A lot has changed since I got into link building a few years ago - link exchange is dead, ad banners are no longer all about gaining referral traffic, and buying links is more dangerous than ever before. Because of the changes mentioned and a whole load of others the majority of link builders don’t like to give away their secrets to sourcing links, even though it’s all pretty much the same at most agencies.
Most of the advice I will be giving throughout this post is most likely available from a large number of sources including SEOmoz but I felt it would be great to bring everything together under one simple guide.
Creating your link building strategy
Before building any links to a website it is important to ask yourself a few questions like:
- What kind of links do you need?
- Do you need nofollow and branded links?
- Do you have a wide enough range of anchor text and landing pages?
Sadly every strategy is different and people can’t answer these questions for you but hopefully you can use the following information to help answer the questions.
Link Placement
In recent times Google has started placing value in link placement, in-content links passing the most value and footer links passing the least, although a good link profile should make good use of every link type as going out and sourcing only in-content links would be a very big sign of an unnatural link profile.
Nofollow & Dofollow
A lot of people go out and source dofollow links, but in doing this they do more harm to their link profile. Every website should have a good balance of nofollow links - there have been cases where sites with a very low number of nofollow links have not ranked as highly as others who keep a good balance.
Branded Links
I believe Domain Authority and Domain Trust make up a fairly large chunk of the ranking algorithm. Even though there are loads of factors in measuring these attributes, one good sign of both is having a good number of brand based anchor text pointing to your website. Some people make the mistake of only building branded terms to the homepage, when in fact there is more value in building links using these terms to landing pages throughout your website.
Anchor Text & Landing Page Distribution
When working on a link building campaign, it is important to work on a wide range of landing pages, using a variety of anchor text for each. Working on a small keyword / landing page set can upset the balance of a website and can have a very negative impact long term.
Content Relevancy
Since the Google May Day update this year, relevancy seems to play a larger role in the ranking factors. Even though the days of keyword stuffing are over, there is still a need to reference your keywords within your content, header tags, URI structure and title tags. Content may not be king but it is one of the keys to a successful link building campaign.
Sourcing Links
Once you have your link building strategy done and dusted the next step is to find suitable websites to source links from. There are many techniques that can be used for this job, some of which rely on tools and others that use manual search queries.
Link Building Tools
If you plan to use link building tools then chances are you will be looking at links going to competitors’ websites. This is one of the best ways to start a link building campaign and can lead to positive results, some of the best tools for this job are:
- Open Site Explorer (Free / SEOmoz Pro Members)
- Competitive Link Research Tool (SEOmoz Pro Members only)
- Majestic SEO (Paid)
- Yahoo Site Explorer + SEO Quake Plugin (Free)
Manual Search Queries
It is said that it’s not the links your competitors have that will give you the edge but the links the competitors don’t have. To find these you will need to find link opportunities using manual search queries - the best way to do this is by using advanced search operators.
Advanced search operators are not as complicated as they sound but if used correctly they can provide a very nice set of search results. An introduction to advanced search operators can be found here and a short introduction can also be found on my personal blog under the post finding the links that matter.
One search string I would recommend when looking for suitable blogs for most niches is:
[search term] -site:Wikipedia.org -site:blogspot.com -site:telegraph.co.uk -site:wordpress.com -site:about.com -site:nationalgeographic.com -site:guardian.co.uk -"directory" -"add link" -"advertising"
Depending on your niche other domains can also be stripped from the results.
Directory Submissions
Directory submission is the most boring and repetitive job, but sadly it is an important task in any link building campaign. These links make up the numbers when it comes to branded links. Submit to the right directories and they will improve your overall domain authority.
Blog and Forum Commenting
Blog and forum commenting for links is seen as spam due to many people taking advantage of unprotected blogs and forums. If blog and forum commenting is part of your outlined strategy then some effort should be put into them.
The best way to act on this kind of link building is by using Google’s blog search to find the most recent articles published within your niche then make a genuine comment based on the content of the article, using the Name field for branded anchor text. This type of link building is best for increasing the number of nofollow links to your website.
Guest Blogging Communities
Guest blogging is a great place to find blogs within your niche, but instead of offering to do a guest post why not offer to write a few pages (I say pages as they are linked to via the top navigation) of content for them? After all these people want content and being able to source multiple pages not only saves time but can also lead to Google seeing the links as trustworthy, just remember to link out to authority sites within your niche as well.
Widgets & Theme Designs
There has been a lot of talk about creating widgets to increase the number of natural user generated links, which does work, but the widget you create does have to be unique and worth having so there isn’t a gap for this in every niche.
Another way to increase the number of user generated links is by creating a WordPress theme, a lot of people have said there is low value in this but if the theme is good enough it can generate 40k+ links (from previous experience). If you wish to go down this route the best way to market it is via your monthly newsletters, just put in a small section about it and wait for results, but remember to also submit it to theme hubs around the web for additional exposure.
Link to Us Pages
Link to us pages are not only great for increasing the number of user generated links but great for masking other link building activities. I would suggest having a link to us page displaying all the branded terms used within your campaign and have different types of links for each (Banner Ad, Contextual Ad, Text Link).
Competitions
If you client is running competitions contact bloggers in your niche and ask politely if they would blog about it. Although getting targeted anchor text through this tactic is harder it can help build the number of generic keywords linking to your domain.
Contacting Webmasters
Making contact with webmasters is one of the most difficult jobs - just about every email sent out needs to be personalised and in some cases contact is needed via social media before an email has been sent.
When sending an email to a webmaster, remember they are a real person just like you, so ask yourself a few simple questions before drafting:
- If you were the webmaster what would persuade you to link out?
- Would you rather a relationship was formed before receiving a link request?
- Should the email be from an SEO’s point of view or would it be better keeping it simple and to the point?
Tracking Progress
Tracking the progress of your link building campaign is something that needs to be done. This can be done in a variety of ways but the best solutions I have found is using Raven Tools for overall tracking of performance and using an Excel document to keep a list of links built containing metrics such as Page Rank, mozRank and Domain Authority.
Having a list of metrics for each link enables you to display a variety of information relating to your link building campaign which helps when generating reports for your clients.
Conclusion
Although link building is a tough task in itself if you plan your strategy properly, build the correct links and track the progress of your strategy the job will become easier over time and you will begin to see what works and what doesn’t for your client.
Just remember every link building campaign is different, even if you deal with clients within the same niche as each website has a different infrastructure and domain history.
If you enjoyed this post then why not visit my Blog or follow me on Twitter.
Great great job indeed Scott.
If I could I would thumb you up several times.
This guide is a good starter in the so hard and tricky art of link building (the one I will consider myself always a student)... and I appreciated your "almost" in the title.
I think the post deserves to be on the main blog:
Again, good job
Completely agree with you G. I think the post deserves to be bumped up to the main blog...Period.
thank you for your comments :)
I agree - there should be more ideas for link building added but the post is a great beginner post as well as a refresher, really
Awesome post. Link building is one of the things I dislike the most about SEO :) But it's such a huge part, that any SEO not devoting a lot of study and practice to it most likely isn't going to get the job done.
I have two quick ideas to add to this. First is blekko.com - if you haven't heard of it, it's a new search engine startup that is still in private beta. But it's pretty easy to get an invite at this point. It operates around slashtags. They are predefined and user created search modifications that allow you to search only sites that you want to search. It's a lot like creating a shortcut for using the "site:" operator on multiple sites. An awesome trick is that you can do inverse slashtags by adding the "!" operator in front of it. That means you can search everything but the sites in that slash tag - getting rid of a lot of the sites you know won't link out. About.com, Wiki, etc. This clears out a lot of results you don't want to see pretty easily.
Oh, and their results vary from Google's a lot. That means there are sites on top that probably don't get very many link requests and will be more open to them. Sorry for the shameless plug, but I think Blekko is pretty cool.
Finally, don't be afraid to get customers to link to you or mention you in the social universe (socioverse?). This can be a HUGE source of links. Customers already give you some amount of trust, so they're pretty likely to throw a link your way - especially if there's something in it for them (Google never says not to reward a customer for linking to you, give them 5% off or a free t-shirt).
Thanks for the comment.
I didnt mention blekko.com due to its small index, in the future this could be a great tool for getting a quick analysis of a websites internal and external link structure.
Blekko isn't really a big search engine yet but is good to take notice of because of the use of slashtags versus the normal algos of search engines like Google. It will probably be a niche search engine or will grow to something more. Also, I will write a post on all of the tactics I've found through time on link building. It is a HUGE article so I'll have to go through and get rid of methods that don't work anymore and structure it correctly.
Well said MountainMedia. Thanks for the mention about blekko.com. Really a great tool.
Links are important (including nofollow links).
If it is nofollow it is still a link and search enginge can see it. To have it balanced is even better. Of course it is better to have links from similar industry and definitely with anchor text.
Thanks, very good post !!
Thanks for the comment, I have seen instances where links from noindex / nofollow pages still have an effect on rankings (through personal tests)
It is good to know. I always thought there is no effect at all.
That is really interesting. Do you happen to have the details of any of those tests? I would kill to see them.
PS - Great blog; very helpful. Thank you.
Ill look through my notes and try to make a blog post out of it :)
Yeah, if there is a blog post made (with data included) on how nofollow links work, you'd be marketed all throughout the web.
Agree 100%. Nofollow link does have an affect. Search engines are made by people and people know how look through website content. If website is linking to some other website (follow or nofollow) search engines do take it in consideration. If there is a link there should be a reason.
I can not imagine how nofollow would not be counted. With all the social webs that are no follow, how can all this referral be not counted? If people are the ones "voting" and none of the votes are counted from social sites, then that would greatly diminish the vote integrity.
The question might be, not if they are counted, but if Google counts them differently.
I agree with you. It is not that the dofollow or nofollow. It is always the link, "A link is a link". I have seen a lot of results that way and it definitely works.
Enjoyed reading this Scott. Very insightful and can see you took your time to write this as well.
I've never been a great follower of nofollow links but you do make a good point so maybe I won't avoid it even with a stick any more. But I'm definitely not going to be building my 'empire' on them.
And yes, I do agree directories do have their own value, especially at the initial link building stages for websites, sort of like a foundation.
Thanks! Tola.
When it comes to nofollow links the best way to get them is through social media, I dont purposly go out and say "today im only building nofollow links", I just build links nomatter if they are nofollow or dofollow.
Yahoo Site explorer is gone.. that's Sad now OSE can only save us!!!
Nice post Scott. This is a perfect 101 on link basics to send to those DIY clients.
MountainMedia mentions customers above, but don't stop there. Vendors, partners, resellers, and other connections are all potential link sources. It's my personal experience that there are dozens of link building opportunities missed by most companies during the daily course of business. Just educating company employees about the importance of links and asking them to evaluate their rolladecks and consider link building opportunities during their daily activities can produce high-value links that your competitors will have no shot at getting.
Oh, almost forgot, great post. Thanks a lot.
Great additions there, thanks :)
Your piece was deemed excellent and made it to paper for viewing over the water cooler
Thank you
Im glad you enjoyed this enough to print it out, I didn't plan on this being so popular :) lol
As an accompliment to SEOQuake, I'd recommend installing the SEO Link Analysis Firefox extension from yoast. It's handy for seeing what the anchor link text contains, whether links have been lost or it's a nofollow.
Great post.
Thanks for Raven Tools, I now have a new product to check out. What an awesome takeaway.
But...
I have to disagree with your statement: "Content may not be king but it is one of the keys to a successful link building campaign."
I still believe content is king. It just so happens that there may be many kings in a certain industry and how do you differentiate yourself. If you can, you can still prevail. This is completely dependent on the industry and target audience, etc... but it is all about the content.
Content is important, but if its king then it needs a strong queen behind it. You cannot dominate links with content, but links can easily dominate content.
Wow, that was a bit of a mouthful haha. Great post though. Always good to hear peoples link building strategies.
Thanks for the comments. The argument can really go both ways depending on who is talking about it, you can have links without content but the content wont rank without links :)
I notice you didn't mention article marketing. Is the time spent writing articles worth the link juice you get from article submission sites? i know that there are only about a half-a-dozen article directories, at that most, that are worth submitting to, and that Google may devalue or ignore submissions that contain duplicate content.
Also: What's your opinion of posting answers with a couple relevant links to your own site on Yedda.com and Answerbag. When I first discovered them, I thought I had struck gold -- from an SEO standpoint, but the Page Rank of the pages on which you post are usually '0' or '1'.
Thanks!
-- Joel
RE: Article syndication sites
There are pros and cons to sites like ezine, helium, goartcles and other content syndicators as link building tools.
I use all three and have built a number of in-bound links but the problem is, once you post a piece, you don't know who's going to download it or what they're going to do with it. You may get your backlink but the piece may be truncated to fit a certain space, or the site owner may add a bunch of spam.
In one case, the site owner downloaded an article on conducting a job search and added "blue pill" in various places - obviously not interested in teaching job search skills. When I contacted the site owner, no response and when I contacted ezine I got a coffee mug and two cool pens with the ezine logo imprinted on all. Not very helpful and did nothing for my creds as a copy writer.
On the other hand, I posted a piece on foreclosure and landed a copy writing gig for a Dallas bankruptcy attorney. Go figure. The piece was never downloaded. The client found it on ezine or helium or some other site. (I should ask).
Hope that helps.
Paul
Sorry I missed this comment, Article marketing is still important, it can generate quite a few additional links if done correctly, although there becomes a point where each hub gives less value plus there is nothing stopping spammy websites from using your content.
Wow Scott. What an awesomely comprehensive post on link building (one of my very least favorite pastimes BTW) . Thanks for putting it all together and sharing the info with us. If I can only give you one thumbs up, I'll make it the thumb I hit with a hammer (thereby making it a bigger thumbs up)
Thank you for your comments (i know ive said that alot above but i mean it). I did my best to get in everything people talk about plus a few things from my personal toolbox :)
Wow, indeed. This is very valuable information that I can use like today.
Can I send you a gift basket?
This is understandable, utile and salable information that'll help me help clients.
Off to explore the pathways you've described.
Thanks,
Paul
not a problem, at the end of the day I do blog posts like this to help the community. Link building isnt something everyone knows about and I felt somethign like this could really help :)
I Like how you show the paid & free tools to use for link building,
Nice article!
Another great tool is SEO Site Tools for finding data from Majestic, SEOMoz as well as Google, Yahoo and Bing, etc.
Use Aaron Wall's SEO For Firefox tool too which shows details on all sections of data in the search results for whatever webpage or root website you are looking at. With these, you can see competitor links and can build the same links or use search operators like what was said in this post.
Hey Scott great article and very helpful. I haven't had a chance to read all the posts although there are many to read. I think social media, comments on blogs and links on facebook are going to become more important as time goes on considering the new wave of interest in social media.
The search engines will take notice of this especially when there are business dollars coming into the equation. Many businesses can now set up a business page on Face book now and also advertise. I have just read a report on how B2C are the main business users of Facebook although I cant see B2B wanting to use Facebook as much in the format offered at present.
BTY here is the URL of the whitepaper on Social Media if anyone wants to browse
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-industry-report-2010
Regards
Paul
Thanks Scot, great update on Link Building Strategy. Maybe you can offer us a series of articles on the subject: Optimizing resources, budget, spreadsheets, impact, etc...
thanks for the comment, Im open to suggestions for my next blog post and ill keep yours in mind :) thank you for the idea :)
I recently hired a PR rep to pitch our stories to professional media - we are gradually getting links from truly editorial sites. I have rarely seen this mentioned as an important way to get links, but it seems to me that acquiring real MEDIA stories, not just blog links or directory links, is going to be even more important in the future.
We are still in the initial stages of seeing results, so I'm holding my final judgement, but I do hope that the search engines continue to devalue the trash links and give the credit to sites that can actually get media stories written. It seems this is a more accurate implementation of the intention of the PageRank "voting" concept.
To be frank though for the cost of PR it does not give a return. Journalists are now switched on to SEO and don't give you the links. So its all in vein. Its gets very annoying but its rare you get a link even if you use your domain as the company name. Even the pr sites dont link it and if you do you get nofollows or your link stripped.
Fantastic post, especially with many good suggestions for finding quality links.
Link building can be a pain and the use of good tools is imperative so thanks for the suggestions.
The SEOMoz Open Site Explorer is brilliant.
Would love to be a SEOMoz Pro member but will have to land some big enough clients to justify the expense! In the meantime, will box on with other cheaper tools.
Wonder if the SEOMoz folk have thought about other plans for small businesses - ie more campaigns with less keywords? We help small businesses who don't have the funds for significant SEO campaigns but can get good results with a tight focus on up to 20 - 30 phrases.
Usually with small businesses their is a smaller budget so i fully agree that focusing on a smaller keyword set can benefit both the business and the SEO, I suggest focusing on long tail keyword and increasing conversions before focusing on the keywords that bring raw traffic.
Fantastic post, especially with many good suggestions for finding quality links.
Link building can be a pain and the use of good tools is imperative so thanks for the suggestions.
The SEOMoz Open Site Explorer is brilliant.
Would love to be a SEOMoz Pro member but will have to land some big enough clients to justify the expense! In the meantime, will box on with other cheaper tools.
Wonder if the SEOMoz folk have thought about other plans for small businesses - ie more campaigns with less keywords? We help small businesses who don't have the funds for significant SEO campaigns but can get good results with a tight focus on up to 20 - 30 phrases.
Hey,
To be honest im not a pro member either, I use the work account from time to time but not as much as you would think. There are loads of tools out there, its all about finding the strategy and tools that works for you and your clients. Although im not saying if you have a chance dont get a pro membership because if used correctly it really does pay for itself.
Great post, I think the facebook NOFOLLOW links are worth mentioning, delicious bookmarking and forums. I just picked up some great links this morning from a forum with a DA83 and PA22.
Love all those tools, especially Open Site Explorer . Read the Link profiling Blog by Dr Pete https://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-profiling-with-open-site-explorer before using it.
Hey, thanks for the comment, not sure if you have noticed but you can get followed links from facebook, have a look at my profile page - https://en-gb.facebook.com/scottmclay.seo
P.S anchor text is not allowed on the public profile only the URL :)
cheers, thanks a lot...I'll give it a go
Good post, MC!
Really liked it!
Thanks Feli, hope you are well
I use search operators all the time....however, your string:
One search string I would recommend when looking for suitable blogs for most niches is:
[search term] -site:Wikipedia.org -site:blogspot.com -site:telegraph.co.uk -site:wordpress.com -site:about.com -site:nationalgeographic.com -site:guardian.co.uk -"directory" -"add link" -"advertising"
Has already yielded a few fantastic results. Thanks!
Hey,
Im glad your getting good results from that, to be honest that string is just a starter, by modifying it to each niche you target will bring better results.
Great post on link building. The guide is really a complete one. Mentioned almost all the possible link building tactics. Nice to see them put altogether in one place. Thumbs up for the hard efforts put up Scott! :)
Great post. Also don't under estimate the power of signatures. Forums (as do other social media sites) allow you to include a link as part of your signature. That link then gets included on every post you make. And if you are going to include a link in your signature, include anchor text in the link... Long tail keywords work particularly well - here's an article on anchor text : Long Tail Keywords : Using niche keywords to get traffic most businesses miss.
Hey Scott
I'm a bit surprised about your post including no-follow links & directories !?
I was under the impression that no-follow links are ignored by the search engines, I noticed that in a comment you say they pass on value (though less than a normal link and no anchor text), do you have any material about this? Would like to read more about this, because right now I hit the 'back' button as soon as my Firebug tells me they only allow no-follow links ...
Secondly, I was under the impression that directories are mainly ignored by search engines as well, as they have too many outgoing links jammed together on one page. I see a few of them in my yahoo site explorer, but almost none in my google webmasters, though in the first months I've been submitting my website to any directory with a high pagerank ... to read later on that directories are basically a waste of time ?!
I do however use commenting as a good do-follow link building strategy, agreed most blogs don't apply do-follow, but there a few out there that do (even with good pageranks/mozranks) and in my experience those are easy anchor text links! They do show up in my yahoo site explorer, also in the opensitexplorer, but not in google webmasters ...
Thx for the feedback :)
nofollow links used to be ignored by search engines until people started abusing them for pagerank sculpting, now to avoid the abuse some value is passed, also for a link profile to look natural these types of links are required simply becasue they are so common.
As for directories, Google love links that are from places from editorial guidelines, quite a few directories fall under this category.
Thank you for this great post. Is there a listing of directories that google loves? I mean, how do you decide which directories to submit to, and which to avoid?
Google loves editorial links, I would suggest when looking for directories to keep a close eye out for spam listings and cache date of categories. There are loads of good directories out there that can be used to build a solid base for any link building campaign.
A number of directories are paid directories, asking for a fee anywhere from $50 - $300. Are paid directories worth the money spent, or should one just concentrate on human edited free directories?
Some high value directories are worth the fee, for example Best of The Web and Yahoo are great directories but they are not necessery, the best thing to do is work out what types of links you need for each client, every requirement is different. If the client needs high quality directories then as I mentioned above it will be worth it.
Just make sure that if your paying for a submission make sure that the page you are putting the link on has been indexed.
P.S just to clear things up, im not promoting paid links with this - Paying for directory submissions does not count as a paid link as the payment is for the editor to check your submission, not to post it.
Sorry if this is obvious but what do you mean by a "branded link"?
A branded link is a link that uses the brand / company name within the anchor text :)
If you're SEOing a local business claim it on the local business listing site Wimgo and link to it from the individual business profile page. That's one quick, hassle-free and uber-relevant relevant link.
Good article!I think ways to build External links lack variety.
A refreshing inciteful post/guide.
Great to have something up to date.
I'm going back through the blog reading the most popular content right now. I see why this was popular - it's extremely helpful! Thanks!
Great article.
Thank you for your great guide. I do have a question. When I translated my site to danish with a subdomain did I see my ranking did improve in English keywords when you search from the danish google.dk. Is this true or just coincidence?
Thank you. Great input especially about connecting first via social sites.
Useful insight into link building. Always good to hear how other people link build.
all good stuff. Regarding this coment above, does anyone have any research results:
Link Placement In recent times Google has started placing value in link placement, in-content links passing the most value and footer links passing the least, although a good link profile should make good use of every link type as going out and sourcing only in-content links would be a very big sign of an unnatural link profile.
The above is conventional wisdom, but does anyone know of any research that speciifically provdes data that answers which type of link (say from the same site so that all other variables area equal) passes the most juice:
a contextual link with the "right" anchor text within a post created simultaneosuly with the post
a contextual link with the "right" anchor text within a post, created AFTER the post was created (i.e. the hyperlink was crated at some time after the post was published and indexed)
a comment link with the "right" anchor text
a text link with the "right" anchor text that is not either of the above (e.g. footer, blogroll, etc)
This article is perfect for anybody looking to start link building for better results. Links are so important for SEO and it can be daunting for a newbie, faced with many conflicting opinions on the subject. This really makes it clear and explains in depth what you should be doing when link building. Great post, good work!
Hi,Really great jobs...!
Thanks for this useful information you share with us.
I have read several articles and blog posts advising building inbound links at a slow and steady pace, but what quantifies "slow"? Is it 2 per week? 10? 50? How many inbound links to one page can I build in a week before search engines start to suspect me of spamming?
Scott, I love your post!
You just saved me a bunch of time. Now instead of me explaining to my new coworkers how linkbuilding works, I can just point them to your post and make them read it! Fantastic! Thank you.
Well explained, Scott! Every information on this post is helpful especially those who work as SEO. Me too, this is what I normally do.
Thanks for sharing it.
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Its very informative post. Link building is very important for increase website page rank. Thanks for sharing list of blog with us.
I've always suspected that nofollow links do still provide some value, and I'm glad to see you confirm those suspicions for me - sadly - others never agreed with me. But then again, I never really had a way to prove it.
Since nofollows were implemented as a way for sites to sell links (or differentiate them from natural links though) would I be way off the mark if I assumed they passed less value than links that were followed (leaving out factors such as anchor text, placement etc, of course)
It is true that nofollowed links do not pass the same value, tests have shown that Google does not fully flow pagerank through these links but I believe that there is still value in obtaining them as highlighted in my post.
I just wanted to thank you for shaing this article with us.
James Platteborze
Hi Scott,
When you say high value directories, does it mean directories with a high PR? Can I utilize the services of a directory submission company? I don't know if the directories they submit to really work.
Thanks a lot for your advice, really helpful for someone like me who is very new to SEO :)
Regards,
Sarthak
I am just writing my own SEO Strategy now for a new site and encorporating all these aspects and a few more. The business is in the already crowded website design field so it's going to be a bit of an uphill struggle but I believe I have found a bit of a niche but still, to rank top 3 for the terms I am interested in there is a long road ahead.
Anyhow, thanks for your post, loads of a good ideas there my friend.
Scott, re directory submission, you can use a company for some general purpose, low quality links to flesh the portfolio out but don't expect miracles from that as these people tend to work for peanuts so they need to just crank out the directory entries in the easy to get listed sites. I am going to go through a list of directories that I have researched myself + the seomoz list and submit to one a day (the road is long). Hope it helps buddy.
Marcus
Hi Scott,
Will directory submissions really help me build links to my site? If yes then what kind of directories should I submit to? General web directories or niche directories which are relevant to the theme and content of my site?
Regards
Hi Sarthak
Directory submissions can be important to any strategy as they can give your link profile extra noise, submit to the high value directories and your domain will gain some trust in the eyes of Google.
To be honest you are better off submitting to both niche directories and general ones (just make sure the category is relevant) but keep a lookout for submissions that are not relevant to the category as this can be a sign of low quality.
That is really very interesting. Links are important for increasing website page rank . This is very valuable information that can used today itself. https://letsrisetothetop.com
MountainMedia and Dvansant both mention something essential that I have been finding a lot of success lately, leveraging business networks.
You have clients, and vendors and consultants and a host of people you, your business or your client's business does business with. There are a lot of opportunities for links.
I have found authority labs new tool to be very helpful for finding any/all types of backlinks on competitors sites to see where I can be... I love the info on looking at where they are not! It is always the 'other' way of looking at the task that distinguishes you from the rest. Thanks
Great post - I agree it should go onto the main blog, an easy to follow guide that everybody can put into practise right away.
One thing you didn't mention that is a really great tool is SEOmoz's new 'Link Acquisition Assistant'.
THANK YOU!!!
You have just read our minds here in "not so sunny" Scotland! In the midst of an overhaul of our entire online strategy, due to several changes both off & online within the company, the clarity deserves many "thumbs up!"
Simple, to the point, no fluffing-up with technicalities, and is something that can be shown to (& understood by!) "Directors" to help justify actions proposed
Again, many thanks
:0)
.x.
Hey, Im also from Scotland :), im glad this post has helped you, at the end of the day there isnt much point in having a post on link building if it just going to be full of fluff.
Great post Scott, I agree with everyone above in saying that this post deserves to be promoted
Good Job!
Great article Scott - definitely a must read!
Nice article Scott.
....and it's good to see a Scottish laddie making it onto the main blog - well done...! ;-)
Thanks for the comment, im glad you enjoyed the article :)
Thanks for the article Scott. I'm new to the world of SEO (1 week). I've been reading as much as possible trying to wrap my head around the topics that are presented. I've found a lot of updated theory in my readings, it's nice to see an updated list of "How to/what to do". I'll be starting my first SEO campaign in the next few days and definitely will apply some of the link building ideas you've presented.
Hey mate, welcome to the world of SEO, SEOmoz is a great resource for anyone starting out, Im just glad you can take something from this post to help you on your way. Good luck with the campaign :)
Great article, and good info.
Thanks
good article...I re-twitted but I don't know if I agree with the link profile thing and nofollow..It's really depending on industry
I agree that every industry is different, but the information provided does apply to most industries. I feel that if I took the time to explain link building techniques for every industry the post would be far too long so I thought I would be better keeping it general.
Great post. Thanks for consolidating tatics into one post.
Directory listing on SEOmoz https://www.seomoz.org/directories
I do not know how updated this is, but it should help as a starting point...
SEOMoz Pro members only -- a great site on directories can be found as the second result on google for list of directories
I think it's a great summary, good job !
Don't forget... https://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professionals-guide-to-advanced-search-operators!
When you say "I believe Domain Authority and Domain Trust make up a fairly large chunk of the ranking algorithm" are you referring to the metrics used by SEOMoz? I'd love to see you expand on why you believe this as I agree that DA is important but in our niche based on the SERPS I wouldn't say it was THAT important.
Hey, when i talk about authority and trust I mean in the eyes of Google, the SEOmoz metrics are great in giving an insight into this.
Great - and complete summary actually.
Great advice.
Link building is quite hard and very time consuming process. I am always wondering why people who spam blogs and forums don't add value with good comment. I would happy approve not spammy comments but a lot of people (spammers) choose the easy way and just put crap into comments section. Wouldn't it be nice to have world without ugly spammers?
A lot of it is automated, hence generic, often nonsensical comments.
its also worth saying that allot of outsourced links can often fall under this category, if you want quality it really needs to be done in house :)
And it creates jobs for moderators like me!
Very good point, but I would rather not have loads of link spam to start with - all it takes is for Google to see a load of spammy links and take action on an innocent site before a moderator has had the chance to remove it.
Scott, thank you for this very useful guide. As an apprentice in the art of link building I can learn a lot from experienced link builders like yourself.
Thanks for the comment, link building can be hard to get into, but once you get the hang of it there will be no stopping you :)
Good post,
Why not do to things at once... given a high % social media uses nofollows, you can keep your social campaign going whilst creating a number of nofollow links ???
Very true what you said about varied anchor text. We recently got caught out on a site (one of our own) by submitting to a directory with very targeted keyword anchor text. The directory in question added our link to its latest links section which was in a side column thus displayed on every page of said directory, Google happened to crawl several pages of that directory over a two-four day period so the number of links with that exact anchor text went through the roof, result being a 8 page drop overnight and a few choice words!
Awsome guide - i really love how you keep all the acceptable methods in one article and still throwing in some creative and fun ones too.
Loved the one about doing blog commenting for the nofollow balance. allthough if you find the right blogs, you could get alot of dofollow links from blog commenting.
Hey thanks for your comment, I mentioned in a comment that Social media was a great way to get nofollow links, to be honest I regret mentioning this in the post.
I hope you got the problem with the directory fixed :)
I had theorized that local blog posts, although they are nofollowed, still help identify a site for its local importance. Leaving a relevant comment on a blog post adds quality to the blog post as an element of discussion; I publish meaningful blog posts. But it is sort of spammy to use keywords as your name in order to get anchor text, IMHO.
Thanks for reffering me to SEOQuake, I'm trying it out along with the SEOMoz SERP site data.
Great post, thanks!
Thanks for your comment, when publishing Blog comments I find its best to use a Name or Company Name, using keywords for these types of links as you say look spammy and have a smaller chance of sticking.
One thing I can suggest is if you come across blogs that allow HTML within the comment add in a custom signature, this will not be as spammy as having keywords in your name and if you add a great comment to the blog there is more chance if this sticking.
Thanks again.
Super blog post. I think most people want to go for the one type of link that will help them the most but your post here clearly shows the benefit and necessity of getting a bunch of different types of links. Great post!
thanks for your comment, people that only go after one type of link are easy targets for the competition, at the end of the day not every tactic works for every industry its all a matter of trying, documenting and analysing the results.
Good post. The only thing I would add to it is using analytic software to determine what secondary links you get from your linkbuilding campaigns. I would use google analytics to find out if the number of traffic sources was increasing and where it is coming from. Also, I would track the overall # of links pointing back to my domain, but this is harder because no one tool is quite accurate.
Thanks for this. The search string is certainly very useful, as is the SEOmoz guide to advanced search operators. It would be really cool to have a plugin which gives easy 1-click access to such queries when on google and other SE's..
There's also the whole section on testing added to the tracking segment. If you test properly and also use heat maps, you can use this to find good SEO traffic funnels to other sites and you can get more data on the links linking to you and where you should focus your efforts. On a different note, testing is best for conversion optimization, which traffic does lead to conversions but pages should be tested constantly.
Very good post.
I just wish that there were more Dofollow Links in Brazil.
It is very hard to find one.
Hi, thanks for the comment.
Have you tried looking for websites within Portugal?
Link building is time consuming but when it is built into a monthly workflow it is manageable. It is a key element of SEO and of course ironic that the least favourite aspect of SEO is actually the most important!
Can't get enough of this post, read it again today. Maybe it should be posted on the main blog!
Excellent article Scott,
I'm starting a link building campaign for my small site and your article provided much needed, starting point, info. This is going to bookmarks! :) It would be great to write/update an article about directories as well. Hope we can read some more interesting stuff from you soon.
Cheers from Croatia
Ivan
This is a great blog post and it nice to see someone come out and say what I have always believed to be the truth about no follows. I spent an age arguing with someone I used to work with about the value or not of no follows links. Don't go out of your way to build them but a few blog comments on topic related pages that engage with the post are important. The search engines would expect to see a degree of no follow links in an organic non seo'd link profile. Its really only us SEO's that understand what they are so a "genuine" link profile would contain them. This is a really good summary and I may well forward it to a number of my clients so they get a better understand of what a link building contains.
Excellent writeup Scott. Would you happen to have an example excel document of how you keep track? I've never been able (or could be bothered to figure out how) to setup proper tracking documentation.
Im glad you liked the post, when it comes to tracking documents every agency is different, sadly the one I created is company property. I really suggest you create one, it isn't too hard :)
I'm currently revisiting contacting webmasters. It's very time consuming and the response rate for me has generally been 5-10%. I really like guest posts because you are guaranteed a link if your article is accepted. If they reject it you can usually take it to another site to get it published. When guest posting, I try to aim for sites with a PR of at least 3 and at least a few thousand monthly visitors.
Great post. I got a few solid ideas out of it. Appreciate it!
Great linking building post! Get this on the homepage!!
Congratulations to making it to the main blog!!
Thanks for your post. A good linkbuilding strategy is about variation : for anchor, source, sites, nofollow/dofollow, trusted/not trusted website ... And that's the main difficulty : you need creativity.
Great post Scott... Thumbs up...