# General Business Category > Business Online Forum > [Article] 5 SEO Link Building Tips

## derekjay

The single most important element of search engine optimization (SEO) is building the number of high quality, relevant links pointing back to your website (these are affectionately referred to as “backlinks”). But, as I’m sure you already know, link building is no easy task. Here are five easy link building tips which I hope will help you along.

*Link Building Tip #1 – Get Active in Your Community*

I’m not talking about joining the local country club here (although that would be fun...), but rather about joining forums that are relevant to your niche. You want to find a forum (or forums) that is active and well ranked, and place your link in your “signature” section. This way, whenever you contribute to the forum (i.e. say something), you’ll be building backlinks. It’s important that you contribute to these forums with your knowledge and not just abuse them for links. You’ll get banned quicker than you can say “backlink” if you do this. “Contribute” is the keyword here.

*Link Building Tip #2 – Suss Out Your Competition*

Write down the website addresses of the top five results for your desired keyword. Then, using Google, type in “link:website” (replace website with the actual website address). This will show you where each site is getting their links from (well, most of them in any case) and hopefully spark some ideas for your site. 

*Link Building Tip #3 – Get Writing...*

Article syndication is one of the most popular methods used to build links. You simply write a short article (400 – 600 words) and publish it on as many article directories as possible. Each directory will allow you to place your link in the “resource box”, thus growing your number of backlinks. You might be wondering “But what do I write about?”. The answer is simple – write about your area of expertise. So if you’re a handyman, write about some basic DIY tasks that people can carry out. Write how-to’s, 101’s and the like – Just give it some thought, it’s well worth it...

*Link Building Tip #4 – Submit To Directories*

Wherever there is an industry, you’ll find directories, especially on the internet. Do a search for your keyword and the word “directory”. Register on as many of them as possible – it’s a free link every time, and you might even find organic traffic (people) finding you on these directories (that’s what they’re there for, after all).

*Link Building Tip #5 – Get Blogging*

My final tip is to get blogging, or at least commenting on other people’s blogs. Look for blogs that are relevant to your keywords or topic and post constructive comments on them. Each comment will earn you a free link, plus potential direct traffic if the blog is popular and well followed. A word of warning though – make sure that the blogs don’t use “nofollow” tags, as this will render your link null and void in the eyes of the search engines.

And there you have it! Five easy link building tips that you can apply today. Best off all – they’re all absolutely free... Remember, link building is an ongoing exercise, and the more you make it a habit, the easier it will become. The only cost is your time and effort.

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Dave A (19-Jul-10), flaker (08-Jul-10)

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## Dave A

:Clap:  Tip 1 in particular  :Big Grin: 

I'm tempted to say something about nofollow tags - I'd suggest they're more devalued than entirely worthless - but perhaps another day when I've got time to get in to it.

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## tonyflanigan

Tip 3. ahem.  yes.  And duplicate content penalties?   :Confused:

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## derekjay

@ Dave - Yes, keep an eye out for the dreaded "no follow" tags. These will diminish the value of the link in terms of SEO. But keep in mind that getting involved in the community will naturally drive traffic to your website in any case, provided what you're punting is of interest. 

@Tony - There is no such thing as a "penalty" as such. Google simply doesn't award the same recognition for content that is duplicated. So yes, it is important to keep it fresh and original  :Smile:

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tonyflanigan (20-Jul-10)

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## JanvandeMerwe

Sorry all.  Could not help myself when I saw the conversation about rel=nofollow.  First let's think back to when it was implemented.  There was a lot of spam in search engines, and walls of 1000 links were not detected as spam by the engines.  Google's solution was to bring in this new class to a link so that users could indicate to Google not to trust the link.

To bring this today; Google is a lot better (though not perfect) at recognizing links that should not be trusted.  The algo has developed to the point that it understands links, links profiles, and spam much better.

So, the question.  How should we see the rel=nofollow tag today?  We should see it as a recommendation to the search engines not to trust the link. We have seen many times that Google values these links.  Should we try and get links without them; yes.  Should we fear them.  Never.  They are links that bring traffic at a minimum, and could potentially be your best valued link.

Pardon the ramble,
-Jan

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Dave A (08-Dec-10)

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## Dave A

I see we share similar thoughts on the nofollow tag, Jan  :Thumbup: 
And of course Matt Cutts burst a few bubbles on it too.

Seeing as you seem to be up to speed (and I haven't been haunting SEO circles for about a year), have you read any buzz on nocontent tags? They got launched latish last year, but I never saw any critical SEO comment about them at the time.

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## JanvandeMerwe

I have seen that they wanted to introduce the tag, but I see little use for it to be honest.  Google understands page layout well enough, and knows what is content and what is a menu etc, so I think they did not find a need to have users and publishers help out the robots.

I have seen that they want to put in a content syndication tag, so that a site/page will not be punished for duplicating content.  This is where Google discusses these new meta tags.

Thoughts?

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## Dave A

That content syndication tag is going to get interesting when there are multiple sites claiming to be the original source  :Stick Out Tongue: 

Probably worth taking note of this bit:



> Although these metatags are already in use by our systems, you may not notice their impact right away. We'll need some time to observe their use "in the wild" before we can make the best use of them. But we're hopeful that this approach will help determine original authorship, and we encourage you to take advantage of them now.

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## OnlineMarketing

> That content syndication tag is going to get interesting when there are multiple sites claiming to be the original source


 yep interesting Dave, for me though it is unlikely to work and IMHO the most interesting part of that statement is the implied respect for article and content syndication and the weight it carries with the Big G, if this is their way of countering the mass of duplicate content on the internet it tells me that the future of article marketing is pretty rosy especially with directories that allow links within the body of text.

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## Dave A

At least we can celebrate that they're inclined to monitor situations first nowadays and SERPs aren't going to be turned upside down overnight.

I also wondered what else Google might be "monitoring in the wild" *without* saying much about it.

For example - With this site's recent upgrade, I couldn't help but notice vB has introduced this tag in vB4.x.x to wrap post content:



> <div class="content">


I'd proved elsewhere a while ago that Google had developed custom _per application_ algo's to help evaluate significant media software platforms. I've got a hunch the Big G hasn't missed this little innovation.

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## bellevue limo

Thanks for your tips

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## derekjay

Catching up on this thread... Wow, how quickly things develop in the SEO game (Panda Update, etc).

Regarding Nofollow - I'm not 100% convinced (despite Cutts' statement) that these tags are disregarded today. Perhaps initially they were, so as to kill the hopes of comment spammers, but I have seen increasing amounts of correlation data pointing towards nofollows indeed carrying value. I have in fact established a few very good rankings in moderately competitive niches with nofollows alone... The guys at SEOMoz also seem to have picked this factor up in their latest research of 10,000 queries.

Hot debate - keep it going  :Smile:

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## robinsonwang

The tips shared here is very useful and helpful. I started to do the online marketing since the first I registered here.

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