7 solid link building strategies for your design blog in 2009

The new year is coming with the traditional new year resolutions. For us design bloggers, some resolutions might be related to growing our audience in some way. One good way to get more traffic and improve your SEO is to get backlinks. For that, tons of strategies exist, but some are more appropriate to the design niche than others.

• Webdesign galleries
  If you are proud of the design of your blog, webdesign galleries are a great way to show off your skills and get some exposure, but also decent traffic and appropriate. Why don’t you start by submitting your site on CSSorgy.com, then on these webdesign galleries.
• Linkbait posts
  Whether you are writing about resources or sharing some inspiring work, chances are that your article will be popular on social media sites. Design blogs tend to be very successful on social media sites like Delicious or StumbleUpon, but smaller sites like DesignFloat or DesignBump are worth submitting to also. A good way to get a better understanding of linkbait is to read this article on SmashingMagazine: Golden Rules of Linkbaiting.
• Internal linking
  This is a key point that is too often neglected by bloggers in their link building strategies. Coherent internal linking will be rewarded by search engines (understand Google), so never forget to link to previous articles when it’s suitable to do so. WordPress also has some good plugins to automate part of the internal link building process, like this one showing related posts or this one that automatically turns keywords into links.
• Organize a group writing project
  If you’ve been reading Designer Daily for a while, you didn’t miss the Design You Love group writing project that I organized this autumn. Just think of a topic and encourage your readers to write about it. People usually like these projects, especially if you make them more attractive by finding sponsors. This way you’ll get as many backlinks as people participating. If you are going to organize a group writing project, don’t forget to promote it by announcing it to Jacob.
• Sponsor a contest
  If you don’t want to take the time to organize a group writing project, you can try to sponsor one organized by someone else. Many bloggers encourage the people participating to link to sponsors. You can sponsor these contests by giving away goodies or services, or simply by paying for a prize.
• Create a free wordpress theme
  Creating wordpress themes takes time and patience, but it can be a huge source of links if your theme becomes popular. If your backlink is in the footer, chances are that the people who download your theme will not get rid of it. This is also an excellent way to show off your webdesign skills and find some design work.
• Guest posts
  I must confess, this is not a technique that I’ve used a lot, but people guest posting frequently seem to really benefit from it. Writing on other blogs allows you to show off your expertise to an audience that may not know you. Obviously you should chose to write on blogs that are in your niche if you want this strategy to be efficient. If you want to guest post on Designer Daily, you are welcome to contact me saying what you’d like to write about.