I have already given some ideas about creating internal links with Link Building a Tutorial (Internal), (see I just created an internal link right there), but now we need to do the important task of creating External Links (i.e. links from other sites, that hopefully have a higher Page Rank than you). External links (hopefully) bring new readers to your site, and can increase your prestige and page rank, so you need to take this topic very seriously.

I have learned a lot of methods for building up external links from my web site THE Canadian Personal Finance Site (see I just created an external link for that site), some have worked well, others not so much, so let’s wander through some of the methods that seem to help out.

Just Ask

One way of getting links from external sites to your site, is by asking the external site owner to link to your site. This seems obvious, but it doesn’t happen often any more either. I rarely add links to my web sites from e-mails sent to me from sites I do not know about (sorry, if I linked to everyone who asked, I’d have a site of links and not much else). If the site owner doesn’t know of you, and does not know you, don’t expect them to link to your site, unless they are incredibly generous. You can try this method, but don’t expect a lot of success with it, unless you know other bloggers well.

Life is a Carnival

This is the obvious way to get external links and to build up your links to external sites as well, simply go to the Blog Carnival hub, find some carnivals that are in your category or topic space, and start submitting posts. Don’t worry that the carnival seems to have 125 posts on it, you are worried about the link, not about if anyone clicks on it (they most likely won’t). This is how I started building up links to my site, and it has worked really well early on.

Hosting a Carnival is really good for this kind of stuff too, because you link to many external sites, but typically those who are in the carnival are supposed to link back to your post as well, which will give you scads more external links into your sites. Hosting a carnival isn’t easy, and if you are a Newbie, the blog carnival owner may not be too enthused to have you host, but keep trying, it pays off.

Best of Posts

Create your own carnival is another option, where you find the big sites in your category, and create a Weekly Best of Links post ( an example of this would be my Random Thoughts: Slash into Lent post). You end up creating outward facing external links, and if those sites see you linking to their content, they may do the same for you, not often, but it does happen.

Remember with these kind of posts, don’t include too many links, because folks just don’t click that many links on any site.

Big Social Media Sites

There are a few big Social Media sites that actually give you a link back from them, and if you are a newbie, their Page Rank is bound to be higher than yours, so having them link to you is good for you. A few of these sites include: Zoomit , OldDogg, Fwisp and others. These links are very useful to have, and more exposure in Social Media, means more eyes on your content, and possibly more folks linking to you as well (and more money to be made as well). A great list of good sites is 10 Social Networks That Will Get You More Traffic, very useful link.

Mainstream media mentioning you will also cause an explosion of links too, but that is very much hit and miss as well, but more exposure in Social Media, increases the chances of this kind of lucrative exposure.

Networking

Get to know other bloggers in your field or in your city. Meet them face to face, or via Instant Messaging, because the larger your circle and network is, the more links you will end up with as well.  It’s not easy to do this (don’t leave comments about how you’d like to get together with the author on web sites, that is just creepy), but you must try. Use Twitter or something like that and say you are in some city and looking for fellow bloggers to meet, you might be surprised who might answer (but also be careful, there are a lot of Trolls and Odd Folk out there too).

As with job hunting, networking is a key to building  your site and links to your site.

So with these two tutorials, you should be able to start building your stature on the web with links both internal and external.

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I have tried building a strong link base for Canadian Personal Finance Opinions over the past while and I think I have succeeded, however, I have not been able to build the readership other than being in the hundreds and the RSS readership to about 400 readers.

Using PerformancingAds as my basis for this I found a likely site where an ad might be of use, and I found a fellow Canadian Financial Blogger in the Million Dollar Journey, who’s rates are a little steep for a week, but I decided to experiment and bought a week of advertising on his site. We shall see whether this will build readership or be a waste of $20.00. I have blown more on stupider things, so I think this is a worthwhile experiment.

If this campaign works, my next steps will be to approach Million Dollar Journey for a more permanent solution. Currently, my site is linked to from the N.C.F.B.A. and other sites, however, it will be interesting to see if my new 125×125 ad is enticing as well.

Canadian Personal Finance blog 125x125 Advert

Targeted Blog Advertising With PerformancingAds
Make Money With PerformancingAds

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Nope, my PR seems to be holding steady at Canadian Finanancial Rants (I was a 5 for a little while, then dropped to a 4 about 6 months ago and still seem to be there for now). Lots of theories as to why Page Ranks are falling for major sites.

Some Theories:

• John Chow’s Theory of Page Rank Drop
• Paula Mooney’s rant about it
• Tech Crunch’s Theory, which seems to be a better reason

Stay tuned, sounds like Google has had enough with link farms

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A lot of sites are “link exchanges”, where bloggers offer to link to each other to help increase their page ranks in various sites like Technorati and Alexa.com.

Another way to do this, is to send a site that you find interesting an e-mail and offer to list their blog on your site if they do the same. Make sure it’s a site you like, don’t just blindly send out e-mails to bloggers, remember if you read this other blog, maybe folks like you will read it as well, and in turn they might be interested in your site too.

Building rank, and traffic is your goal, so think of as many ways as you can to do this.

Another useful tool is Blogrolling.com , which is a place where you can put your link lists and update them there, instead of on all of your web sites. I have used it in the past and it is quite useful, if you have more than 1 web site, that is for sure.

Start get that traffic rolling!

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