When I first started to write about europalace casino games in the early 2000s (on a different blog, of course), I found that link building was easy. In a few days I’ve manually registered my URL in a bunch of web directories which transfer link juice, about 100 of them, and watched Google follow them to me. I used all the tricks of the trade – I’ve put my URL in forum signatures and commented a lot with them – and worked my way up to a PageRank of 4 in a few months’ time. But these strategies don’t work today. Link building in 2015 and beyond has to be much more sophisticated, and has to carry a lot of added value for it to be successful.
Simply being in a blogroll doesn’t do the trick
There was a time when you could ask your friends for a link in their blogroll (which didn’t cost them a dime) to raise your new blog in the Google search results. Today it’s not enough. If you’re not careful, you can fall deep down in the SERPs, and possibly even drag those linking to your site with you.
Today your inbound links are best to be as natural as possible – like links to a certain post on your blog, and inside the content published by the linking site. Sitewide links raise all kinds of red flags over at Google, which can result in manual actions, spam reports and their likes – which are bad.
Web directories are not good anymore
Web directories are pages with an incredible variety of outbound links, which makes them the less-than-ideal – even the bad – choice for SEO in 2015. They are good initially, as they can get Google index your site faster, but they do far less good to your site’s or blog’s authority today than they did back in the day. There are some highly reputable directories, like Alltop, Blogcatalog or DMOZ, which are worth a try, but too many directory backlinks will most likely drag your site’s authority down.
Guest posts are better
The best way to obtain natural and valuable links to your blog is to check out guest posting opportunities on websites on the same topic, but with an older age and much more authority. You would be surprised how many of the big websites offer outsiders to post their content on their pages. It’s important to know, though, that these websites have strict submission guidelines, and will always check if the content you provide is up to their standards before publishing it.
Guest posts on sites with authority in your field are considered natural by Google, but don’t jump the horse – excess is considered spammy!