Matt Cutts - Effective techniques for building links

The Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel have released a video in which Matt Cutts describes some of his ideas for effective link building techniques.  Here are some of the main points covered.

Building good content
Original research where somebody diggs deeper into a subject are always linkworthy.  Many bloggers are lazy and will just re-hash existing content without adding anything new.  If you can go that little extra and provide new insights, present new research, people will link to you. Matt uses the example of Google's Public DNS Service where a blogger called Manu took the time to test the speeds of their new service and published the data on his blog. Yahoo has recorded over 150 backlinks for his blog post already.

Controversy
Some people have made a profession out of hating somebody.  Whether it is Microsoft, Apple, homeopaths or the Conservative Party, having a good rant will attract positive and negative responses in equal measure.  A link is a link, so gaining hundreds of backlinks from people who disagree with your opinion will still benefit your website.  Matt points out that humour will do the same job, funny pictures, videos and blog posts will all attract links.

Participate in a community
Involve yourself in forums and answer questions that help other people.  People appreciate the help, and are often willing to link to somebody who has a good knowledge of their industry and is happy to spend some of their time helping others.

Social media
Spend time where your customers are, if they are spending 4 hours a day on Facebook or Twitter, you should be there too.  In some industries customer loyalty is so strong that having a Facebook group or page allows you to connect with more people than mass mail-outs or spamming mailboxes.  The customers will actively seek you out and sign up for newsletters and latest articles.

Lists
Spend some time building lists of valueable resources. "50 ways to build backlinks", these lists are a bit tiresome but the titles are eye-catching and they are easy for a reader to scan and pick out the information that they are looking for.  Spend some time writing "How to's ..." and simple tutorials.  Even if you don't get links from these, you'll have extra content.

Start a blog
Become an authority in your niche or industry.

Run a free service, build a free application, plugin, template, make a video
Providing something for free may seem like madness, but people will remember you and come back for help, updates and advice.  The beauty of all of these is that you only have to put the work in once.  You may be reaping the rewards in terms of links for the next decade or two.

Good site architecture
Don't make it difficult for people to link to your site!  It sounds obvious but if your URLs can't be bookmarked or if Google can't find pages on your site then you could be missing out on backlinks and returning customers.