Where to find Quality Sites to Build Links on!

As search engine marketers, one of the greatest challenges we face is finding high quality sites to build backlinks on. Sure there are a million different gigs on fiver offering to blast your site with backlinks to hell and back and as tempting as it is, we simply can not do that because we know those links will do our site more harm than good – especially in the long run.
Now, there are different ways to get quality backlinks built: We can either build them ourselves or have others build them for us. If you have more time than money, building them yourself is a great option. If you have more money than time – there are some great places you can outsource the boring work to. I like to do a bit of both.

Options for building them yourself:

• One of the best ways – in my opinion – is STILL guest posting. I know Google has cracked down on this in the past but if you do it tastefully (as in: none spammy), it works really really well still. The key here is to find real blogs in your niche. The best way to do this is to simply do a google search for your keyword and start going through the top 100 listings. Then find a way to contact the webmaster and ask what it will take for you to post a guest post on his/her blog. Some will say no, some will tell you what it will take. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. It has paid off many times over for me.
• Unlike the previous point where you tap into existing blogs, my second favorite “free” approach is to build web 2.0 sites – establish some link juice to them – and have them link to my site. Again, this has been very worthwhile for me but does require a fair bit of elbow grease on my part. Here is a list of some of the sites I use. Let me know in the comment section if any of them don’t work anymore or if you use sites I did not list yet:
  • 2itb.com
  • angelfire.com
  • bcz.com
  • blinkweb.com
  • blogger.com
  • bloghi.com
  • blogster.com
  • devhub.com
  • edublogs.org
  • fc2.com
  • getjealous.com
  • hubpages.com
  • insanejournal.com
  • inube.com
  • livejournal.com
  • multiply.com
  • my.opera.com
  • my.telegraph.co.uk
  • mywapblog.com
  • posterous.com
  • quizilla.teennick.com
  • shutterfly.com
  • snappages.com
  • squidoo.com
  • thoughts.com
  • travelblog.org
  • tripod.com
  • tumblr.com
  • weblogplaza.com
  • webs.com
  • webspawner.com
  • weebly.com
  • wetpaintcentral.com
  • wikidot.com
  • wordpress.com
  • yola.com
  • zoomshare.com
  • 350.com
  • doomby.com
  • hpage.com
  • jimdo.com
  • journalspace.com
  • moonfruit.com
  • page.tl
  • sitew.com
  • wallinside.com
  • webgarden.com
  • webnode.com
  • webstarts.com
  • hazblog.com
  • academia.edu
  • bravenet.com
  • opendiary.com
  • jigsy.com
  • zimbio.com
  • rebelmouse.com
• Another great way to tap into established blogs is by commenting on them. I used to do this very heavily for one of my sites and it still has great ranking as a result. Oh and, I get a bit of random traffic from it as a result too. The trick here is to find sites that allow do-follow comments and then make a genuine comment on their post – otherwise it likely won’t get approved. I use http://dropmylink.com to find do-follow sites. You won’t see overnight rank improvements from doing this but it DOES help in the long run – especially if the sites you are commenting on have decent linkjuice and authority in your niche.
• Now, this is not something I do too much myself anymore, but it is a great way to get profile type do-follow backlinks from sites that have high PR. Simply subscribe to Angela Edwards backlink packs and get busy building them (she gives you step by step instructions for each of them). If you have done any SEO over the last 5 years, you will be familiar with her packs. They have made her famous in the SEO world and for good reason: Those links work! Joe Fin offers something similar here!
• What I have also done my share of is going through fiverr and contacting gig owners that offer to post your content on their niche related site and find out exactly what site they would post it on. If the site looks decent and has non-spammy content on it (not spun gibberish), I will run it through http://www.majesticseo.com and http://www.toolsiseek.com just to see how much power it has behind it. Anything under 15 Trust Flow or under PR 1 I usually don’t waste my time with. If it fits my requirements – I will go ahead and order the gig from them. Sometimes you can pay them a bit more and they will write the content for the post – other times they ask that you provide the content. In which case you can write it yourself or have someone else write it for you through another gig.  Some of these sites are pretty good, but I still think my free guest posting method is better.

Options for Outsourcing Your Link Building:

• One of my favorite places to outsource backlink building to is RankCrew. It’s a system by SEO legend Jonathan Leger and what I like about it is, you get manually built backlinks. Their packages are very well priced in my opinion and having spent around $1000 with them over the last few months, I can say I have always gotten what I paid for. They give good value for the money for sure.

These are just a handful of my many sources for quality backlinks. I hope that gives you a few ideas as to where you can hunt for backlinks for your sites.

I have one more POWERFUL source of backlinks that I did not mention and that is from my own private blog network. Private blog networks are fairly pricey to set up but are worth every penny. I will talk more about them another time.

Where do you get your high quality backlinks from? Would love to hear your secret!