Building credible inbound links using article sites

http://www.articlebeach.comThrough my eBay shop I recently won a 12 hour piece of SEO work for an online classified ads site, foxads.co.uk, which has taken me into unchartered waters...

The challenge, as it hit me, is that the Foxads home page has no content to optimise. Because it is dominated by free classified ads which are user generated content (UGC),  I found it difficult to employ my tried and tested SEO model of optimising the static content on the main landing pages using my SEO 101 Techniques (see previous blog post "Taking the plunge into search engine optimization").

But running Foxads through the online web assessment tools at alexa.com and websitegrader.com gave me an insight that the Foxads site lacked inbound links.  But this wasn’t what my eBay listing was advertising:  I’m good at content optimisation but lacked experience in link building – my dilemma was whether to hand the money back in order to preserve my 100% A star feedback or dive into unchartered waters...

Over the last twelve months I’ve signed my own websites up to a couple of link exchange sites who do it all for you, but in truth, I don’t believe I achieved any tangible improvement in my page rank what so ever! I was pretty convinced that I’d received a slap in the face from Google for using automated link building services.

Article sites saved the day!  Through investigating where competitors have successfully created inbound links I have discovered the wonderful service that article sites provide:  You submit a bona fide information based article of between 250-400 words, and once it’s approved, voila!  You have created a valuable inbound link back to your site with a page rank of between 6 – 8.

The article sites I’ve discovered so far are at:-

 http://ezinearticles.com
 http://www.acmearticles.com
 http://www.articlecity.com
 http://www.articlesbase.com
 http://a1articles.com
 http://www.articleclick.com
 http://www.articlesphere.com
http://www.aardvarkarticles.net
http://www.amazines.com
http://www.1articleworld.com
http://www.articlebeach.com


Try them – they work.   In conclusion, my view is that there aren’t many short cuts worth taking when it comes to building link partnerships.  Which is why link building costs what it does.....