Link Building Through Design

Posted on 18. Jan, 2007 by Dave in Business

Alright, so I admit it, I sort of left my article on Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1, Part 2) hanging a bit there at the end on the topic of link building. I promised to come back to it, so here I am. I’m not going to bore you right now with all of the stuff you should already know and have heard at every SEO blog ever (”Submit to directories, ask other webmasters to trade links, yadda yadda yadda”). Instead I’m going to take it one tip at a time including the things I’ve found to be most helpful for generating a good number of quality backlinks to my sites.

The first link building tip is acquiring backlinks through your design.

Over the past couple of years there has been a design movement hell bent on creating pages using this new-fangled “CSS” (cascading stylesheets) versus the old-world table-based layouts. Using CSS gives you better control over your frontend, makes your code easier to read by spiders, and makes your website more accessible. I’ll be writing more on the benefits of CSS and its possible future later.

“How in the world does all this help me build backlinks?” Aside from being a good way to build your website, CSS is also a very trendy little fad within the web design world. As Digg users turn giddy when they hear about a new Apple product, web designers go out of their way to get their eyes on the latest CSS-based designs. This has lead to a modern day internet explosion known as the CSS gallery. CSS galleries are basically link depositories which display links, little screenshots, and usually a rating of the latest and greatest CSS-based designs. They are usually very easy to get into, and there are a ton of them on the net. Starting to see where I’m going with this?

The concept really is pretty simple:

Step 1: Design your site (try to make it look decent)
Step 2: Code it or have it coded in CSS (which frankly you should do anyway)
Step 3: Submit it to every CSS gallery you can find

This will instantly generate at least a few dozen good backlinks for you. A couple dozen backlinks isn’t anything to jump over joy for, but if you have a good (doesn’t even have to be great) design then it will get picked up and added to other design directories, blogs, forums, etc much like a link to a good article gets passed around. Of course the better the design the more backlinks you’ll most likely get from it.

Here is a list of some of the top CSS galleries I was able to find:

There are a ton more out there, but these should be a good start for you. I also found a nifty little tool that supposedly automatically submits your site to over 25 of the “most popular CSS showcases” – CSSInsert. I can’t vouch for how good this site is because frankly I’ve never used it until today, but if it works like it claims to, it will definately save you some leg work.

Well there you have it – my first little link building tip. Use this and you will certainly get some backlinks. I did this with my personal blog a couple of months ago and was able to generate over 3,000 backlinks in about a month’s time. It’s definately worth the minimal time and effort. This little tidbit is nothing ground-breaking, but in all honestly, is anything about SEO really groundbreaking? On second thought, maybe I’ll save that argument for another post.

48 Comments

Nenad Ristic

18. Jan, 2007

I love this as well… Do you ever make posts that are anything less than brilliant.

Now, I will have to use my own design skills…

agloco

18. Jan, 2007

hi matt.. another great post… anyways i hope you make a post on where to submit or get one way quality backlinks for free..

thanks,
http://myagloconetwork.blogspot.com

Rich Backpacker

18. Jan, 2007

“Code it or have it coded in CSS (which frankly you should do anyway)”

Does that mean no tables at all… or does it just mean that I should use a stylesheet to control the look of my site?

Matt Coddington

19. Jan, 2007

Yes Rich, these galleries want no use of tables at all (aside from displaying tabular data).

Rich Backpacker

22. Jan, 2007

Ok, let’s see how it goes. I made a new site with a very simple CSS design and submitted it CSSInsert.

Cross your fingers and wish me luck :)
http://www.sharkcars.com

Web design to increase back links | Increseo Search Marketing

23. Jan, 2007

[...] This SEO tip of link building with Web Design is a very good one. Be sure to check it out. To further add on to his tips of building a css compliance website and submit to list of CSS showcase sites, another great way to increase a vast amount of backlinks is to design a wordpress theme and submit to the theme site. [...]

Jonix Konios

25. Jan, 2007

Hi matt, has allways a superb post, 5 stars! absolute CSS is no doubt the definitive technology of web2.0, aside javascript. I’m also in the phase of rebuilding all my blogs with just pure and clean CSS.

Matt

27. Jan, 2007

no mention of the fact that trying to create good looking CSS designs is ADDICTING?

Net Business Blog » Blog Archive » Link Building Through Theme Distribution

27. Jan, 2007

[...] This is another link building tip for you web designers out there (the first being the CSS gallery tip). Theme distribution is basically creating a design, skinning it into a CMS or forum (WP, PN, vB, and IPB to name a few) and then distributing it for free to anyone who wants to use it. A lot of designers hate the idea of giving away free designs, but I’ve used theme distribution as a way to promote my design company since day 1, and I’m positive that the majority of its initial growth was due to this method. [...]

derrich

28. Jan, 2007

CSS? What’s that? ;)

Radu

31. Jan, 2007

Um, http://www.csszengarden.com/ CSS Zen Garden is a pretty big one as well.

Sohbet

11. Feb, 2007

Sohbet Web pretty big one as well.

Agloco Hype

19. Mar, 2007

Hey great articles, keep up the good work.

http://aglocohype.blogspot.com

web developer india

20. Mar, 2007

Hi dude…

once again a nice post…and thanx for css galleries.I will wait for more articles.

Thalasar Ventures Business Blog

24. Mar, 2007

Link Building Strategy…

I have to admit I am lousy at on page SEO. I am not sure why this is – I suspect that because for a few years on page factors weren’t that important relative to off page links. As a……

lida

02. May, 2007

CSS? What’s that? ;)

F?kra

12. Jun, 2007

it will also allow you to store the results into a variable by simply using the “name” attribute. This variable can then be written to disk and used later at the developer’s discretion. With this functionality

Araba Resimleri

22. Jun, 2007

I have to admit I am lousy at on page SEO. I am not sure why this is – I suspect that because for a few years on page factors weren’t that important relative to off page links. As a……

Bebek Resimleri

22. Jun, 2007

Seks

22. Jun, 2007

Good site – you’re a pretty good writer….. Very creative…

Hikaye

22. Jun, 2007

Is there REALLY a need for such sarcasm, SomeOne?. How childish!. We are not all as perfect us you… forgive us !.

ifade

25. Jun, 2007

thanks…

F?kralar

01. Jul, 2007

Thnx.

Erotik Shop

14. Jul, 2007

sex shop,seks shop,erotik shop,cinsel ürünler,penis büyütme,geciktirici,vajina,erotik market

hikaye

21. Jul, 2007

Is there REALLY a need for such sarcasm, SomeOne?. How childish!. We are not all as perfect us you… forgive us !.

oyun

21. Jul, 2007

Thnx.

resim

21. Jul, 2007

mp3

21. Jul, 2007

mp3 Thnx.

mp3

21. Jul, 2007

Is there REALLY a need for such sarcasm, SomeOne?. How childish!. We are not all as perfect us you… forgive us !.

msn

04. Sep, 2007

The best is not always the most popular. My favorite scientific blogs….

MN Web Developers

15. Sep, 2007

I think CSS Based is the best one out there.

MN Web Developers

Muhabbet

24. Sep, 2007

Thank You.

Adult

13. Oct, 2007

thanks for links..

seks shop

17. Oct, 2007

thanks very good

seks ?r?nleri

17. Oct, 2007

yeah very good

seks

17. Oct, 2007

The best is not always the most popular. My favorite scientific blogs?.

Sally, design guru

21. Oct, 2007

I’ve never tried such a way of linking. Thanks for useful information. I’m going to use it on my new web site.

hikaye

21. Oct, 2007

thanks a lot

Bujes

21. Oct, 2007

Another great article. I didn’t know anything about CSS Galleries, but now I think I’ll start using them as new link source.

24. Oct, 2007

24. Oct, 2007

09. Dec, 2007

I am curious if there is something like css galleries but for the websites which use tables. We have new design and I think that is worth submitting to some gallery but it is not tableless…

gazeteler

28. Dec, 2007

thanks.

mriza

18. Jan, 2008

yea, good idea, the same idea when you create blog template and put your links there, share it with other.

Seo Consultantcy

31. Jan, 2008

Fantastic post, there really is some excellent css sites out there, with more & more everyday. One i believe you did not mention is one of my favorites & believe he really should be noticed for his work which he offers for free. His portfolio is Dezinerfolio at http://dezinerfolio.com/.

What do you think? Good isn’t he.

seOverflow

03. Feb, 2008

Thanks for the tip and the list. I tried CSS Insert but got a domain parking page at Godaddy. They must have taken it down or something. Back to the old manual submissions!

James

22. Mar, 2008

A great way to increase your links, this should be applied by any web designer. SEO is very important, the design and graphics looks great and you should show the entire world your work.