Blog Training and How-To Guide for Business Blogging

Continuing on the topic of backlinks, in today's post, Dan Smith discusses the how to attract backlinks to your blog. 

My word preference for the name of links pointing to a website is “inlinks,” so I’ll be using that phrase. Inlinks are certainly a major component of the search engine algorithms, and are extremely critical to have, as Easton pointed out in his post this week. Kimberlee also shared the world of Technorati links. So, how do you get more inlinks? A major portion of the answer to this question is to increase your blog’s exposure, so that more people know about you and link to you.

Here are some ways to increase your blog’s inlink count:

• Make comments on other blogs. Make sure you put your blog URL as a link in the comment—most blogs will ask you for your name and URL when you make the comment, which automatically makes your name link to your blog when the comment is published. These links in comments are not always picked up or indexed by search engines, actually, but by doing them, more bloggers will find out who you are, what you’re about, and may start mentioning you, quoting you, or linking to you in their blogs, which links DO get indexed by search engines.

• Trackback to blog posts you reference on your blog. Again, trackback links are not always indexed by search engines, but, like with comments, they can have very positive ancillary effects.

• Guest blog on other blogs. Every time I’ve seen someone guest blog, they get a link back to their blog in the guest blog post they write. Read this post for ideas on how to invite yourself to guest blog.

• Submit your blog posts to social media sites. I’ve found many links to Digg submissions in Google search. But even if the search engines don’t index social media submission links, these do help more people find your blog.

• Online networking in your topic. Meet online writers and editors in your blog topic. For example, introduce yourself via email to the About.com guide in your blog topic. 

What other things can you do to help increase inlinks to your blog?