Link-building should constitute no more than 10-15% of your search engine optimization practice. You want your linking to be efficient, effective, and long-lasting. Here are a few link building tips to help you improve your search engine optimization practice and your search results.
Links start at home
Most people now agree that internal navigation is extremely important to the search optimization process.
-
You want to use concise, meaningful, keyword-rich anchor text in your navigation
-
You want to provide alternative, content-embedded links to deeper content in the site where it makes sense
-
You want to use alternative anchor text for secondary on-page links
-
You want to provide cross-promotional links on as many pages as possible in as unobtrusive a way as possible
Keeping in mind that the user experience should be your first priority, you want to strategically position links throughout your site and your pages. Your navigation should serve both the user’s needs and your own self-promotional needs. But your content provides you with many opportunities to inform your visitors about relevant, related content.
Avoid PageRank manipulation schemes. They are ineffective wastes of your time. Instead of putting rel=’nofollow’ on links pointing to your “About Us”, “Terms of Use”, “Contact Us”, and other important pages, use those pages to point your visitors to content you want them to find. People search for these pages so you need to ensure they can find them. Remember, the user experience has to come first, not the latest SEO fad.
If you’ve developed a cross-promotional link widget (server side includes make this extremely easy to implement), you can embed it on your so-called incidental pages to help people get to the content you value most. In fact, you SHOULD be embedding that widget on those pages. You should be using those pages in every way possible to help the rest of your site.
The alternative anchor text that I suggest for secondary on-page links may puzzle you. We know that in some rare situations Google passes the second link’s anchor text. However, the consensus point of view (which I support) is that you probably don’t want to invest your time in placing multiple links to one destination on a page. However, there are time where the Web designer may feel this enhances usability.
If you’re going to embed a secondary navig ational link structure on your page, you might as well as use the anchor text to describe those pages with alternative keywords. Regardless of whether that passes any value to the destinations, it gives you an opportunity to use alternative keywords in an appropriate on-page context AND it may help some of your visitors.
Keyword anchor text is relevant to both the linking page and the destination page. A lot of people in the SEO industry have gone to forums and asked why such-and-such page appears in search results when it has no links pointing to it with matching anchor or any apparent paragraphs or titles using the keywords. Every time I have looked at these mystery pages I have found outbound links using the keywords.
SEOs have a huge blind spot for the on-page value that outbound link anchor text provides. It’s still part of the on-page text. It’s not like the link is being treated as something separate from the page.
Leverage your friends’ sites
It’s a time-honored tradition that we all advise our clients to get their moms, pops, and cousins to link to their sites. Frankly, just dropping a link somewhere on a random site doesn’t provide much value in my opinion. I’d rather have a link from a relevant article.
Not some freebie article the friend picked up off the Web and dropped the link into. Rather, I’d want to write the article. It doesn’t have to be a Michael Martinez-quality 50-paragraph text marathon. Just 2 paragraphs of 50-100 words each can provide your friends and relatives with enough text to add a page to their sites.
If you make these micro-essays relevant to both your friends’ content and your own site, you can reasonably embed an author’s credit link that uses link anchor text to help your site. But that’s just cream.
The real value in creating these micro-essay pages is that they stand pretty good chances of ranking well for long-tail queries. I have tons of referral traffic from sites that carry essays I’ve written. So what if their links don’t pass anchor text in Google? They’re sending me qualified traffic. That’s called free advertising in a qualified marketing channel.
Can this technique be abused? Sure. It’s being abused right now. There are link brokers out there selling pay-per-post links. There are people calling and harrassing honest Webmasters like me, asking if they can put content on our sites.
For this kind of link building, you MUST draw the line at the end of your friends and relatives. I’m not interested in hosting some cheap schlocky advertorial on my site. But if a friend wants to put an essay on my site, you’d better believe I’ll be very, very agreeable (in fact, I HAVE allowed friends to post essays on my personal sites more than once through the years).
SEOs write guest essays for each other’s blogs. You can create guest pages for your friends. They get some interesting content and you get a link from a page that has a good chance of ranking for something that sends qualified traffic to your site.
Directories, Directories, Directories
For about $100 you can get someone in India to drop your link on 1500-2000 worthless directories. I’ll admit that I toyed with the idea of using one such service last year but after looking at the list of directories I decided there was no traffic value. Maybe I would have gotten some temporary PageRank and anchor text, but we all know Google hates those guys (and probably also Yahoo! and Microsoft).
Directory submission is certainly a useful link building technique, but you should personally vet the directories. Remember, the link you get may not pass PageRank or anchor text but it could still pass traffic. I’ll take a nofollowed link that passes traffic any day of the week, so evaluate the directory. Use third-party resources like Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast to estimate how much traffic they may actually receive. Those estimates won’t be accurate but a dead directory is not likely to show up on those services’ radars, and you just want to know if a directory actually gets traffic.
The fewer ads per page you see on these low-value diretories, the better. But if they use the expression “SEO friendly” or in any way talk about the value of links, etc. then don’t even bother submitting to them.
You should set yourself a limit, too. I would not see a need for most sites to submit to more than 20-30 directories.
Micro sites, off-site blogs, and co-owned sites
Someone recently went to a popular SEO forum and asked if they should invade a new query space with micro sites. The poster claimed to be working with an “authority” site (whatever that is). I and a whole lot of other people suggested the micro sites would be counter productive.
If you have a domain that is well-established in the search results, it’s been around for a few years, and you want to take on a new query space, just put the content on the domain you have.
Micro sites serve useful purposes in many contexts, but they are abused by a lot of inexperienced SEOs and spammers. They are also created wastefully by businesses that don’t understand Internet marketing.
The most compelling reason for creating a micro site (in my humble opinion) is to establish value for a standalone brand. But there are other less compelling reasons that make sense in the right situation as well. You can think of topics and content three-dimensionally, for example, and create concept sites that provide your visitors with tightly related but extremely different content. You literally split a brand value across multiple sub-brands.
This approach works well in the entertainment Web for television shows and movies, as well as online games. User communities, supplemental information, and news/interviews are often posted on micro sites in a network of closely associated sites. The primary brand is the official Web site of the television show or movie. Rarely will you find such a site linking out to other sites (beyond its satellite sites). More often the studios put their outbound links on one of the micro sites, all of which also link to the primary brand site.
These satellite site networks succeed because each site brings enough unique content and concepts to the user experience that it makes sense for people to link to them all (or to more than one of them). News articles link to multiple sites in these networks, fan sites link to them, forums and blogs link to them, etc. It’s a great strategy when you have the right concepts and content to work with.
But understand that the best, most successful micro sites are built on concepts, not content. That’s a HUGE distinction and a lot of SEOs seem to be completely unaware of it.
Still, a lot of business sites can employ the micro site strategy successfully without having to build online games and user forums. For example, you can set up your company blog on another domain. Some SEOs say it looks unprofessional to put a blog on Blogspot or WordPress. Frankly, I disagree with them. But if you feel that’s not an option, there is no reason why you cannot put your business blog on its own domain or sub-domain. You can link to the business site.
Technically, in a network all the sites tend to link to each other, but you give yourself links from newer content on satellite sites to deeper content on the primary site. A blog is more likely to attract new links (if you post to it regularly) than, say, an article archive. If you publish press releases on a regular basis you may have sufficient content to create a press release sub-domain or domain. All of these types of sites, however, should serve unique purposes that don’t really fit in well with the primary domain’s concept.
Companies that operate complementary brands (you see a few such companies in the travel and lodging industries) can usually cross-link their branded domains provided they don’t get greedy. The holding companies rarely provide much content under their own names. However, I have found a few holding companies that actually issue press releases or post other unique, promotional content on their corporate sites that help promote (and link to) the brand sites.
The old press release trick
Ah, yes. The old press release trick. Matt Cutts has indicated that Google is on to the old press release trick. You know what I’m talking about: you run around to 10-15 press release distribution sites and post the same badly written pseudo-press release announcing to the world that you’ve assigned yourself a designated parking space. And the press release links back to your site.
Some press release venues actually drive traffic to Web sites. I know because I’ve published press releases and have seen the referrals. Traffic is a lovely thing to have, and if you can publish a decent press release that is well-written and likely to capture someone’s imagination, it may be worthwhile. Just understand you need to spread the cost of publication across the visitors you receive. You’re not paying for a value-passing link.
But can press releases still pass value? Sure they can. Maybe some services pass value and others don’t. But you know, there are Web sites that will republish press releases for you without charging a fee AND they’ll give you a link. How do you find these sites? Look for them in places where other SEOs are not looking.
There are many businesses that can get other sites to post content about them if the businesses stop thinking in terms of “money for links”. You need to think of terms of “reaching out to a community that is interested in what I do”, and “reaching out to Web sites that want content that I can provide them”.
If your business participates in trade shows, makes presentations at schools or community organizations, sponsors community competitions or sports teams, or otherwise engages with people outside of its normal business operations, the chances are pretty good there are Web sites out there where you can get a blurb, a press release, a custom-written article, or some sort of announcement posted with a link back to your site.
These are the kinds of sites that SEOs cannot drag all their clients to (but don’t be surprised if someone has hammered a few Webmasters in these categories). These sites may be run by local community organizations, local governments, schools, or enthusiasts. They may have small audiences or large audiences. They may be connected to other sites that will pick up their news and events announcements. One link can spread across many sites if you provide compelling enough content.
So, how do you find out if these sites will carry your content? Ask them.
Ask them without including the content.
Ask them before you send the content.
Ask them without talking about search engine optimization.
Ask them without mentioning Google, Yahoo!, or any other search engine.
Contact the site operator and treat him or her like a human being. Don’t shower them with faux compliments about how great their site is.
The people who have been most successful in getting me to post their content on my network have been very honest, very direct. “Michael, our company does X, Y, and Z. We want to work with Xenite.Org to create some content that we feel would be of interest to your visitors. Please contact me for more information.”
Dudes, I’ve picked up the phone and called people right away when I’ve received messages like that. They don’t come from the SEO industry. They come from television producers, TV and movie studios, manufacturers, and other folks. I’ve never seen an SEO be so straight-forward, so honest, and so willing and able to help me create content I can use.
You want a link? Give me unique content that no other site is allowed to have. I’ll give you a link in a heartbeat. If there is a magic bullet in link building, unique, original content is the magic bullet for link building.
I’ve stopped promoting companies whose marketing campaigns shifted from providing unique, original content to sending out press releases to mailing lists. As soon as you put me on a mailing list you’re dead in the water. As soon as you assume the sites you’ve contacted are all willing and able to republish every piece of tripe you send out, you’re off my radar.
You get value for value. It’s a simple exchange.
Okay, that’s not a press release trick, but that IS where it came from. The old press release trick can work if you don’t treat it like it’s a machine that punches out die-stamped links on demand.
The old blog comment trick
Here on SEO Theory, (and over at Best SEO Blog), we regularly delete (and report as spam) posts from people who drop by to say, “Great post Michael, you’ll find I wrote about the same thing at [some Web address I have never heard about]“.
As someone who has leveraged blogs to build traffic and visibility, I feel there are some boundaries that should be respected. Here are the guidelines I try to follow when posting comments on other blogs:
-
As much as possible I just embed my link in the link field that converts my posting name to a link
-
If I feel compelled to drop a link in the message, I try to link to someone else’s site so that I’m making a legitimate recommendation
-
If I feel like I really have something I’ve written that is worthy of note, I drop the link on a blog where I have an established history of participating in discussions and to which I have myself linked
As we all know blog comment spam has been around for years and it’s not likely to go away. Even if the links are nofollowed (and even if your tests suggest that Google occasionally follows nofollowed links), the best value you can get from any link in a blog comment is visibility.
People read and respond to those comments. You can look like a shmuck in more than one way but dropping a link in your message is about as dumb and shmucky as you can look. It says you’re naive, inexperienced, and don’t know how to build links or how to understand their value.
So, yes, I’ve looked dumb and shmucky on occasion, but if people have some idea of who I am, or if I take the time to say something more than, “You can read my blog at [some web address you've never heard of]” there is a good chance they’ll click on the link under my name.
Traffic is all that matters. Interested, converting traffic that produces regular readers who subscribe to the blog feed, come back to read the articles, and maybe provide links to the articles on their own blogs is what I’m after when I’m being self-promotional. Frankly, when I comment on someone else’s site, my first priority is to add my opinion to the discussion — to provide value to the other site, in as much as I can do so.
Wrap up
There are, of course, other ways to build one-way links. But these methods work very well and they help improve the user experience in many ways. The more value you get from a link, the better. You want more than just PageRank and anchor text. You want traffic, visibility, credibility, and ultimately trust (from the people whose sites link to yours).
The less time I spend building links, the better. If I want links in volume I’ve got options that I don’t say much about. Of course, I’ve mentioned 20 Links A Day more than once, and I think it’s a great program. There are alternatives out there and many people have used them on occasion.
In fact, the more linking resources you acquire, the more effective your link building becomes if, instead of saturating each resource with as many links as you can dump on it, you exercise discretion and balance your use of those resources wisely. You should always think in terms of “I need more links, therefore I need more resources”. As soon as you saturate a link channel you’re done with it.
The decision to burn out a resource is a very short-sighted one. The decision to nurture a resource and make it reusable for a long time is a very powerful one.
Twitter
Facebook
RSS
