Top Social Community Sites for Link Building

Posted on 04. Feb, 2010 by Nate in SEO

This post was written by guest blogger, Alex Stetson.

There are so many social media sites, social bookmarking sites, and document/video sharing sites available to us today.

It can be difficult to pinpoint which of these venues will be the most effective use of your time and effort for SEO link building.

Based on personal experience combined with technical fact, I would recommend the following as some of the most useful community-based sites for link building.

Twitter

There’s been a lot of controversy about the usefulness of Twitter for social media campaigns. Twitter is mostly criticized for being “a waste of time.” I can vouch for the fact that Twitter can be a huge time warp; but to successfully utilize Twitter for link building, you have to have a plan and stick to it.

Twitter can be an amazing source for social media link building. It can help you drive traffic and links to your site because it’s easy to connect with other professionals in the industry, get and give tips, and make contacts for guest blogging (great way to link-build.)

Though Twitter links are no-follow, there is a viral value to this ubiquitous micro blogging site; it successfully captures human interest as a means of viral link building, and quickly provides you with a relevant and willing audience.

Sphinn

This social bookmarking site allows users to post and “Sphinn” articles that they like.

Three major factors make this site great for link building:

• it caters to online marketers, a relevant audience, so the traffic it can drive to your site is that much more valuable.
• all links on the site are followed by search engines, so even if your post doesn’t get a lot of Sphinns or reach the homepage, there is always an inherent value in participating.
• it’s quick and easy to use, so it doesn’t waste your time, which encourages user engagement (yielding a larger audience.)

Blogspot

Blogspot is much more user friendly than many other sites that allow you to create a webpage. It is slightly more valuable than its article submission counterparts for a number of reasons. It is highly customizable; you can specify your domain, description tags, and your blog posts are neatly archived. You can totally redesign the look and feel of your blog without possessing any design skills. Since it’s a blog, it encourages reader commentary and participation, which will help maintain your link relevancy. Plus search engines follow all links posted on this site.

StumbleUpon

Another site that does not use “no follow” tags for hyperlinks, StumbleUpon is a good link building tool for a number of reasons. It draws a large, diverse audience in terms of user interests; but at the same time, it personalizes random searches or “stumbling,” based on user feedback. So strategically written content, (e.g. overlapping subject matters,) can draw interest from an otherwise unreachable audience.

For example, an article on the new iPad that also discusses web design might attract a music lover, and consequently interest them in your design services.

StumbleUpon is great for displaying different types of media—pictures, videos, or written content. It appeals to the everyday, slightly A.D.D. web surfer; and the more good ratings you get, the more prominently displayed your site will be on the homepage (which = more publicity, which subsequently = more link juice.)

Squidoo

Squidoo is my favorite social portal site for link building.

It allows you to build quality links through quality content creation in an easy-to-use interface. Each user can create up to 5 pages, called “lenses,” that are crawled by search engines.

Squidoo lets you strategize based on keyword iterations by allowing you to pick your page name and titles; inserting hyperlinks is no-hassle, and you can link your lense to other related lenses, increasing chances of driving relevant traffic.

Which social media sites would you recommend for link building?

Leave your comment below and tell us why.

This post was written by Boston SEO expert and guest blogger, Alex Stetson.  Alex works out of Waltham, Massachusetts for Fresh Tilled Soil, a digital media and web design firm.  Talk SEO with her on Twitter @Marisol1986.