Net Frontier Marketing

Until your blog becomes an “authority” that attracts links to itself by the sheer force of position and mindshare, you might want to add to your arsenal some of these paid link cheats.

Earlier this week Andy Beard posted a list of Paid Links and what they may be a direct or indirect compensation for.

The ones listed in this article are links that are “paid” for without an exchange of money and that are accessible to nearly all small bloggers and marketers.

Below are the steps you need to follow to get in on the action. Not all of the 32 methods Andy listed are discussed here. Read his article for the complete account.

The numbers you see refer to Andy’s list and what you can do to be on the receiving end:

1-2: Give links generously when posting. Find someone that doesn’t have the massive ego often associated with “authority” sites. They will take note and might read your content, sign up to your feed and ultimately link to you.

This kills two birds with one stone because you can often get trackback links out of it. Bonus points if your target doesn’t use “no follow”.

Make use of this by having weekly or monthly link carnival where you link out to the best relevant posts you found during the month but didn’t have time to comment on.

3: Sign up for accounts on the big 5 social networks, notably Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Netscape and Delicious. Use them to bookmark useful content.

While this may have a limited effect on attracting links to yourself, the idea is that you are helping with the distribution of your target’s content. If they take note, you get some “friendly points”.

It’s also useful to have these accounts and build them into power users so that you can inconspicuously submit your own content and have your account pass the SEO filter built into social media users’ biases.

Finally, you can draw attention to the fact you’ve Stumbled or Dugg them by leaving a comment, fitting in perfectly with #4 below.

4: Leave comments. This is as obvious as it gets, not much to say here. You can once again multi-task your link building by leaving comments on blogs that have the Top Commenters plugin.

6: Start a debate. This fits in with numbers one and two. When expressing your point of view, link to intelligently constructed posts that defend an opposite viewpoint.

8-9: Proudly display your Trackback URL. Bonus points if your trackbacks have “no follow” removed. The prospect of an easy link back is enticing to people following tips 1 and 2.

10-11-12-13-26: Get involved in your community. Attend conferences, ask questions, buy a round of drinks and ask people for their opinion. This last one can be done from the comfort of your keyboard. Don’t ask for links, ask for feedback, stroke some egos, you get the point… Bonus points if you’re natural and sincere.

As I said, there are many more good ones but they are more expensive to implement or rely on a moderate degree of authority on your part, which makes it harder to benefit from when you are just starting out.

While none of these will work miracles for you, they are a quick and easy way to contribute to your overall efforts in terms of traffic, mindshare and link equity.

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