Getting Started with Link-Building (Advice, Please)
-
Hi forum, my company has done almost ZERO link building, and most of the traffic we receive to our site is for our branded search terms (people searching for our company name). Our content and on-page SEO is pretty solid, but how would you suggest getting started in link building? We've dabbled in comment marketing, but almost all of these were unfollowed links. We already do PR and submit it to prweb.com. We have submitted to quite a few online directories and are currently working our way through relevant directories provided by SEOMoz. We do not want to pay for links, and we want to do all of this in house. We are committed to putting the time in to get high quality links by hand. Does anyone have any advice? A "Beginner's Guide to Link-Building" would be excellent. The specific site we are working on is http://www.consumerbase.com/index.html if that is of any use. Thanks!
-
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-101-the-almost-complete-link-guide-updated-for-post-penguin
After you read that info on the beginners guide I would read through this post by scott mclay as he talks about setting up campaigns.
-
there is an easy way to find sites that have dofollow comment sections but I will not list it here since this is something you definitely want to stay away from.
The problem with comment linking is that if it's a dofollow it is anly a matter of time before all the spammers start posting on it and what USED to be a decent link is now a like with a hundred spammy med, adult and casino links on it. These sites quickly become toxic and pose a risk to your site.
-
It's debatable on whether Google takes no-followed links into consideration. I've heard arguments on both sides but where they are most beneficial is creating discussion on a forum or comment board to boost your brands image.
I know comment linking is easy, but do not get caught up in it. In my early days I had the "lazy seo" mentality (as much as I want to deny it), and one of my personal sites got dinged hard. I actually blogged about it when I used to work at SEO.com here: http://www.seo.com/blog/staying-off-googles-naughty-list/
Here is an article about how JC Penney got slammed for buying links: http://www.seo.com/blog/seo-jcpenney-disaster/
There are ways of link building that aren't spammy, but like I mentioned, any legitimate link building tactic can BECOME spammy if you are lazy.
I forgot to mention, but infographics are a great way to build links as well, but don't have the "if I build it, they will come" mentality. You need to promote it and share it for it to grow
I hope this is helping Zora!
Kevin Phelps
-
Perfect, thanks Darin. I will give that a read today.
-
This is definitely useful, thank you Kevin.
Can you go into more detail about the benefits of comment linking? Almost all of the sites I found made their comment links no-follow. Even when I used a "do-follow directory," to find blogs - most, if not all, were no-follow.
Is a no-follow link still useful when working to boost DA?
(Just to be clear, when you say comment linking, you mean attaching a website URL to your 'comment-author-name's' anchor text when posting a comment on a blog, right?)
-
Hey Zora,
The thing to note about link building is that you need to do it with your brand in mind, not for the purpose of manipulating the search engines. Excellent link building methods include:
- Guest blogging
- Submitting to truly relevant directories
- Local directories (even if you're not a locally-focused company it's still acceptable)
- Press Releases (although Google doesn't count those links anymore)
- Comment linking (when you are actually adding a helpful response)
Do not get mixed up in this garbage:
- Link trading
- Mass article submissions
- Content spinning
- General article directories
- Link purchasing
- Privately owned blog networks
Make sure you understand what Google means by "paid" links. This doesn't mean hiring an agency to help you is a "paid" link since you're paying them. A "paid" link is a purchase where you are dealing directly with the site owner that is irrelevant and holds no value whatsoever. The recommended link building methods above have other purposes besides just the link.
You should check out our infographic we made to help people with guest blogging. I think you'd like it: http://www.guestblogposter.com/beginners-guide-guest-blogging-infographic/
Just remember, any of these link building methods can become spammy. It's how you treat them that makes them effective. Do not over due it either. Make sure you are varying your anchor text and don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't do all guest posting or all directories. Mix it up and be legitimate!
Does that help?
Kevin Phelps
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwphelps -
Not sure if you saw this but we have "A Beginners Guide" here on seomoz.org
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
Read this first and let us know if you have any questions about it.
Darin.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Reasonable Cost for Link Building Service
We need about 5-10 high quality links to our website created every month. We need the link targets researched and outreach done to these sites. The sites most be legitimate and high quality; decent domain authority, real sites, not phony low quality sites. Sites that would show traffic in similarweb.com with decent metrics. We absolutely want to avoid any link building schemes that could get us penalized. I have been told that such a project would take a qualified SEO about 8-10 hours per months (more during the additional month of research, less afterward). As such, what is a reasonable cost for these 5-10 links per month? $300, $500, $700, more? I only want to work with a highly experienced SEO, native english speaker with extensive experience. What is fair? I don't want to overpay or to under pay. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Linking to URLs With Hash (#) in Them
How does link juice flow when linking to URLs with the hash tag in them? If I link to this page, which generates a pop-over on my homepage that gives info about my special offer, where will the link juice go to? homepage.com/#specialoffer Will the link juice go to the homepage? Will it go nowhere? Will it go to the hash URL above? I'd like to publish an annual/evergreen sort of offer that will generate lots of links. And instead of driving those links to homepage.com/offer, I was hoping to get that link juice to flow to the homepage, or maybe even a product page, instead. And just updating the pop over information each year as the offer changes. I've seen competitors do it this way but wanted to see what the community here things in terms of linking to URLs with the hash tag in them. Can also be a use case for using hash tags in URLs for tracking purposes maybe?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
SEO Experts: Where did you start?
Hi all! I'm beginning to travel down the road of becoming an SEO expert! I've attended the latest few webinars on Moz, and have started watching the White Board Fridays. However I'm wondering, for the current SEO Experts, how did you get to where you are today? I.e. What books did you read? Did you pay for classes or just learn everything from Moz? Where is a good place to get an SEO Expert Certification/Is it necessary? How long did it take you to become an expert? (Stuff like that) I suppose I'm looking to make a list for myself, organizing what I should learn first, and then create a timeline moving forward. Thanks for your help Mozzers! - Briana B.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCWhelan13 -
Problem with internal links
Hello! Our domain, http://www.unionroom.com/, is having a strange issue with OSE in that it is telling us our internal pages aren't linking to one another. An example of this is that it is showing our About page ( http://www.unionroom.com/about/ ) only having three links, but this link appears twice on every single page on the website (~200 pages) in the header and footer. We've hung around for a little while to see if OSE would correct itself, but it hasn't and this now suggests that it may be an issue with our in-linking structure. Can anyone spot any issues with our build? The rest of the websites that we produce, that are all built in the same way, all have healthy internal linking structures according to OSE. Very confusing! Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unionroom0 -
What Link building Strategies should adopt after hummingbird update?
I need to know that what Link Building or SEO Strategies should be adopt after latest hummingbird update. I am really much confuse about it. Kindly Help. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irfan200120 -
Link Building for "State" informational pages
I have a webpage for all 50 states for specific info relating to relocation and was wondering if there are any recommended links to work at getting for these pages. I would like to do "state" specific and possibly health related links for each page to help in the SEO rankings. I can see that if I just wanted to get 10 links on each page that is going to be 500 links I have to build and it is going to be very time consuming but I feel it is necessary. Thank you, Poo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Where does link authority get passed to a stand alone landing page
Hi All, We are currently building a landing page that contains a bunch of funny top 10's, some that aren’t suitable for all customers, it can only be accessed from a PR source or recipient of one of our emails. The question I have is; where will the authority gained from people linking to this page go? Would it be passed to the home page, if there’s a link to it? Or would you recommend a way to control it? Any insight welcome. Cheers Neal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Exclaimer-2868850 -
Switching to masked affiliate links
Hi there, I run a content affiliate website where I introduce products in articles and then link to merchants where the user can buy the respective product. Currently I am using regular affiliate links here with the "nofollow" attribute. With growing size of the site, I would like to switch to masked affiliate links, so instead of a link like "jdoqocy.com/click-123" I want to use "mydomain.com/recommend/123". My question here is: When switching to masked affiliate links, does it makes sense to also convert all the older unmasked affiliate links? If yes, what would be the best way to do that - Convert all old links at once or convert them over time (e.g. over a few month)? Currently about 2/3 of my site's outbound links are unmasked, external affiliate links. So I am afraid that changing this relatively large share of links from unmasked external affiliate links to masked links doenst look natural at all... Thank you for your advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FabRag0