If you've ever been the victim of a Google penalty, you know how painful it can be to identify the problem and recover from the hit. Even if you've been penalty-free thus far, the threat of getting penalized is a source of worry. But how can you avoid it, when it seems like unnatural links lurk around every corner?
In today's Whiteboard Friday, we're overjoyed to have Google penalty and unnatural link expert Marie Haynes share how to earn links that do comply with Google's guidelines, that will keep your site out of trouble, and that can make a real impact.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hey everybody. My name's Marie Haynes, and today we're going to talk all about links. If you know anything about me, you know that I've done a lot of work with unnatural links. I've done a lot of work helping people with Penguin problems and unnatural link penalties. But today we're going to talk about natural links. I'm going to give you some tips about the types of links that you can get that comply with Google's guidelines. These links are sometimes much harder to get than unnatural links, but they're the type of link that Google expects to see and they're the type of link that can really help improve your rankings.
I. Ask
Number one is to ask people. Now some people might say, "Wait, that's not a natural link because I actually had to ask somebody to get it." But if somebody is willing to vouch for your website, to link to your website, and you're not giving them anything as an incentive in return, then that actually is a good link. So you can ask family members and friends and even better is employees. You can say, "Hey, if you have a blog, could you mention that you work for us and link to us?" Now, if they have to hide the link somewhere to make it actually happen, then that may not be the best link. But if they legitimately are happy to mention you and link to your company, then that's a good natural link that Google will appreciate.
II. Directories
People are probably freaking out saying, "Directories are not natural links. They're self-made links." I'm not talking about freelinkdirectory.com and other types of spammy directories where anybody in the world could create a link. I'm talking about directories that have a barrier to entry, a directory that you would expect that your business would be listed there, and a directory perhaps that people are actually using. A good place to get listed in these directories where you expect to see businesses is Moz Local. Moz Local can really help with the types of directories that you would expect to see your site listed in.
There are sometimes also, though, niche directories that perhaps you have to do a little bit of searching for. For example, let's say that you're a wedding photographer. You might want to be listed in a local city directory that tells people where to find musicians for their wedding and venues for the wedding and also wedding photographers. That can be a really good link, and it's the type of link that would bring you traffic as well, which is another indicator of a good link. A good way to find these opportunities is to search for your competitors' phone number. You can do a search for the phone number minus their site, and that should give you a list of directories that Google actually thinks are good examples of links to your site. You can approach those directories and see if you can get a link to your site.
III. Industry connections
IV. Unclaimed brand/name mentions
This is a place where somebody has mentioned your business, mentioned your website, perhaps mentioned your name, but they haven't linked to you. It's perfectly okay to reach out to those people and say, "Hey, thank you for mentioning us. Could you possibly link to us as well?" A lot of the time that can result in a link. You can find these opportunities by using Moz Fresh Web Explorer. Also, I think every business should have set up Google Alerts to tell you when somebody has mentioned your business.
However, even with these set up, sometimes some things get missed, and so I recommend every month that you go and you do a search for your brand name and subtract out your website. You might want to also subtract out sites like YouTube or Facebook if you have a lot of those listings as well. Then, set the date back for one month and see what new mentions have happened in that last month. You may be able to reach out to some of those businesses to get links.
V. Reclaim broken links
A way that you can find broken links to your website is to go to Google Search Console and look at the crawl errors. What I'm talking about here is a place where somebody has linked to your website but perhaps they've misspelled the URL. What you can do, there are two ways that you can reclaim these. One is to reach out to the site and say, "Hey, thanks for linking to us. Could you maybe fix the typo?" Number two is to create a redirect that goes from the misspelled URL to the properly spelled URL. When you do this, you lose a tiny little bit of link equity through the redirect, but still it's much better than having a link that goes to a broken page, because a link that goes to a 404 page is one that doesn't count for PageRank matters.
VI. Be awesome
Journalists are always looking for stuff to write about. If you can do something with your business that is newsworthy, then that's fantastic. Something you can do is create an event or perhaps do something for charity, and journalists love to write about that kind of thing.
A good way to find opportunities to do things like this is to do a Google search for local and your profession. Let's say you were a hair salon. You could do a Google search for local hair salon and then click on news. You'll see all sorts of news stories that journalists have written about. Perhaps a local hair salon has offered free haircuts for veterans. That gives you an idea of something that you can do as well. That also gives you a list of the journalists that are writing these types of stories. You can reach out to those journalists and say, "Hey, our business is doing this awesome thing. Would you consider writing a story about us?" Generally, that would include a link back to your website.
VII. Get press? Get more!
If you're getting press, do things to get more of that press. I have a story about a client who had a product who went viral. What he ended up doing was contacting all of those people who had linked to him and offering himself as a source for an interview. We also contacted people who mentioned the product but didn't link to him and said, "Hey, could you possibly link to us? We'd be happy to do an interview. We'd be happy to provide a new angle to the story." So if you're doing something that is going viral, that is getting a lot of press, often that means that people are super interested in this aspect of your business, and you can usually, with a little bit of work, get more links out of that process.
VIII. HARO
...Which stands for Help A Reporter Out. HARO is an email list that connects journalists with businesses, with professionals as well. These journalists are looking for a source. For example, if you're a dentist, there might be a journalist who's doing a story about teeth whitening. That journalist might want to use you as a source and then link to you. A tip that I can offer is, if you're using Gmail, is to set up filters in Gmail so that you only see the HARO requests that contain your keyword or your business. Otherwise, you can get up to three of these emails a day, and it can be a little bit overwhelming and fill up your inbox.
IX. What content is already getting links?
A good way to do this is to go to Google Search Console, Links to your site, Most linked content, and click on More. This is going to give you a list of the URLs on your site and the number of domains that are linking to those URLs. If you download the list, you'll also be able to see the exact URLs where the links are coming from. If you have content on your site that actually is already attracting links, then this is the type of content that you want to promote to other people to get more links. You can also contact the people who did link to you and say, "Thank you so much for linking to me. Is there something else that we could produce that would be useful for your customers, for your readers?" Often that can give you good ideas for creating new content, and the links are right there if those people are willing to give you ideas to write about.
X. 10X Content
This is creating content that's 10 times better than anything that's out there on the web. This doesn't have to be expensive. It can just be a matter of answering the questions that people have about your product or your business. One thing that I like to do is go to Yahoo Answers and search for my product, for my profession, and see what kind of questions people are asking about this profession or product, because if people are asking the question on Yahoo Answers, it often means that the answer is not easily available on a Google search. You can create content that's the best of its kind, that answers any questions that people might have, and you can reach out and ask for links. If this is really, truly 10X content, it is the type of content that should attract links naturally as well.
So these are 10 ways that you can get links that will comply with Google's guidelines and really should make a difference in your rankings. These are going to be harder than just going to a free link directory or using some spammy techniques to make links, but if you can do this type of thing, it's the type of thing that really moves the needle. You don't need to be worried about the Web Spam Team. You can be proud of the types of links that you're getting.
Thanks for watching. I'd be interested in seeing what types of links you have gotten by creating great things, by doing things that Google would expect businesses to do. Leave a comment below, and I'm sure we'll have a great discussion about how to get links that comply with Google's guidelines.
For more educational content and Google news from Marie, be sure to sign up for her newsletter or one of her new course offerings on SEO.
Hi Marie,
Just to say I really enjoyed this week's post. I would like to mention something that could benefit other users too. From my experience, with "scrapebox" and visiting the website "expireddomains.net" you can get very good broken links from other webs which can then be used as an advantage for your website by writing a review or making a 301 redirection.
I thought that a 301 redirection only was valuable if the original web was about the same topic. Could using not related webs result in a penalization?
Thanks,
This is a good question and a tough one to answer. If you're using the technique described by Zulver, this is a little bit on the grey side. If I spent a lot of time finding expired domains to buy up so that I could redirect them to my website, this is something I'd feel a little bit uncomfortable showing to a webspam team member. There are a good number of legitimate uses for 301 redirects but playing with expired domains is rarely in line with Google's guidelines.
If the domain name is not blacklisted, has relevant links about your site and is redirected to your main domain surely this would work in google's eyes?
Hey Marie - directories... shock horror! I talked about this recently and there was seemingly some feedback from Gary & John at Google. Yet, there are search queries in the UK for local businesses that pretty much return nothing but niche directorie. Typically, local business type queries like 'plumber in birmingham'.
In this instance it not only makes good SEO sense but it's good marketing to be as visible as possible to your audience. Be that on third party directories or anywhere else.
The point here is quality - directories, guest posts, contributions, round ups - they can all be done in a good or bad way. Quality matters. Relevance matters.
I think as people we want things to be black and white - directories bad, editorial links good - but life is not really like that. Quality and real world relevance are the best measuring stick rather than any specific category.
Common sense is often the best way to do this - who would have thought! ;)
Talked about this a little more over here:
https://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/penguin-4-0-business-d...
I totally agree, Marcus! What good can a guest post on something like Business Insider be, if it's not at all relevant.
Thanks Marcus. There really are some good directory links out there. Like you said, quality and relevance matter so much.
Agreed! With regs to...
"I think as people we want things to be black and white - directories bad, editorial links good - but life is not really like that. Quality and real world relevance are the best measuring stick rather than any specific category.
Common sense is often the best way to do this - who would have thought! ;)"
Totally agree Marcus, Booking, TripAdvisor and that kind of marketplaces are not so long from directories like they let us know :P
I agree Marcus, both Gary & John has recently stated that 'directories isn't the right way to do link building'.
More ob the subject here if anyone is interested: https://semtuts.com/google-directories-not-right-way-link-building
If you're a local business, citation building is still very important for SEO.
Hi Marie,
I've had some experience with broken link building on Wikipedia. I found so called dead links, and I replaced them with a link to a relevant article from my site. Still can't say if I benefited in any way from those links as they were nofollow. I guess it's just a couple referral visits and diluting my link profile.
Please can you say which type of websites you listed Wikipedia?
I'd say this probably works best for informational sites and big brands. If you're trying to build wikipedia links to sits that heavy commercial intent, it's pretty likely that those links will be removed by other wikipedia editors.
Good idea. I've had some decent success doing this as well. I created a helpful tool for one of the websites that I run. I then edited the wikipedia entry on that topic to include a link to my tool. I got some referral traffic but better yet, I do think that I got some good followed links as a result as well. These happened when other people wrote about this topic. They would read the wikipedia article and find out about my tool there.
One problem I've had though is that if you try to do this too often, other people come in and remove my edit. I suppose those are probably competitors. Grrrr.
Thanks Marie,
I thought of giving up the wikipedia link building, but I think you're right, the wiki article with your link can actually bring good natural links to your site. I'll keep doing it then :)
Hi everyone. I would love to hear some real life examples from those of you who have been successful at getting good, high quality links to your site. Have you used any of the tactics I discussed? Do you have any other tips for us?
Hi Marie, great article, thanks.
With respect content - there is much value in spending time to get your content into the *right* high profile news sites / industry sites rather than submitting it to any old blog that accepts guest posts. The more difficult a venue is to get into the more reputation you gain from the link.
BUT this also has a cascading effect in many ways.
First, the article often gets syndicated and you end up with multiple links from sites you never heard of. Some rubbish sites, yes, but some really good ones as well.
Second, people recognise you as an expert and you'll get emails/calls out of the blue from journalists requesting your opinion on something or asking for a quote.
Third, when you do reply to journalists in places like HARO you can refer them to your article in Forbes, the WSJ, the BBC! That immediately establishes credibility and it makes a big difference as to whether they use your quote and give you a link.
Fourth, you can refer clients to these articles as well and the reputation of that destination site rubs off on you and clients are more likely to trust you and do business with you.
I'd put 10x or 20x the effort into getting published on a well reputed, brand name site than getting published anywhere else.
I love the idea of being able to get more HARO success because you can refer journalists to your article in Forbes, WSJ, etc. Great idea! Now someone should do a WBF on how to get published on great sites like that. :)
There is also other impressive technique - "How Do They Do It?"
In some industries simply impressive content with video/images how product is getting designed, manifactured, stored, transported. I often watch this TV show and honestly i learn new things in each episode.
Another example - video with outstanding class. Like this one:
Can you imagine that video about one excavator and two bulldozers can make almost 10M views?
Just person with camera was in right time and right place for that.
Such content is priceless.
PS: Link to video is - https://www.youtube.c0m/watch?v=ctmNrKK87GA but i can't post it here.
Great idea Peter. I think we really should all be doing more video. Sometimes I think we don't because we feel it has to be perfectly polished, but good and real footage is something that people just eat up.
PS: Just thought I'd add that this is from personal experience. I've chased and earned links to my site from the likes of Forbes etc.
Hi Marie, article is great.
But i tried to implement the tactics which you discussed in the article. I stuck on the directory portion, i tried to find directory sites. I am unable to do this because at the time of searching the directory sites, i didn't get any single directory website link so can you tell me how can i get those directory sites.
Hi, Marie! Thanks for the great article!
I think social media is the forgotten stepchild in marketing/SEO sometimes, but sharing particular links on Facebook and Twitter have actually been very effective for us. It's definitely a good one to add to the list, but maybe not as important as some of the other ones you mentioned.
Hi Marie,
I really liked this post, the most of the techiniques for me are ok, now I'm going to make an experiment: HARO for non-english sites, I'll tell you how it's works ;)
One great way to get links that I didn't find in here is testimonials. I have clients that use other business's products, and when I advise my clients to give a testimonial to them it usually generates a link.
Great idea!
Kind of surprised that the word 'relevance' wasn't said once.
I didn't notice that until you mentioned, Dan. I agree. I'm a bit surprised that this conversation isn't more zoomed in on that variable. To ensure that these links hold their value in the future I imagine that aiming for the highest relevance possible is pretty important.
Hi Matt,
Unfortunately relevance isn't a variable that you can sell. Things like DA, UR, DR, PageRank etc, they're a number, you can quantify a link building effort with a number and almost show an ROI. It's an easier sell than "hey, we got you these links off these genuine websites that are highly relevant". Everyone chases the "big link juice".
I really enjoyed this episode! I find that hearing others talk about link building strategies not only gives me new ideas but also validates my own thought process. I'm really excited to try the phone number trick to find relevant directories. Brilliant idea!
Great posts. I would like to add that press and journalist are always looking for good content and information. If you have that great content (great or nothing) you have done part of their job, and they will be glad to include it in their blogs or articles. This strategy may have incredible results
Great point. There is a real art to connecting with journalists and getting them to feature your content. But if you can provide them with a truly good story, then this can result in great links.
Thanks for this Marie, I always look at link building a shudder, but you've actually made it sound super simple. I'm glad you went into some detail about directories too, I was under the impression you just don't touch them, but clearly there's more too it.
Lots of discussion on today's post! Links are always a hot topic. I've had more success using HARO than any other link building method for my cleaning service.
I love HARO. I find it only works if you are legitimately a professional in your field. This is probably common sense, but I see it happen often. If you are using HARO to get links to a dentist's site, then you need to have the dentist themselves answer the HARO request.
I recently posted a HARO request as a journalist and not a source and it was eye opening to see what kind of responses I got. I got a huge number of responses and it was impossible to read them all. Hopefully soon I'll write an article about what I learned from being a HARO journalist. It has helped me to pitch better I think.
I would certainly find that useful. I don't know how many replies the average journalists gets, but I must admit their lack of replies can be, er, annoying at best. Especially when you've taken the time to put together several paragraphs of insightful advice exactly along the lines they requested. And, to make matters worse, sometimes I find they've used my ideas / material without crediting me.
Really? Can you share a bit of Haro wisdom with us? :D
I'd really appreciate it. I found it difficult to find niche related reporters in self development area.
Hello Marie,
Really helpful points we got in a single small post. Whatever you said about broken links I totally agree with that but what if someone creates lots of links in irrelevant sites in a weird way to show your bad impression. Exactly the same thing happened with my company, I was checking the backlinks of my site and suddenly found many links which were created in the irrelevant site, perhaps it was done by my competitor, so in that case how can we remove that. One thing more, what you think about that links which we get through Bookmarking sites.
Good one thanks, Marie!
Since Penguin 4.0, do you think you can be more experimental with link building with less fear of obtaining links which Google deems as not adhering to their guidelines?
Although all excellent, some of the things you mention are not fully 'natural' e.g. asking your mate to link to you. Though the big G could never really prove otherwise.
I think the only time a link is truly fully natural, is when someone saw your content, thought it was excellent and linked to it. Or if it was picked up by the press etc.
Since pure natural doesn't always happen (especially for the little guns), they may need to pee a little closer to the wind to get any kind of links. But with the revised Penguin, I guess people don't need to fear peeing on themselves as much?
Bon weekend,
Gill.
Hi Gillon,
I really did think that Penguin 4.0 would bring about all sorts of experimentation in regards to links. I'm sure some are doing it, but I haven't really seen much talk on how people are doing this. Manual actions still exist so I wouldn't want to be risking too much.
I'm going to disagree on whether or not asking someone to link to you is fully natural. I would argue that it is natural, provided that you are not giving something in return. If you ask me to link to you and I respect your website enough to do that, then that's a vote from me to you. I wrote a full article about this including quotes from John Mueller from Google here:
https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2396815/i...
Hi Marie,
Yes it would be interesting to hear more about how people feel about that post Penguin 4.0.
If John Mueller is not worried about negative SEO, in theory, we shouldn't worry if we're not sure Google will like/not like a link that we weren't 100% sure about?! Meaning in my mind, always aim for super high quality, but don't stress if you're a bit unsure.
I'll have a read of your article over the weekend. Saved to Pocket, thanks.
I may change my opinion once I've read it, but I guess the reason I would disagree that asking a friend to link to you is natural, is because a friend is biased. If you showed a stranger your website and then they decide to link, that would be natural!
Think of reviews instead. If your best mate reviews your product and gives it 5 stars, is that as authentic as a stranger giving you 5 stars?
It would never be a problem and I would ask friends, family, colleagues etc to link, just not sure I could call those kind of links 'natural'.
Cheers,
Gill.
I think the test for if a link is "natural" has nothing to do with the relationship of the publisher and site linked to, it's really just about wether or not the link provides value to the publishers audience. If it does, then it passes the "would this link exist if it weren't for search engines" test.
A paid for link could provide value to a publishers audience, but wouldn't be deemed as "natural", so I don't fully agree :)
Loved all the tips in the WBF. My experience about getting links has been a corollary of what you mention. Many a times on my travel blog I have mentioned places I have stayed or some hidden gem I mention on my blog about the place I visited and one fine day I find the property or a local directory promoting travel to that area / destination link to my blog without even asking. So I guess the opposite also works, if you mention somebody that is relevant to what you are writing they may also link back to you.
Hey Marie, thanks for this awesome video.
Especially at the end, where you mention that idea that you can use Yahoo Answers to find what people are interested in, is a gem. And it makes sense. I would do the same. First, I would search what I want to find in Google. I scan through it, and if I can't find the answer there, I am heading towards Quora and search it or even ask the question there. So yeah, great idea!
And about your question on how do I build my backlinks, I personally think that the hardest to do methods are always the best. Because everything that is easy can be done by a spammer, and you don't want to do the same techniques.
That being said, providing 10x valuable content, reaching out to those interested in your product or service, creating connections, offering interviews and even simple things like answering niche related questions on Quora or forums can bring tremendous value over time.
I also follow Brian Dean at Backlinko, because he also has some fresh out of the box ideas to earn links.
I hope this is helpful,
Cheers :)
I love the idea of search Quora for ideas too!
EXCELLENT BWF!
I mean, really, really useful! These are all the techniques we've been using, except for a few because they are not in our language speaking environment (e.g. HARO), but I must say that #5. Broken links is definitely what was the hardest thing to repair... So we had to do 301 redirects.
Loved the video!!!
Cheers,
PopArt Studio
Hello Marie,
Well, I have used many of these techniques, I must say that the Unclaimed brand/name mentions & Reclaim broken links both are very time consuming process and very less success ratio (according to my experience). But yes, if you get link by this way, you will rock for sure.
I would like to add one thing in your paragraph about Unclaimed brand/name mentions :- If you find your brand has been mentioned by someone else and you asked for a link back to your site, then they must have to give a link back. Otherwise, you can simply ask them in a good way to remove your brand name from their blog/site. In such situation, they will prefer to give link back rather than removing your brand name.
Anyways, good work done Marie, I enjoyed reading :)
Shubham,
Asking people to remove your brand name from their sites when they refuse to link back to your site is really BAD move. Google counts even simple mentions of your brand name (even if without backlink) when it comes to build authority for your site. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
BTW, has it ever happened that you asked someone to remove your brand name when they denied a backlink, so they actually removed it and replaced it with your competitor's name and provided them nice dofollow link along with it?? just being curious to know.
Hello Vini,
Thanks for the suggestion and I appreciate that .
About this point - Google counts even simple mentions of your brand name (even if without backlink) when it comes to build authority for your site. - I am100% agree and correct.
But at this point - Asking people to remove your brand name from their sites when they refuse to link back to your site is really BAD move . I'm not agree with this because you might took my point in other way (not sure which way). Reason is - Nobody can keep your brand name in their blog, website, newsletter or at anywhere without your permission or without giving credit (resource link).
So, what I meant in my last comment is, if somebody has used your brand name in their site (Intentionally or unintentionally), you can simply ask them to link back to your website (Nothing wrong in that because you deserve it). Suppose, if they refuse and you don't want your brand name to be mentioned on their blog/site then you can ask them to remove it, as simple as that. It's your choice, it depends on person what they want. I just shared the option that if somebody is not giving link back to you then no need to panic, you may ask them to remove brand mention as well.
I had such experience but in my last company so I can not share screenshots of the emails with you. Sorry for that.
Cheers !
Hi Shubham,
You have a good point about measuring success ratios. I think that brand mentions work well for some businesses and not for others.
Hello Marie,
Yes correct, it deepens on the type of business, it works only for specific niche sometimes but not for all.
Thanks,
Hello,
Great stuff Marie,
I think mostly SEO's people are preferring the first option of yours - "ASK". Yeah, it might be the best option for getting backlinks if our content is readers worthy & match with website/blog category and relevancy. Of course website authority is also matter.
My opinion for natural backlinks: - Infographic's are a good option for getting natural backlinks because it makes complex data easy to understand. With infographics we can easily get natural links, like -just need to make an embed code at the bottom of each infographic so people can link back. The possibilities of getting links from other web are endless. We can build links in many different ways; we just have to be creative.
Thanks!
Infographics can be a good way to get links but it's quite easy to cross the line into spam territory with them. I have seen a number of sites that will create an infographic simply so that they can list it in all sorts of infographic directories. A lot of those are pretty spammy and really, they are self made links so I don't like them. But, if you create fantastic content and people truly do want to share that content, then yes, infographics can work well.
Yeah absolutely. But i am talking about a good content infographics which is useful to readers. Thanks for your response.
This is a great Whiteboard Friday, Marie! A lot of these tactics would fall under traditional media relations or PR. The goal there isn't always (or hasn't always been) links, but rather coverage. It's a very similar approach whatever your end goal is, with a focus on being helpful and relevant to the press member or site you are approaching in the hopes of being covered. I'm really happy to see these tactics in here, and I hope this means PR will be tied into SEO and overall marketing more frequently. No one benefits when all these approaches are siloed. :)
Hi Marie,
It's nice to see companies that treat links as a catalyst for improved business performance as opposed to an output.
From my personal experience, I have always found that links from suppliers (especially in retail) are some of the best links that you can go after for four reasons:
Thanks,
Craig
If you are B2B, you could stretch that idea to get links from customers/clients as well.
Hi Marie,
I'd love to know what Google thinks of building a legitimate - and industry-related - scholarship opportunity for college students to earn links from .edu sites and scholarship listings (with focused outreach to quality sites only). Is this considered manipulative, and therefore spammy, or is this still recognized as a valid link opportunity?
In my opinion scholarship links can be natural but they can also be unnatural. The difference depends on things like scale and relevancy. If you have hundreds of links from scholarships and have very few other links then this may not look good to Google. If you have a scholarship called the "[My keyword] scholarship" then that can look like a link scheme. But if you have a legitimate scholarship and have links from respected places, then this should be ok.
I started doing Scholarship links for clients a little over 10 years ago. We actually offered a legit Scholarship from each client between $500 and $1000 each year. Brought in 100's of links. Since then I go back to these scholarship pages and you see 100's of companies doing the same thing. While I am not actively searching for these links any longer as I feel they have been degraded over time, our Scholarship page on our website constantly is a top 10 landing page and a few of those clients still doing the yearly scholarship.
I guess a question I have is the work I have done back then possibly hurting us now? Though my rankings don't seem to have suffered.
I think that scholarship links can sometimes work. However, if I was building an algorithm that decided which links to count, I'd probably build in some type of thing to make it so that links from scholarships didn't count so much. I'm not saying Google has done this, but I think they probably know that a site that gets hundreds of links from a scholarship they have offered, probably doesn't have hundreds of editorial mentions. I could b wrong though!
I doubt that those links are hurting you, especially in the new age of Penguin that no longer demotes sites for having potentially unnatural links.
Something i found useful is if your company does charity work with organisations ask that organisation for a link from any fund raising news etc you do as a business. It's not only good for showing 'human' side of your business but a .org link is a great thing to have.
I love this one. Link building by doing awesome things for charity is a great idea. Anything that gets you good press is a good thing!
Hello Marie,
An Awesome Whiteboard Friday Post, I loved to read it.
As far as concern the high quality links to your site, then I would like to give a real based example and the tactics which I do follow is..
I use to get high quality links by doing competitor link analysis. and then I do make lists of all links which I gathered from the competitors, and check those links one by one through https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/ to determine DA & PA for further evaluation of quality links.
Thank Marie,
Such a great article to build backlinks.
Stupendous Information.
What link building strategy you should implement, also depends on the content you would like to propagate. As getting a "natural" backlink almost always depends on third parties who may refrain of linking to you, and people would rather not link to commercial content like stores, manufacturers, or even classifieds portals, you as a SEO may be tempted to add some "unnatural" links (general-audience directories with no added value for people searching the web, for instance) and hope that Google will not find out and penalize you.
My particular case is a real estate portal targeted at a fairly remote part of the north-west of Germany. Interestingly, universities and student associations backlinked to us (because we have a college here, and every year, hundreds of freshmen look for cheap accomodation). Some (but not all) realtors who place their offers on our portal gave us backlinks. Municipalities are also quite a good backlink source (because they sometimes sell plots to build a house on), but in practice, only very small villages (with rather poorly ranking websites) linked to us.
Thank you very much for your advices Marie !!
We must keep in mind always doing things well, as Google likes and do not use black SEO techniques maybe without even having the intention. The best way to make a good SEO I think is trying to like our customers, our visitors, think they would like to find when they get to my site and from there, things will go well.
If we add our business to a niche directory, does that link need to be a nofollow link if we pay to be listed? or even if there is a free option? So if I am a wedding photographer and I add my business to a local wedding directory and pay to be listed, is that link a nofollow link?
Not every paid directory link is unnatural. Matt Cutts did a good video about this a few years ago. I am ok with paying for a directory link provided the following is true:
-The directory has a barrier to entry. So in example, only people offering services for weddings would be allowed in this directory.
-The directory is one that looks like actual humans would use it.
-The directory doesn't allow you to select your anchor text. The reason for this is that directories that allow you to select your own anchor text will often be spammed.
I rarely will pay for a directory listing just because it is a link source. But if I pay for a directory listing that has value outside of SEO (i.e. it could legitimately bring me clients) and it meets the criteria above, that's ok.
Completely agree with the value of asking people you know. I think the potential value here is hugely underestimated, providing a lot of opportunity for those ahead of the curve.
I love this blog!! Always such useful information here!
Hi Pratibha,
Are you talking about someone attempting negative SEO? As in a competitor was pointing bad links at you? If so, I wrote an article about this on Moz here:
https://moz.com/blog/preparing-for-negative-seo
Keep in mind though that all sites collect odd links. It may be nothing sinister. And now that Penguin 4.0 doesn't penalize for bad links, I'm even less ambitious about disavowing potential negative SEO attacks.
If you're trying to build links via social bookmarking, I'd recommend against it. This is an old tactic that is unlikely to help now. Google knows that those links are easily self made and IMO they rarely will count them for passing PageRank.
On the topic of links, what is the value of a link from a source unrelated to your industry? For example, I'm close to a followed link on my Moz Community Profile, but I'm not sure if it will actually make much of an impact. I also use HARO and get links from "how to run a small business" type websites, but again, they aren't really too related to the topic of "cleaning". How useful are these "off-topic" links?
I don't think anyone outside of Google can really answer this question with certainty. I really think that a link that gets clicked on adds value. So, if you have a link from an unrelated source and people are clicking on it, then that's great.
I do think that non-related links can be helpful though..just not as much as relevant links.
Thanks! Onwards to 200 points! The real goal is of course to learn about SEO, but the link is obviously nice. I guess it's payment from Moz for adding long tailed keywords to their blog posts :)
I always find writing about my favourite authors or documentaries got me great links. I mean, when you write about someone's book they kinda, wanna link back to you. But you have to make it worth their while. Just a plain text post ain't going to cut it anymore, it better be visually appealing or a video.
Sweet video!!
Love,
Jeph
Good point. I've never actually tried doing ego-bait. I often have wondered how well it would work. In all honesty, if someone wrote a great review of my book or another product of mine, I think I'd be unlikely to link back unless it was a really well known publication. For example, if a writer in Forbes or the WSJ did this I'd likely link back. But, if a regular blogger did I'd be flattered, but not likely to mention the review with a link.
I'm curious to hear more about your success with this tactic.
Hi Marie,
Thanks for making my Friday awesome Again.
All things that matter is how well you study your competitor. Make a plan to beat him.
And in the END highlight yourself as a BRAND. Get in headlines according to your niche. If you do that then i think after sometime you will emerge yourself as a Brand and people know you by your Name.
On point number 2, yell[dot]com is a perfect example of a 'legit' business directory. It's free, and if you're promoting a business (with a real location, phone number etc.) you should definitely be on there.
Hi Marie,
What are your thoughts on badge links? Lets say a manufacture has a "Certified Seller" program where sellers have to meet certain criteria. The idea is that customers will know that they are buying the real product from a reputable site when they see the badge on the seller's site. The seller places the badge on their site with a link to the certification program landing page. The customer can then view details about the program, watch videos, etc.
Hi Chris,
This *can* work well, but it can also be really easy for this to start looking like a link scheme. John Mueller has been asked about things like this before and he has basically said that it's ok to offer a badge with a link back provided that it is really clear to the webmaster that they are linking to you. You can't hide the link and you really should make it so that it is possible for the business owner to host the badge and choose to remove the link.
Also, to technically stay within Google's guidelines you need to make it so that there is nothing traded for the link. For example, you can't say, "Publish our badge and we'll feature you in our directory."
You also want to make sure that when you link back you are not using commercial anchor text.
And finally, be careful about scale. If your site has thousands of badge links but very few other naturally gained links then this could start looking like a link scheme as well.
Great video Marie. Thanks for sharing your knowledge of link building. I have a question that seems to get mixed opinions between myself and other colleagues of mine. What is your take on .edu and .gov link building? There is some .edu and .gov sites that are public access which allow you to create a profile and leave a link as well as in some bios they allow you to leave a bio and anchor text. I know that its better to leave links on sites that are relevant to your niche but is it still beneficial to get links on these sites if the spam score is low?
If you're creating a profile just so you can create a link to your site, do you think this is a natural link? I'm not against profile links, but I'd say to only make them if you are truly an active member of the organization.
brand - site:???????? not working for me
Am i missing something ?
Let's say I'm looking for brand mentions of Moz that didn't link to Moz. I would do this search:
Moz -site:moz.com
Be sure to put no space between the : and moz.com.
Then, I'd set the date back a month and see if I can find sites mentioning Moz but not linking. In this case, there are all sorts of mentions of Mozilla in my search, so I'll modify it to say:
Moz -site:moz.com -mozilla
Now I have a list of sites that mentioned Moz. I then have to comb through them all to see if any have mentioned the company but not linked.
Any one can recomend good place to look for links that are landscaping related and in state of Washington?
How about you build some sort of guide on things that are common to Washington such as a guide to the types of plants that tend to thrive in your state?
Then, do searches for things like:
landscaping inurl:resources
gardening inurl:links
and other things like that. You can then approach some of those sites to ask if they'd include a link to your new guide in their resources.
Take note though if you do this that two things are super important:
1) Your content needs to be REALLY good and helpful.
2) You don't want to spam every site under the sun with link requests. Be subjective in who you choose.
So much to learn so little time thanks for the expert advice on links! With an broken link is it better to link to your main page or an deeper link?
I think it really depends on a number of things. I would link to wherever makes the most sense for users. For example, if you have a broken link that is supposed to point to a guide on how to fix green widgets and you redirect to your home page instead of your guide, then that's going to frustrate users.
Hi Marie,
Thanks for this insightful WBF, learned a few things! There is one particular method however that I am struggling with:
Most businesses have connections with suppliers, with vendors, with clients, and with partners. These are places where you would expect to see that your business is listed. If you can get listed on these types of lists, then that's a good thing. A good way to find these is to find out what lists are your competitors on, take a look at their link profiles, and see if there's anything there where you should be listed as well.
There is a caution flag associated with this practice, relating to the "Link to me and I'll link to you" scenario described in Google's Link Schemes information:
Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
While I support and promote the concept of Strategic Partnerships as a link acquisition strategy, I also feel it must be qualified with the mention that these relationships should be a natural fit, meaning your services or products are complementary to one another. This shouldn't be a one-hit situation where you just get your link added to a running list, but an on-going relationship per the "Partnership" portion of this method. With a true Strategic Partnership, there should be natural and consistent occasion to link to said partner and them you as content is developed and published to the site.
I also feel this is one of the better methods out there as well, as the results often translate into evergreen links that provide success over the long-term as each site continues to succeed and grow its customer/audience-base.
Again, thank you for your tips here. Looking forward to sharing them with my colleagues.
Best,
Kyla Becker
Technical SEO Manager & Backlink Manager
Merkle, Inc.
Didn't read all the other comments, maybe this has already been said? # VII were you intending a play on words/theme? Got Press? (got milk?) anyway, that's what I assumed ... or what I would have done. Maybe you meant Get ... just sayin'
Great!
The next 5 - 10 times I look for links, I´ll read this post again :=D
Nice to see you on WBF Marie! Some good tips here. Two things I'd like to mention about reclaiming broken links:
1) You mentioned that "when you do this (setup a redirect from a broken link), you lose a tiny little bit of link equity through the redirect." Google has mentioned a few times that this is not true. You do not loose any link equity using a 301 redirect (ex. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-redirects-not-...).
2) You do not need to setup a 301 redirect for all broken (external) links. A lot of the broken links I get are from shady-looking sites. I don't think setting up a redirect for them is worth it.
I recall a post on Moz not so long ago which did some research on this 301 issue. From what I recall the Moz experience was different to Google's claims.
You mentioned using HARO and using filters in Gmail. I saw how to filter specific keywords coming from an email address (I made them starred), but how can I make it so only emails from that email address and with the keywords come into my email box, and nothing else from that email address?
Hi Marie,
I really liked the video, but I have a question about V. Reclaim Broken Links. Can you find webpages where they misspelled your link? Because it looks like you can only see whether the links on your own website still work. Where can I search the websites that misspelled the link? If you can use Google Search Console to find websites where they misspelled the link of my website that would be of great help! I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Romana
Hello,
I am using ahrefs tool to track the broken links, you may try it. Also, you can just google "broken links checker" , there will be some free tools as well. Hope this helps.
Thanks
Romana, you bring up a good point. If someone has misspelled your entire domain name then those are going to be hard to find unless they come up on a brand name search. What I'm talking about is where someone spells the domain name right but has a typo in the rest of the url. These will appear as 404 errors in Google Search Console. It's described in the video how I do that.
Thank you so much! Such great ways to get links. However, in practice it is really difficult to implement all of them
Hi,
My question is that how can i setup HARO! is Google Clearbit filter all the email?, email filter helps to provide categorize.
Hi Noman,
I'm not sure if I fully understand your question. What I do is set up Gmail filters that say things like, if the sender is HARO and it contains the word "[my keyword]" then send it to my inbox, otherwise archive.
Hi Marie
Thanks Marie for the total break down. Yes it is good to know that few directories are still important but I want to add one more strategy into the mix. What you think about Brokenlink Building I mean we can target those sites backlinks which are in our industry but has shut dwon their business or not live currently. So if we have backlinks of those sites then we can reach out to the backlink provider and can suggest our site with a similar kind of contnet just like the old one. Whats your say on that ???
Cheers,
Subha
I think that Broken Link Building might work in some verticals but in most cases it's a lot harder to get links this way than it was a couple of years ago. I own a few websites myself and a few times a week I get emails that tell me that a link is broken. (I know! I should probably spend time fixing those, right?)
My point though is that as a webmaster, I know darn well that those people are trying to use a tactic on me in order to get a link. It feels sleazy and I don't like it.
Link penalties are common across Google and almost all clients I’ve worked with have been through the same. This article is really helpful for all internet marketers and SEO experts. Thanks a lot for posting this, Marie!
HARO keeps getting mentions - I must be doing it wrong or something. I found it pretty time consuming to process all these articles which many felt like fluf and spam - I didnt find anything to follow through on. Do you guys have better luck with it? Is it something I should try again?
You aren't doing it wrong. For my industry/business I go through 30-50 HARO emails before I find one request worth spending some time on to compose a bespoke reply.
Hi Brendon,
I think the degree of success you can get with HARO depends on your industry and a few other factors. I have one client who has a success ratio of about 1 link for every 10 pitches. They're good links so it's worth it. I have another who is a dentist and gets a link almost every time he replies to HARO. And then I have another with an informational site. Although she is a recognized leader in her field, she rarely gets links from HARO. I think it's because her site is a direct competitor for most of the sites that are wanting to do interviews.
One thing that I do do is set up Gmail filters for HARO so that any HARO email that doesn't contain one of my keywords just gets archived and doesn't make it to my inbox. That may help.
Very good post, enjoy this article a lot, not only gives me new ideas, but also goes for new strategies.
Very helpful , i stopped foucing on directory links after reading this post , but link building is very touch job especially when google introuduced this rel="nofollow" t
Thanks for the article, Marie. I'm definitely a bit of a newbie when it comes to link-building, so I'll be coming back to this one for a while!