Link Building
-
I've been hearing about going after niche directories, and my question is most of them have a ton of links on any given page. Is it even worth taking the time to approach these sites knowing they won't pass a lot of link juice?
-
Thanks, I've heard of him before.
-
Thanks, I've heard of him before.
-
If it's the topic you've talked about before, I know nothing about that, so I would not be the one to write about it. For ecommerce, check out Rob Snell. His site is at http://www.robsnell.com/, and I've seen him speak at Pubcon, and listened to him on an interview at Webmaster Radio (probably in their ecommerce experts show). He talks about how he gets content for his brother's product pages. IIRC, he sits down with a tape recorder and has his brother tell him all about why you would want this particular product for your hunting dog, what makes it great, what are some of the questions that they get on the phone all the time, and then goes and writes all that up for the site.
-
I have changed all my product descriptions from all the other retail sites in my niche, for that exact reason. To not have duplicate content, or at worse, the same content as all my competitors. But you gave me some good ideas
Do you want to right these for me
-
Product reviews are a great source of content. If you're not the manufacturer, rewrite the description and enhance what the manufacturer provided. Make your product page the ultimate source of information on that particular product.
Why would I choose this product over another one? What's the best use for this particular product? What type of people use it? Is it for beginners or for advanced people? What is the product made of? Is it made in the USA? Has it won awards? etc. etc. etc. All the stuff that's a lot easier to sit here and write about doing than actually taking the time to sit down and do (which is why there are product pages on my site that are nearly empty
).
-
The only issue with producing good content is when you have an ecommerce site, and it's mostly product pages. Then what?
-
I wholeheartedly agree with EGOL.
When you spend time chasing directories, filling out forms, etc. it feels so completely fake. You recognize the sole purpose of the activity is to get a link for search engines, not to benefit users.
If you found a great site that talked about golf or whatever your interests are, and they had a page which listed the best golf courses by area, then I would surely recommend trying to list your site on that page. Real people interested in your topic will see it and learn about your site. That has value.
If you launch a website often you have a lot of specific knowledge about the topic or know others who do. Share that knowledge! You probably know all sorts of tidbits about the best golf courses, players, rules you like or don't like, where to buy clubs or clothes, discussions about sponsors and so many other topics. Those articles need to be shared in a high quality way.
If you run short of content, then you can look to your users. Many would jump at the opportunity to provide great content if you give them the opportunity. Adding a forums and/or blog to your site can generate great ideas and capture a lot of long tail traffic. You can emulate what SEOmoz does and promote great forum articles (the Q&A section is basically a forum) to your blog.
It's all about the content.
-
Only one works for me and that is producing good content. I spend 100% of my time on that and 0% on linkbuilding. Every minute that you spend on content creation is spent creating a traffic-pulling asset.
I could spend time begging people to link to my content... but if you have good content people will like, tweet, share, digg, stumble.. .and that generates traffic and with that traffic a few links. So just make more content and make it very easy for people to share. The key is to make content that people want to share.
-
That's what I thought. It seems there are only really maybe a half dozen to a dozen effective link building methods and strategies.
-
If you have an established site with good linkpower these sites will add such a miniscule amount of boost that they probably are not worth your time.
If you have a brand new site that has close to zero power then the miniscule contribution from these sites might give a tiny amount of help.
If you are in the second situation above there is something else to consider... if you want to have a serious website that ranks well and pulls in nice traffic at some point you must figure out how to pull in some genuine links and on that basis it is probably better to get straight to that work than spend valuable time chasing directory links.
The only exception to the above are the few directories that are associated with successful websites (that are not directories) but that simply have a page of links for a topic like... places to play golf in Upstate New York.
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 Issue
Hi, While prospecting for backlinks target do you guys filter links less than a specific DA or PA? for instance - if PA<5 then remove
Link Building | | Janki99
My VA accidentally selected a PA 3 link where the site owner eventually gave us a backlink.
Due to that link the traffic jumped 14X!!!
Had it been my filtering process would never got the backlink and traffic. What do you guys suggest?0 -
Link Building Question
Hi Community, I am currently doing some link building for a client. I have created a case study in the form of an article based around the client on our own website & linked to one of their service subpages so a user can see what kind of work they do. I am also currently trying to rank the exact same service sub page for 'KEYWORD A'. I have used 'KEYWORD A' in the title of the article (/KEYWORD-A-TEXT-TEXT) and built a link (not exact match anchor text but contains 'KEYWORD A') within the article pointing to the service subpage. Our blog post now out-ranks the service subpage by around 5 pages, my question is: 1. How long does Google take to acknowledge that the client's service subpage is more resourceful for KEYWORD A? Any other hints / tips / advice is appreciated! Thank you
Link Building | | SO_UK0 -
When pitching a whitepaper as Push Content for Link Building, is it ok to give the person I'm pitching a link to a landing page with a form on it?
When pitching a whitepaper as Push Content for Link Building (i.e. pushing out content that my client has created), is it ok to give the person I'm pitching a link to a landing page with a form on it? Or should I create a landing page with the whitepaper included on it? I’m not sure if the client will be ok with this b/c I know they use the whitepaper for sales purposes to gain leads. For example, my pitch email would include a line such as this, "the whitepaper can be found at LINK and I'd love if you could share it with your readers." I think it may be weird/a little wrong to ask a webmaster to include a link on his site to a landing page with a form to get the whitepaper. Does this make sense? What have others done with whitepapers as Push Content for link building?
Link Building | | ArketiGroup1 -
Content optimisation or Link Building first? Small clients & small budgets
Hi there. Apologies in advance for this long message! I have come from a large client-side SEO position where I had a small team of online marketers to assist in our SEO efforts. The effect was that we were able to work on link building and onsite optimisation at the same time and obviously give it 100% of our attention (and the website had very high DA and Trust). I have recently moved to a small agency where I am the sole SEO-Guy and my clients are small. I typically have no more than 8 hours to spend per month on all aspects of SEO (analysis, reporting, link building and content optimisation) per client and I have to strictly adhere to this. To make matters more difficult, these clients typically have weak back-link profiles (low in number and quality and all pointing to the home page) and poorly optimised content (which contributes to low DA & PR). I went through my first 'monthly process' for a particular client in September and focused my 8 hours on optimising the site content for a particular section of the website. This involved optimising meta titles & descriptions, body content and images for our chosen keywords. I didn't focus on links at all. I published the changes to the site on 23rd September. When I look at my rankings as of 6th October, one keyword in particular has dropped by 28 places (from 11 to 39) which seems excessive to me. In my mind, the changes I made were small, so this drop concerns me. The particular URL was ranking in position 11 for a keyword that I subsequently targeted to another (more relevant) page in the site. Both pages have the same MR, PA and links etc. I think I may have effectively cannibalised the keyword and to make matters worse, the new page isn't even in the top 50! Both pages are in the Google Index. So, this is my longwinded way of asking for your opinion on whether other SEOs in my position would recommend spending time on building the back link profile to strengthen DA and PR of deeper pages before you start making content optimisations (given I am unable to do them at the same time). It's tricky with small clients as they don't necessarily understand how long these things can take. Cheers! Laurie
Link Building | | Laurie-Tomahawk0 -
Link building - am I too cautious?
The only backlink building I am doing is guest blogging as it seems most other methods have potential to harm rankings in the post panda/penguin era. As mentioned in another post I'm trying to get a strategy for social media that works as I believe social likes/shares are important. What other link building methods can I use that are totally safe? Is it okay to 'buy' a link on botw r examleas theyre editorally reviewed? I'm asking myself 2 questions when acquiring limks. 1. Would I want this link if google didn't exist and 2. Will it bring me relevant traffic. I'm almost scared of link building in case google punishes me. Are there any legitimate methods I'm missing?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Should I build links to wordpress category pages?
Hi guys, I'm working on http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com and planto build links to the category pages - is that the best strategy for a comparison site like this? This is a wordpress site and I read that category pages should be no indexed is that the case? If so then obviously I'd be wasting my time building links to these pages as google wouldn't index them anyway. Any advice on the best strategy for link building would be much appreciated!
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Link building for eCommerce website (Software Products)
Hi. We have two websites, where we develop extensions and templates for various CMS. Thats like , we have around 500+ specific products pages now and we have optimized each and every product page with natural SEO techniques. No over at all. Im very specific about it. But I want to know, how to make a link building plan for those sites. Can anyone help ?
Link Building | | mageclub0 -
How fast is too fast when it comes to link building?
I'm getting ready to start a massive link building campaign. I plan on using a variety of anchor texts, getting links from a variety of sources, and only getting high quality links from relevant sites. My main concern is getting penalized for gaining too many links too quickly. Does anyone have any advice on how fast is too fast? Or how much is too much in a certain amount of time? Thanks!
Link Building | | CIEEwebTeam0