Link Building With Your Existing Social Profiles

Link building is a key aspect that you need to work on to help grow your site.  Whilst most of you know this, many assume that it only relates to guest blogging – that is only half of it!  There are plenty of other sites that you can use for link building, especially your existing social profiles.

Why Link Building Is So Important

Link building can help your site in a number of different ways.  They can…

1. Send traffic when people follow the link naturally,
2. Send search engines to your site when crawling (usually has to be a dofollow link),
3. Help you rank higher in the SERPs.  Generally, the more links you get, the more popular your site is (though it’s not as straight forward as that).

This is why “building” links on other sites is so important.

Like I say, many people assume that this relates exclusively to guest blogging.  Guest blogging is an effective way of getting links, as long as you try to get links from high quality sites and use natural links, but there are other sites that you can use.

Quick Tip: Aim for sites with a higher Google PageRank (PR) if you can.  High PR sites are viewed more positively on search engines as these have high traffic and lots of links pointing to them.  If you can get a link from one of these pointing to your site, it will help boost your site.  The more you get, the more likely it is that your site will increase its PR.

Don’t Forget About Your Existing Social Profiles!

Many people forget that there are plenty of sites that you can get links from that are perfectly safe and not spammy – nothing worse than spammy links.

We all have (or at least SHOULD have) social media profiles setup for our website/business on all the major social networks.  Despite this I have, on countless occasions, not been able to find a link to their website.  This is crazy as this should be your number one priority!

Make sure to add links on your;

• Facebook page in your about section,
• Twitter bio,
• Google+ about page (links, contributor, introduction),
• LinkedIn company page/personal profile,
• YouTube video descriptions,
• Pinterest bio,
• Personal accounts (works at…)

This may sound obvious to some, but I am truly astounded to see that a lot of sites don’t do this!!!

You want to be leaving a link for people to naturally follow when they find you on these sites, but search engines WILL see and crawl these links to find your site.  The fact that they all have decent PR themselves can be great for your site.

Don’t Stop There, Add Your Link Your Other Online Profiles

Your link is like your online business card.  You want to be showing your link to as many people as possible, so think about other sites that you are signed up to.  There will usually be a place to add your website link in the “profile” section (though admittedly not all will be dofollow, but they are still worth adding) so it makes sense to add it.

This isn’t spammy.  Spammy would be adding your link to every update you post.  Simply adding a link in your profile is just allowing people to find you if they choose to do so.

Think about other sites you are on;

• WordPress.com,
• Disqus,
• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Triberr
• EmpireAvenue
• Alexa
• Klout
• ….and many, many more!

Let’s take a look at my Disqus profile as an example.

That way, when people find me on Disqus, or via the comment section of a site that I comment on, people will be able to find my site.

Similarly, on Klout people can find my site via my profile description.

These are just a few examples, there are literally hundreds of places that you should be able to think of.  Try to focus on profiles that are linked to your niche and where people will actually find you.

Summary

Link building is often thought of as a negative, spammy technique that people use.  Whilst it can be if abused, it is mainly about getting your link seen by people in appropriate places.

Think about all the different places that you could add your link to help send people to your site.

Where have you managed to get your link placed that people may not have thought of?  What is your overall opinion on link building?  Please let us know your views below in the comment section.