This is a Guest Post by Paul B from EarningMoneyOnline.co.uk. He teaches different ways to earn money online using SEO and online marketing.

There seems to have been a shift recently in people’s minds that maybe social networking will replace link building. I think it’s mostly since the announcement of Google + and how that could affect the search results in future. But what people forget is that traditional link building has always been a social activity because in order to get good links you have to deal with real people, any link you can get without communicating with a real person is worthless in my opinion.



If we look at the most common scenario faced by SEOs and marketers, getting a link from a high value blog, it’s easy to see how important standard social skills are. Even if you only have a moderately successful site I bet you’ve already had hundreds of generic emails asking to buy/swap/give away links (they always start with Dear Webmaster). The problem with this kind of mass volume technique is that it doesn’t work on anyone who has a quality site, which is a problem when those are the only links you want.

So how exactly can your social and communication skills help you get links? Well for a start you need to figure out what exactly it is this webmaster might want before you contact them. For example if they allow guest posting on their site follow any guidelines they have laid out exactly, so if they want you to write on a specific topic or make the post a specific length do it no questions asked. Also if you’re just asking them to reference your site for free you need to convince them why so don’t just forward your URL, send some quick bullet points on why you think your site will benefit their readers. My point is that you want to do as much of the work for the webmaster as possible, you are the one asking..remember.

Another important point is working out exactly who to contact, I still don’t see the sense in sending out thousands of emails when just a few well placed contacts would do the trick. To cut out the noise I try to find other webmasters who are already sold on the concept of sharing content/visitors/links by visiting webmaster forums and other specific services designed to bring together like minded individuals. For example, myblogguest.com is a forum where right now you will find webmasters asking for guest posts, you could have a link from a totally new site in just a few hours. To me that sounds much better than hundreds of emails to random webmasters who have no interest.

If you liked this post then I have lots more at my new blog, there I detail different ways to earn money online using SEO and online marketing.

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