Link Building for Landing Page

[ecentricmarketing]

Hey Guys,

I have a client that is launching a website in about 2-3 months time.  They have had a flash site for the last 4 years and have had no SEO/Link Building to the site and are now going to undertake my services for Content Strategy, Social Strategy and Link Building.

In the interim (from now till the next 3 months) they will be launching a "coming soon" landing page.

What I want to know is when doing their initial link building do I just concentrate on brand related links through local directories with the aim of getting a few local keyterms?

Or should we be deploying a longer term strategy of going after the competitive keyterms now?

Thanks,
Michael

[David_ODonnell]

I'd keep the old site live and build links to it.

This means you have an actual live and complete website that other sites are more likely to link to, as apposed to a coming soon page. It gives you the option to build deep links to pages on the site. You can 301 redirect if URLs change on the new site.

It also means you can start link building now, not have to wait 3 months for the new site to go live. As you know there is always a delay between the start of a link building campaign, and the results.

Hope this is more helpful.

[MoosaHemani]

I am not sure what your client industry is so I am pitching the idea in general and then you can change it as per your industry.

Why not you put something interesting and valuable to your audience instead of a coming soon page... like provide a FREE guide to something what most people in your niche are looking for!

This will help you get some natural links from different multiple domains and at the same time this will increase your email list that you can later use to increase your sales ratio and more...

#justathought

[ecentricmarketing]

Hi David,

Thanks for the response.  I merely wanted to start a discussion about the initial stages of building quality directory links for a landing page.

I know my question may have come across as broad and not specific but rather than insulting you could very easily asked for me to expand on my intentions to engage whether I did have any idea of what I was doing.

For your knowledge I never take what is written in the Q & A as gospel but I tend to have a huge amount of respect for the community and thought I would get an informative response.

For your interest we have a procedure for building link strategies for our clients, however we wanted to use the SEOMoz community to expand upon and take it to the next step.

My SEO strategy is usually based on a number of factors to gain link traction;  combination of on-page strategy and promotional strategy which will be launched in 3 months.  In the interim I was wondering whether anyone has had a similar experience pre-website launch.

Thank you for the link you shared.  We are using many of these tactics already.

Just wanted to know your thoughts on this specific situation and what your approach would be.

Regards.

[David_ODonnell]

Hi Michael,

Question: Should you be selling services you don't know how to deliver?

Follow-up question: What if someone (unintentionally) gave you bad advice here and you acted on it?

Typically a business hires another business to provide a service they are experienced in delivering. I realise the only way to get experience is to do, but perhaps you should be learning on your own sites before moving on to clients.

To touch on your questions, local directories may be a very small part of a link building strategy, but they're definitely not the only part. Also, you are going to be extremely limited in the types of links you'll be able to achieve building to a 'coming soon' landing page. It also means you can't build deep links.

I would recommend reading, 'Starting A Link Building Campaign' here for starters: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links

If, after reading that you don't know if you can deliver a quality link building campaign, perhaps look at outsourcing the job to another SEO until you're up-to-speed yourself.

I don't mean to be come across as an ass, I'm honestly concerned for both you and your client. I hope this helps.

[Saijo.George]

It would depend a lot on the niche .. if its uber tough then have a mix of  hard and relatively easy ones . If the nich is not that hard to crack go after the hard ones from the get go.