Here is my personal list of places that I go when I start a new site to get free links. These 29 links always get the ball rolling and help natural links come in.
Blogs
Blogs have become some of my favorite places to get free links. All you have to do is register a blog and post a short article relevant to your site and then post your link. Below you’ll find 24 free blogs in which you can link to your site.
Make sure that you interlink these blogs somewhat so that they all get found by the bots.
1. Squidoo.com
Create a free account, write an article and post a link embedded in the text back to your site.
2. WordPress.com
Create a free blog, write a short post and link back to your site.
3. Blogger.com
Create a free blog and write 3 posts, one linking to your Squidoo lens, one linking to your WordPress.com blog and one linking back to your main site.
4. MindSay.com
Mindsay offers free blogs and wikis. Like the others, create a free blog and post a link back to your website. Also link this blog to your Squidoo lens.
5. BloggerParty.com
Another free blog site. Link your post to one of your other free blogs and your site.
6. BraveNet Blog
Bravenet has been around a LONG time. Like the others, post then link.
7. 3Steps.com
3Steps is new but also free…make sure to continue interlinking these blogs so they all get found and indexed.
8. The Right Blogger
Site seems to be down right now…can’t create new blogs. Check back later.
9. BootsnAll TravelBlogs
You must first be approved as a member, then apply for a blog. Might not be worth the effort. Blog posts must be travel related. Hopefully your niche is travel related as well.
10. iUpload Blog
Another free blog…
11. TravelPod Blog
Travel related free blog site.
12. Bloggates
Free blog, slow site. Many good subdomains are still available.
13. Livejournal
Old, established, easy to use.
14. BlogText.com
Sites don’t seem to index well, but allows a lot of outgoing links.
15. Xanga.com
Does Xanga allow outgoing links? Couldn’t figure it out.
16. Blogigo.com
Allows outgoing links, even had a spammer listed as an example blog in a category…
17. SoulCast.com
Soulcast gives free blogs and allows you to insert your Adsense ID and they’ll automatically publish Adsense code blocks.
18. MyDietBlogger.com
MyDietBlogger offers health and diet blogs for free. Perfect for someone in a health related niche.
19. BlogNow.com.au
Free blog site touting their “No Ads” approach. I don’t know why they’ve chosen to not display ads, because not monetizing and not selling the site doesn’t seem like a good business model. I don’t think you have to by Australian to signup.
20. 20Six.co.uk
Good looking blogs, 1000+ template designs, outgoing links.
21. Vox.com
More free blogs…large site, established.
22. Tripod (remember them?)
Tripod, home to thousands of amateur webmasters has free blogs.
23. Aeonity.com
Free blog site, themes are all similar. Small user community.
24. Blogslive
One of my new favorites. Lots of themes available. Quick loading, outgoing links.
Comments on .edu Blogs
Personally I don’t think SE’s actually abide by the nofollow code. With that in mind I give you some of the best places to post comments.
The reason most of these are great places to comment is because they have PR or are popular posts.
25. PR6 – How the Cookie Crumbled: A Recap of the 2006 Creative Services Holiday Party
Most of the old pages are PR6. Comments are held for the moderator so make them legit.
26. PR4 – Blog comment spam with plagiarized text: hard to spot
Interesting discussion in 2006 relating to blog comment spam.
27. PR4 – Google bombs – Voice option and collective action
28. PR4 – Additional Comments Regarding Computers
29. PR3 – Blog is back to normal
First comment is moderated.
Most of those were found using this method and applying a few more keywords.
Hopefully those 29 locations will inspire you to find other places that will give you a free link!
Hey, may i have a free link here ;)? hahaha.
You just got it!
Thanks for the useful information. I am working on implementing the suggestions on this site.
One problem, the pages you’ll be linking from don’t have any of there own link popularity. Now if you link them all together, you might be on to something 😉
Thank you for this summary, of course it maybe a nice idea as starting point for some webmaster with no other possibilities.
But… on the other side: Imagine, everybody would do that (creating a new blog, just to write one or two articles, only for linking to annother site)… as a “user” you would get something mad when your searching at google for something…
IMHO, still the best way is: Make a good website with good content (content thats unique, based on your own work), then mail to relevant sites and ask them to write a review or for setting a link.
Darren, That is why I mentioned linking some of the sites together. You don’t want them to seem like a network of spam sites, but you do want them to get found.
Buuuutton, “users” won’t ever find those sites. They aren’t linked from any sites with traffic. The only “users” that will find them is Googlebot, exactly what you want.
This is brilliant. I gave you a little writeup. 😉
This isn’t how to get to #1 on the SERPs, it’s how to get your site found quickly by the bots. After that, your good content and attempts to forge linking relationships with other webmasters will have a lot more gravity.
This is a good list, and might be a useful resource for beginners. But it’s also encouraging the creation of spam blogs, no? I mean, creating 25 blogs to announce a new site is maybe a little over the top?
Spam is generally used for email, and something that is unsolicited. Creating junk (junk is a better word) blogs isn’t really bad IMO because no human will find them. It will however give Googlebot something to do for a little while.
Brandon,
Great list, thanks! I have a question…how did you get the beautiful add to section on the upper right of this page? Did you design it yourself or is it a wordpress plugin or something?
Thanks,
Sara
Sara, that is a feature of this theme (Not So) Fresh.
Thanks Brandon,
As you probably know it’s blogtipping day and I just wanted to let you know that I posted about you.
Sara
There are better ways to do it. Simply contribute quality comments to do follow blogs (unlike this no follow one) and the link carries more gravity. This leads real bloggers to find your content and if they like it they will write about it.
However, if ones content sucks then no ammount of crafty tricks will help.
Good linkbate if a tad too spammy for my tastes.
Lord Matt, when dealing with links, the text of the comment isn’t relevant. And commenting on one blog will give you one link on that domain. If you’re like me then you believe that 1 link per domain is perfect. That is why you can go to all the above listed sites and get one link from each of them. Listing locations to get free links isn’t spam, it’s an obviously good way to get free and easy links.
I will have to implement your list for sure and then see how much it helps.
Thanks a lot for the the great list.
-Emily
So how can we boost adsense revenue,Without using black hat cheating tactics ?
Interesting article, I especially like the way you “round robin” your links from one blog to the other!
great post thumbs up now for some link juice.
Good posting, i will try this.
According to my search status plugin in firefox, the website column in this comment also has nofollow attribute.
Its posted in April.. but not loosing the relevence.. so lemme also get a free link here..
Hei Brandon.., Thanks for the links..
Some stuffs worth mentioning are
1. atwiki site where we can create pages of our own
2. Google pages where you can create a personal page..
3. Geocities (less worth)
Great advice for us newbies to blogging and websites.
Thanks very much for the info.
Cheers.
Agreeing with Suzanne (and many others), this is a really generous service you provide for us here Brandon!
One thing though… Doesn’t your own links here loose significant value Brandon? I’m not talking about the value for us, your visitors, but the value of your own internal links for any SE crawling your site?
I’m new to SEO, and my only interest is making my site rank, but as far as this process has taken me, I’ve gotten the understanding that you should be very careful with your outgoing links… Is that wrong?
Martin
Very very nice. i will try to join some of the sites you’ve mentioned and create links to my blogs.
You just don’t get it. I feel like attacking you a little bit because your article is just so infuriating. You teach idiots how to piss in the bathwater. And then, these idiots stand upright with a glossy look in their eye, so proud of themselves for dribbling yellow that they might just think it’s made of gold. Yay, let’s sign up for free blogs. Let’s link them all together. Yay, now people trying to find something just found my fake websites that link to nowhere and back. Yay, and after a thousand of them do it, I get a dollar. Yay, I found someone who pays me a nickel each time I flick boogers on a wheelchair.
Each niche you speak of is just another place you found not covered in enough piss just yet. I hope that you linger on this comment just long enough before you delete that it eats away in the back of your mind for the next entire day, how annoyed this mockery of a website is.
Since I’m SEOing our mobile phone shop these links should come in very handy! The first looks particularly useful for our current methods, thanks Brandon!
Thanks for the links, there is nothing like a nice free link
Mike, normally I don’t respond to idiotic comments, but your comment was special. As for teaching idiots how to pee in their own bath, you are apparently the expert so we’ll leave the personal analogies to you.
As for teaching people how to find and profit from niches, you’re definitely not the expert or else you wouldn’t be complaining. For a niche to become profitable long term you site has to provide value. If it doesn’t provide value, your site will be short term profitable.
By linking blogs together, you are promoting your niche website. If done right, smart people like you never find them. They are tucked deep in the search engine index and don’t rank for any particular terms.
You said, “how annoyed this mockery of a website is”, my website isn’t annoyed, annoying perhaps to the uninformed.
I give free reviews and links to sites that visit my site and request a review
On Behalf of 3Steps.com, thanks for the mention. We appreciate it.
Lots of great info on your site. I see that you have researched this area of Internet Marketing quite well. I will be going through the whole site and sharing it with others.
I think your smart and very helpful, especially to beginners like me.
Please take a look at my santa letters site and let me know what I might be doing wrong. Okay ?
Thanks , Cheryl
http://www.specialsantaletters.homestead.com
Very good information for indexing and getting some traffic.
I tryed to make some comments on .edu blogs you describe from 25 to 29 but they all don’t place your comment.
Remco, many .edu blogs have comments go to moderation immediately.
Hi Brandon,
Thank you so much for this list. Many of these sites are ones I’ve never heard of, so I appreciate the uniqueness of this list. Because of this list, I now have a Facebook account, and I’m addicted! 🙂
You may have noticed, if you follow your links, that I had linked to this list on my MySpace blog. I have since been able to implement several of these you’ve noted, and it’s been very helpful bringing in links to my blog.
hi Brandon,
Those are really great tips as i already use some of those sites.
Dugg from me mate!
regards,
Al
Wow thanks for this list. I just spent 3 hours posting links in the order in which you have them and interlinking. Now I wait…
I will have to implement your list for sure and then see how much it helps.
Thanks a lot for the the great list.
This is an absolutey amazing blog and set of links for geting links. Brandon your a link superstar! Keep up the excellent work.
Brandon, this was a useful list to help others get started. What do you recommend that we do with each RSS feed for these new blogs? Apart submitting each one to multiple RSS directories, what else would you recommend that we do with the 20+ new RSS feeds we will get using your recommendations?
Thanks for a great list!
Thanks for the useful information. I am working on implementing the suggestions on this site.
Nice suggestions. Sometimes it is very difficult to get your niche site mentioned on other sites. For some reason my content is also not often linked to. I try and work on the content, but again, the niche makes it quite difficult to get good backlinks.
I will try some of the sites….thank you!
Thank you. I’m really glad I found your site. Great stuff. SEO is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. It seems a neverending task, but list like you provide really help a lot.
Thank you for this it is really useful. I was having trouble recently trying to find free blogs, I guess my google skills just aren’t up to scratch, so it’s definately good that I’ve found your site.
Will keep posting on your interesting blogs 🙂
I’ve used Blogger, Blogger Party and Mindsay to set up a triangle of links in the manner you describe Brandon.
I would certainly do a lot more posting but the limiting factor is time. For us part-timers, there are just not enough hours in the day. I take my hat off to you!
Sure has inspired me to get some links starting with this one right here in the comments.
Great job on this article you make link building sound easier than it sounds.
Here’s another place to get a free link…
http://www.digg.com
All you have to do is sign up for an account and post a link about your article on your blog and you’ll get a free link.
Hope this helps as well.
Thanks Brandon for the nice tips on getting links.
Also since I like to check your links to other ideas like the (not so) fresh thingy.. it would be great if you added the _new to the link to open us in a new window so I could close the window and return to the exact same place.. seems I lost my place everytime I clicked on one of your links..
Thanks again..
Nice. I will make an even more updated version of free blogs on my sete. Now I even put the correct link to it too 😉
Thats a great list for cross posting and cross blog networking. Thx for putting the list for everyone.
I’m already checking them out. Nice to have a bit of professional advice