When link building is returning little success, what is a good plan b?

[newdaymedia]

I know that in an ideal world you would be able to create an amazing site with great content that every one would link to. But what if you're not able to so this, what if you the market you're in is very competitive and you're struggling to find good link partners. I know I can submit to directories and article/press sites but surely this isn't enough to get me any where near my desired goal!

I guess I'm asking: is gaining reciprocal links the be and end all of Serps, am I missing any other SEO techniques to get my site higher up the rankings?

[loopyal]

Hello James It is getting harder. Certainly, speed isn't easy in a competitive market If your site is local there are many options If national or global it is harder. Try finding a few related blogs and offer a guest post that has a single relevant link to your site. Also do one press release each week, about something you are doing. Try to write something groundbreaking on your blog and then write a press release about it, then go to twitter and Facebook and other bookmarking sites and do a good post there. Find related blogs that allow comments, with a related post and comment on the story. Find strong related blogs that you can find contact details for, and email or (gasp)phone them to see if they are interested in collaborating and might link to your great story. Also ask them what floats their boat, so you can write other stories they will link to. That's a little bit more than being stuck with reciprocal links This should work for any site, if you have great content

[DougRoberts]

Who are the target audience of the translating services? I'd start by looking at blogs that spoke to this target market. For example are they students, small businesses, people in the legal profession?

Who needs the services your client offers, and where do they congregate. If you can get a blog post in front of these eye-balls then not only do you get a link... but you're also talking to potential customers. You might get some referrals traffic too.

[newdaymedia]

Thanks for the help.

I've looked at their competitors, links etc and I was shocked to see that one in particular had a article on Mashable, thats impressive! The majority of rest just had links in high paid directories,articles and press releases.

I've havent' really done much guest blogging or reviews, do you normally search for keyword related blogs or..?

The niche my client is in is translating services

Thanks again!

[DougRoberts]

What are your competitors doing? A good first step is to take a look at what your competitors are doing, how they're building links, what content are they creating and who are they targeting (customers/market).

Using open site explorer you can reverse engineer their links. (If sites link to your competitors they may link to you - although I would suggest you dig deep and understand why they are linking to you competition. You may need to provide better content or a unique opinion. You can look at their top pages and see what other people are linking to.

Reciprocal links aren't the be all and end all. Ideally you want to get inbound links for reasons other than offering them a link back. Google are well aware of the practice and excessive reciprocal links are going to look a little unnatural. Can you think of ways you can earn links from authoritative sites in your niche?

What do your customers need?  How well do your understand the customers of the site? Can you provide some great content that satisfies their needs/problems?

What about guest blogging? Give-aways, reviews?

What's the niche the site is operating in? If you can provide more details then maybe you can get some more specific advice.

Hope this helps.

[Aran_Smithson]

Build some industry specific info graphics or jump on a meme that you could tailor to your industry.

A good post on creating info graphics

A great post on utilising memes

Have you considered Social networks as a way to get your content out there and build links, whilst also engaging your target audience?

Share links to your great content on twitter with relevant hashtags, check out http://hashtags.org and build a following. Though its not enough to simply blast out links to your followers, you'll need to engage them too.

Check out the white board friday video on building links with twitter

Also, theres facebook which you could use to grab your audience and potentially build links

Linked in if your industry isn't facebook prone.

Flickr and deviantart if your idustry is so inclined.

Create a tumblr blog to highlight your content (one of my favourites)

Pinterest,oh what did I do without it? yes pin some relevant, cool images of stuff you may sell or relevant to your industry and if its good enough people will share it.

There are other ways too but, I could literally go on all day.

Check this out http://www.seomoz.org/article/social-media-marketing-tactics

Theres a lot to digest, but its not rocket science.

Best of luck and if you get stuck, come back and ask some more

Regards

Aran