Linking for multiple clients
-
We own a small web design company that both creates the sites and then does the seo marketing for them once they are created. The business has grown to have over 100 customers. However, as we sell more sites we find our SEO team is somewhat short staffed. So far, the area that suffers the most is the link building aspect of SEO.
The sites we build are for dentists and usually only contain 10 to 20 pages. Enough to list the services they offer and where they are located. Here is my question:
We need to get the most effective links possible for over 100 sites with just a couple of employees. What would be the most effective links to try for. We cant chase down every stray link for our doctors. And, we don't have time to do in-depth research for each client each month as we are already pushing ourselves to the limit. In time, we will have more employees to help share the SEO load. But for now, where should we be spending our time most effectively? We can usually only budget one or two hours per client each month for linking.
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
-
Have you considered hiring a contractor? If you're in a position where you can't afford to hire more staff but can afford to spend a bit, I would suggest hiring a freelancer to increase the number of hours spent monthly.
If you can't do this, you are really limited to Daniels suggestions (minus the blog comments bit) and possibly some generic press release and article work - keep it clean and unspammy.
-
Thanks for the input. We have an employee that only does Google places right now. They contact our doctors and make sure the PINs are done correctly, as well as uploading pictures and video.
I will be sure that we are getting the most out of directories as we can. As for the guest commenting on other blogs, we train the doctors to do that. However, most don't have time. It is difficult for us to find blogs all over the country for different dentists and put a link on each one. I will give it a shot though. Thanks for all the feedback, and if anyone else has a thought I would be happy to hear their ideas.
-
Right that's what I'm concerned about. Needing to be extremely careful in how the work is done. I pity the person having to be responsible for that if they're not aware of these issues. That's all I was trying to get across.
-
Oh I see what you mean, like getting links on one blog to all 100 sites? I don't know if that is how I would go about it. I would spend 2 hours browsing around different blogs and leaving comments for one guy, then the next 2 hours doing it for the next guy, etc. I don't know that I would repeat a lot of blogs or posts. It would be pretty tedious but if you only have 2 hours a month and won't do Google Places work, then it beats writing a single article or submitting to spammy free directories or making hundreds of bookmarks.
-
Agreed Daniel. I'm just looking at the scale of it. 100 sites. All from the same source. The amount of time involved to do that just doesn't seem to be a wise use of productivity to me at that scale.
-
Well I would hope no one would smell a rat and report spam because I would hope they would leave real comments as real people with real names. I agree, blog comments are pretty insignificant, but in bulk they are quite helpful for local non-competitive phrases. You just have to do it right, which a lot of people can't seem to do for some reason.
-
I have to agree with Daniel's first suggestion, and at the same time, caution that the 2nd suggestion could rapidly backfire because just one link from one blog is very insignificant in the long run. Multiply that by multiple doctors - how long do you think you'd be able to get away with the blog comment path before someone smelled a rat and reported it as spam? In the blink of an eye.
Local citations, local directories, and local listings and Yelp, CitySearch and the rest. Coupled with high quality unique content on each site where you seed location info into the on-site optimization.
-
If all you have is two hours per client then there are two options you could be doing:
1. The most effective thing you could do would be to build citations and listings in local directories. These links will help immensely because they will also push up the dentists site in Google Places as well.
2. If you aren't concerned with Google Places, then in only an hour or two each month I would comment on as many dental/health related blogs as you can with a real name and not spammy comment. This is the fastest way to create a halfway decent link.
Good luck!
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
-
Value of Links? What is each link worth?
Morning Everyone, I just had this thought and wondered what everyone's opinions were in terms of link value in monetary terms. We'll assume for the purposes of this that the links come from contextually relevant sites and that the sites in question have got the Moz DA from being high quality and have a good quality incoming link profile. Its a bit of a theoretical question, but i guess imagine if the only way you could get links was to pay for them, what would they be worth to you. This is link value for SEO purposes, they will have in addition value from traffic from good sites, that no doubt varies wildly depending on topic. I assume everyone also agrees on: The first link from a domain is the most valuable High DA sites are worth more than low ones. So could anyone who has an opinion on the link value suggest a monetary value for links. Its really just using a monetary amount to see how best to target my time. Here is my example of what might be expected, but I am hoping people with more knowledge will perhaps correct it. DA Rating First Link 2nd-5th Link 5th-10th Link 10Plus Links 5 $5 $2 $1 $0 15 $7 $3 $2 $1 25 $25 $10 $5 $2 35 $45 $20 $7 $3 45 $65 $30 $11 $4 55 $95 $45 $19 $5 65 $200 $100 $45 $6 75 $350 $120 $65 $9 85 $700 $240 $95 $15 95 $1100 $450 $200 $30
Link Building | | wellandpower1 -
Will short linking to my site affect SERPs attribution of inbound link?
Some brand partners are using their short links to link back to our site (like bit.ly but they have their own). They have a high domain authority and trust so we want that link back to be read by Google. When I downloaded all inbound links from Moz, this brand's site was not listed, making me worried that the inbound link isn't being seen or considered! Haven't been able to find any info on this...
Link Building | | PAC31350 -
What is the process of link earning to avoid link building?
Hi All, I want process to earning links for new SEO 2014. Can anybody explain? Thanks, Akhilesh
Link Building | | dotlineseo0 -
Does This Link Have Value?
Hi Mozzers, A client paid to publish a white paper, thinking that the link to the web site is beneficial. The link does redirect back to the web site, but is in a format that I've never seen: http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001YdyyLrzOQJxM87SJZkJYVbQKSdCmFpwqg1fuX3yqVqpGboUjdSaHv9IdW5HsQpgmvwOrg5N4T3DNHYV8e1UVe_YCua_XQCFykoSJvu1HzDyb-3x-aFcPU-ER-vwWxq4- Does this link have any value?
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk0 -
What are inbound links worth after Panda and Penguin, since a site ranks for the NATIONAL keyword "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS!?!?
ARE INBOUND LINKS TODAY ALMOST WORTHLESS??!!? After having been the KING of SEO, down to the toilet? Today I got a great sample from a fellow SEO professional showing a site, rockymountainfurniture.com rank for "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS FROM 3 DOMAINS and a domain trust of 14!!!! ON A NATIONAL, VALUABLE, HIGH QUERY VOLUME KEYWORD!! I was stunned, but is this the "NEW SEO WORLD" we live in, so we should skip spending hundreds of hours on link building? There are over 32 different types of inbound links but this is much MORE than a radical change, this is turning SEO as it was up-side-down. Any input, thoughts, ideas?
Link Building | | yvonneq0 -
Link to those that link to you? Worthwhile?
We have thousands and thousands of sites that link to a domain we are working on, many with low page authority and high domain (bloggers, forum posts, etc). Has anyone experimented with linking to the pages that link to you (not from your site) but from other means in an effort to boost their quality? I'm not sure what method we would use, maybe some relevant blog comments or social votes. But curious if this could be an effective method.
Link Building | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Porn link ...
I just ran https://www.majesticseo.com report for back links and showed me that I have one link at porn site ... not sure if it will be appropriate to post it here. The link was discovered on 03.05.11 and when I visited today link is not there... I dont know who put that link there. Can I get penalty for that from google? Can it be a mistake?
Link Building | | DiamondJewelryEmpire1 -
Recognizing a back link
Have you conducted or know of any research/studies that examines when the inherited value of a backlink is actually attributed to the detination url? Meaning if abc.com links to xyz.com today with a unique long-tailed anchor tag, at what point would Google actually recognize the value of that link to xyc.com (ie increasing in the SERPs for that anchor). My first inclination would be at the point of indexation of the link but from my own casual analysis, I havent proved this to be true. Obviously we dont know exactly how google does this, but have you drawn any conclusions based upon your own findings? Perhaps there's a period of link evaluation post indexation before passing value in terms of ranking relevance? thanks!
Link Building | | lexnex0