3 quick free link building tips for this time of year

There’s nothing better than free SEO opportunities, so I thought I’d share a couple of quick tips for getting better links during the ‘holiday season’ (or Christmas, if you’re politically incorrect like me).

Round Ups & Most Popular Lists

Keep an eye out for blogs doing round ups and lists of their ‘Most popular blog posts of 2011’. These tend to start popping up around now (if you don’t come across any naturally, just use Google), and tend to be popular until at least mid-January. For best results, comment on popular dofollow blogs.

Once you’ve found a list, make sure you comment on at least some of the blog entries that are linked to, as well as the round up post itself. ‘Most popular’ blog entries have a range of benefits, particularly if they are ‘most popular’ because of the number of views or shares rather than the number of comments.

Advantages:

• Most of the entries are likely to attract more backlinks and shares – they are by definition popular content – which means more value in the long run for your link.
• They are linked to from a popular blog entry, giving them a good internal link and so more value.
• The round up post from 2011 is likely to be linked to for next year’s ‘Most popular blog posts of 2012’ round up, creating another good round of links and interest in the post.
• There will be entries with several months’ age to them, so it’s easy to comment and create a backlink for your site with definite value.
• They may be ‘stickied’ in the sidebar or even become one of the most popular posts in themselves, meaning that the value of the link shoots up as it becomes site-wide.
• You don’t have to spend time trying to hunt down the most popular posts on the site yourself.

Seasonal swaps

There are always contests happening for Christmas, but setting up something like a Christmas card swap or seasonal guest post swap is very cheap and a nice way to get bloggers to link to you. This works better if you have friends or contacts to get it kickstarted, and have a central point where bloggers can add their interest/URL without affecting your links, or you do three way swaps. If you’re a member of a forum or similar community, you can create a good centralised point and a greater reach. The most important thing is to be creative (or get involved in someone else’s scene if you don’t have the time/inclination to create your own). There are also lots of question-type memes you can develop and promote.

Advantages:

• Contacts/networking as well as links.
• More ideas for content/blog posts/other swaps.
• Potential social media benefit.

Badges and awards

People love badges and awards, so create a few attractive graphics and write a blog post highlighting the ‘best’ in your niche for 2011, whether that’s best bloggers, most creative advertisers, best social media use or whatever. Then drop the site owners a personalised email or tweet with the badge they can add to their website. Who doesn’t love awards?!

Advantages:

• Again, a good chance to make some great contacts in your industry.
• Higher chance of tweets and shares.
• Increased likelihood of getting more beneficial footer/sidebar/homepage links.
• Authority boost.
• A little flattery goes a long way and can open up opportunities for guest posting, interviews, and a whole load of other things.

Got any seasonal link building tips or found these tips useful? Feel free to leave a comment!