SEO with blog links
Many people are make their living by blogging, and will be more than receptive to offers for paid reviews of your website/service. Start by finding blogs related to your line of business, and then inquire about whether they're open to reviewing your site/service for a fee. You don't need to worry much about a negative review, since the search engine optimization link is primarily what you're after. Here's a sample email:
Hello,
I've just visited your blog and found it to be a really good resource for... blah blah blah
I'm wondering if you would be open to payment for writing a blog entry about my website. I could pay a fee in advance so that you'd be free to write an honest review of it, along with a link. I'm trying to do some link building, as competing with larger companies on pay-per-click has become nearly impossible for me.
The site is: www.clicktropolis.com .. It could be an honest review, positive or negative, whatever you think.
If you're interested at all, please let me know what your price would be.
If not, I'm sorry to bother you.
Thanks!
Damien
Be sure to ask how many subscribers they have, and compare a few offers before making your decision.
Link exchanges for search engine optimization
Two way link exchanges (where site A links to site B, and site B links to site A) used to be one of the most popular forms of traffic building. I still receive spam daily with automated scripts requesting such exchanges. Apparently these people are not aware that Google places very little value on such exchanges. If two sites link together, Google pretty much assumes that it is an artificial relationship.
However, what you might find useful is a 3-way link exchange. To explain: suppose you own site A & B, where site A already gets some good traffic, and site B is brand new and needs promotion. You contact site C who has good traffic, request that they link to Site B, and in exchange you'll link to them from your site A.
Although it takes more work to arrange such exchanges, once you explain the setup you'll be more likely to find receptive webmasters who are interested such search engine optimization benefits.
Encourage visitors to link to your site
Make it easy for webmasters and bloggers to link to your site by giving explicit permission, and offering pre-created code like this.
To encourage links, you might offer some free bonus (item, service, etc) to anyone that places a link and shows you the URL. When offering such a reward, be sure to specify that the link must be on a site/blog related to yours.
Article submission for SEO?
Writing articles for mass web-distribution has lost most if it's value for search engine optimization. Why would intelligent webmasters want to post unoriginal articles, knowing that Google will not index duplicate content? Most of the articles I've submitted to ArticleCity.com and other distribution engines have just ended up on junk sites run by keyword-spammers.
More useful these days is to write custom articles for offering to specific websites/blogs. You might write a variety of articles, each of which contains a link to the most relevant page of your site. Then contact webmasters to see if they would be interested in adding your unique content. Bloggers especially feel pressure to continually produce new material, and will often be receptive to content that will give them a break from writing. Websites with advertising (e.g. Adwords) will also be more likely to welcome free content (more ad clicks for them).
Also worthwhile is creating content for websites such as eHow.com. Be sure to structure and title articles with SEO in mind, and always include a link back to your URL.
Finally, writing articles for your own website is a no-brainer. Google loves content - needs it. So post fresh articles to your site frequently. Hate writing? Consider hiring outside experts to produce material for you. I use Rentacoder.com for this purpose occasionally (more info).
