So far in this series we’ve talked about many different ways of getting backlinks to your site … the backbone of SEO. Depending on your personal preferences and your backend you can end up using some of them more than the others, and that’s okay.

The task for you is to always select the ones that give the best results with the least amount of work (a classic 80/20 case). And in order for you to be able to do this you have to be aware of as many link building techniques as possible. That’s why I’m publishing this series.

Just to recap, as we are slowly approaching the end of the series, so far we’ve discussed:

• Articles.
• Web 2.0 sites.
• Free blogs.
• Video sites.
• Social bookmarking.
• Social news sites.

Today we’re taking on one of the most obvious sources of links possible – blog comments and forum posts.

(Note. This post contains a list of popular social news sites. In some scenarios, social news sites are great to get backlinks to your blog or website.)

In the previous part we were discussing some popular social bookmarking sites. If I were to choose just a single biggest benefit of social bookmarking I would have to say that it’s the sole result of getting a link and all the SEO benefits that follow.

Social news sites, however, even though similar in nature, provide a completely different main benefit.

From a technical standpoint, you use social news sites very similarly to social bookmarking sites. You just choose a site, register, submit a link along with a short description, and you’re done.

But the main benefit isn’t the link itself. It’s the traffic that follows. That is, if your content has a viral enough nature.

Two leaders

Before I tell you anything else let me just show you the two leaders of this market, so you can understand what exactly a social news site is.

(Foreword. What’s in here for you? This post contains a list of social bookmarking sites you can use to get backlinks to your website or blog.)

Lo and behold, here comes the most obvious place for getting backlinks possible. It’s about time, wouldn’t you say?

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, social bookmarking sites are places where you can store your bookmarks online (at least that was the original idea).

The main benefit here is that you can access them from any location because they are not kept locally in your browser. Additionally, most sites offer an extensive category and tag features, so you can organize your bookmarks pretty neatly.

So far in the series we’ve covered a number of places you can get backlinks from. Such as: article directories, free blog sites, web 2.0 sites. Now it’s time for video hosting sites.

If “video hosting sites” doesn’t ring a bell then I’m sure YouTube does. YouTube is the biggest video hosting site out there, and the second largest search engine.

Benefits of using video hosting sites

First of all, sites like YouTube are primarily a community sites. They are not meant to be places where you can get some fast links. They are places where you go if you want to engage with other people, and be a part of something bigger than just your small self-interest.

YouTube is visited by over 450-500 million people a day (according to Wolfram Alpha). If you’re looking for a venue where you can share your content and attract new audiences there’s probably no better place than YouTube.

(Here’s the deal. Things you’ll find inside this post: a list of 6 sites where you can create free blogs and then use them to get backlinks to your main site.)

This is the third part already. Previously in this series on how to get backlinks to your blog / online business we covered article directories and web 2.0 sites. To get the full view of the issue we’re talking about here make sure to check that out if you haven’t already.

The name “free blogs” is pretty self-explanatory. There’s simply a number of sites that give you the possibility to create, and then host a blog, all free of charge. Those blogs can be used in any possible way … just like a normal blog.

Pros and cons of free blogs

The default approach is to create a blog as part of the service’s main domain name. So, for example, your free blog’s address could look something like this: mysite.wordpress.com. This gives you one big benefit…