New websites need links to develop any sort of search engine visibility. Links pointing to a new website can get it indexed and help it to start ranking for low to medium competition long tail keywords.

These keywords will send visitors searching for information on a specific topic to your website and allows you gain a new reader or make some money from whatever affiliate program or ad scheme you are running.

I’ve recently set up several websites for some friends and link building was my main concern because I needed links for the webpages to be indexed and start showing up in the search engine.

I’ve previously written about the best way to get traffic for new websites and this article complements that by focusing on ways you can use to quickly acquire some links that will help your website.

15 Link Building Strategies for New Websites

This collection of link building tips are likely to guarantee that you will receive free links from already established websites. This differs from content-oriented development strategies which hope to gradually attract natural editorial links.

These link building tips focus more on targeted link placement or link insertion, whereby you are likely to control the specific anchor text used. Some of them include agreements made with others and others involve one-way action on your part.

1. Submit your site to Web Directories. This is a pretty monotonous process that can get you several hundred backlinks if you have the time. An alternative would be to hire a manual directory submitter. Here’s a list of web directories you can use. You can also find some blog directories here.
2. Submit Press Releases to PR sites. A basic press release about your website’s launch can be released to several PR websites, who will distribute it to various online news outlets. A good way to get a free link. I recommend using PRWeb and PRLeap.
3. Reciprocal Links with Similar Websites. Its important to pick sites that are of high relevance so you’ll not only get links but traffic. Reciprocal linking can be useful from the beginning but don’t overdo it. You can find link partners by emailing them directly or searching through webmaster forums.
4. Squidoo Lenses. A Squidoo lens is fairly easy to create. It only takes around 15 minutes to set up one fully and you’ll be able to insert a bunch of anchor text links to your website along with your feed content. Hubpages is another similar site you can use.
5. Article Submissions. Create a short article on your niche topic and submit it to article directories for a backlink and some traffic. You might get more links if your article is picked up and published on other websites. Here is a list of article directories, sorted by Alexa and PageRank.
6. Social Media Profiles. There a whole bunch of social websites online which allow you to insert a link to your website on the profile page. Sign up for some of them, preferably using a username and avatar that brands your business or you as a person. This might come in useful when you decide to promote your site via the social website in the future.
7. Social Bookmarking/Voting Websites. Certain social voting websites like Netscape or Digg are often crawled by search engines and their links do help to get a website indexed. 3spots has the biggest list of social voting and bookmarking websites I’ve seen so far.
8. Forum Signatures. Sign up for some forums in your niche and start contributing to ongoing discussions. Insert a link to the homepage or some inner pages of your site.
9. Create a Tool, Theme or Widget. Pay a designer to come up with an add-on application or template that is related to a specific social network, popular website or platform. Include a credit link that points back to your designated website.
10. Blogs on Other Blog Platforms. Use existing blogs you have on other blog networks. Or set up different versions of your blog on different blog networks like WordPress.com, Blogger and Xanga. Link to specific webpages on your website.
11. Comment on Other Blogs. Start commenting on relevant and popular sites in your niche. Don’t just spam for links but focus on building a relationship with other bloggers as well. Write a relevant comment and try to avoid using keyword names or signature links.
12. Guest posting on other blogs. Like article and press releases, this one involves having readily available content you can send out to certain blogs in your niche. This is great for getting relevant links and traffic.
13. Hold Contests. Some websites often offer contests in a bid to attract anchor text links from bloggers. An example is this iPhone giveaway on Gary Lee’s site. Contests allow you to determine the specific anchor text but its possible that too many links using the designated keyword may harm your domain instead.
14. Collaborative Projects. You may need to develop an article specifically for a writing project, blog carnival or meme but it will usually get you a couple of backlinks, depending on the number and generosity of the participants involved.
15. Offer your Expertise. This will apply if you have a specific skill set such as web design, copywriting, translation or SEO. Write to an established website and offer to revamp/optimize their website in return for a mention or credit link on a webpage. This offers excellent branding, particularly if your offer is picked up by a website with a decent audience.

Many times website owners who are new to link building simply don’t know what to expect when it comes to the timeframe for registering backlinks.

Here’s a common question we get:

“I’ve just started marketing my brand new website, and I know I have backlinks coming into my site, yet when I do a check for incoming links, nothing shows up. Am I doing something wrong?”

Probably not–A backlink check will tell you how many incoming links are registered with a particular search engine, but it will not tell you how many backlinks you actually have.

Why is that? Well, it usually takes search engines months to re-evaluate incoming links, so if you do a backlink check today, there are likely links that are going into your site that haven’t yet been calculated in.

It would be nice if we could build links and then immediately have them show up in a backlink check, but that’s just not the way the internet works.

As you’re building links to your site, here are some ways to keep track of your progress and build links effectively over time:

How To Do A Backlink Check:

It’s incredibly easy to do a backlink check for your site. In Google, just type this into the search box link:http://www.yourwebsite.com/

The results of that search will bring up a list of sites that are linking to your website address. In the upper right hand corner of Google you’ll be able to see a total count of your registered backlinks.

An even better tool is Yahoo Site Explorer https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com which provides a list of your registered backlinks and much more detailed information. Both of these backlink checking tools are free, so you can try each one out (or do both).

Why Are Backlinks Not Showing Up For My Site?

Let’s suppose you know that you’ve build links to your site, but nothing is showing up when you do a backlink check (frustrating, I know!).

There are some logical reasons why backlinks may not be showing up:

1) Perhaps your website is brand new and has not yet been indexed by Google.

When you launch a new site it does not automatically appear in Google–it usually takes several months for Google to realize that the site is there and to index and categorize it.

Until your site is indexed, it will not show up in any search engine searches and no backlinks will be registered. You can even do a search for your exact site name or URL and nothing will show up–that is how you know that your site has not been indexed yet.

If this is your situation, don’t fret! This waiting period is something that all website owners go through, and Google (and the other search engines) will eventually index your site.

It can take anywhere from 3-5 months for a new website to be indexed.

I remember the last time I was launching a new site it took about 5 months for the site to be indexed in Google. On that 5th month, all of the backlinks that I had been building over the preceding months finally showed up–whew!

2) Not enough time has elapsed since building the links.

Even if your site is already indexed, it usually takes search engines several months (3-4) to recalculate the backlinks. So, if you have been doing article submissions for the past 2 months and you know for a fact that you have quite a few incoming links, those links will not show up in a backlink check for another month or two.

This doesn’t mean the links aren’t there–they are! The search engine just hasn’t registered them yet.

As you can see, one necessary component of any link building campaign is PATIENCE. There will be a time delay from when you build the link to when you see the fruit of your labor in Google.

Keep in mind, this time delay does not impact your marketing campaign–whether the links have started to show up or not, you should continue to market your website and submit articles. Immediate results are not the goal–you should be going for a long lasting impact on your search engine ranking for your keywords, rather than a brief shot of traffic that fades away after a day or so.

When you’re link building, you need to market your site consistently–develop an article submission schedule for yourself and stick to it, submitting articles each and every month.

You will be rewarded in the long run with an increased search engine ranking for your major keywords, which can of course build traffic dramatically for the long-term.

Today, the hottest topic of SEO industry is how to get quality back links with out paying a single penny to webmasters. The answer is SMX or SMM, here are some great things that I listed to get high back links that are trusted by search engines and helps to boost you’re ranking with out getting penalized.

Getting links through social media sites can be a crapshoot; these are the links which are recommended by search engines. Unlike the traditional link building techniques like reciprocal or three ways, you can not figure out from where those links are coming or which site to target.

Most of my clients ask me the question, the links generating through social media network are efficient or not?

The answer is very simple; the links that you got from content of websites and blogs are more authentic then any other link even from home page.

First thing is that SMM link building is not as tough as most of us think. The only hard part of link building is that what kind of links transfer trust and link juice to your website. Not every link from social media has same weight. Because of this measuring the weight of social media links are hard. Every social media website has its own power and trust in search engines especially in Google. Following are some social media websites that can transfer their link juice and trust to the targeted URL.

• Digg

• Propeller

• Furl

• Techorati

Some other SMM websites are.

• del.icio.us

• StumbleUpon

• Facebook

• Almost all of the rest

Like article marketing, you can not use social media networks in the same way for increasing number of links. Although you will get a powerful link through SMM, but still the most important are the visitors that are coming through social media sites and linking back to you after visiting your website and blogs.

Well, the good news for the SMM fans is that there are many niche social media sites are also available that you can target. There is a huge potential is available but it required a little technique and tactics. If you are working on niche website, then this niche SMM will be the best option for you to gain potential customer and quality back links. The traffic, that you will get through major social websites like Digg and Stumble Upon, will definitely send you massive traffic but will not generate potential customers.

The link building through unique content and blogs in social media marketing is not like traditional link building, this is a new and reliable way of link building. Although the links through social media doesn’t cost enough still they will consume lots of your time and required lots of research.