Free Backlink Resources

Whether you have purely web 2.0 sites like HubPages or other such platforms, or if you have self-hosted sites, there is a little bit of everything in here for you. For some other ideas on backlinks , I go a bit more in depth on my Hub "Where Can I Get Good Backlinks?"

Rather than amend that Hub, I decided to write up another Hub. Before going too far into the subject, when talking about backlinks, the subject has a natural division of two main families:

1) Those who want backlinks for their Hubs or other Web 2.0 properties (i.e.: the freebie sites).

2) Those who want backlinks to rank their self-hosted sites.

There is some overlap, of course, and Hubs have already been written on driving traffic to your Hubs, or generating backlinks to your Hubs. I will throw in a couple of ideas to that effect, since these methods will work for self-hosted sites as well.

1) Free Backlinks For Your Hubs And Other Web 2.0 Sites

Here are some ideas that I'm sure you're tired of hearing about, but they work so I'll mention them again:

• Article Marketing (EzineArticles, GoArticles, Article Dashboard, and tons of other article directories are great ideas, or other Web 2.0 properties such as Blogger, WordPress, Associated Content, Suite 101...)
• Social Bookmark Sites (Digg, Reddit, Mister Wong, Jumptags, del.icio.us...)
• Blog Commenting

There are other methods, but actually these have worked out the best for me personally, and they aren't spammy. I have a blog that has [now 2,500+] backlinks...95% from blog commenting.

[*If you want to simplify a lot of this and have the ability to pay for an all in one tool - my favorite is Magic Submitter - perfectly whitehat when used the way it was intended. Click this Magic Submitter link for that Hub.]

I have included a snippet of the screen capture from Yahoo! Site Explorer, a free tool that you can use to check backlinks on your site or a competitor's (it does *not work* with HubPages, YSE picks up all of HP's backlinks, so if you used it to check your Hub, you might be wondering where you grabbed 1,000,000 backlinks...). I have protected the identifying information of the website, since I don't want to mix and match my web presence per se (competition is stiff enough!).

Here's the real kicker, though: I didn't want to promote my site, but I wanted to illustrate and prove to you that using these free methods I have been able to get plenty of natural backlinks over the course of 45 days or so. All that is meant only to address the fact that blog commenting is often met with a rolling of the eyes, as well as article marketing and social bookmarking.

Yet these are all 100% free methods to get traffic to your web property. Begin with these three methods before you begin paying for backlinking methods and services.

Free Backlinks For Your Self-Hosted Sites

Using the above, you can drive traffic and get backlinks to your website or Hub, etc. But here are two really neat-o, Speed-o and FREE ways to get backlinks to a self-hosted website.

• CommentLuv or "ComLuv" as they're now known
• Feedjit

What in the world is ComLuv? As the picture illustrates, ComLuv is a plug-in that you download to your website, free of charge, and it will append the title of your recent blog post to your comment if you comment on a ComLuv-enabled blog.

Don't know where to look? Easy: go to their website, they have a bare-bones landing page that will help you find other ComLuv-enabled blogs where you can comment, and have your recent blog post title display. This is at http://commentluv.com and it's flat out incredibly useful.

Remember my [2.5k+] backlinks? ComLuv, baby, ComLuv! People found me through my comments, because the title is actually a backlink to your most recent post. If the person is interested in your title (hint, hint: write interesting titles!), they click through and see what the fuss is about.

Do yourself an immense whitehat and traffic-building favor and check out ComLuv today. If you want to get a feel, your best bet is to search their site/personal search engine of ComLuv-enabled blogs at http://commentluv.com or simply search for "CommentLuv Enabled" + Keywords to see what's out there.

To get the free link love, I can't urge you strongly enough to check out ComLuv. Yes, I love their business model and the serious amount of traffic they've given me - it's all from these guys.

[My Alexa ranking at my main blog is around 55k globally, and yes, you have to work for it by writing good shtuff, but ComLuv did the rest and I still can't believe it.]

Disclaimer: it is free - but there is a way to buy more credits and get more URLs in their drop-down referral list when you leave a comment at a ComLuv site. Hence, I've included my "affiliate" link, but for the life of me I don't imagine I'll see a red cent since their free program is entirely sufficient for most.

But trust me when I say it works incredibly well once you write some solid content and leave a trail of good comments where it counts.

Now, what on Google Earth is a Feedjit?

No, it is not an all-you-can-eat imbecile at the local buffet (btw: if you find that imbecile, that's most likely me, so just wave as I cannot say hello through the bites of quasi-steak and semi-mashed potatoes...). Feedjit looks like that picture illustrates, which is a sidebar with a few details of your blog's visitors (name, location, where they arrived from on the web, what they click to leave, time that they arrived expressed in relative terms to the present).

It is a widget that you can place on your blog, that shows a live traffic feed of your visitors and where they came from, what they clicked to leave (if they clicked an affiliate link, for example), and a host of other statistics you can learn about from the admin-panel of your blog.

It is Javascript, I think, or an I-frame, and all of that to say: it will slow your load time just a hair ball. But is it worth it?

Oh, you better believe it! That widget has given me traffic stats that I love, helps me to find 301 redirects on my blog that are not working right (more on that later), and other fun little tidbits - but the coolest things is, I get tons of traffic from it, as well as backlinks.

How? Simple: when you sign up for Feedjit, you are posting your site to their directory of websites. Others see your feed, will see your blog, and then they'll follow or add you to their list of hip places to be. The best part is that this is all organic. It happens naturally, and will surprise you in the number of links you get.

Personally, I quit counting at 75 backlinks - and that happened the first couple of weeks. All I did was install the code snippet after customizing the color scheme to fit my blog.

My recommendation is to use Feedjit, ComLuv, and blog commenting to begin with. If you want to put a little extra time in, then you can write and submit some articles, then do some social bookmarking as well.

The best method I used to find blogs to comment on (high-ranking blogs, too - not just any blogs, so the higher the PageRank or PR, the better the link-authority) is a free tool that works well with the ComLuv-enabled sites, or simply stands on its own..

As far as saving time looking for keyword-related, niche-specific blogs, this tool outranks them all, and it's free! What makes it so good is how it finds Drupal, WordPress, Typepad and other types of blogs for you, so you get a bit of link diversity as well. You plug in your keyword to search for the blogs in your niche, let it pick your sites across these different blogging networks, and then you start commenting on them.

This tool is 100% free, but you can upgrade to their paid-for version (yes, I now use the paid-for tool, but the free one was fantastic). What I love about it is that you get to read other blogs related to your Hub or website, and comment like you normally would in a conversation. It sure beats writing 500-word articles, as far as time's sake.

Other tools like this are spam factories, and webmasters like myself will quickly make a note of your IP address and block you permanently using a variety of methods, such as an html "deny from" file, Askimet or a host of other plugins.

For getting free backlinks and actual traffic to your blog, the winning combination for me has been using ComLuv, Feedjit, article marketing, social bookmarking and finding high-ranking, niche-related blogs to comment on using Scrapebox - and be forewarned that Scrapebox is a known black hat tool.

However, you can use Scrapebox in legitimate ways - I simply use it to search out blogs easier than I can do in Google, returning a lot more data and saving myself time that way.

In other words: I have no need to pay for a single link to this blog. Mind you, I have a lot of premium tools and I do pay for some new software or subscribe to monthly services time to time, but I really have no "need" other than convenience (and I do this full-time so my entire living depends on my websites ranking and converting).

Update: You can use CommentHut, or EdwinSoft's Comment Demon software to find these blogs if you don't want to use Scrapebox, I simply find Scrapebox to be without peer. CommentHut is perfect for those looking for a whitehat way of blog commenting, so keep it in mind (same with Comment Demon, which is cheaper).

Additionally, no matter which tool (if any) you choose, you can follow the other commenter's to their blogs as well. Spend 1-2 hours at that per week, you'll see good results!

Now, if I was in a competitive niche and wanted to out-rank my competition for certain keywords, I would use tools and services like the "freemium" SEO PowerSuite, used by many SEO professionals. (Meaning you can use 90% of their function for free.)

But I always go with the free version, build a base of backlinks, and re-evaluate what else I need to employ.

There you have it, folks, some of the best ways to get free backlinks that will work for your websites, Hubs or just about any other web 2.0 property you own.