comments – valuable, insightful, and thought-provoking comments – on other authority and high-PR blogs within your niche was and still is an excellent strategy to create backlinks. My recommendations, as far as ‘blog commenting as a link-building strategy’ are as follows: find relevant, authority blogs in your niche (similar to yours), read their content, and use these blogs to leave thoughtful comments on their post, along with a URL of your own blog. Some blogs use certain plugins (such as CommentLuv) and give you’re a do-follow backlinks to your blog or one of its posts. Always remember to put in the link to your blog in the ‘URL’ field, and refrain from posting spam comments or even one-liners such as ‘thanks for this post’.

6. Social Media: Social media’s rise in prominence since the turn of the decade, and especially in 2012, has been nothing short of phenomenal! Facebook, the undisputed king of social networks, crossed the 1 billion users mark (yes, billion, with a ‘b’!). Similarly, the likes of Twitter and Pinterest (and even G+) boasted similarly-impressive numbers. What this means for you, is an excellent opportunity to build backlinks!

7. Social Bookmarking: Lastly, a word on social bookmarking and whether it is still a viable backlink-creation method and if it should be a part of your backlink strategy or not. The answer to both these questions is yes it is, and yes it should be! Social bookmark websites – such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Delicious and Reddit – organize external links and articles according to different interests. Users simply go on these websites, find their interests, and look through the sites and article and share them with others as well! Submit your content on these social bookmarking websites.

Your Turn: What backlink-building strategies do you think will be effective in 2013? Leave your comments below!