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Repurposing Old Content For New Link Acquisition

I think we all can agree that one of the easiest ways of building links is by writing high quality articles and submitting them to article directories such as EzineArticles.com.

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome with article creation is the time it takes to produce the content. For every article that is written and prepared for submission, you either have to spend considerable time, or pay someone else to create it for you. Who says you are only limited to a few links per each piece of content that you create? I say repurpose it and get more links in less time.

So, let’s dive deeper into how this is done…

Turn Your Old Content Into Video

Despite popular belief, creating video and distributing it to all of the major video engines is a piece of cake! Using software like Windows Movie Maker and Jing, you can easily turn that old article into a video and not only get additional links back to your website, but often times drive loads of targeted traffic.

There are a few ways to create a video from your old content, but my favorite, is by taking what you said in an article and turning it into a Powerpoint. You can then take your Powerpoint, shoot a screen capture, and then upload to your favorite video site. If you want to do something a little different, you could even do a screen capture of you showing the home page of your blog or website while going over the content of your article.

Once you have your video file, you can send it to YouTube, MetaCafe, and Viddler. My favorite is definitely YouTube (despite the no follow links) because I can drive tons of traffic and usually rank well in the SERPs in less competitive niches. Uploading to Viddler (followed links) and other do follow video sites is a great way to get those juicy, credible links back to your site.

Turn Your Old Content Into Slideshows

As mentioned above, taking your old content and turning it into a Powerpoint presentation can be a great way to get additional links. In addition to turning those Powerpoint files into video, you can just upload them to sites like docstoc or slideshare and collect some additional backlinks to your website. These too are very credible links due to the credibility of the domain… and as those links age, they will become even more credible.

Turn Your Old Content Into PDF’s

Now that I have brought up docstoc in my last example, another great way to get links back to your website using your old content is by taking the actual article and turning it into a PDF. Before PDFing it, you should create hyperlinks within the document and then upload it to docstoc and other document type websites. When those PDFs get indexed, the links within them will also get crawled, indexed, and count toward your link count.

Turn Your Old Content Into Audio

Lastly, you can turn that old content into audio files and upload it to podcast directories. Using programs like Ivona text to speech, you can easily have your content turned into English audio with either a male or female output. When uploading to the podcast directories, you will be able to add links back to your website, thus giving you yet another way to get links from your old content.

Repurposing your content is smart and not a lot of online marketers are doing enough of it. I’m sure that these are just a few of the ways to repurpose your content to get some additional links without a ton of additional work on your part. Please share if you have other ways or other services that work well in making these processes easier.

Phase Two Link Building Strategies

Unlike phase one link building strategies, phase two requires just a little more effort on your part, but will be rewarded with higher rankings in the SERPs. Phase one helps you build a pretty solid foundation to your supplemental link building that you will do in phase two. How about we get started…

1. Article Marketing

The hardest part about article marketing is creating the content that you will post on the article websites. You should work hard to create high quality content around a certain keyword that you want to rank for. You can then take the content and post it on sites like EzineArticles, Go Articles, and Article Dashboard. It is advised that you do not post the exact same content on each of those sites, but quickly re-write the content and post unique copies of each article on their respective site. If you are feeling a little crazy, you could also invest in a good spinning software and mass produce semi-unique versions of an article and shoot it out to many different article websites.

One thing to keep in mind about article marketing is how to effectively use the author resource box to your advantage. First, you should always max out the number of links allowed. Most often it will be two links. I usually build those links to deep pages on my websites, but you can take one to the home page and one to a deep page if you wish. Always make sure to use some different variations of your keywords as your anchor text so your links look more natural to the engines.

2. Super Charged Article Marketing

I wasn’t really sure what to call the second method of link building since you aren’t actually building any links. Instead, you will be building RSS Feeds for your articles that you submitted during the article marketing process and submit those feeds to RSS Feed Directories. This will ensure that all of your efforts are indexed by Google and the other engines and you receive maximum value from your work. Use a service like Dapper to create the RSS Feed and then submit to directories like Feedage.

3. Guest Blogging

Blogging is a really hot topic right now and links from relevant blogs are full of link juice that will launch your website to top rankings in the engines. Using services like MyBlogGuest to find these opportunities make this method of link building a little easier, but you still have to create the content and strategically place the links in that content. You can also leverage the power of semi-automated blog networks, but these links are of lesser quality and should be used in conjunction with other link building tactics.

4. Submit Content To Social Blogging Sites

Guess what? More content needs to be created for this next link building tactic. Creating and submitting content to sites like HubPages, Squidoo, and other “authority sites” is a great way to get links and boost your website’s credibility. Because these sites are very credible in the eyes of the engines, they will not only help you rank better, but often times, rank themselves in less competitive niches allowing you to own more real estate in the SERPs allowing you to dominate the competition.

5. Forum Links

Many SEOs will tell you that forum links are garbage, but I beg to differ. Posting links on just any forum is a complete waste of time, but finding industry related forms and becoming part of the community… that is where the real value lies. Getting involved in conversations and answering questions around the niche you are targeting not only strengthens you as an authority, but you can add links in your author signature that point back to your website. Often times, these can be anchor text specific links and often times, they are do-follow links. Even if they are not do-follow links, you will still get traffic from those links and if you are TRULY and authority and provide real value on your website, you will attract links from those visitors websites, blogs, facebook pages, and twitter. All in all, you win… So don’t ignore forum links!

Well, that is phase two in a solid link building strategy. So go out and make things happen for your website!