Your link building should always be methodical and planned out correctly to acquire a diverse group of one way links pointing to your website. Social media activity is starting to show up in Google webmaster tools so having a focus on branding your business in the social space will be just as important as anything else. Your in-bound link structure should be diverse and robust.
Here my typical link building laundry list:
1. Press releases (PRleap, 888 press release, PRWeb, etc…)
2. Article directories (Associated Content, Ezine Articles, etc…)
3. Niche business directories. (Do your research!)
4. Wiki’s (Aboutus.org, wikispaces, etc…)
5. Business related profiles (Business.com, Merchant Circle, etc…)
6. Social networking profiles (Twitter, Facebook, etc…)
7. Location Targeting Profiles (Foursqaure, Gowalla, Loopt, etc…)
8. Product reviews (Crowdstorm, Buzzillions, etc…)
9. Video sharing profiles (YouTube, Break, Dailymotion, etc…)
10. Blog comments (Industry related specific blogs)
11. Forum comments (Niche forum communities with links in signature)
12. Chambers of commerce (Go local!)
13. Industry organization websites (It costs some money but it is worth it!)
14. Industry event websites (Become active to build business offline too!)
15. Other niche natural spots (Where are your competitors? Should you be there too?)
Your links should be well rounded and have a strong combination of the above list. Your links should also be targeted so a link sitting on a completely unrelated website will not give you any link building benefit. It will most likely just hurt your websites power if you attempt to connect with an unrelated website simply to acquire a link pointing to your website. Building up your website links is very important to the overall success of a business online. Treat each link as an actual pathway that could deliver a website visitor and not as much as a link to help you increase your rankings. The rankings will happen over time and you can’t speed up the process or you will find yourself cutting corners to get the job done. The search engines need to see a natural type of growth for things to work exactly how they are supposed to. Take a tasteful business branding approach to your link building and you will grow as a business online with a very strong foundation in place.
