How to Get More Inbound Links to Your Blog: Blog Carnivals

To rise in page rank and get more search engine traffic to your blog, you need more inbound links (links from other blogs and websites to your blog and posts). So how do you know how many inbound links you have?

The easiest way is by going to Google.com and entering link: www.yourblog.com and seeing what the results are.

You should also try link: yourblog.com as well as  the URL of some of your more popular posts just to see who is linking to you.

You can also do this using Google Webmaster Tools. Here’s how.

How to increase inbound links
One way to increase your inbound links is by guest blogging, but that requires a lot of work. First you have to find someone interested in hosting your post, then you have to write it. (Chris Garrett’s Guest Posting Workbook can help you streamline this process.)

You can also bookmark your posts at sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Facebook or StumbleUpon. Some of these sites use nofollow links (they don’t pass on “Google Juice”). To find out if a site uses nofollow links, use a Firefox tool extension like SearchStatus. It will highlight all the nofollow links on a web page.

A quick and easy way to get inbound links is by participating in blog carnivals. A few years back, blog carnivals were very popular. It seemed that at least once a week, a favorite blogger was hosting them on her site. When that was the case, it got kind of boring. After all, who wanted to read link roundup posts that much? Well, maybe it’s time to buck the trend!

How to participate in a blog carnival
Go to blogcarnival.com and sign up for an account. You don’t need to have an account to participate, but it helps you save time in the carnival sign up process if you do. Plus, it enables you to save favorite carnivals so you don’t have to search for them every time.

To search on carnivals by subject matter go to browse all carnivals. You can either pick a category, search by keyword or do both.

After you’ve done your search, click on “Next Edition” to see what blog carnivals are actively needed new entries. Then pick one you’re interested in and click on the orange “Submit your Blog Article to this Carnival” button in the upper right hand corner. Enter your posts URL and any other information they ask for, such as picking a category. Click on submit and your done. You should get an email confirming your submission.

Starting your own carnival
Some favorite carnivals of mine are include review bloggers monthly by Liz of This Full House Reviews. There are also blog carnivals happening that aren’t done through blogcarnival.com, such as Weekend Herb Blogging at Cook Almost Anything, which was originally started and hosted by Kalyn at Kalyn’s Kitchen.

Why not start your own blog carnival? It’s a great way to partner with other bloggers and meet new ones. You will all benefit by improving your SEO and increasing your traffic. Plus, it’s a great way to meet other bloggers and get some interesting content for your site.

Hosting a carnival once a month on your site is often enough. Any more and you may bore your readers or suffer from burnout.

If you were to create a blog carnival, what would it be about?

Anne-Marie Nichols is the Social Media Manager at Mom Central Consulting. You can also find her blogging up some healthy recipes at This Mama Cooks!

Anne-Marie Nichols