Link building for a product review site

[mihaiaperghis]

I'm doing SEO for a product review website, and I'm curious what link building opportunities are best for this category.

Assume only the following:

• The website is basically a blog
• Most of the articles are reviews on cosmetic products, though there are also articles regarding news, product roundups, tips&tricks and similar content
• The website is in a local, non-english language

Disregarding low-value opportunities such as directories, what kind of websites should I aim for outreach purposes?

So far, I'm thinking the following:

• Product manufacturers (very low success chance, as the review site is fairly new and in a localized language)
• E-commerce sites selling the products (average to low success chance, since a lot of them use CMSes that might not allow integration of a review)
• Other cosmetic blogs, particularly for guest blogging (average to low success chance, since the website is fairly new)

Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!

[lbi-tr]

Hey Mike,

Apologies if i pronounced your name incorrectly.

In answer to your questions:

1. Do both. The review on the site will bring in longtail traffic for the client and the link from the competition or secondary review will pass more authority back to your site.

2. That's a tricky one- what is the local language? In the first instance I would use advanced operators that alow content submissions or have communities around your product. FOr example: intitle:write for us "beauty" or use the wildcard to search for lists "top*Beauty Blogs [local place name]"

3.Why not contact a local beauty school and ask them to trial the product? Or sponsor a prize giving/ award ceremony/study group/sports team and get them to link back to your site.

4. This depends on the scenario, if you link is on a blogroll with 100 other links all using keywords to link then this is bad .But if your site is on a blogroll with a small amount of quality sites, this is fine.

Link Building is like your diet, everything is fine in moderation.

[mihaiaperghis]

Thanks for the response Anthony!

However, I'm mainly interested in link prospecting / building opportunities. The client himself is building the content, so my job is prospecting sites, doing outreach and building relationships.

[mihaiaperghis]

Good stuff, thanks! I have to say, I wasn't expecting a video actually tailored for my response (thought it might be some general link building video that I might find useful).

Let me give you some more details:

• the client is actually building all the content (though I will advise him on what content performs best, what are people looking for and so on), so I'm there only for the actual link building (outreach + promoting the articles)
• the client doesn't care about monetizing his website atm (so no affiliate links, at least for now)

Regarding what you said, a few questions:

1. You've mentioned getting/buying some products and sending them to a local blogger for a review article with a backlink. Would this get  higher return than the client actually reviewing them himself?
2. Web 2.0 websites, any idea which work well with non-english websites? Already checked hubpages and couldn't find anything related to cosmetic related local language queries.
3. You've mentioned link building from universities and colleges in your answer, but haven't seen this in the video. What did you have in mind?
4. What do you think about getting "blogroll" backlinks, on blogs which are in related niches (lifestyle, nutrition, what you mentioned in the video)? Being blogwide, are those too spammy?

Thanks again, really appreciate the effort!

PS: You can call me Mike

[anthonydnelson]

Hi Mahai-

If you are writing reviews on your website, I would focus on making them the most comprehensive reviews available online of each product you are reviewing. A well-written, thought-out, balanced review with great pictures will be appreciated by everyone.

If the review is positive, the company whose product is reviewed might very well link out to you. Who doesn't like linking/sharing a positive testimonial/review for their own product? Make it easy for them to link to it. Offer an embeddable badge or graphic perhaps.

Other websites looking for information about the product will also likely link to your review as well, respecting it for the well-thought out, balance review that it is.

Put the focus on the reviews. The links will come.

[lbi-tr]

Hi Mihai,

Great questions. I put together a video for you explaining what I would do to build links to your site. It goes over the basic stuff like doing outreach, competitions and review to the more complex stuff like getting universities and colleges to link to your site. I hope you like it and find it useful. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZi6ppj6yjw

Thanks,

Ross

FZi6ppj6yjw watch?v=FZi6ppj6yjw

[mihaiaperghis]

An interesting idea, though not so popular with non-english speaking countries. Also, the website being new, I prefer to have most if not all content on the website itself, at least until there's a minimum dozen of posts/reviews.

Thanks!

[sherohass]

Would recommend joining myblogguest.com this way you can get articles with back links to websites of your choice and you can also publish articles on great and popular websites provided you can submit quality articles that you wrote yourself. Your articles can contain anchor text with backlinks to your website.

Hope this helps.