So you want to build lots of backlinks for your blog huh?

That’s easy. You only need to look at what work for others and steal their techniques. Obviously, some methods only work for a select few, because of the way they do it, and because of the fact that you can’t do it. I am talking about the so-called A-list bloggers who have done all the hard work of building strong reputation for their blogs, and now even if they do so much as belch, it prompts many people to link to them for doing such valiant feat.

Of course it takes time, hard work, dedication, and a bit of social media luck to reach that level, but here we are talking about quick and dirty ways to build loads of links to your blog, aimed at getting you better search engine rankings, improved Technorati rank, and most importantly creating brand awareness for your blog.

1. Start a viral link chain

In the early days of Blogging Bits, I bumped into OneMansGoal, liked it, and posted a couple of comments. Next day when I logged into Blogging Bits dashboard, I noticed an incoming link from OneMansGoal.com. I followed the link and found out that Bryan has started a viral link chain and has included my link because I was one of his cherished commenters. Hmm.. I sure got a little lucky, because the links spread like a virus, and I had tons of links coming my way without my doing anything (my link isn’t a part of that viral link chain anymore because of my unfounded concern that Google was punishing me for taking part in it. Of course I was paranoid and wrong).

You aren’t as lucky as I am. But you can get your share of links if you start your own viral link chain. Just kick things off by posting a few initial links and tell your readers to post it on their blogs with their link included so you can include their link in the chain, then sit back and see it go viral!

2. Write viral posts

Everyone loves viral posts. Even I do. Viral posts are useful, and deal with our base needs.

There are many ways to write viral posts. Here are few most successful ones:

• Give away a free product or service
• Offer free reviews
• Compile lists of useful resources
• Start a contest
• Conduct an interview with a celebrity blogger in your niche
  

When it comes to creating viral content, remembers these rules: people like freebies, people like resources, and people like to come under spotlight. Give it to them and they’ll give you back a lot of link love.

3. Join group writing projects

One of the main sources of traffic as well as links for Blogging Bits has been the group writing projects I joined. Almost everyone who participates in a writing project links to all other participants. This means a lot of free and quality links for you.

If you keep in touch with other blogs in your niche, you’ll know when someone starts a group writing project, but I highly recommend checking out Contest Blogger’s Group Writing Project forum to keep updated with the latest writing projects from all around the blogosphere.

4. Bookmark yourself on dofollow social bookmarking sites

There are a few social bookmarking sites that do not ‘nofollow’ your saved links. Very generous of them indeed. We are here to grab this opportunity and save our posts to those sites and get free backlinks.

Here are three of them that work for me.

• Mister Wong
• BibSonomy
• Furl

Do you know of any others?

5. Offer free website templates

This is something I plan to do in coming days. Okay, not all of you can design and code website templates, but those of you who do, you are missing out on a real opportunity to promote yourself. If your every template is used even 10 to 20 times, it means as many free backlinks for you. A good template can generate hundreds of free links for your blog, and a few dozens of good templates can.. don’t gape at me, I kid you not!

Actually, if you do the real hard work of designing and coding the templates, it’s not too difficult to convert them into WordPress Themes. Here are a few WordPress Theme tutorials to get you started.

Even if you aren’t good at design, you can hire a designer to design you a WordPress Theme that you’ll distribute on your site. This is not a bad deal because if you spend that money directly advertising on other sites, it will get you only a couple of links. Whereas with a theme you give away freely, you’ll amass piles of backlinks in no time.

I am making use of most of these techniques moderately, and Technorati shows me that there are currently 189 pages linking to me. That’s just the result of making use of these methods in one and a half month. You see, I told you it was easy.

What works for you when it comes to building backlinks?