Help on Link Building

[NaescentAdam]

Hi,

Recently I've dropped two points on my Root Domain Authority for smallhope.com.

Not really sure why. I've done as much on page optimisation that I can think of, but what I would really like some help on is Link Building.

If this was your domain what would you do specifically and start link building. I've read a ton of stuff but I just dont seem to know a way to begin.

Can you offer me any advice? I've dropped 20% in traffic in the last 8 months.

Hope you can help,

Adam

[NaescentAdam]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for that I think I'm going to start them today. Relationship building, I think I will keep that in mind.

I'm going to go through our photos now and get them all organised. We're also doing a press kit and will start pushing travel bloggers and newspaper writers to come down and do stories on us.

The place is beautiful and the history is pretty special so I'll push that too.

I was sitting here trying to think of sites to request links on but I guess thats an outdated way of thinking about it.

Thanks Guys!

[jws8118]

Don't think of it as link building as much as relationship building and community engagement.  If you think of your primary goal as relationship building then an obvious place to start is by getting engaged on other high traffic travel blogs/communities.  It's extremely important to start with engagement so you can establish some rapport with the community before doing outreach and offering a "free guest post."  Webmasters of quality sites are inundated with requests from complete strangers for "free content" that if you don't establish some sort of rapport first you won't get 1/4 of the responses you would have.

That being said, you should also start building several Twitter lists of authors and influencers in your niche so that you can start engaging with them via Twitter.  I find engaging via Twitter just about the easiest way to start building rapport with someone.

After you have a sense of who is influential in your space and you make efforts to engage with their content and build rapport then you will have a very clear idea of what kind of content you need to create and you will have a relationship in place to start pitching the content once it's ready to go live.

Essentially link building isn't about any tactic, it's writing content, having a network to share it with, enough credibility/authority to get your content picked up somewhere other than your blog, and your commitment to engage with the audience that responds to your piece.

Sites aren't looking for "free guests posts" they want authoritative authors that drive community engagement!

[GeorgeDavis]

Sit down in a room with a pencil and piece of paper for an hour and write out ideas.  Here are a few of mine:

1. Participate on vacation forums, offer advice for people looking to save on trips to the Bahamas.
2. Release high-quality photos of your lodge with a CC license.
3. Write and release a comprehensive guide to planning a Bahamas trip on the cheap.
4. Write and publish an article series, "1000 things to do on your Bahamas vacation".  Day 1, swim with sharks, day 2, go parasailing, etc etc.
5. Write and publish guest posts on travel blogs.  ("The 10 hottest night clubs in the bahamas","5 reasons the bahamas are the perfect family vacation spot", etc)
6. Setup a webcam at the lodge and stream it to a dedicated page on the site.
7. Do a facebook giveaway of branded SWAG.

These are ideas I thought of in about 60 seconds having no experience or knowledge of the vacation niche

Good luck!

[marylandseo]

Guest Blogging and Blog Comments on related blog sites would be great point to start..