Six Ways to Get More Links:
Tips for a Niche Blog.
Tips for a Niche Blog.
Helio of Goteborg’s History wrote asking me how to get more links for his Swedish history page. I’ll admit I’m not an expert, but my last name is “Liljegren”, so I’m motivated to give a nice Swede the few tips I know. The first tips applies to non-English language bloggers, but read generally, the other five apply to everyone. Here goes: A number of translation plugins exist for Wordpress. I haven’t tried them; maybe I should. You definitely should! Polyglot is a Wordpress plugin can help you provide content in a variety of languages, but you need to supply the content in both languages. Unfortunately, writing copy in both English and Swedish is work. Try robo-translation using Word Translation Plugin; it’s free. If free doesn’t work, you can pay for Angsumans’ Översättare Plugg Pro 4.0 Befriaren also known as “Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro 4.0 Released”.
Helio, let’s take your blog as an example: you write about “The history of ‘X’ in Sweden”. So, you can link to a) history blogs, b) Swedish culture blogs and most importantly c) niche blogs about ‘X’. Your best bet is to find niche ‘X’ bloggers who seem interested in Sweden. These exist! What good does this do you link-wise? There is a strong possibility Wendy might be interested in articles about the history of Scandinavian knitting. (Or she may not.) How might you, Helio, get a link from a blogger like Wendy? There is no sure way, but you could try this: post an interesting article about the history of Swedish knitting mentioning the Bohus Tradition; mention modern day knitters who still knit these things. Link Wendy’s Bohus sweater. (BTW: It’s a great sweater; she’s a famous American knitter and knitting book author. Your readers will probably be interested in the link!) If your article is interests Wendy, she might link back. (BTW: be sure to use WP-Cache if she does. Click to read why.) Now, don’t focus on Wendy; she’s an example. And let’s face it; she doesn’t want to be spammed. I want you to generalize the advice I gave you. Do you plan a post about The History of Luttefisk? Find A list (or B or C list) food bloggers who might be interested in Luttefisk. (Or better yet, blog about something edible.) Swedish Furniture? Find bloggers who discuss Swedish furniture or interior design. What can bloggers other than Helio do: Think about their niche broadly. Try to link to people in their tight niche, then try to find creative ways to link to people who overlap their niche. I’m bad. Finding five people is work. Looking at the links I’ve dropped so far, no one is likely to link back! I think your “link-niche” is also Sweden! I have no idea how you can attract historian bloggers. But, with a name like “Lucia Liljegren”, I know loads of people who are dotty about Swedish culture. If you want to find niche bloggers are interested in Swedish culture, try Googling. Add Swedish term to the “niche” you are connecting too. Googling “Knitting Lucia” is odd, but it works. When you eventually blog about the history of Swedish food, try “food scandinavian”. It won’t hurt to try “luttefisk blogger”, or “crafts Swedish”. To find Swedish groups, Google “Swedish Days” of “Swedish Museum”. (Heck, try Andersenville, Chicago.) This will take time, but if you find a blogger who is posting regularly, and mentions anything Swedish, finding a reasonable, non-spammy excuse to link them would be helpful. Your goal is to get these bloggers to notice your post. Their response is in their hands! You really need that trackback. So, after you hit publish, always go back to “edit” your post. Scroll down and check whether or not a trackback was sent. If it was not, check your link is correct. If the link is correct, visit the page and search for “trackback”, find the url, add it to the trackback box at Wordpress. Save your post again. After that, trackbacks are in the hands of the blogger you pinged or tracked back. So, join StumbleUpon. Install the toolbar. Make a decent profile. Apply a few of my tips. Spend one or two hours a week stumbling content in your niches. Find friends in your niche, defined broadly: History is a niche. Sweden is another niche. Afterwards, find the correct niches for your individual posts. If necessary, self stumble– but it’s best to be patient and wait for someone else to stumble because you’ll get more traffic, get more friends and fans. Heck, write a good post about the history Bohus knitting, let me know and I’ll Stumble the English language version and tag it “knitting”. So, the short advice is: provide content in English, link to bloggers, link to a lot of bloggers, develop a method of identifying bloggers who are interested in your niche (who you can later link and who will link you), make sure you they know you linked them, use StumbleUpon to make friends with… uhmm… interested bloggers!
Need proof? Do you see Lucy, the adorably cute cat to the left? Well, Wendy Johnson is attached to the hands holding Lucy. Wendy not only knits a lot; she sometimes knits Scandinavian styles. She also celebrates St. Lucia’s day every year. 
Identify your “link-niche”. How? Ask other people who visit your blog. You, Helio, may think your niche is History. It is, but are historians going to link you a lot?
Swedish Americans; are dotty for Sweden. Find them; they will probably link more than historians. Or not– still, it’s worth aiming for links from both niches. Summary of How to Get Links
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Comments
16 Responses to “Six Ways to Get More Links: Tips for a Niche Blog.”
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Have you ever considered doing paid consultations? You really have a handle on this.
I’d do it, but I actually don’t know that much about it. It’s just in Helio’s case, his niche is the type that should be able to attract interest– if he thinks outside of the history box!
Good stuff Lucia. If somebody is having trouble getting started and doesn’t who what other blogs are in their niche a good tip would be to pick your most common keywords and then do a search in Google Blog Search and Technorati. This will bring back blog posts using that term and that often turns up other bloggers who are blogging about the same things as you.
@Caroline: Great advice. Of course, some newbie bloggers have trouble identifying their keywords too. Partly, that’s vocabulary though. I think if you asked them “what words might use to find a site like yours”, that would help. (But in Helio’s case, all those words are in Swedish!)
Very very good tips, I have no words Lucia..Tack
Helio
I think that linking out is really important for a new blogger. And, I like your advice about linking to at least 5 other blogs per post. I also like your advice on searching for trackbacks.
Good tip on reminding people to blog in English. The Swedish blogging community does have its limits. We took the same approach, but in reverse order. In America we recognize the amount of Spanish speaking individuals is on the rise so we created a Spanish Speaking section on our website. (It does help that we have a Spanish Speaking Lawyer on a our Law Firm, lol.)
Quad Cities,
Good for you offering services in Spanish. Though I no longer speak it, my first language was Spanish. I grew up very aware of language barriers.
Lucia
Wendy Johnson was at my blog
Cheers
Helio
@Helio: Cool! Wendy is a very nice lady.
Good tips. I also like to keep reminding people that adding useful, well written content is important. It should be obvious but that act is both extremely important and very inter-dependent with your other suggestions. Using trackbacks when you don’t really say much other that this post is cool might work some, but doing so when you really add value to what the original post stated dramatically increases results.
Also I think people should expect this can take time. Don’t expect things to happen quickly (that is my advice anyway). Some do seem to be able to grow quickly right away but I think those are the exceptions.
@John,
I totally agree with your comment about writing good content. However, in Helio’s case, it looks like his content is probably good. Admittedly, since it’s in Swedish, I can’t tell. But the blog appears to have a niche, and the articles are lengthy, with images etc.
So my sense is, his question is: I have good content. Now how do I get links.
That’s a question we all always have.
Of course, in my case, I got most my links by writing a plugin. This worked both directly and indirectly because the plugin caught Andy Beard’s fancy. That was enough to get several other people to notice the blog and now I have visitors who seem to like my content.
Good content. Motivation in establishing, developing and maintaining that niche. Stumble Upon. Those three are really very effective.
Very helpful tips here - especially for new bloggers who want to get good traffic.
Austin
http://www.findaniche.org
great advice. We do all these - so its useful to know that we are on the right track.
Linking out for pings and trackbacks is fine if your are blogging about other peoples blogging about blogs (a subject that is definitely not niche!!).
If you provide unique content on a niche subject that hardly anyone else is blogging about ( such as at On Stage Lighting , I find the only solution is leave comments in “off subject” blogs and hope that there ain’t “no follows”. LOL.
Seriously though, even 1 linkout per post is a pretty tall order. I would love to link to relevant fellow bloggers but really don’t want to link to the big guns/advertisers within posts.
That’s what the Adsense is for.
Best Wishes
Rob– you’re right. But, in the case of a blog about Swedish history, it’s possible to link out.
One of the difficulties challenges with using links for votes is that cross-linking is more natural in some niches than other.