SEO and Link Building – Where To Get Backlinks Today
Like it or not, being a blogger and/or Internet marketer requires you to do some really boring things. One of my least favorite activities is building backlinks for SEO.
Luckily, there are a few tools and websites that can make getting high quality backlinks a breeze.
Tools For Automation
There are many tools you can use to gain backlinks to your webpages. But, there are only a few that are worth using.
Social Monkee
Funny name, awesome free tool. It allows you to create links to 25 different sites for a link of your choice each day. If you do this every day, you will have amassed about 750 backlinks each month. I use this nearly every day. To get a free account, just visit their site.
Bookmarking Demon
This is a paid software program that you need to download to use. But, don’t let that keep you from looking into it. I have been using it for a couple of months now, and I am really glad that I bought it.
BMD allows you to create accounts easily, to bookmark a boatload of links on a boatload of sites in a very short amount of time. I am currently using this to bookmark to about 70 social bookmarking sites. The real advantage of this software is that it helps you to stay organized and efficient. You can even schedule bookmarks and ping them as you please. You can check it out here.
IM Automator
IM Automator is the first tool that I ever used to make social bookmarking easier. You can use the free version forever, or if you try it and like it, you can opt for the paid subscription version. Currently, I am using the free version. If nothing else, it is one more tool for your online assault.
IM Automator allows you to submit 10 urls each day. These are submitted to a bunch of different sites over the period of time (1, 15, or 45 days) that you choose.
Onlywire
This is one of my least favorite tools, but it is still quite popular. It allows you to enter your link once and get links on 42 social networks (digg, facebook, posterous, etc.). Unlike IM Automator, you need to set up your own accounts to use this tool.
I tried this one out about six months ago and did not fall in love with it. It does work, though. You can choose to pay, or put a badge on your webpage to use the free version.
Social Marker
Social Marker is an ok alternative to a paid tool like Bookmarking Demon if you don’t want to pay for it.
Of course, it does have its limitations and can be frustrating to use. I used it for a while before taking the plunge and paying for a tool instead. My biggest complaint about it is that it would not always work, and when that happened, it got very confusing and time consuming.
Again, this tool requires you to set up all of your own account manually. Still, it is a great free tool.
Online Communities
This is what the web is all about. Building relationships with people provides us with just about all of the opportunities we find in life. Getting a better job, an education, a spouse, etc. are all related to how well we build relationships. The bottom line is that you need to be able to build relationships.
There are some exceptions, of course, but most of those people work for Microsoft.
Anyway, here just some of the awesome places on the Internet that you can meet people, learn more about the virtual world around you, and do some link bulding.
Blokube
Dev from technshare.com started a social voting site for Blogging, Marketing, SEO, etc. called blokube.
Link popularity is key on this site and you can’t get that without regularly visiting. That is, you want the links you have submitted to get to the front page for maximum visibility. I usually visit this on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Blog Engage
A guy named Brian built blog engage a while back. This is one of the most popular sites like this out there. It used to be invite only, but that seems to have changed. Well, I know that I have not invited anyone for a while anyway… 
Like Blokube, you want your links to be popular on this site. That is, you want people to vote for your links so that you can get to the front page. That is where your links will get the most exposure.
Blog Interact
This is one of the newer blog bookmarking sites, and there are some things about it that are quite cool. Of course, link popularity is again key here to getting to the front page. Blog Interact was started by a guy named Bryan (seems like there is a trend here) and it looks promising.
Other Blog Voting Sites
Of course, it does not end there. There are BlogCatalog, MMO, SERPd, and a bunch more. If you have not already, check these sites out. It would not be a good idea to use all of them, but find some you like an visit regularly.
Blog commenting
This is probably my favorite way to create backlinks. Really, the best part of it is that taking part in the online community allows me to find new blogs and to meet new people. I talked a little bit about part of my commenting strategy a few posts back.
In general, blog commenting works, but there is one thing that adds a special something. The CommentLuv WordPress plugin is probably old news, but if you have not added it to your blog and joined their community, you are missing out.
Other Backlink Opportunities
RSS and Directory listings
There are countless directories and RSS aggregator sites that are crawled by the search engines. One easy way to build some more authority is to get noticed on the best of these. One RSS site is Alltop. Directories, such as dmoz, have appeared to be looked upon well by the serps. This is probably because, in the case of dmoz, human people (as opposed to the other kind… I can’t believe that no one has stopped me from writing like this yet) research every site submitted for inclusion in their directory.
I put together a PDF with a copy of this post and a list nearly 300 of the best RSS and Directory sites. You can download it (for FREE) by pressing the button below.
Anyway, these types of sites are great for getting noticed, so go get some backlinks!
There are link building services that will do hundreds of RSS and/or directory submissions for you, and the amazing thing is that it is fairly cheap. If you head over to key2seo.com or ODesk (after commenting, of course ), you can find someone to do this for between 10 and 35 dollars.
Don’t Forget To Ping
So, now that you have some backlinks created, you need to ensure that Google knows about them. So, you need to ‘ping’ them. If you are using wordpress, this is as simple as pressing post for the most part.
But, I use the “cbnet Ping Optimizer 2.3.3″ plugin to help me to keep from spamming the search engines. Plus, I added a bunch of services to help the search engines notice each new post. Also, Bookmarking Demon will do pinging for you.
If you want a list of services, Alex posted a pretty good list of them a while back in his post about Google PageRank.
Also, Alex recently mentioned a tool that I had not heard of – pingfarm. It looks pretty good, so check it out!
Of course, link building services will do this for you. But, it is good to do this with any links you build through any of the above methods.
Social Media
Triberr
Social media is rarely included in this topic. I just found this website recently, so though it does not really fit in the topic easily, it is an incredible idea so I want to mention it here.
Triberr is an invite only website where tribe members automatically share each other’s blog posts on Twitter. It does not give you backlinks, but it does help you to network and to get retweets.
It works via RSS, so every time you post to your website, everyone in your tribe will retweet your link to it. The tribe I stared is called “IceBlueTribe” (of course). I am looking for people to be part of it, so click on the link above and tell me when you are ready!
Anyone who joins my tribe will get at least 2 visits each week from me. I comment and bookmark (digg, delicious, stumbleupon, etc.) any good posts. Let me know if you want an invitation.
I also joined Danny Brown’s tribe (Bloggerific), which is fairly new as well and includes a great group of people (Brankica, Ingrid, Aaron Lee, and Sarah Robinson).
Bonus
Here are a few more that I have seen mentioned elsewhere:
DropMyLink
This tool can be used to find .edu and .gov sites to comment on. My results have been quite mixed when using this, but it is worth taking a quick look every now and again.
Free Link Checker
If you want to check your links, you can use this tool. It is from scrapebox, and works quite nicely. The best part is that it is easy to use.
Your Turn
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SEO and Link Building Photo Credits
photo credits:
Fence link: Teeejayy
Banana suit guy: Leah Gregg
Red leaf: SumaVV
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Twitter: AboriginalMama
said:
Triberr is a really awesome tool; Brankica invited me to one of her tribes, and I’ve slowly been building my own tribes within my own niche. It works phenomenally!
Social Monkee is another one I’ve heard mention of recently on another blog, but I didn’t bother to go see what it was. She didn’t describe it very well, and I couldn’t visit immediately. But I think I’ll check it out after seeing mention here. It sounds like it could be a real heavy hitter in the backlink building.
Delena
Delena Silverfox´s last [type] ..123Inkjets Coupon
Hi Delena,
I just found Triberr myself a couple of days ago. Apparently, it is one of Dino Dogan’s projects. It looks excellent so far.
Its main purpose, at least the way I see it is really community building. I think we can use a bit more of that!
Social Monkee is another great new tool. I think of it as a way to get additional backlinks. I use it fairly inconsistently, but I quite like it.
Have a great day!
Hi,
Thanks a lot for this wonderful post! I already know some of the tools here. I have been using some, but afraid to use others especial SocialMonkee. What I think is that 25 links a day is not natural and 750 backlinks each month is too much. That’s what I think. When search engines say natural link, that means 2 links today, 30 links tomorrow, 5 links, 23 links, etc. The fact that it is always 25 links makes me skeptical. Maybe you have a different opinion because you are using the service… I’d love to know your opinion because such services are very, very valuable. I am tempted to use them but afraid of the consequences.
I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks a lot.
Take care.
Mouh
PS: please keep up the good work!
Mouh´s last [type] ..5 Clever Ways to Increase Sales
Hi Mouh,
Thanks for the encouragement.
To your question, I see tools like Social Monkee and IM Automator as part of an overall strategy.
So, what really matters how you choose to use them.
Also, remember that the search engines don’t pick up everything you do every day. That is why I mentioned pinging as being part of the process/strategy.
I am pretty new to Triberr, but have been using all of the others for a bit and they seem to be working pretty well.
That is, since I implemented a strategy using these tools (most of them twice per week), I have seen jumps in the ranking of a few important keywords here, as well as the keywords I am going for on a few of my niche sites.
I can’t recommend these tools enough. But, you need to work on a strategy or your time could be wasted.
Also, never just bookmark yourself. In my opinion, that is a bad practice, so I tend to bookmark my friends’ posts (stumble upon, delicious, and the places mentioned above).
If you have further questions about these tools, please leave another comment or contact me via the contact page.
Thanks for the comment and have a great day!
Twitter: stevescott1
said:
Mark,
Oh so much to do…so little time to do it. Let’s see, first of all I have suddenly started to hear a lot about triberr. It sounds interesting. When I get a spare hour to play I will join one of these days (I will surely join yours when I do… but I tweet you anyway when I visit
)
I did run into an issue with BMD. I got a small niche site I was playing with as a test sandboxed (I think) from using it too much. Just a word of warning. That being said I do think it is a great program, The pinging alone almost makes it worth it.
I have used almost every other method (I used IMautomater a ton too, but fell off of my submissions once I got BMD)
I do have a question: Do they give you a list of the URLS that it submits to? Over time do these links show up as Backlinks when using 3rd party tools (like yahoo site explorer)Since it is free I will probably play with it regardless, at least on niche sites where it will not matter if something gets sandboxed for being, “unnatural” to see for myself, but I must say it did look interesting.
Steve@Lifestyle Design´s last [type] ..23 A-B Split Tests that Get More Subscribers for Your Email List
Ha. Yeah Triberr seems to be picking up some momentum. It is a pretty cool community building tool. And, it looks like they have a bunch of ideas on how to improve it over time. I think it is going to end up being something that tons of people use.
BMD and IM Automator are both great tools. You are right, though. Using them too much, or at least too much at the wrong time, could likely make Google think bad things. I think that all of these tools can be great as part of a solid backlink strategy.
Pinging is key.
To your questions, Social Monkee & IM Automator do give you the links to the bookmarks. However, Social Monkee does not give you all of them unless you get a premium membership.
BMD does provide a list of the links to the bookmarks you create, and actually builds the list for pinging automatically (I love that).
As far as seeing the links in site explorer, yes for all. I tried them all for about a month, pinged them, and did notice that at least some of them showed up.
Thanks for the visit Steve. Have a great day!
Twitter: rdempsey
said:
Hi Mark – when you say “at least some of them showed up” what kind of percentages are we talking? Also has getting these backlinks actually helped to improve the search rankings of your sites?
Robert Dempsey@Internet Marketing Strategies´s last [type] ..Is Success In A Popular Niche a Foregone Conclusion
Hi Robert,
I will try to answer your question as clearly as I can here, but know that I will be writing about what my strategies are and why when I feel I have enough data.
The percentage seems to vary and appears to be different for different sites. That could be due to limited data (due to limits in the time I have been tracking this and because site explorer does not show everything).
Also, there are times that I ping and times that I don’t, so that could be affecting the consistency as well. Actually, one of the tests I am doing right now has to do with pinging frequency.
As far as improving rankings based on the use of these sites and tools as part of a backlinking strategy, I would say that they do.
But, I have not tested any of these in isolation (though I may at some point, or perhaps we could talk Whalley into it). So, I can’t say, for example, that one tool is better than another.
What I can say is that I have seen BlogEngage pages with links to blog posts make the first page of Google for the keywords in the title of the blog post they link to.
Also important to know, IMAutomator and Social Monkee both post to smaller bookmarking sites. BMD will post to pretty much where you ask it to (including digg, etc.)
I think that a good mix of these is probably an advantage. Plus, tools like Social Monkee and IMAutomator are easy and quick to use. I really have not noticed any negatives.
My backling strategy is really based on the idea that having a good mix of link sources is best. As we have talked about before, I have a few sites that are doing pretty well (first page for medium competition keywords) and a few that as not doing as well.
At this point, I would say give them a shot and see if they work for you. If you find that you don’t like one of them, then there really would be no loss.
I appreciate the questions and the visit Robert!
Have a good day.
Twitter: techwork_dk
said:
Hi Mark
What a great post with a lot of great resources. I think I will give the “Social Monkee” a try sometime soon. Thank you for sharing. It is always nice to some nice tools helping doing all the hard work.
Thomas@IT-Blog´s last [type] ..10 Awesome bloggers I follow
Hi Thomas. Thanks for visiting!
Yeah, I am a big fan of tools. Just make sure you don’t overuse them – see Steve’s comment.
Have a great day!
Twitter: Bomb_hipster
said:
Hey Mark,
Thanks for the wonderful tips my man!
Backlinking is something I think everyone should do. I have some tools that I have been hearing about more and more that I have been putting off. Looks like i have some researching that I have to do.
Dev & Brian have made some great communities for us bloggers. I need to join in on the action!
God bless,
William Veasley
William Tha Great´s last [type] ..Your Life is A Open Book
I agree – there are so many tools out there to help with this. Those that I have recommended above are some of the best I have seen.
I would get started sooner than later if I was you. Also, I would start out fairly slowly and increase you backlinking frequency over time.
Get to know the tools and how the different types of links effect your site(s). Then go for it.
Have a great day William!
Twitter: Brandon_Connell
said:
You forgot one. For pinging, I actually use a desktop software called RSS Feeds Submit. It’s very nice and handy to have.
Brandon@Make Money Blogging´s last [type] ..Empower Your Money-Making Future With Positive Thought
Nice! Thanks for the addition Brandon. I will give that a look.
Have a good day!
Twitter: adriennesmith40
said:
Hey Mark,
Great list… I use quite a few of these myself.
Blog Engage is still invite only so I haven’t been able to join yet! Still waiting… hint, hint!!!
I use to be a part of Blog Catalog but I found so many blogs that I had absolutely no interest in so it was really hard to interact there. Might have to check out a few of the other ones you’ve mentioned though.
Happy to see the Cloudflood button for your free report. Great going Mark!!!
I sent info to Brankica about Triberr so she said she would send me an invite. Haven’t gotten it yet. She’s got that contest going on this week for introductions so will probably get it later this week… So you’ve got one of your own! I think that is the way to eventually go once you get in and start participating. I guess I’ll see soon enough.
Thanks for this scoop Mark. Great post and awesome tips and info.
Adrienne
Adrienne´s last [type] ..Has Article Marketing Died a Slow Death
Hi Adrienne,
I am glad you found something here that you can use. Regarding Blog Catalog, I was also a member for a while, but I did not really like the way it worked. Perhaps I will go back and check it out again some time. Anyway, I do really like the three that I listed above.
BTW – I just sent you an invite to BlogEngage. Let me know if you don’t get it.
Have a good day!
Twitter: actofrage
said:
That’s a massive article, great job! Downloaded your eBook and must say that, although I’ve read a lot about this subject, I actually learned a lot from it!
I know most of the usual tricks, but I’m definitely going to try out some new things and submit my RSS feed to some of the syndication sites.
Awesome, cheers!
Sietse´s last [type] ..Top 5 April 2011 Movie Trailers
I am really glad you found it useful.
Have a great day!
Twitter: rileyhar
said:
Not only a worthwhile blog but a lot of the heavy hitters are commenting so the reader is getting TWO great sources (blog and comments) of info. Thanks
Riley
Riley Harrison´s last [type] ..GOAL SETTING THAT WORKS part 7
Twitter: buildrankprofit
said:
Mark.
Epic man, EP IC.
This is linkbait at it’s finest and I will do my best to share the love.
Nice work.
I can also add a great one for you:
http://dropmylink.com/
part of the commenting tip but basically the quickest and easiest way to find blogs in your niche to comment on.
Thanks for putting this epic post together my friend – sorry it’s been so long between drinks
Alex@make money with Amazon´s last [type] ..10 Reasons Why I Won’t Tweet- Share- Comment- Reply or Even Vaguely Linger
Perfect! Thanks for the addition Alex. I think that I have see this before, but I forgot about it so I really appreciate you mentioning it here!
And, many people probably know this one, but just incase – http://www.commentluv.com/ has a great search tool on the front page.
Twitter: buildrankprofit
said:
Oh I just noticed the link love too!
Sweeeeeeeeet
Alex@make money with Amazon´s last [type] ..The Money is in the Content The List is Useless!
That’s quite a useful list of link building websites. I have bookmarked this page and I totally agree with Onlywire. I signed up with Onlywire as well when it newly came out. However, it gace me quite a lot of problems with a few sites such as Reddit and Mixx. I use socialmarker more often. I mean, it has a more lengthy process but it’s actually something better for me.
Abdul Rehman@Make Money on the Internet´s last [type] ..Beginners’ Guide To Making Money With Clickbank
Thanks for sharing your experience here Abdul.
Have a great day!
I currently apply such link development techniques as article writing and submission, web link directory submission, blog commenting, guest blog posting, social bookmarking sites and so on. I think that article directories are the most effective link building method.
Terje Sannarnes´s last [type] ..How an Entrepreneur Can Build a Website with Minimal Skills
Hi Terje,
I use all of those as well, though I have not done much guest posting lately. Regarding article marketing, I have been using them in a few different ways lately to great effect. That Google update appears to only have changed things for people writing really horrible articles.
Have a great day!
Mark, once again, it’s another useful great share you’ve done man. I was looking for another backlinking that I can use, and I found some at your place. Great share! Thanks a lot!
Andrew Walker´s last [type] ..A2 Hosting Coupon
Twitter: atweetbydan
said:
I would also like to point out, is to NEVER EVER spam blogs or forums when doing link building. As a matter of fact, both blogs and forums are *not* meant for link building in the first place.
Doing manual link building is really the only way to go, even though it can be repetitive and boring at times. Using automated software or hiring so-called “link builders” to do it for you can cause you more harm than good in the long run as most automatic software and “link builders” spam websites with YOUR link.
Just my $0.02.
Dan´s last [type] ..Disable Windows 7 Desktop Composition for Better Gaming
Twitter: Anok_imchen
said:
Onlywire used to be good, but it has lost its charm (dont knw why!)
I guess the only thing that makes SocialMonkee better than Onlywire is the ability to spin keywords
Btw, whats the difference between the free and the paid version of IM automator?
Twitter: SEOExpertforYou
said:
The only difference is the paid version submits your bookmarks to more social media sites for you and I believe you can do more than one bookmark a day.
cool Mark,I’ve read it and look forward to more tips about SEO from you. Thanks a lot!
Thanks for sharing the nice post on link building. As I own a wordpress site, I found useful information on how to ping easily after creating backlink. This is also worth of complement to learn a new tool from your post for checking our backlinks as well.
talmuri@cheap seo service´s last [type] ..Internet Service