Using articles in your link strategy

So it seems that everyone is doing reciprocal link exchanges. Now when used in conjunction with other techniques this works fine but as search engines continue to get smarter we are forced to change with the times.

So the question is: How do we get links without a reciprocal link campaign? There are countless different ways to do this and most involve investing a little bit of money. One idea that has been popular in the past is to write relevant articles and then post them on as many directories as you can get your hands on. While this is at least a step in the right direction, I would take a slightly different approach by spending some money to get a topical website to post one of your articles on a dedicated page.

Writing an article and placing it on someone else’s website will take more time and resources then just a straight text link but I think that you will find it is also more effective. Search engines not only look for the anchor text of the link but they also look at the website that it’s coming from and the text that surrounds the link. By adding the article you will have control of not only the theme of the page but also the headline and keyword density. These factors add to the quality of the page in turn the quality of the link.

Another advantage of using a dedicated article page is the fact that it is less likely to be flagged as a text link. Google has stated in the past that they are trying to prevent people from buying there way to the top of the rankings. By placing your link within an article page it makes it more difficult for search engines to detect that this is a paid link.

Now as I stated earlier this will be an expensive proposition depending on what site you are buying the link from but as the saying goes sometimes it takes money to make money.