Link Building With Blog Carnivals

building links with blog carnivals Blog carnivals are a great and easy way to gain exposure and back links for your blog. I hope everyone has read my article 101 traffic building strategies. Once a month I will post new strategies for the next 3 months until we reach a total of 101 traffic generating tips. What I am going to discuss a little tonight is one of my favorite linking strategies. I strongly urge not to rely on one or two strategies, but as many as possible. When starting any link building campaign it is also important to think about your niche and who your target market is. I would prioritize getting links from niche related sites way before general sites. Why? The answer is simple: it will help your traffic will be more targeted. Plus, blog carnivals are easy enough so that every new blogger can get started with right away. There is no excuse not to start right now!

Blog Carnivals:

What is a blog carnival? A blog carnival is simply a listing of niche related articles, with a description and link back to the blog with the original article. People who want to participate in a blog carnival can go to a site like www.blogcarnival.com and look for a carnival on their niche. Then they simply post their article to the relevant category. If the blog article is accepted, it is listed in the article.

Tips for Blog Carnival participants:

only submit original and interesting content
submit to an appropriate carnival. If you have an internet marketing article for example you would not submit to a carnival on health and fitness for example. The worst thing you can do is try to spam your article to categories that are not relevant.
Think a little outside the box. Say you have a parenting site for example and wrote an article discussing issues with teen credit cards. Along with relevant parenting and family type carnivals you could also check out some relevant money, credit or finance carnivals.
Participate on a REGULAR basis. This is extremely important and is what I credit one of my sites getting over 75,000 visits a month for the last couple of months. Don’t necessarily worry about the traffic you are getting from the blog carnivals, but the backlinks you are getting also.
When submitting to blogcarnival.com try to include a major keyword in your site title and keep your title fairly short. One of the great things about blog carnivals at blogcarnival.com is that you not only get a link to your article, but also to your site. So make that backlink count!
When a blog carnival is published, make sure you make a mention on your blog and link back to the carnival.
Get to know the sites and owners that participate in carnivals in your niche. There may be opportunities for article exchanges or joint ventures.

Tips for Blog Carnival Hosts:

First off, before I get into the tips, why should you host a blog carnival? After all you are sending links ‘off’ your site. Well, I believe what comes around goes around. By hosting a blog carnival in your niche you are getting some good content that will not only be of interest to the search engines, but also to the your readers. You are proving you are truly an authority in your field by linking to good content, and that you are truly interested in bring value to your readers. This will help bring people back to your site. Plus, some of the participants may link to you which will help search engine rankings. With that said here are a few guidelines.

Post your carnival when it is scheduled. There is nothing worse then saying you are going to host a carnival and then decide not to have it, or post it late. Reputation is very important to get participants of future blog carnivals.
The best and interesting blog carnivals are those where the host actually reads the submitted articles and makes a relevant comment or description about the article.
Add appropriate pictures. I am always a believer of trying to liven up your articles with one or more pictures.
When you post your blog carnival email your participants and thank them.
I like to open up the links in a separate window. That will help people return to your page.
Make sure you monetize your blog carnival posts with a relevant offer. No spamming.
Never use “no follow” on your links. You want to give people full credit for their articles and people that use “no follow” will get a bad rap.

In summary, I love blog carnivals. They are extremely easy to participate in and a great way to gain exposure. This is one of the first things I recommend to people when starting out. It will help with some immediate traffic if you follow the guidelines above and only submit original interesting articles, plus it will help build links slowly to your blog or website. The best advice is definitely participate in one, and try creating and hosting one yourself.