Should I embark on this long term link building campaign?
-
I've been planning to set out on a massive link building campaign for the term 'how to start a business' and I can't decide if it's a good idea or not. (Metrics attached - my site is the last listed and the ones above it are the top ranking for that term)
The sites ranking for that terms are on very authoritative domains, but the page link profiles on each of them are poor. This is one of those moments where you think, 'Am I about to waste a tremendous amount of time?'
My guide is extremely thorough and I had hoped with a MASSIVE amount of elbow grease outranking pages that had poor content value + only has 4 referring root domains. The problem is, I'm not sure if the powerful overall domain authority would still outrank my newer site.
Should I follow through with that general guide or focus on less hard to rank and less searched content?
Argh confusion GB3jcsJ.png?1
-
My gosh guys, thanks so much for the thorough and insightful answers!
Ironically you both cleared up my game plan in other parts of my business indirectly. So now, aside from my initial question - I've got a better plan for that as well.
Brilliant. Thank you so much!
-
I wont disagree, links can be good, but links that you can just go out and get are usually not worth it.
Quality and unique content described by Egol is what you need.Click data will eventually get you ranking better and better for the keywords that your content deserves not necessarily the ones you wont to rank for. Search engines look at the activities of users, they see what keywords they enter and what results they click on, did the user come back and click on a different result, what was the last result they clicked on. From all this click data they can start to see what results served the users needs for each keyword and rank you accordingly.
I create many websites for people, from their content and purpose I can just tell if they are going to successful. I make sure the site crawls perfectly with no errors no redirects and mess, I make sure the content is described to the search engine well using structured data, its the clients job to supply good content. If that content is good. I will see over the next few months it continually rise in the rankings.
click data will eventually overrule everything, of your site does not satisfy the users needs the search engine will eventually know this no matter how many links you have, and visa versa
-
'Am I about to waste a tremendous amount of time?'
If I am interested in ranking well for a keyword, I don't look at those numbers. Instead, I go straight to the search results and look at the quality of the content that is currently ranking for my keywords of interest. If I am confident that I can beat their content then I attack. Great authors with strong content area expertise should not look at those numbers. If you can beat their content soundly (like Rand describes here) then you have a chance. If you can't beat their content then is the time to evaluate.
Judging by the quality of the writing in your question, I think that you might have a shot at it. You say that you have an extremely thorough "guide". Does that mean you have hundreds of pages about hundreds of topics that speak to how to launch a business? Is it clearly written for the average person? Is it unique content that you own, found nowhere else on the web? Do you have it on the web with all of the pages optimized, each for specific queries? If you have that do you plan to continue writing for this topic, on this site, into the foreseeable future (meaning at least a few years)? Is this site already pulling in a little traffic?
If you have a confident "yes" answer for all of those questions, then my advice would be... Forget about this keyword. Look at the analytics for your website and identify the pages that are pulling in traffic and producing income from adsense. Identify the keywords of these pages. Now you see what's working. You have discovered a vein of gold. Mine it 'til it plays out. Instead of spending your time building links, find more veins. Mine them. If you are producing better content than what is out there I would keep attacking it. As long as your traffic and income are growing month over month keep at it.
Instead of launching a massive linkbuilding campaign I would launch a massive quality content campaign.
That is what I would do. I am sure that plenty of people will disagree. Most of those people have never been able to answer a confident "YES!" to the questions posed above and kept attacking the content.
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
-
Link building for a 'boring' eCommerce site
Hey all, I'm in need of some serious inspiration and I'm hoping one of you generous people can help. We're looking to do a spot of link building for an eCommerce site which I would describe (without putting it down too much) as 'boring'. This isn't our fault per se as the site sells printer cartridges and there's only a certain amount of excitement such a product can create. As a result natural linkbuilding is quite tricky, especially when it comes to creating links to anything other than our homepage. For the past couple of years we have focused on creating good content and indeed have a thriving database of hundreds of helpful articles and videos on the site. These are generating decent traffic (and rank #1 for many different help related search terms) but the problem with these articles is that they don’t convert in to sales at all well. I’m also conscious that it will ultimately end in us developing a link profile which would classify us as a printer repair resource rather than cartridge sales website. I have read numerous guides on Moz but they all tend to focus on products which are a little sexier than those that we sell. Getting someone to share and link to a truly unique product would be incredibly easy compared with asking someone to engage, share and link to the latest Epson cartridge. I started writing articles on some decent quality business blogs however the links given don’t look particularly natural and the link would always be to our homepage. We have the staff and the time but we built a whole host of rubbish links back before Penguin and I want to ensure that we are going to head in the right direction before embarking on something new. If you had a site which was really dull how would you devise a link building strategy that was relevant and, most importantly, natural? Thanks for your help. Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate1 -
Setting up a separate site for link building
We are jump starting a link building campaign for a personal injury law firm. We're planning on doing things right with earning links to content people will actually want to share, sponsoring local events, etc. We're a little worried that some good opportunities could be missed due to the fact some people have assumptions about personal injury lawyers and would be hesitant to link to us simply because of our injury, regardless of what we're trying to share/promote. One solution we're considering is creating a foundation associated with the firm that supports relevant causes and provides the public with educational resources. That might get over our branding hurdle a bit. We've also discussed setting up a separate site for the foundation and actually building links to it rather than our main site, then linking the foundation site to our main site. The hope would be that we could get more links to the foundation site and it would in turn pass on link juice to our main site. My concern is whether this strategy makes any sense. We'd be putting good content on this foundation site rather than our main site. How much link juice would actually be passed on to our main site in this case? Would so much be lost that it would negate the whole purpose?
Link Building | | LeeAbrahamson1 -
Content Marketing and Link Building Strategy in Industrial B2B
We struggle link building because engineering sector has few blogs and is much more traditional than many industries. I've just had a new idea on how to do this and wanted to bounce it off people to help refine it and improve it. Search LinkedIn for "content marketing" or similar Refine by Industry etc Ask people on resulting list to guest post on our blog - which is focused on engineers in our sector Then..... For us it boosts our blog content with high quality posts that are interesting for our audience and maybe some traffic benefit. For them it provides SEO benefits and possibly some market exposure. How can I parlay this into getting a link back as well? What else can I do to make it more effective? Cheers Denis
Link Building | | Zippy-Bungle1 -
Build links to home page or internal to rank internal pages?
I understand that naturally people link to the home page and internal pages - probably the home page more often than not. In order to build a natural looking link profile I also understand that I need a variety of anchor text, brand and url links. Should I be building links mainly to the home page with only a few to internal pages? Ultimately I want my internal pages to rank for specific terms so in my head it makes sense to concentrate my link building effort to internal pages but that would seem unnatural to google I'm sure. For arguments sake if I only built links to the home page with a mix of the anchor texts described above would these internal pages rank eventually anyway as 'link juice' flows throughout the site? Or is it an absolute must to build some links to internal pages. Could a page rank for a keyword without having any links to the site with the keyword anchor text (simply url links) based on the page title/content? Also what is a good ratio of home page to internal links? I would assume around 10:1? A lot of questions I know but I'm confused as to what will be the best strategy.
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Link Building Ideas?
Hi everyone, I am currently working on a site where people can buy mail-order bagels, i.e. the bagels are shipped via postal mail. It's a good alternative for places that have no good bagel stores nearby, especially in small, rural towns. I am about to launch a link-building campaign for the website, but am a little stuck as to where to begin. My first thought was guest posting, but it seems like the vast majority of food blog owners are very protective of their blogs and rarely, if ever, allow guest posts. I also thought about doing sponsored reviews (i.e. sending mommy bloggers free samples in exchange for a review), but that's essentially a paid link, i.e. a no-no. There are of course generic web directories, but those only get you so far, and article marketing is out of the question (too spammy). Was hoping I might be able to bounce off some ideas off of you all. Any thoughts? Thank you in advance for whatever tips/ideas you might be able to share 🙂 Lukas
Link Building | | TampaSEO0 -
Link building
i want to ask a question. i am sure this is kind black hat seo. look at this web site http://www.199999dollars.com/ if we also create website like this and put a banner as domain for sale and in the footer put back links to our domain ? thanks
Link Building | | idreams0 -
Link Building Strategy - Please Give Feedback
Hi, I"m moving forward with link building for nlpca(dot)com and here's my plan I know my industry, keywords, and this site very well so I'll start by: Analyze Top content for top 10 competitors and see where the links are currently going. I'm assuming a competitor is someone similar to me and not sites like wikipedia in this case Make a spreadsheet for all of the worthwhile links that I find by using OSE and the top 10 competitors, places where if we're good enough we can get a link on that page. See what they're linking to Use (1) and (2) to discover what stelllar targeted content to build Use infographics, a blog, and articles to build targeted content to request a link from the people in (2) building out facebook, twitter, and Google +1 for the site is coming too. Your thoughts? I'm completely open to improvements via feedback.
Link Building | | BobGW0