Are you familiar with “Link Mixology”?

How about the 12 kinds of links you must be getting to your site?

While even *I’ve* been guilty of saying, “A link is a link is a link,” that’s a bit oversimplified.

While more links is better then less links, having certain kinds of links outweigh and are more valuable than others.

Links from “authority sites” for example, pass more “link juice” on to your site than, say, links from unestablished sites.

And also important is the “link mixology” – that is, the distribution of different kinds of links from different kinds of sites to your own site.

Like, if you have ONLY social bookmarking sites linking to your site, that’s really obvious to the search engines, and can get you banned. It looks fake – because it is fake.

The search engines are sophisticated enough to detect that kind of manipulation.

Normal sites have a good “link mixology” – they have incoming links from different types of sites.

We never want our site to have all it’s links, or a great majority of it’s links, coming from one “kind” of site.  Instead, mix it up.  Your sites link mixology will look more natural and you’ll gain by increased ranking in the search engines when you do.

Here are the 12 kinds of sites you should be getting links from:

1. Internal Links: These are links from yourself, to yourself.  Linking to your own relevant content, or sitewide links like “Home.”  In some blogs, like this one, you’ll see links below each post to related articles.  You’ll see links to category and archive pages.  These are all internal links.
2. Directories: Directories list websites, usually under different categories of interest.  The classic is DMOZ, but there are a lot of others out there you submit your URL to and get a link from.
3. Press Releases: Press release submission and distribution services, like PRWeb, allow you to submit a press release (gotta come up with something newsworthy to say, but even the launch of your site is sufficient).  That press release will be distributed to syndication services and republished – with your link.
4. Article Directories: Getting a link from article directories is as simple as penning an article and submitting it.  Usually your link will be in the “About the Author” bio box.  There are hundreds, probably thousands, of article directories out there for you to submit to.
5. RSS/Blog Syndication: Submitting your blogs RSS feed to syndication services will usually not only give you a link, but each time you publish a new blog post that individual article will get a link.
6. Blog Comments: Easy enough – leave a comment on relevant blogs in your niche to get these kinds of links.  Don’t be a jerk though, use your name and say something relevant and interesting.
7. Videos: Sites like YouTube, and the many others, often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s description or on your profile page.  Some let you do both.
8. Forums:  Forums usually center around a particular topic, so they’re great in being very relevant links.  You can link in your profile and/or signature line at most forums.
9. .edu Links: From educational sites – colleges, local school districts, etc.
10. .gov links: Like .edu links these links usually carry a lot of weight, but it can be tough to get the government to link to your site!
11. Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking services allow people to collect their favorite links in one place. If you bookmark your own stuff (there are services that help you do this automatically also) you get a link from the service.  Even better if you produce content your readers love and bookmark themselves to refer back to.
12. Social Media sites: Kind of a catch-all here, but this can refer to places like Twitter and Facebook, where people network with each other, to places like Squidoo and Hubpages, where you can place your content on a page on their site and link out to your site.

There’s are other places and ways to get links, like buying text links, trading links with another site owner or participating in a link exchange service.

But the ones above are typically what you’ll work on as an internet marketer because they are under your control, that is, you can go out there and get them yourself without spending cash or begging other webmasters.

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