Link Building as a Part of Your SEO Campaign :: Secrets and Pitfalls

Link Building as a Part of Your SEO Campaign :: Secrets and Pitfalls

September 21, 2004

by Irina Ponomareva © 2004-2005

Good links are essential if your site is to rank highly for competitive key phrases. They bring weight and authority, and make the search engines 'think' your site is important and respected enough to rank well.

Good inbound links are necessary for your site to be found by search engine spiders and crawled by them. Sites having more inbound links are crawled deeper, and their content is updated more often. Inbound links from good resources that rank highly for your target phrases give your site a boost, and so do inbound links with your keywords included in the so-called "anchor text", which is the industry name for the text between the < a > and < /a > tags.

Link building strategy: plan, verify, rework

For better results, your link building strategy should be planned and thought over thoroughly prior to starting actual work. There are many ways of gaining links to sites, but not all of them are suitable in all cases.

Directory submission is probably the only one that causes no questions and is fine in all cases. Worldwide general directories, local directories, niche-specific directories - there are thousands of them around. Just start - and they will keep you busy until you get tired enough and scream "Stop!" When submitting - strictly manually - do not forget about varying your titles and descriptions - but always include your targeted keywords. Variety is good SEO.

Yet directories are tricky things. Not all of them parse PR (or, in other words, add to your link popularity). Many use JavaScript redirects to link to your site. But don't think it is absolutely useless to submit to these directories. If they are popular enough, they are quite likely to bring direct visitors to your site.

Many directories are paid for. Before you pay for inclusion, do some research. Ask people if the directory in question is worth the money being asked for. Visit good SEO forums (as well as your industry forums). If the directory is known and has visitors, then part with your money. If not, perhaps your money could be better spent.

Other directories require reciprocal links. There is nothing bad in this, unless you do not feel you can link to this site and not be ashamed of the link afterwards. This rule applies in all cases: do not link to any site if you feel shameful of linking to it, no matter what you are offered in exchange.

Reciprocal linking is a popular and effective way of building your link popularity, but it can be dangerous, too. When searching for good link partners, strong ethics and prudence should guide you on your way. Otherwise you are sure to make a mistake sooner or later.

A pure, old-fashioned link farm is easy to detect. It is a huge list of sites - a collection created with the help of one or another automated link harvester, and never sorted or categorised. Link farmers do not care for such things, they have no time for it - they are too busy aggressively harvesting more links. But there are more sophisticated and less obvious ways to increase link popularity artificially - clusters, rings, pyramids, etc. - and all of them are widely practised, while Google and other search engines are looking for ways of detecting and fighting them - with a good degree of success.

So you need to be very cautious. Avoid services that promise to increase your link popularity drastically and swiftly. Rely on yourself - and do everything manually. If possible, do not exchange links with irrelevant sites - it is always better to link to sites that may be of use to your visitors. And ask yourself "Am I making the Net a better place?" whenever you are considering another link exchange.

That will protect you.

Many site owners still think that reciprocal linking and link pages will ruin the business image of their site. We disagree - if everything is done properly, it will not harm your site, and can even improve it greatly - but in this case we do not insist upon link exchange campaigns. There are other ways of link building that can be - and are - employed.

Buying links is another good strategy when your approach is professional. But it is prone to mistakes, too.

Often you may come across sites (or Google Ads) offering PR7, PR8, PR9 links for sale. Beware! Quite likely, the links will be from the pages already full of other links - so the authority passed by each one will be tiny, not worthy the price you pay. There are also sites that have been selling links for so long and with such zeal that Google finally decided to block their PR and authority from being transferred. You won't see it form the site itself, as the PR shown by the toolbar is still the same nice 8/10 or 9/10 value. So, again, plan your strategy with care.

It is much better when you contact the site owner individually - and negotiate your deal, paying thorough attention to all the aspects. Strictly speaking, PR is the last thing you should take into account. Look at the relevancy. Look at quality, ask for visitor statistics - if the site is often visited by people, they may use the link you are buying to go to your site directly.

In any case, if your budget is restricted, you might find this method too expensive. There are other ways that are less expensive but require creativity and effort.

Articles. Writing articles about your industry and publishing them through the Net - or establishing an RSS feed - is a perfect way of improving your overall web presence, including the link popularity issue.

Your articles published on the Net help you build credibility, as they certainly show you know something about your work, not just that you know how to promote yourself. They also contain a link to your site - and bring you visitors and authority.

If you establish an RSS feed on your site - and feed the intros of your fresh articles - then numerous bloggers will sooner or later add your feed to their news aggregators - and post your intros to their blogs, thus advertising you for free. You will have nothing to do - just write articles from time to time and watch your link popularity grow.

Yet for small business sites such information areas may seem inappropriate. In this case launch your industry news site on another domain. Link it to your business site - just do not cross-link them too heavily - and they will transfer link popularity to each other, at the same time improving your business image.

The only obstacle we can see in this case is time or in-house resource restrictions. If you have no time to write articles and can't afford to hire somebody who will do it for you, then consider press releases instead. They are shorter and more business-fixed.

Press releases. These are perfect for your purpose - short, descriptive announcements of your business ventures. Good marketing pitch and strong emphasis on your target audience expectations make them an ideal method of improving your online business positioning. Link popularity is again the side-effect of it.

There are numerous services on the Net that specialise in publishing press releases. The most popular of them is, of course, PR Web - and it has both paid and free option for your consideration. The links from this site are very valuable due to its perfect reputation and popularity with human Net inhabitants.

But to publish good press releases you need a good reason - some business initiative or a special offer. New products or branches are also good - but if you try publishing something insignificant with the sole purpose of adding one more link, be ready to have your release rejected.

Conclusion

These methods are the most popular ones - but there are more. Quite often you will find out your site is linked to without your knowledge - provided it is good enough for that. So never stop improving your site - it will pay back sooner or later.

Monitor the results of you link building campaign - and if you feel something is wrong, re-consider your strategy. Try and utilise as many methods as possible - and whatever you do, always be creative, imaginative and dedicated.

Your creativity and dedication will ultimately bring you success.

A couple of links you may want to reference on those recommendations:

Articles and duplicate content filters:
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/archives/2005/07/05/google-dupe-content/

Directories being targeted:
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/2654

Also read somewhere about wider directories being more specifically targeted, but I can't remember my source on that.

Best SEO link-building strategy - use multiple strategies. :)

The threadwatch link also mentions niche directories being spared - I'd also point out the suggestion there that so far it seems to be all those "directories of directories" that are being targeted, rather than directories themselves.

I can't think of anything more useless than a directory of directories.

What's next, a directory of directory directories :rolleyes:

I think some webmasters find them useful, and they can be a reasonable starting point for new site promotion, if the directory itself is well done.

The problem is that there are only a few that are well done and there are numerous clones that are basically copies of the few good ones. I've tried to make this point elsewhere and been rather aggressively attacked for it -- to be honest, I feel somewhat vindicated to learn that Google may feel the same way.

Now if only we could see clear evidence that Google is discounting all those DMOZ clones out there which merely use the DMOZ data dumps I'd be happy :D

I think some webmasters find them useful, and they can be a reasonable starting point for new site promotion, if the directory itself is well done.

The problem is that there are only a few that are well done and there are numerous clones that are basically copies of the few good ones.

You're right - webmasters may find them useful for promoting start up sites but that's about it. Considering more times than not start up sites end up abondoned you end up with a directory full of dead crap sites.

The list of quality directories on the Internet is tiny, and, imo getting smaller.

I don't disagree, ForumJunkie.

I've stated elsewhere that I think the general directories market is already over-saturated. No one uses these things to find sites anyway -- they exist solely to provide backlinks for PR.

I do, however, think there is value in niche directories where the entries are reviewed and therefore include some qulaity control -- that's why I've just started one :D

....too many chiefs and not enough Indians in this town :)

There are so many directories now that are simply scams that will get you destroyed in the SERP's.

Let me explain, you can submit your sites to a directory that asks for a reciprocal link, but at the same time they claim that they will list you without the link and that it is not necessary.

When the search engines target the links in that directory that has reciprocals (but at the same time there are listings in it that never gave a reciprocal), you might get in trouble even if you do not submit a reciprocal link back.

Maybe none of us should ever submit to any directory that even has the "option" to add a reciprocal link.

We all need to get smart quick and this includes directory producers.

Maybe none of us should ever submit to any directory that even has the "option" to add a reciprocal link.

I don't know about you, but I have never even considered linking back to a directory in exchange for a listing. The users on my sites would not find any value (not even entertainment value) in a link to a directory.

I don't think being listed in a directory will have any negative implications in terms of the search engines.

Even if reciprocal directories = link farms to the search engines :confused:

Even if reciprocal directories = link farms to the search engines :confused:

If you're not linking to it it won't matter. If you're linking to it, well, that's another story.

If you are listed in the database of a directory that is targeted you might be hurt.

Even if you don't have a reciprocal, but the option exists on the directory submission page, I will not submit to that directory, because it may be targeted down the road as a link farm and I don't want to be there.

If you are listed in the database, even if you don't have a reciprocal, but the option exists on the directory submission page, I will not submit to that directory even if a reciprocal is an option because it may be targeted down the road as a link farm and I don't want to be there.

I don't see it ever being a problem if you're not linking to the directory. The people running the directory could easily add the "link back to us option" at any point - months or years after your site is already listed. Are you going to monitor every directory you are in to make sure this doesn't happen and then try and get yourself removed from the directory? No search engine company in it's right mind is going to penlize the sites that are being linked to by the directory in question.

Well they could go the extra yard and confirm if it is a true reciprocal link from a known "link farm directory" then to make folks like you happy FJ :eek: :D :wave:

Well they could go the extra yard and confirm if it is a true reciprocal link from a known "link farm directory" then to make folks like you happy FJ :eek: :D :wave:

I think you lost me there....

If what you're saying is they (they being the search engines) would actually check to see if there is a recip link then I think we're agreeeing....if you don't lnk back to them it doesn't matter if they request a recip - it only matters if you actually give them a recip.

Regarding the article that opened this thread - I'd like to add something regarding buying links. 9 times out of 10 if you buy a link from someone offering "permanent" links one of the following scenerios will happen:

1) Your link will be on a junk links page with dozens and dozens of other unrelated (or related) links.

2) You'll be added to a directory of some sorts.

3) You'll get a great spot on the site and then start to notice over time that the site is dying or has already gone offline.

A legitimate site will not sell space on it's prime real estate for a one time fee. It's a poor business model and sites that practice it usually don't last long. After they sell out their advertising space they start another site and abandon the old one...which happens to be where your link is.

Look for related sites that rent ad space on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Yes FJ, that is what I am saying, they can check the reciprocals coming out of link farms (reciprocal directories) :D


PS: I have never bought one link and have had and still have many number 1 SERP positions in many keywords.

PS: I have never bought one link and have had and still have many number 1 SERP positions in many keywords.

I think the only time you need to consider buying links is if you're after a highly competitive word/phrase. In any event, look at the traffic potential from the link itself in addition to any potential search engine benefits.

or if your main goal is to build PR quickly

or if your main goal is to build PR quickly

And if that's your main goal you should rethink your strategy :)