When rebuilding a site, when should you start building links?
-
We are in the process of completely rebuilding our web presence. We went ahead and started a blog using Hubspot while we are redesigning everything and writing all new content. The new site will be live in early August. The question is when do we start making a big push with Linkbuilding? I am currently trying to promote the Blog but I'm wondering about linkbuilding for the rest of the site? Do we wait until the new site is live or do we start doing it now? The new site will be completely different from the old site?
-
What are your thoughts one paying an SEO to do linkbuilding?
My thoughts on linkbuilding are different from those of most SEOs. I attack rankings with content and let linkbuilding happen naturally. That makes the links happen slowly, but nearly 100% of my time goes into producing permanent equity for the website.... and instead of paying a linkbuilder I would rather pay an author.
but sites that have a high domain authority will have to be manually done by someone in house.
I agree. Although we generally do not do link building we occasionally request a link from an authoritative website. I make all of those contacts myself. If they will be linking to us based upon the merits of our content then someone who can speak to the content will be the most qualified for making the request. The more technical in nature your content becomes the more important it is to have content area expertise making the contact.
-
Well the content and the UI will change dramatically for the better. The site looks ok now but it doesn't engage visitors. The Blog still has the old UI but we're posting new content to the blog everyday and we'll put the new skin on the blog when the main site goes live. So if I am reading your response correctly I could probably continue with building links related to the blog but should hold off on links to the main site.
One follow up question. What are your thoughts one paying an SEO to do linkbuilding? It seems that paid linking building is probably ok for getting a lot of links to lower ranking sites but sites that have a high domain authority will have to be manually done by someone in house.
-
The answer depends upon how much your content is changing and what type of links your are "building".
If you are getting links into articles that will be on the same URL before and after the rebuild then getting links into them now is fine.
If your content is going to move to new URLs then getting links after the move will have best results.
If your content is going to change significantly then webmasters who link to you now might not like what you have up later and it might be easier to get them to link to improved content.
As for methods of getting the links... if you are buying them or getting them from sites who have some partnership with you then you don't have to worry about editorial decisions... however, if these links are to be given on the basis of merit then you should wait until you have super design and best possible content before you spend time on linkbuilding.
See... the question is complicated.
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
-
Frequency of Manual Link Building Monitoring
Hey Moz! We're in the middle of performing a link remediation campaign, and had a question regarding new links. We do not acquire any links through methods that break Google's guidelines, but we recently discovered a suspicious link to our website that happened organically. What is the recommended frequency for manually checking all newly discovered links to our website in order to catch/remove toxic links? Monthly? Bi-monthly? Yearly? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | TheDude0 -
Link Building - Post Penguin
Hi, We have an eCommerce site that has recently been hit for some unnatural linking, resulting in a warning in our Google Webmaster Tools account. We weren't doing anything particularly underhand (and indeed before Penguin there wasn't a cause for concern) but nevertheless Google has picked up and penalised us. We've instantly removed the worst offending links and requested a resubmission. If this doesn't result in positive action from Google we're planning on employing the services of an Oracle member on SEOmoz who was kind enough to give us some fantastic free advice in order to go through and remove any further links that may be seen as questionable. Moving forward however I'm a little bit overwhelmed as to exactly what we should be doing in order to create a positive, natural link portfolio. I understand the emphasis is on ‘natural’ linking but we’ve been online for 8 years and I think it’s fairly safe to say that the number of links we have now is probably representative of about our ‘lot’ when it comes to 100% natural links. It would be nice to give our portfolio a nice gentle push in the right direction. I’ve checked through SEOmoz and the most up to date link building article they have appears to be http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links - This guide however does seem to suggest some things that are potentially frowned upon now (for example, highly optimised anchor text I understand is now a no-no). Obviously, in days gone by I could look at Open Site Explorer to try to emulate my competitors but, to be honest, most of them have what I would describe as a fairly poor link profile and if I'm going to invest real time in to this I want to make sure I'm heading off in the right direction. Does anybody on here know of a really high quality post penguin link building guide, either on SEOmoz or elsewhere that I can use as some bedtime reading? Our website is eCommerce in nature so an article tailored towards online selling would be ideal. Thanks for reading! Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Safe to link to another site you own?
Hi mozzers, I have some external links on a resource page on my established site. I have a new site in the same niche with content that if linked to, would improve the resource page. If I linked to it using branded anchor text, would it be safe? My thoughts are yes...as long as it adds value and isnt keyword anchored. The sites are on different C class IPs Would welcome some thoughts Peter
Link Building | | PeterM220 -
Link building options...slim
I am in a smaller town and sell real estate. I have seen a lot of the competitors links and some of them are just blog commenting spam and things like that (although they are ranking well for certain terms and their links are coming from sites that have nothing to do with real estate.) I guess what I am trying to say is should I start going after links from other towns/cities in my state or should I go outside of my state and start looking for other links in other cities and states? I have bought my townstate.com from someone recently and it ranks highly for town,state. I am trying to find different ways to get to number one for my "town, state real estate". What would you do? Would you continue to add content once a week or so as well as build links? Thanks!
Link Building | | blake-766240 -
Mobile sites link strategies
Hi, I am working for a large mobil-site (+200.000 pages), to improve their SEO, and am trying to figure out the best way to set up a linkbuilding strategy for the site. The urls are very dynamic and often rather long so deep linking is difficult. Any input/ideas would be welcome 🙂 Jens Peter
Link Building | | jpndk0 -
Building Links
Hi everyone, I am new to SEO and in the process of building links the clean way. Any suggestions on how exactly I can find websites that are linking out to quality websites already? I went thru most of my competitors link building strategy - and 90% of their links are done either thru link exchange or paid links. So looking at my competitors strategy does not really help. So I need to find websites/blogs/forums that are ready to link to me if I can show them some useful content. How do I find these websites first? Please help! Cheers! Arjun
Link Building | | ArjunRajkumar0 -
Hey guys wondering which is more important getting links from authority sites or relevant sites?
basically a site that has really high authority but not that relevant or medium authority pages but relevant. an example an authority site with a mozrank of 80 or a relevant site of 20.
Link Building | | shrikey0