Using New Content to Build Links 

Chances are you are reading this article on the Text Link Brokers blog, or one of a number of syndication partners who agree to republish the article with links intact.

Think about this, for the time it takes me to write this article, I could have built as many as 2 dozen high quality, keyword rich links back to both the main site as well as the blog site.

Normally, for me to build 2 dozen high quality links for one of my clients I'd have to start with a list of about 500 somewhat related sites, filtering out those that are lower quality and submitting to 50 to 100 sites in hopes of achieving those 20 or so links.

All this would have taken me about 5 or 6 hours - even longer if I hadn't used a few tools to help gather those links.

Yet here I am with much less effort, able to achieve almost the same number of links.

That's the nice thing about content - it can do so many things for your site:

• A growing site helps encourage search engine crawlers to visit repeatedly.

• A growing site has more pages which have the potential to rank for other phrases.

• A growing site offers more entry points to searchers.

• A growing site offers more opportunities for others to link to it.

• A growing site can help positively influence link popularity (if internal navigation is coded properly)

• And More...

There are many other great reasons for starting an ongoing content development program. Aside from the link building opportunities, you can also begin to develop your online reputation as an expert in your field.

For example, when I do a search for my name, I find myself in traditional organic SERPs but also on sites like Google News, as well as most of the main blog search engines. This is because this site, and others I write for, are syndicated. Plus those sites that I mentioned earlier - the syndication partners - are also syndicated.

So my articles appear numerous times for the same search. This helps build my reputation online.

Not only does my name appear throughout the web, but articles like these also get picked up by even more sources. Ones that perhaps didn't read this blog, or one of the syndication partners, but they may have found it on Bloglines, Technorati or any of the other large blog search engines.

Then, the article gets picked up by even more sources, in its entirety, with links and all.

So, the number of new links I've created has nöw jumped from the original two on this article, to a couple dozen on our syndication partners to ????

It's interesting to see where articles get picked up. I've found myself quoted in PDFs belonging to Universities, on foreign sites where I've been translated into Korean, Chinese and even Russian. And, you guessed it, the links remain intact.

That's because these articles aren't like news - they last much longer than a press release which, while gaining huge exposure for 2 or 3 days, quickly disappears.

And the more articles which I write for this site which appear like this, the better it is for the site.

So, what is the downside to this plan?

The only one, really, is that you have to be able to write. And not just scribble your ideas down, but make them intelligible and easy to read.

This is what takes the practice. But I can tell you that while you may (and likely will) labor for hours over your first few articles, over time they do get easier.

So much so that you will begin composing them in your sleep, or while you are waiting for your bus, or any place else where you have "down time."

So if you are concerned that a massive and costly link building campaign is your only option to increasing your online visibility think again. Sometimes something as simple as an "I was thinking" article can drive dozens of new relevant links to your site.