Here’s another post dedicated to finding high quality links on the Internet that are literally being given away to anyone who apply. You can most likely acquire these links without creating a profile, but your profile may be deleted due to incompleteness paired up with lack of fulfillment. These links will provide you with a form of reputation management, a larger Internet presence, and a potentially juicy boost to your SERPs! These links are easy to obtain and may not have a direct impact on rankings for competitive niches.

In the past I’ve shown you how to get a do follow link from eBay and Google. This time we’ll focus on other sites. Let’s just jump right into them, shall we? Below you will find a list of places for you to develop a profile on, more information to come after the list…

Last FM [Page Rank 9 Homepage] – Do follow link, no anchor text
Example: http://www.last.fm/user/thedan1984

About ME [Page Rank x Homepage] – Do follow link, no anchor text
Example: http://about.me/danbochichio
About.ME may seem like a silly site, but it’s definitely a great way to manage your brand and results that show up in the SERPs on brand-related searches. It’s a great freebie that will rank well enough and may be able to block some spots near the top of the SERPs, depending on how far you reach already.

Squidoo [Page Rank 7 Homepage] – Do follow links, yes anchor text
Example: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/thedan1984
Squidoo is not only useful for creating quick landing pages which allow for monetization, but your profile itself can be a valuable link source. Squidoo pages rank really well, the domain has a high authority in the eyes of search engines, and your profile page can be a great place to get a followed link in a paragraph of text of your choosing.

Crunch Base [Page Rank 7 Homepage] – Do follow links, no anchor text
Example: http://www.crunchbase.com/user/thedan1984
Crunch Base is a directory of people, usually people within the Technology industry.

My Opera [Page Rank 8 Homepage] – Do follow, no anchor
Example: http://my.opera.com/thedan1984/about
Allows for no follow in your personal blog section (but link is can be surrounded by glorious content and choice of anchor text is available.) In the profile section you get a chance to drop a link to your website’s URL, but you do not get to pick the anchor text.

YouTube [Page Rank 9 Homepage] – Do follow, no anchor
Example: http://www.youtube.com/user/MrOldSchoolApps
Your Channel page allows you to post a non-anchor text, followed link to your website. All you need to do is build up your Channel’s PR. This is easier than it sounds. The best way to do this is to comment on older YouTube videos that have a high Page Rank. Your comment includes your YouTube ID with a followed link back to your YouTube Channel. You’ll find it much easier to boost your Channel’s PR through internal linking on YouTube than trying to get high quality external links pointing at your Channel – save those links for your actual website!

SEOMoz Profile [Page Rank 7 Homepage] – No Anchor text, *Followed
Example: http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/194137
*Your SEOMoz profile link becomes followed if you become an active contributor to their website (via commenting on blog posts, submitting your own blog posts, or submitting high quality comments that get the approval of your peers over there.)

Now you may be looking at the list above and be thinking “Well these aren’t real links if anyone can obtain them” – this is only partly true. They may not help you beat any of your competition due to the fact that anyone can easily create these links, but having the extra inbound links from high trust / high authority sites can play a factor in ranking over those who do not have any links from high authority domains. As stated previously, they are also good for eating up positions in the SERPs when searching for branded terms.

So why am I showing you all these links? Aside from them being great opportunities to spread yourself across the Internet to locations where your target audience may be, I am also showing you these links to provide you with additional assets to dominate the SERPs for your branding. Branding is an important aspect of SEO and marketing in general. Search engines do take branding into account when ranking for select keywords. For a task as easy as creating profiles across a span of popular web 2.0 websites, I often see that it is overlooked by many small businesses. Either they do not understand why or how they would benefit from having a “Last FM” account (for example), or they simply do not even know it exists.

So how would a company benefit from a Last FM account (for example!)?

Everyone listens to music. If you are a small business, you may be use to playing the radio in the workplace to help cover up any dead-noise. Why not make the switch to an Internet streaming solution to fill that void instead of traditional means (the Stereo). It won’t require much work to make the switch, and the benefits come without any extra work beyond the initial setup. Your company will be active on a music Network which will help provide you with a new, free space to market yourselves in front of thousands of potential customers.

The same goes for all the networks really. Most web 2.0 sites that are really popular, provide free services and usually include a place for you to create a profile, where you basically can stamp your business’s branding and spread awareness of your goods and services. Chances are, your audience is already there, why aren’t you?

Hopefully by reading this post, you will have walked away with something new. Either a list of sites to obtain links from by building profiles (an easy job, and outsource-able job, and yet it’s something often overlooked.) This post only touched lightly upon reputation management, but that’s a topic I’d like to get into deeper in another post later this year.

Do Follow Links Using Profiles was written by Dan Bochichio is a freelance Internet Specialist with over a decade of experience in web design. I specialize in taking new businesses from a web-zero to a web-hero by creating attractive sites which meet today's standards on the Web.

Follow @thedan1984