Archive for the ‘ Link Building ’ Category

experimentIf you’ve spent any time on this site, you’ll know I talk a lot about link building and my experiences with it. Link building is one of those necessary Internet marketing evils, and for the most part, it’s a big pain in the a**.

Sure, there are all sorts of tools that will automate the link building process (think SE Nuke or EdwinSoft’s Ultimate Demon) and these are fine for getting a base of low quality links. However, obtaining quality in-pointing links is a tedious, hands-on process, that often doesn’t bear fruit.

Webmasters of quality sites guard their links jealously, and won’t hand them out to any webmaster who comes calling, and certainly not one of a low quality website that can’t provide something in return.

Prior to the Panda update, I had a pretty relaxed attitude towards link building; a few blog comments here and there, some directory submissions, link exchanges with relevant sites, a handful of videos posted with their links pointing to the most appropriate pages, and so on.

Mostly I just focused on creating the sort of great content that garners links on its own.

That doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.

Today, in a post-Panda world, it seems to me that a much more aggressive link building strategy needs to be considered – which is why I’ve written so much about link building on this blog.

One of the strategies I’ve always considered but never put into practice is the Web 2.0 strategy; creating high quality material on Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, Tumblr, Weebly, etc, and then linking those sites either directly to your “money” site, or to each other in a complex link wheel, and then to your money site.

That’s after you build some links to those pages as well, of course.

And, since Web 2.0 sites have a ton of authority with the Search Engines (SEs), the links gained from pages hosted on them can have considerable weight – especially if those pages you created have received links of their own.

I’m not sure I buy into the “linkwheel” strategy: it is manipulative (as far as the SEs are concerned) and too easy to reverse engineer. In other words, to me it looks more deceptive than a straight link. There’s no reason to my mind why a SE would ignore a direct link from any Web 2.0 property to your web site, unless, of course, you have a zillion of them and your page is of extremely low quality. That’s a dead giveaway.

I’ve seen some webmasters argue it makes sense to link your Web 2.0 sites together to further build the authority of the sites in your Web 2.0 network, thus transferring greater “link juice” to your own site in the process. Who knows whether this works or not for sure?

One of the reasons I never bothered with this strategy is that is seemed like a LOT of work. I won’t post crappy content under my name, which means I’d have to create them all myself, and with my regular content creation duties and the sheer number of web 2.0 sites worth considering, I’d never be able to get it all done.

Obviously then – considering the title of this post – this is something I’ve reconsidered. I’m thinking that I should develop quality material on the top 5-10 Web 2.0 sites. Build them, let them “sit” for a month or so, and then add a link or two to my money sites.

Yesterday, for instance, I created my first Squidoo lens – it’s on the subject of body building supplements, and today I created a second one on job training (for my new job training and certification site). It was a fairly painless process, although I imagine it will become less fun each and every time I create a Web 2.0 page.

Since I’ve seriously been considering hiring a virtual assistant this year, this seems like a perfect task to outsource.

In the meantime, stay tuned for updates and results on the Web 2.0 experiment. I’m curious to see how it turns out.

What They Don’t Tell You About Blog Networks For Link Building

Toilet and moneyBuild My Rank. TrafficKaboom. SEOLink Vine. Unique Article Wizard. Article Ranks. Blog Blueprint.

I could go on, but you get the point. These are all link building networks – large networks of sites and blogs owned by marketers for the express purpose of link building.

Here’s how they work…

You sign up for the service of your choice.

You pay a fee, usually a regular monthly subscription which ranges in cost from around $50 per month and up.

This gives you access to the network.

Now you can post articles, blog posts, and sometimes, short 150 word “snippets” to the network, and include a link back to your site. The specifics of how many posts you can make per day, or how many different sites you can add to the network varies greatly depending on the service to which you subscribe.

For instance, with Build My Rank (which I wrote about some time ago after trying the free trial of the service), you are allowed to add 5 sites to the network, and make an unlimited number of posts. Each post must be a minimum of 150 words, and can contain one link back to your site. All posts must be unique and well written – no spun material is allowed.

On the surface, belonging to a quality network – which can contain sites with a PR (Page Rank) ranging from 0 to 6 (again it varies from service to service) – seems to make pretty good sense. Why bother hunting down blogs to solicit guest articles or make posts on when, for a small monthly fee, you get direct access to tons of such sites that will post your articles without question?

Well, here’s where we get to the part where I tell you what the gurus are not telling you about using blog networks for link building…

There are two main things…

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Link Building Strategies: Build My Rank Review

Vintage felt hat

I must admit, I investigated the Build My Rank (BMR) network with some caution. Had a trusted friend not raged about the service and its effectiveness, I probably never would have checked into it. However, curiousity got the best of me, and over I went.

trepitrepidatiously. Had a trusted friend not spoken so highly of the service, I may never found it. BuildMyRank is, of course, a

As you are no doubt aware, in-pointing links continue to be a huge factor in obtaining decent search engine rankings, and accordingly, traffic. In the olden days (and by “olden”, I mean 5 or 6 years ago) you could put up a web site, and – provided you had done some keyword research and targeted the appropriate words and phrases – start receiving traffic almost immediately. I find that no longer seems to be the case. You simply must have links- and lots of them – if you expect to see traffic.

Build My Rank is, of course, a link building system; it’s a large network of authority sites (with Google PRs ranging from 1-6, according to the advertising) which you can gain access to for a very reasonable monthly fee.

For $59/month, you can set up profiles for 5 web sites (a subdomain counts as a separate web site) and obtain an unlimited amount of links for any URL within those 5 domains.

Here’s how it works…

Once you have accessed the BMR system by signing up for the free trial, you create short, 150-word “posts” which contain a link to whatever URL on whatever site you happen to be promoting.

The posts then enter a queue until a staff member reviews them for quality. Should they pass muster, they are then posted to their network. Once they are posted, you can login to the dashboard, and check the PR of the sites your links are posted on, and whether or not those links have been indexed by the search engines (the exact URLs of the links are not revealed, to protect the integrity of the network. Decent link tracking software should identify them, however).

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Article Marketing For Backlinks: Is It Still Effective? Does It Work?

thinking Article Marketing For Backlinks: Is It Still Effective? Does It Work?

Before beginning this discussion, I have to confess a personal bias; I’ve never really found article marketing to be a particularly worthwhile strategy in the pursuit of useful backlinks – at least, not for my particular niche. But then again, it’s possible article marketing has never worked for me because I never really bought into it, and therefore never committed the appropriate resources to it.

A self-fulfilling prophecy if you like.

Nah.

Although not being a huge fan, I do occasionally revisit article marketing, often after reading a particularly compelling and authoritative article in favor of it.

However, in late spring 2011 in the aftermath of the infamous Google Panda/Farmer update, I’m even less convinced article marketing makes a lot of sense.

If you’re not familiar with the basics, let’s briefly cover them…

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The Authority Codes By Ryan Deiss: Get Quality Links!

Since we have been talking a lot about obtaining quality in-pointing links lately, it seems prudent to mention Ryan Deiss’ Authority Codes report. It’s a freebie  – a tantalizing tidbit Ryan gives away in exchange for an e-mail address so he can promote his various products to you.

In this case, however, it’s actually a pretty decent trade off.

The Authority Codes is a visually appealing, super-slick, 21-page PDF document that shows you how to use the SEO Quake FireFox plugin along with 12 customized search queries (these are the “authority codes” Ryan is talking about) that will help you find credible blogs where you can post a comment and obtain an in-pointing link.

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New Link Building Tools To Be Reviewed Soon!

Just a quick note to let you know I’m playing with two link building tools right now; Brad Callen’s SEO Elite and the “Link Assistant” software, brought to us by the makers of SEO PowerSuite. Reviews of both to follow shortly (I hope).

Right now, I’m enjoying tinkering a bit.

Stay tuned!

.Org, .Edu, & .Gov Links: How good are they… really?

If you’re a webmaster interested in obtaining in-pointing links for your web site, you’ve probably heard of the value offered by “.edu”, “.gov” and “.org” links.

The thinking goes like this…

… The “.edu” domains are usually maintained by academic institutions that have a lot of credibility, and therefore garner instant respect with Google. The “.org” domains, maintained by respected organizations and associations, receive the same.

Therefore, obtaining an in-pointing link from such a domain offers much more impact than from a simple “.com” or “.net” domain (“.gov” links, or links from government sites, are also seen as credible and highly valuable). That’s the argument being made by various marketers anyhow – certainly the ones trying to sell you the software that locates the “.gov”, “.edu”, or “.org” links.

But are these links really all they are cracked up to be?

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Automated Blog Post & Comment Software Sucks…

It’s an appealing thought…

Build hundreds, even thousands of targeted backlinks to your web site in minutes by using software that “searches out” blogs targeted to your niche, and automatically submits your comments (and your link). Some of these software services claim to be able to randomize your material, thus submitting numerous, but all entirely viable versions of your comments to the various resources.

Riiiiiiight.

If you think this is a viable way of building links, let me provide you with a real life example. As you know, I run a successful online business in the sports/weight loss supplement niche (with UltimateFatBurner.com & Real-Customer-Comments.com). Both of these sites make use of the WordPress platform to some extent – as a content management system, and to leverage the power of visitor comments to build fresh and relevant content. And yes, we have a honest-to-goodness blog which is updated daily.

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Link Building Strategies: How To Find Theme Related Blogs

A short while back, I talked about how posting comments on quality, related blogs can be a great link building strategy if implemented properly (regardless of the “no follow” status of any blog).

Naturally, the most obvious next element of this discussion is…

How do I find superior quality, theme-related blogs?

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Experimenting With The Directory Maximizer Directory Submission Service

Sigh.

Here I am, talking about link building again. It seems like every second article is about link building in one  form or another. Nevertheless, link building is a vital element of SEO, especially for relatively new sites. So it has to be talked about (if you’re familiar with my articles, perhaps you’ve already read my “linking fundamentals” article. If not, you’ll probably want to review it now).

To recap my “take” on link building; the most important element of any successful campaign is to begin with a web site of exceptional quality and sufficient depth of material. If you don’t have this, you need to take a link building chill pill.

If you’ve got this in place, you’re ready to investigate strategies to build up your in-pointing links.

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