COMMENTS
I've slowly started building links to my beer blog, which I do in my spare time. What I do is read the sites I want linking to me and become familiar with their work. Maybe post a few comments on their site as well. Then I'll add them to my links page and drop them a quick email saying something like "Boy this is awkward, but I linked to you and it would be pretty cool if you could throw a link my way." In almost every instance they're more than willing to link back and now almost all are active on my site as well. So my advice is to become engaged and active with their content, link first if possible and then just ask for it. And when all is said and done stay engaged with their site - RSS feeds are great for this.
I've been building links to my
internet marketing virtual assistant site in my spare time as well. It's very time consuming but I find that submitting my site to quality directories has helped. I've also been getting links from social content sites like
Fluther. You can't spam those sites though. You need to be smart about it and answer or ask questions related to your area of expertise so that you can add your keywords in your anchor text links while at the same time contribute something meaningful and relevant to the conversation. A delicate task but rewarding nonetheless.
I have good success with press releases and article marketing. I take my blog entries and move them into an article format. I submit to the top article directories which are free. Similar process with the press releases, I do have to write a press release which takes a bit more effort than the article directories. I submit to high PR press releases with the proper good link requirements.
The results have been very good. Currently ranking high on homeopathic medicine and homeopathic remedies in Google. Top 100 in Google in over 1,222 keywords.
We have actually put together a consortium of several Online Marketers that keep track of everybody's blog posts and updates. Once an update is posted, if valuable, the group posts on several Social Networking sites to help build links. This works for everyone in the group as currently, most people post regularly and their posts are Useful, Unique and Up to date.
As you mentioned this is quite an intricate topic. For the website of xyzmo, they are providing
digital signature solutions, we have put extensive efforts in various link building measures. Starting from diretories and catalogues like DMOZ, business.com etc. over blogs, wikis, press releases to social networking sites like Linkedin, twitter, yahoo answers and so on.
Hey, Pete. We've found, for us and our clients, that it comes to down to consistently publishing great, multi-media content (photos, videos, blog posts, press releases, case studies, etc.). Regular participation in the social Web (forums, blogs, social networks, micro-blogging) also can be a highly effective way to build authentic inbound links. Plus, the HubSpot system makes it possible to do all of it in a very strategic and measurable way.
For HubSpot, I don't think we've ever really gone out and done traditional "link-building" as most seo consultants might define it. Rather, we've focused on creating "remarkable" (Seth Godin's term) content that other people want to "remark" (link to) about on their website or blog.
I think if you have x hours in a given week that you want to dedicated to link-building, my recommendation is to spend half that time writing remarkable content (including a remarkable title) and the other half of that time engaging (thoughtfully commenting) in the blogosphere and socialmediasphere with others who are trafficing in the article's specific topic area.
I don't think it makes sense to have a third party consultant (with a gmail address) who doesn't completely grok your business cold emailing (interrupting) bloggers asking them to link back to your site or to trade links. That same amount of time/dollars is better spent sitting down and creating a remarkable article of your own that will be a magnet for links, imho.
Wow! These are great comments and very helpful. It's good to see a variety of approaches.
Link Building is hard and there are lots of ways to skin the cat. At the end of the day, remarkable content and connecting in a meaningful way w/ other publishers/bloggers that are interested in the same topics is the ultimate way to attract new inbound links.
But, beyond directories and before a blog has a readership, there are some things I recommend that are a bit more engineerable including press release optimization, article marketing and writing guest blog articles.
I also recommend these methods to assist a company in ranking for specific keywords.
A good thing to add Pete, is that if all your incoming links have the same anchor text google will see what you're trying to do, so if you ask a lot of people to put links up make sure you mix up the language after awhile.
I noticed hubspot ranks for both "internet marketing software" and "online marketing software" (#2). Don't tell me that just happened by accident Brian H :)
My company ranks #1 for both "how to videos" and "how to video", among other lesser terms.
We used to be on the first page for "how-to" but are being moved around all the time with that one. No idea why.
We've been working on building links for awhile. It's a slow and time-consuming process, but at
The Hotel Experience, we know that it will eventually pay off. One of the most difficult aspects is finding relevant places to link, but for example, we can link with companies like
Hilton Bellevue with a relevant comment and check one more thing off our linking list. The major problem is how much time it takes for people to find relevant pages and companies with whom to link.
@Eric S Pratum. I agree that the most time consuming part of this process is "developing relationships" with people who "might" link to you. BTW. You should really host your blog on a domain that you control.
@AndyFox Agreed. You can't just go after one or two keyword phrases. Need to mix it up.
@Dr Beer Love. Thanks for sharing your process. It's a very good one. There's nothing wrong with asking after you've demonstrated you're interested in them too. I think there are some other ways to "cause" those links without asking, though. I'll detail them in my next blog post.
@Shari thanks for sharing fluther. That's a great site for some link building.
@Eric Buckley. I'd like to learn more about your circle and how to get into it. I understand that advanced link builders have their own networks. I have some of my own. But, I'm always looking to expand that circle.
Great article. The comments are helpful too. We've had success building links by submitting press releases and articles online, posting guest articles on blogs and submitting links to directories. All of these things have been mentioned above. The key is to continue doing these things. You can stay in the number one spot by doing these things once!
You are right about the compelling content. I have more researchers and writers contacting me than actual customers and potential clients at this point so I look forward to seeing your demo and figuring out what I need to tweak. I have a blog that weaves through my site and find that easier to update and work with and spend less time on the core site itself. I have just been using the Linked In Outlook toolbar this week and it has reminded me to add people to my network as I communicate with them and also to respond to questions which allows a link as well. My blog title came from the title tag for the international site for our franchising organization. <a>www.atlantaluxuryhomesandrealestate.com<a>
Hi Pete, Thanks for the reply. Our circle is small but easy to get involved in. Just simply leave a comment on the
Web Services and Tools blog and let us know you are interested.
From there I can let you know the other members. We all subscribe to the RSS feeds of the other group members and when a new post is reported, we comment (if relevant), stumble, digg, etc.
There is also another group that we are involved in started by the Friday Traffic Report guys called Social Marketing Central. It is a ning.com site and I can send the link separately if desired. This is a good resource for getting others interested in what your doing, learning from what others are doing and generating comments an opinions to these efforts similar to this post. Hope this helps.
It looks like everyone has their own methods of link building and they all sound great. I am learning how to do all this and find a combination of everything will give me the best chance of links coming to my site.
Can anyone go into further detail about article marketing?
One of the first steps is finding professional directories on-line. This can be as easy as searching, in my case, for "real estate directories" to find relevant places to build links. Using one of the PR checkers I ensure that they are at least at my PR if not higher before adding my information if there is a fee.
Please mention in your article what not to do! Many people make the mistake of purchasing large amounts of links. Big mistake as the major search engines know what about these link builders. Using techniques link purchasing links and building link farms you may skyrocket up in the search engines only to fall into the depths of the internet abyss!
Really good advice here. Thanks.
I would also provide the advice that evergreen content which will not get old and outdated quickly. 80% of the hedge fund content I create is meant to be valuable 2 and 3 years down the road.
While top 100 out of 3,200 results as mentioned is alright the #1 ranking position is going to capture 50% of the traffic, if you are not in the top 10 you aren't being considered by over 90% of people searching. Top 5 is where I think everyone should be aiming, otherwise it doesn't do much for your traffic.
- Richard
I've recently joined an
environmental consultancy and have been tasked with improving the results from the website (SEO will be at the heart of that). They haven't done much link building or know anything about it, so I'm looking for ways to get started! I am thinking of starting with local environmental authorities/bloggers etc. Thanks for all the great info.
@Richard Are you really looking to get started the right way OR are you trying to build links in people's comments?
Really good advice here. Thanks.
My web page http://linuxandmicrocontrollertips.blogspot.com
Heyy this is great stuff, I’ve just started my own website selling t-shirts, and I’ll use this to promote it, thanks.
www.simplytopuk.com
“Bringing you quality night out t-shirts”
FREE worldwide delivery.
I'm relatively new to the inbound link game, but I've definitely noticed that finding the right place to link combined with the most pertinent anchor text link, targeted at the title and content of your specific topic seems to work the best.
Again, thanks for a great article and all the helpful posts.
-Nathan, Austin Wellness Clinic
I'm helping with marketing a product (see <a>www.oxygenpod.com) via seo. It's time consuming, but I've been going through blogs where competitors are mentioned and commenting about this product. This at least includes the POD into a broader conversation and also uses competitor efforts constructively for this product.
Im finding this very intriguing, with link building, what would people say the effectiveness of social network links are? How do spiders react to links placed upon myspace comments for example.
Music Search, Downloads and Streaming
@Ash Links that you "build yourself" on social network sites are generally not the best links. Most social networks default their links to "no follow" so they don't give any SEO credit. Most pages on social networking sites have a low pagerank/authority, so they're not passing much credit.
Also, I know you didn't ask, but it's really poor taste to leave a link to your site in someone's else's comment section unless it's a link to a relevant article.
Great post, very good idea's, and I must say I have used some of these idea's in the past and they work very well
How come no one mentioned the no follow and do follow difference? Basic link building can come from anywhere to get you started, but eventually you need to begin an exchange campaign in earnest.
Excellent article, I have picked up some ideas for my site
Thank you
Hi
I have been doing link-building for a number of years now. I am still learning but my rules generally are:-
1) Find websites that have a natural connection to your website
2) Include keywords in the anchor text that you want to rank higher for
3) Gradually add links daily or weekly and not all at once.
I am learning more through
Alex Jeffreys coaching program too
Thanks
link building very useful for the improve the page rank
http://www.sunnerindia.org
I'm having a heck of a time gaining inbound links to my new community website:
www.VillageVoyage.com . It is currently the largest wiki in the world, & anyone can come to the site to create or improve their own business/blog page. Thousands of outbound links to businesses have been added, but how do I get people to provide the occasional inbound link? Thanks, Pat
Excellent article GREAT TIPS! Thx
This is so true! Sometimes if you have all the content but need a quick jump in ranking these links really help.
I have an online store that dropped it's ranking to #2. I quickly setup some new inbound links and not only regained the top spot, I moved up to #1 for a new keyword.
I also share more of these experiences from my blog where I discuss learning and improving my online business as a
student of Alex Jeffreys
i got your point, i'll try to start to do your idea. thanks for this knowledge
Great article, fantastic tips, thanks for sharing!!!
These tips will really help. Thanks to everyone who responded.
This is a great article. Thanks for sharing all the SEO knowledge.
Justin
Thanks for the SEO help. I think the take-home message for my new site, which does
Restaurant Reviews in Redding, is to put in the hard work every day. It just doesn't look like there is a Holy Grail here.
I find it ironic to see so many folks posting comments with inline URLs in the hopes of pulling down more Google juice--especially since you're putting a nofollow in all of their comment links. ;)
I have a new site that deals in
Free stuff uk. SEO for me is the hardest part and i find all the advice here very helpfull and understandable, thank you.
I liked reading everyone's comments, it helps me refocus and keep on target. I've been working on my photography website <a>www.TroutmanPhoto.com a lot. When I purchased the website I didn't realize that crawlers can't see flash. What an expensive mistake! So I've been working to correct it with my blog, articles etc.
Oh wow !! I am glad I stepped on to your website....
Frankly speaking, when I saw your free marketing kit, I thought you are some spam website.
But now when I saw you have 9000 subscribers, I really appreciate that you are genuine.
I am loving your website. Great effort.
Cheers !!
I'm really surprised that there was no mention of forum marketing and signatures in this discussion.
General rule of thumb seems to be that if a site is constantly updated with new original content - and has been doing that for a long time, it's going to be a great source for a link. Well, the most active forums are just that!
Plus, forums can be targeted to specific niches which also helps Google. There's no point in building links from pages that aren't related to your niche (which is what some of people commenting above leaving link spam should have thought about.).
You guys bring up great questions and I love that you've built up an active community of people who enjoy commenting.
Hi there,
The how of building links Its a bit of a slow and boring process I find unless you go off to a link building company to do it for yourself.
I have been trying to build links to my own website for
Web Design Glasgow and while i have been doing this i have also been building my own directory list of website to add your own website so that you do get a link back.
But the problem with that is that most of the will only display your url and not the keyword link that you are looking for.
So the long short of it, it takes time to build up links to your website.
Thanks for the great info! <a link=http://www.mfmapparel.etsy.com> MFM Apparel is just getting started with all of this stuff. This site has been a great help!
Here is simple strategy that I used to get a link from an relevant site with high authority:
1) I searched google for the keywords that my target readers use.
2) I found a blog that got top listing for almost all the keywords.
3) I followed the blog, then emailed the blogger, introduced myself and asked if his readership might be interested in a link to a particularly unique post on my site.
Since then he has linked to my blog a number of times, and I have also linked to his site.
I think if you have fresh content and you approach another blogger with respect, it can be okay to simply ask.
Thanks Pete, Hubspot, and the many participants above for the great ideas!
Here is simple strategy that I used to get a link from an relevant site with high authority:
1) I searched google for the keywords that my target readers use.
2) I found a blog that got top listing for almost all the keywords.
3) I followed the blog, then emailed the blogger, introduced myself and asked if his readership might be interested in a link to a particularly unique post on my site.
Since then he has linked to my blog a number of times, and I have also linked to his site.
I think if you have fresh content and you approach another blogger with respect, it can be okay to simply ask.
Thanks Pete, Hubspot, and the many participants above for the great ideas!
Thank you Frank Damelio for the info.
Another good source for inbound links are local government directories. These work well to help optimize local business and are ranked well with search engines. Some will even let you put how you would like your anchor tag to appear.
For more SEO and linking strategies, visit my
Search Engine Optimization & Web Design Blog
I have been trying to build links after having to change my url. Yuck...what a job!
Now i understand still back links are playing good role in search engine ranking. So i will create more back links for my website. It was a good article. thank you.
First thanks for the fantastic advice everyone. I took all these great ideas and boiled it down to top 10:
check it out