You are currently browsing the archives for the Link Building category.
1) Buying websites
It may be faster to buy an old site with a strong link profile, and link it to your own site, than to try to start building authority links from scratch.
Recommendation: If you find relevant websites to purchase, try to maintain their host and don’t make too many changes to the design and content of the website.
1) Local and business links
There are always some good links that can be acquired from local and business resources.
a) You can join the Better Business Bureau and get a link from your local Chamber of Commerce.
b) Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources.
c) Ask your manufacturers, retailers or other business partners to link to your website.
d) An affiliate program can also be designed to provide link juice as well as drive direct sales to your website.
Recommendation: All links help and you might as well get as many as you can.
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1) Directory Submissions
Submitting your website to directories is something every website should do but shouldn’t be taken too far. Yahoo and DMOZ are the best directories and are good links to have. Beyond those directories there isn’t big list of quality directories but they are helpful links nonetheless.
Recommendation: Submit your website into the most effective directories from trusted sources. They are easy links to acquire and can add value to your link profile. You can also create your own topical directory on a different domain and hosted on a different server then your website. This will give you a good directory link and it may have the potential to attract link juice that your website wouldn’t normally be able to receive.
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1) Article syndication
This is a popular method of building links and driving traffic to a website. How effective syndicating articles can be depends on a couple of factors. The articles need to be interesting and news worthy, no boring press releases and general information about your website. The content needs to be fresh or at least different then the content that is on your website. The best results can be achieved through writing different content to all the article submission services and directories that are available. Don’t expect to receive an anchor text link in the article with all your submissions. Receiving a link with your company name is also helpful to your rankings.
Recommendation: Submit your articles into as many syndication services and directories as you can, as long as the content is different in each. You don’t want to duplicate content. Try to get relevant keyword anchor text links when possible but company links are also great to have.
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1) Becoming an industry resource
Adding content to your website that provides helpful information to your visitors and your industry in general can help build links naturally for your website. Adding content to your website will add more weight to your website and the search engines may consider your website to be an authority in your industry, which will boost your rankings. If the content on your websites achieves good rankings, you will also attract backlinks from visitors who find your content valuable.
Recommendation: Create content such as “101 Lists”, “10 Easy Steps to Help You X”, “Extensive Resource Lists”, “Top 10 Myths for a Specific Category”, “List of Gurus/Experts” in your industry and other variations. These types of content are great for attracting backlinks and traffic.
9) Reciprocal links
Exchanging links with other websites can still help increase your rankings but it isn’t as effective as it once was. There is good value in exchanging links with prominent websites in your industry. There is also a method of 3-way linking that can be effective but shouldn’t be done in an easily identified pattern.
Recommendation: Try to exchange links with non-competing websites in your industry. 3-way linking can be very effective but you shouldn’t link out to unrelated websites or receive links from unrelated websites, which is a difficult arrangement to be achieved.
1) Varied anchor text
Acquiring links that contain the keywords you’re targeting in the anchor text of the link is a proven method of increasing your search engine rankings. Nevertheless, only concentrating on building links with the same anchor text can have a negative impact on your rankings. The search engines see all of your inbound links and can analyze them to determine if there is a natural variation in the anchor text.
Recommendation: Roughly 70% of your inbound links should contain your relevant keywords in the anchor text. The remaining 30% should be allocated to variations that contain your relevant keywords, less relevant keywords/phrases and variations of your company name.
General Advice
1) Make content easy to understand and accessible
Quality content can attract links for your website. Make sure the content is easy to understand and accessible to your visitors.
Recommendation: Make sure the textual content on your website is easy to understand as well as grammatically correct. Your visitors should be able to access your content with ease and it should be organized in an effective manner.
Well… Rand’s done it again. Rand Fishkin over at SEOMoz recently started a new series of blog posts called “Headsmacking Tips” for Link Building. Great idea for a thread and one I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on. In his first post, Rand covers link requests in order confirmation emails.
The concept is a simple one. Whenever someone places an order on your site, ask them to link to you if they own a website. Pretty awesome idea, leveraging your customer base to build links, but one that seo’s don’t consider all that often. At the bottom of your order confirmation page and/or within your order confirmation email, politely ask your customer to link to you if possible.
In my last post, I discussed the different types of link building methods that can be utilized. In this post, I want to look further at what factors determine the value of a link. Every link has a different value and you need to understand this if you want to make educated decisions on how you should invest your time and money. Since nobody has complete insight into the inner workings of Google and their algorithm, except people at Google of course, many of the factors that effect the value of a link are not completely agreed upon by experts in the industry. Although there are certain factors that everyone seems to agree on.
The most commonly agreed upon factors are Alexa ranking, Robots.txt excluded page, domain authority (in quality of backlinks), page relevance and the number of links. The most controversial factors are TLD, type of links, domain authority (in PageRank), domain authority (in rankings on irrelevant keywords) and target page location. The most important factors are Robots.txt excluded page, Anchor Text, link is on penalized page, page authority (inbound links), domain authority (in quality of backlinks), amount of outbound links on a page, total amount of links on a page, age of domain, relevant authority (in rankings on relevant keywords) and Javascript link.
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