It is my great pleasure to announce the release of Moz's third guide for marketers, written by the inimitable Paddy Moogan of Distilled:
We could tell you all about how high-quality, authoritative links pointing to your site benefit your standing in the SERPs, but instead we'll just copy the words straight from the proverbial horse's mouth:
"Backlinks, even though there’s some noise and certainly a lot of spam, for the most part are still a really, really big win in terms of quality for search results."
— Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, 2/19/14
Link building is one area of SEO that has changed significantly over the last several years; some tactics that were once effective are now easily identifiable and penalized by Google. At the same time, earning links remains vital to success in search marketing: Link authority features showed the strongest correlation with higher rankings in our 2013 ranking factors survey. For that reason, it has never been more important for marketers to truly earn their links, and this guide will have you building effective campaigns in no time.
What you'll learn
1. What is Link Building, and Why Is It Important?
This is where it all begins. If you're brand new to link building and aren't sure whether or not it's a good tactic to include in your marketing repertoire, give this chapter a look. Even the more seasoned link earners among us could use a refresher from time to time, and here we cover everything from what links mean to search engines to the various ways they can help your business's bottom line.
2. Types of Links (Both Good and Bad)
Before you dive into building links of your own, it's important to understand the three main types of links and why you should really only be thinking about two of them. That's what this short and sweet chapter is all about.
3. How to Start a Link Building Campaign
Okay, enough with the theory; it's time for the nitty-gritty. This chapter takes a deep dive into every step of a link building campaign, offering examples and templates you can use to build your own foundation.
4. Link Building Tactics
Whether through ego bait or guest blogging (yes, that's still a viable tactic!), there are several approaches you can take to building a strong link profile. This chapter takes a detailed run through the tactics you're most likely to employ.
5. Link Building Metrics
Now that the links are rolling in, how do you prove to ourselves and our clients that our work is paying off? The metrics outlined in this chapter, along with the tools recommended to measure them, offer a number of options for your reports.
6. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Link Building
If we're preaching to the choir with this chapter, then we're thrilled, because spammy links can lead to severe penalties. Google has gotten incredibly good at picking out and penalizing spammy link building techniques, and if this chapter isn't enough to make you put your white hat on, nothing is.
7. Advanced Link Building Tips and Tricks
Mastered the rest of what the guide has to offer? Earning links faster than John Paulson earns cash? Here are a few tips to take your link building to the next level. Caution: You may or may not find yourself throwing fireballs after mastering these techniques.
The PDF
When we released the Beginner's Guide to Social Media, there was an instant demand for a downloadable PDF version. This time, it's ready from the get-go (big thanks to David O'Hara!).
Click here to download the PDF.
Thanks
We simply can't thank Paddy Moogan enough for writing this guide. His expertise and wisdom made the project possible. Thanks as well to Ashley Tate for wrangling the early stages of the project, Cyrus Shepard for his expert review and a few key additions, Derric Wise and David O'Hara for bringing it to life with their art, and Andrew Palmer for seamlessly translating everything onto the web.
Now, go forth and earn those links!
Nice Work!
After so many people abandoned spammy link building in the past couple of years it's easy to forget that editorial links continue to comprise one of the foundations of strong SEO, and those who master the fundamentals go far.
This is a great resource for those looking for an introduction on how to do things the right way.
Couldn't agree with you more Cyrus. Link building has been a very uncrowded market with a lot of opportunity over the past 2 years now.
After receiving so much scrutiny, I can imagine how difficult it would be for someone new to the field to even consider link building. It seems likely that they'll discover the quick and easy route, end up with a penalized site, and hate link building forever, OR they'll discover the past two years worth of hate directed squarely in the face of manual link acquisition tactics.
So hats off to Paddy Moogan and Moz for creating this excellent guide. Perhaps now, this will be the first thing a newcomer to the field will discover, and gain some well rounded perspective on the past, present, and future of link building today.
I think it is high time that our industry stops beating a dead horse, and makes this kind of crucial pivot. Instead of demonizing all of the bad ways to build links, let's focus on the education of how to build links right.
Wielding the power of the link wand comes with great responsibility; all of the links you build ought to be for the betterment of mankind.
Pay attention on how Cyrus mentions that links remain vital to ranking yet does not mention that Link building is required to acquire links. We don't build links ANYMORE we attract them! You should be some what surprised when you are reviewing your link profile, if your not then you went at it all wrong!
Cyrus, I totally agree with you ... excellent work Trevor.
Thank you - things are changing so fast with link building and this guide outlines what needs to be done TODAY rather than researching outdated tactics that the web is currently filled with on thousands of blogs.
I have one question related to LinkBuilding - why link here to PDF is dofollow to Amazon CloudFront? Isn't better to create CNAME CDN as cdn.moz.com, storage.moz.com or even guides.moz.com This will help to build high-authority site inside moz.com and keep link juice inside. Or i'm wrong?
Anyway we should thank Paddy Moogan about that wonderful guide. Thank you!
+Peter Nikolov I think that Moz does not need additional authority but your offer is very good, and anyone can take advantage of it.
Another best practice is to self-host the PDF and use rel="canonical" HTTP headers.
This helps attribute any links that your PDF earns to the original source, and helps reduce duplicate content issues (if your PDF is a duplicate of your online guide).
Information here:
Thanks for that great tip Cyrus!! You are amazing.
Great work, thanks. All the Moz guides are well-written and accurate. I always steer new clients and prospects to these guides because there is so much truly awful information about SEO out there and it's a great value to have well-informed clients.
Thanks for the kind words, Moe -- so glad the guides have been useful resources for you and your clients. =)
Nice work, thank you for that guide, I'm in pretty good need of it as a beginner. Also nice thing to use Legend of Zelda's Link for illustrations ;)
One last thing: a little "Link buliding" typo right under the Quote of Matt Cutts.
Very good post, but, i ear that the linkbuilding will be dead in few month. Anybody is agree?
I definitely disagree. The old, spammy practices are becoming truly obsolete, but finding honest ways to earn genuine, editorial links is still quite important for search marketing. Check out the quote from Matt Cutts in the post above, and also this post by Eric Enge. It isn't dead. It's just changing for the better.
I don't agree with you. I think that the bad linkbuilding will be dead, but if you make a good linkbuilding it can be perfecto for you!
I appreciate how much this guide stresses relationships and outreach as part of link building. You have to get people involved in the process if you want to get those good links!
I'm just searching this type of guide. Thanks to MOZ and Paddy Moogan. Hope i will be the SEO specialist within a short time. Working hard to become a renowned Search Engine Optimizer in BANGLADESH. Thanks to all who are helping here.
I'm working to be a future SEO specialist in Spain, and this kind of guides really are very usefull! :-)
One tactic that has been invaluable to me is to meet other webmasters in your niche. Becoming friends with them is rewarding on it's own, but the collaborative environment helps both of your sites to not only rank better, but also to create more exciting content. It's one that is heavily overlooked by many marketers these days.
Great Job Trevor,
Your new beginners guide to link building is really very great and help, lot’s of new comers in the industry. What you think editorial links still it provides equal weight age as it does in the past?
Cheers :)
All evidence indicates that editorial links, both at the page and domain level, remain one of the most significant factors in SEO.
The confusion comes from Google cracking down on both spammy and non-editorial link building. In a few broad strokes over the past couple of years they have wiped away much of the link graph by cracking down on link networks and penalizing folks for non-editorial links.
Why does Google work so hard at cleaning up the link graph?
Because links are valuable. Links count. A lot.
The good links, the links that remain, the billions and billions of links and anchor text that search engines do count, are worth gold.
Even I can't understand why Google is cleaning up the link graph. It might be because of spammy links by the spammer or to get control of them.
What you think now Google is looking for apart from links?
This guide itself is a brilliant piece of content-based link building, by the way. Thanks a lot for such an informative tutorial. And it's great more people will understand the new better ways of link building tactics!
Great guide thanks, I'm a little disappointing your still suggesting to use Page rank (which is pretty sucky now days) as the best way to measure authority and you only touch on OSE, ahrefs & majestic as ways to measure anchor text but not authority. why not both?
It's a great guide for those just starting out though and I'll share it with a few people who have asked about such.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the comment and I'm glad you enjoyed the guide.
I don't encourage the use of PageRank as the best metric to use as it can be unreliable, but it can be a decent indicator and used alongside other metrics such as DA, PA, citation flow etc. Ultimately, it's about being consistent I think and taking into account context as well as raw metrics.
Great Work Paddy!
I noticed the same thing about Pagerank, while we still use it for benchmark in certain cases, I think DA is a better indicator.
One strategy that I was hoping to see in the content-based link building section was creating an updated version of previously published resource/content.
e.g We designed an Infographic on Social Media Cheat Sheet with latest version of dimensions after Facebook and Twitter design overhaul and helped us secure link from New York University.
Thanks for the great read. I have a quick question about web cam links coming to our website. We posted a streaming video cam we own of a popular surf break in Capitola (foxxr.com/cam) and it's getting picked up by web cam directories. We have quite a bit of traffic from these cam directories, so we posted a site audit tool in on the page to generate some leads. Our website is about internet marketing. Your article mentioned that links from irrelevant sources may appear spammy to Google. Would a web cam link be irrelevant or spammy?
Hey Brian, glad you liked the guide! Your question is a great one for our Q&A community, which you've got full access to with your Pro subscription. I'd head over there and see what folks have to say. Best of luck figuring it out!
Brian, I posted this below but here's a great litmus test for links.
"Would someone see this link on this page, find it interesting and relevant, and click on it?"
"If they did click on it, would it be valuable to them?"
If you can answer yes to both of those, then I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you are really concerned about it I would do this, move it to it's own page, and optimize the page to be about the locality. Then 301 the page in your robots.txt. You'll keep the value and keep the new page just about the cool cam footage. That'd probably be more robot friendly.
WoW!! This is the Bible of the linkbuilding Trevor!!! Thanks
The guide is great. Lots of information. But I thought Link Building as such is dead. Social signals including Quality Blogging and Forum Participation are gaining momentum. I've personally seen the importance of these factors on my own site, without practicing any other link building practice as such. Stressing upon Social Media is need of the hour and placing ads through them.
Link building is very much alive. Many people think it's dead because it's not easy to game the system, but going out and earning / building very valid and specific links can greatly improve your website's traffic and rankings.
This is great. Simple, articulate, and effective. I feel that even the experts can use this guide to get back to the basics. Thank you !
Hi Trevor (nice name by the way)
We don't Build links ANYMORE we attract links! Sure guest blogging can still help along with some white hat link baiting...,.BLA! Build an audience with the industry's best content and learn how to effectively distribute this content through ALL your social channels, PROPERLY, and make sure to engage with your audience. They are real people that want to be a part of your success this is the way you should focus on link acquisition. This way the signals that your links will transmit will be 100% Natural. What about getting strong links? Eventually you will have industry leaders that will also share your content, this is where you will make up for former PR7 and PR8 links, by the authority of the profile on which your link was created.
We attract links we no longer Build them! You should be surprised where and what a link is from when you get it! If your not surprised then your not Attracting your Building!
Hi Trevor! (Yes, I wholeheartedly approve of your name, as well.) =)
I agree entirely, and that's a theme that's really hammered home throughout this guide. Not only will the old tactics not work like they once did, they'll likely get you into trouble. If we want to earn the kinds of high-quality editorial links that Google still appreciates (and always will), we've got to focus more on creating great content, and finding the people with whom that content will really resonate.
Thanks for the note -- hope you enjoy the guide!
Thanks to Trevor Klein and Paddy Moogan. It is needed now as Google has updated their Penguin algorithm 5 times. So we should have a link building strategy that works according to Google algorithm.So it will be a very helpful resource.
Wow, this is one awesome guide. Thanks a lot. At page 8 with the Ranking Factors in Google there is an error (I think). The yellow 5.21% and the orange 20.94% have the same legenda description. I think a copy+paste mistake.
Indeed! We're on it. =)
Thanks for the catch!
Thanks Trevor Klein & Paddy Moogan for Sharing this impressive beginner Link Building Guide, It's really very beneficial to us as well other individuals as well.
Great guide! Thanks so much for releasing it!
Trevor
Link Building is one of the basic and most important aspect of SEO but as per my experience, lots of SEO Experts are really not aware about the depth and concept of Link Building. I have read so many articles about Link Building but i never read a post like this. This is a complete guide and a proper post about Link Building and the Process of Link Building. You have done a great job by putting everything regarding the topic. How to start, how to stop, what are the elements and many more. I got to learn lots of things from this post only.
I find the Thematic Cluster is really very very effective and useful. Thanks for sharing such an effective post with us..
Thank you for the information. That´s amazing. :-)
Hi Trevor,
I just found this on kingged and I am happy I did. There is no denying the fact that link building is still very much relevant in SERPs.
Whether the visitor that stumbled upon this post is a newbie or an expert online marketer, this guide is handy for link building success.
I have downloaded the PDF and from the excerpts I think Paddy Moogan has addressed the basics of link building effectively!
[promotional link removed]
Glad you're enjoying the guide, Sunday! Thanks for the kind words.
(One note: Please keep links in the comments relevant to the post; they shouldn't be promotional in nature.)
I haven't read the guide yet but I am especially lookino forward the link building metrics and advanced link building tips and tricks.
Loving the imagery!
Thanks very MUch for sharing. You guys are really doing good.Very nice. I am a newbie and i hope i will learn tons of knowledge from moz including this rocking guide. Thanks guyzzzzzzzzzz. <3 <3 <3(valid on facebook) but i am used to of it.
Hello, I´m from spain and I´ve a question, in my business there are few resources in Spain and in Spanish, is there any value to attract links from web pages, blogs, etc from other countries? my business is local. Thank you
Paddy .. I am not a newbie but loved your article especially as it updated me and reaffirmed latest linking prcatices. I would like advice or opinion I am midday through booger outreach , Do blog hosted on blogspot , wordpress etc have any value in terms of link devolpment or web marketing
This is a good instruction for a new person like me. I like to know how to search for the perfect blog to put my website link? My website is about World Cup 2018 [link removed] and i need to know how i will get the perfect websites o put the links to increase traffic of my website.
Thanks
Great post Trevor!
Brilliant resource. Easy to grasp and more thorough than anywhere else online. Why I love Moz!
Great post! Thanks for sharing, link building is still a big important factor in rankings, as I could see from some tests. Thanks also for the pdf download available. Appreciated! Eugenio (SEO)
Awesome free resource for noobs. This is the kind of content that makes this site great! Thanks for sharing. I would add, it may make sense to talk about web 2.0's as support for links you are building. It's linkbuilding for your linkbuilding : )
I think many people shy away from the tiered link building because it's usually done to shield / hide a core website from gray / black-hat link building methods. I could be wrong, but that's my two cents on it.
Great Resource with excellent material. Great Job Trevor.
Most of the things are already being shared on many of the sites but this assortment is really impressive. Enjoyed a lot. JJJ
Link building still necessity for website reputation and ranking in SERPs, there is some elaboration required to get the link with exact anchor text, Brand name or naked url etc.
Link building is what many people are doing at present. And some are doing with out knowing the purpose and benefits. This is a nice article to know about it specially for newbee.
Good way of presentation.
This is a fantastic guide!! Thank you for your insight and thank your twice for the PDF version. It's so nice to have that option available. I'm looking forward to really digging into this tonight.
if i bookmark my site.. and is description section i have the same content that is on my site.. do Google count it like duplicate content ?
No.
but google penalised my website for this act
By "bookmark," you mean saving a website's location in your browser for future reference? If that is what you mean -- bookmarking a website in this way has absolutely no effect on SEO and rankings.
Unless you mean something else?
social bookmarks mean to me.. StumbleUpon and share the post of blogger.com and facebook
Social bookmarks were heavily abused among other link types back in the day. Google has heavily de-valued them, but I don't see how you got a penalty unless you REALLY overdid it. Casual usage of social bookmarks shouldn't penalize your site.
Going forward, the only links you should build would give you a "Yes" answer to both of these questions:
"Would someone see this link on this page, find it interesting and relevant, and click on it?"
"If they did click on it, would it be valuable to them?"
Those are the links that are not only kosher with Google, but valuable to you as a webmaster or marketer. These can even be paid links.
I wish there was a chart representing 3 types of SEO companies: 1-those that don't build links. 2-those that practice poor link-building tactics. 3-those that practice approved link-building tactics.
Maybe I have some work to do tonight... Thanks for the article!
This sums all for beginners! Thank you for refreshing many minds!
Thanks for such a informative post. Now more people will understand the new better ways of link building tactics!
Great Post Trevor .. !!
But after discussing with many internet marketing expert i have a little confusion, i just want to know whether link building is still and important factor in seo?
Yes, it's still quite important. I tried to get at its continued importance in the first few paragraphs above, and you'll find many more reasons why as you read through the guide. =)
Great work Trevor, After many spammy ways mentioned my N number of peoples who are into digital marketing at last i got a guide which i can trust.
Trevor, Paddy, Cyrus, and everyone, this is a WONDERFUL resource that I'll definitely save as a reference for my team and the agency as a whole. However, I just have one small quibble: I'd suggest adding a whole chapter on using public relations -- specifically, media relations -- to get press and earn links from major outlets and publications. One editorial mention on, say, CNN is great by itself, and such a mention would then be seen by untold thousands of people who will then naturally mention and link to you as well. It snowballs from there.
I hope I don't sound like a broken record because (disclosure) I've written about this topic for Moz in the past, but I'm very passionate about this niche in digital marketing. :) A significant part of what is in this guide is essentially "public relations" by other names and what PR experts have been doing since long before websites and links existed. I'd perhaps go as far as to say that "public relations" will soon become the best way to "earn links" because the best links have always come as a natural result of good marketing and not because of anything marketers have done to build them directly.
Still, that's a minor issue. Again, Moz has gone above and beyond in creating this third introductory guide -- all three have become my go-to guides when people at work or anyone else I know wants to learn the 101 of SEO, social media, or now linkbuilding. So, thanks!
Just an idea: If you ever revise this guide in the future, I'd suggest a part on PR & media relations. Or even a future guide on that topic unto itself!
Hi Samuel,
I agree that online PR is an important part of the process and it's definitely an area we see as important at Distilled. I think the lines between what we call link building / outreach / PR are becoming blurred now and good link building can look like PR and vice versa.
I think that ultimately it comes back to what the client goals are and what activities are best suited to meet those goals. If more traditional style link building does that, then great. If a PR campaign does it, great. More and more it will be a merge of the two I think :)
Cheers.
Paddy
Really awesome work!
I think you should include backlinko.com at learning More resources;)
Way to tap into my nostalgia to get me excited about 'Link' Building. It's usually just as confusing as the Water Temple so I'm pumped to read through this guide.
Oh man the Water Temple was SO confusing!! =)
Thanks, Tim -- hope you enjoy it.
Great work to Paddy Moogan! Especially since we are all, once again, beginners to link building!!!
Very well put, Robert! Hope you enjoy the guide.
Thank you for this comprehensive guide, even if it's for beginners. I share it with my team. These documents are a wealth of reliable information not found elsewhere than on Moz. Good work!
Thanks so much for this! As someone who is completely new to SEO tactics and link building, this guide was very helpful.
That's great resource Trevor. Although, i was late comer in the comment section but I really enjoyed reading it and forwarding to my team. Broken link building is what I am researching about as of now. Any input on that would be helpful from your end.
@Cyrus Great suggestions in the comment follow up.
Hi Amit, and thanks!
There's actually a small section of the guide devoted to broken link building, and if you're looking for more, there are a couple of great resources at the bottom of that section for you to look at as well.
Best of luck!
Hi Moz Congratulate we really needed this type of material officially from Moz side...
Noticed on the graph on page 8, there are 2 colors with the same representation. Both orange and yellow represent "Domain-Level, Keyword-Agnostic Features".
Great catch -- thanks, Tim. The largest slice is supposed to be "Domain Level Link Authority Features" -- the descriptions below it are correct. We'll get that in the queue to be fixed!
You did great Job. What do you see about indexing of new links for faster indexing
Use Twitter or social media to link to the page containing the link. That's generally a pretty fast method if you get a link from a site that isn't spidered very quickly. Still, the link's value many times needs to be "baked in" before you see a full value. It's not uncommon to see a slight dip in rankings before they increase. Really just depends on how Google handles them and how they fall in terms of value and your site's stats.
If it's an internal link or a website you control you should be uploading or submitting an XML sitemap regularly with data refresh rates to emphasize the new URL or new data. You can handle this in Google Webmaster Tools.
Fantastic resource!
One minor nitpick:
It appears that there is an error in section 3... at the bottom in the section "How long will it take for link building to improve a site's ranking?"
It reads:
"The length of time can vary greatly and depend on a number of factors:
It is much harder to personalize mass emails like this
If you make a mistake, it isn't just one recipient that sees it; all of them do
You can get yourself blacklisted if people start reporting you as spam
You are possibly breaking the law if you're mass emailing people who have not opted into being emailed in this manner"
That list of factors is identical to the bulletted list a few sections up that describes the downsides of using mass mail programs for outreach. It would appear that list got duplicated in the wrong spot.
Thanks! We noticed that, and it's on our list of things to fix ASAP.
Trevor, great guide. Also, using illustrations of Link in a guide about links, incredible! Also,
Great overview. Embeddable info graphics can be editorially sanctioned though, so I think they are fine in many cases.
This seems to be a good work for all level of SEO experts especially for beginners including myself. Thanks for posting.
I have a serious problem with linkbuilding.
I can't make bad linkbuilding, when I make it, always a buy 4 domains, and then I like it and make new blogs!
Hi admin,
Nice post. Thanks for sharing information about Link Building.
Very, nice, tks
Thanks for providing such a great information
There's no such thing as link building anymore nor tactics nor strategy - to think in those terms is bordering on breaking Google search quality guidelines. This article is just peddling falsehoods for people coming into SEO for the first time. Call it 'community outreach' or 'public relations' NOT 'link building'. At the end of the day, links have to come to you organically and naturally, but forcing the issue will get you a penguin slap.
Aside from the semantic debate we could have over the term "link building" itself, I'd be quite interested to know which pieces you believed to be falsehoods that we're peddling. I'm not sure if you've had a chance to peek at the guide itself yet, but there's a strong emphasis on earning links and a very obvious message that the old tactics are no longer viable.
As with so many issues, there's actually a lot of gray in that seemingly black-and-white picture you've just painted. Would you call outreach to influencers who you think might appreciate your content "forcing the issue?" I'd say that's a perfectly viable link building tactic; the person still has every option to ignore you, and if you get a link for it, you know that it's been earned. The fact is, though, those links won't just appear as if from nowhere -- it takes a bit of work to earn the appreciation of other folks around the web, and that work is what's outlined in this guide.
First, you're being a bit disrespectful, and second, you're really missing the point that is being put out here. There is a considerable difference between publicizing your website and building links via legitimate and natural methods and hammering out thousands of pointless and misguided links for the sole purpose of increasing your rankings.
Google has no quarrel with webmasters going out and collaborating to gain visibility and visitors by sharing links with sites in a mutually beneficial manner, or with webmasters pushing out great content across the internet with links. What Google DOES have a problem with is when people abuse this relationship in an attempt to game the system algorithmically (cloaking, keyword stuffing, etc.).
This is how many things in life work. Your neighbor probably doesn't mind loaning you $5 for lunch, but he might have a problem with you doing it 10 days in a row or asking for $50. So frankly, I don't see how this is such a hard concept to understand, or why we need to avoid "link building" like it's a taboo word.
Frankly, Moz and many other SEO resources do a good job at emphasizing quality and legitimacy.