Put simply, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of getting your page ranked well in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. I regularly read internet marketing forums like the warrior forum and digital point, and I have to say …there is a LOT of bad advice out there. Most people really have no clue. So what would I recommend when it comes to doing well in SEO and getting your site ranked high?
Well, it basically comes down to on page optimization (doing things on your site to get it ranked higher, like having a relevant title tag, meta tags and so on) and off page optimization (getting links to your site from other sites). Off page optimization is far more important than on page optimization. The most important thing for ranking highly in Google is links, and lots of them. So here are a few free ways to get links to your site…
Forum posting: Posting on forums is not just good for direct traffic; it also gives you SEO benefits. What you’ll be doing is linking back to your website in your forum signature. Most forums let you do this, so that every time you post on the forum, there is a link back to your website at the bottom of your post.
Article writing: I’m not a fan of this since it takes a lot of work, but it’s popular on places like the warrior forum. This involves writing articles, and submitting them to article directories with a link back to your site. The main article directory BY FAR is EzineArticles.com. Like with forum posting, article writing is mainly used to generate direct traffic, but the links your get back to your site will boost it higher in the search engines. By the way, with article marketing, only submit to 2 or 3 article directories — mass submitting articles pretty much never works.
Directory submission: There are hundreds of directories that let you get a free link to your site. The traffic you get from these is going to be very low, if any. It’s also fairly time consuming. However, it’s good to get your site indexed initially. You’ll need a good piece of software to help you with this - the best one being Directory Submitter by Brad Callen.
Social bookmarking: If you have a site with great content, social bookmarking can (potentially) give you tons of traffic. This basically involves submitting your site to major social sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Delicious etc. NetStrife in fact already gets a decent amount of traffic from StumbleUpon. But anyways, social bookmarking will get you a lot of links back to your site, and it is well known to have good SEO benefits. Submitting your site manually rather sucks, so you will need a tool to help you. I strongly recommend Bookmarking Demon (non affiliate link).
Blog commenting: When you comment on people’s blogs, you can enter your URL, and this gives you a link back to your site when your comment shows up. Some blogs use nofollow (which makes the link useless in Google’s eyes) but there are still many blogs that do not use the nofollow tag. There is actually software out there to allow you to automatically scan for blogs to comment on, such as Real Link Finder ( a free tool) and Fast Blog Finder.
These are all fairly well known tips, just in case you are not familiar with SEO. In the next couple of days I’m going to go over some really REALLY powerful ways to build links, that are not really well known, and have worked well for me. Stay tuned.
Readers have left 10 comments on "SEO Tips Part 1 - Free Methods".
Welcome back dude!
I absolutely love free seo tools. I used to make a network of blog in several free blog hosting and give my seo campaign a link love. Submitting to social bookmarks using socialmarker is also a brilliant free seo.
Welcome back Lucas, Don’t be a stranger dude, glad to see you posting again.
Hi,
I’d just like to tell everyone that this blog’s been sold, so I’m no longer writing for Net Strife.
Lucas Tan
He is not lucas. Lucas sold this blog on sitepoint for $1500. I think the new blogger should introduce himself.
Excellent link tips. i also must agree with Iron Blogger - welcome back to the land of posting!
By his writing style its pretty obvious that he is not Lucas.
I have to be honest, I like the new owner already, the test will just be if he can submit content on a regular basis and get this blog rolling again.
I never got and will never get a hang of forums! I can’t seem to use them with ease!
I feel that commenting is the best way of link building and gaining traffic.
Forums can only provide little but nonetheless steady traffic. I guess it depends on your authority on the forum.
I’m with Ganesh on this - commenting is definitely most effective - i find forums bring in between 50 - 100 UV’s a month
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