White Hat Ways to Build Links

[webgeek]

All the hullabaloo about black hat, paid links, de-indexing and negative SEO is enough to confuse and deflate the aspirations of site owners.

Thankfully, Hubspot has been kind enough to share a post on 32 White Hat Ways to Build Links here.

Though alluded to indirectly, the volunteering angle can include things like sharing and posting on communities like UKBF as well as donating funds to open source projects and charities, who often will reward you with a nice mention / link.

Just thought I'd share the word according to Hubspot....

 

[Chunkford]

You forgot to include their buzz word in your post - 'inbound'

I agree it's a good list, but in the real world the majority of businesses will struggle to implement most of those activities.
And TBH those sort of activities will only work when you've already got a huge following hanging on every work you write.

 

[eventdomain]

Like the author says: -

if you're a source of great content and you get it in front of the right people, they're going to share it.

except many aren't a resource - their offline small biz's, so wont be distributed like a huge 30k resource is going to be. No point in doing all that white hat stuff, if you have nothing to shout about.

People get tangled up in this SEO is king talk, except they dont have anything to sell which works off of free recommendations, which is basically what free weblinks are - word of mouth.

In other words - why should I give you a freebie, what's in it for me......

 

[jamesruppert]

All your observations are correct, sometimes webmasters focus on SEO alone and forget the more important thing in online marketing and attracting visitors to their websites. This is not the fault of SE's but at least they should build something that honestly improves SERP's.

 

[eventdomain]

but at least they should build something that honestly improves SERP's.

I've said this for years - you MUST stand-out above the usual websites, and content is the way people will find you. Thing is, adding loads of content to a
non-content site, looks weird, out of place even and can ruin its look - and users expect certain sites to do certain things and mixing the two formats isnt wise.

There's nothing wrong with spending some cash on a 2nd content site, who says it has to match your business? it could be a 2nd biz idea, but point is, the content will work for you and attract visitors (depending on the new resource size, set-up etc).

 

[RadiusBPO]

I might leverage these inbound marketing methods for my brand

 

[coronaborcalis]

Doing those activities for online promotion will bring business in the long run and also instead of people finding our website through keyword that we target they will find our website from website's name on search engine.

 

[brianwood76]

The best way to build quality traffic is through relevant blogs and forums

 

[I, Brian]

I've said this for years - you MUST stand-out above the usual websites, and content is the way people will find you. Thing is, adding loads of content to a
non-content site, looks weird, out of place even and can ruin its look - and users expect certain sites to do certain things and mixing the two formats isnt wise.

There's nothing wrong with spending some cash on a 2nd content site, who says it has to match your business? it could be a 2nd biz idea, but point is, the content will work for you and attract visitors (depending on the new resource size, set-up etc).

Quite agree to a certain extent.

I think if people focus on publishing quality, useful, referential content, then people will naturally link to it. More importantly, if helps build defensible traffic through citations, so that even if Google disappeared, you would still have a useful stream of traffic.

Getting good content noticed, however, takes a heck of a lot of time and effort, but as Ed alludes to, sometimes it's better to have a second content-rich site in your niche, or more, to help server as marketing hubs for your own business.

A few years back I was speaking at SES and SMX, with a presentation that illustrated niche markets as represented by multiple sites, and how it made sense to have an acquisition strategy to bring more third-party hubs under direct control. That would still require fair treatment of all brands being covered, but also means you can elevate your own above that.

Unfortunately, I think very few commercial enterprises look to acquire useful resources and instead try and build them from scratch in their content strategy - resulting in a huge effort in time and money to gain nothing better than third-rate, if lucky.

 

[RossiterDan]

To quote Chunkford: "in the real world the majority of businesses will struggle"

Who's real world are we talking about?

The old real world where businesses struggle to develop content?

Or the new real world where content development is a paramount element of any online marketing plan?

Google's latest webmaster email has been literally telling businesses to join the new real world - or get out.

 

[HenriettaRonsons]

The Best White Hat Ways to Build Links are:


1. Guest Blogging
2. Forums
3. Articles
4. Directories
5. Press Release
6. Social Bookmarking etc.