Best place to start link building
-
I am new to SEO and want to start doing some link building using SEO moz to help. I am looking for pointers on where to start. Our business is www.hairbowcenter.com and we sell ribbon and hairbow supplies. We are lacking a lot of good links and I wanted to start focusing getting more. What tools should I use and where do I begin. I noticed our Pagerank is only 1 for our site and I want to get that up as well.
-
Are directories still a relevant way to start with link building after the latest google changes?
-
I usually don't use shortcuts when I research Mommy Blogs. The quality ones get a ton of requests for reviews and giveaways. You have to find a way to stick out from the bunch. I usually read a handful of posts and the "About Me" page before sending an email. That way I can personalize it, and possibly even find a good pitch (ie - if they do a product of the week, etc). Most good Mommy Blogs have a page devoted to PR or you can just use their contact form.
I haven't used them so I can't vouch personally, but http://momsparkmedia.com/ might be a good option for you. Looks like they act as a liaison between bloggers and companies.
I hope that helps!
-
Can you recommend some sites that you contract mommy bloggers from? It seems like from sites like this http://goo.gl/tJFSG, you cant easily find the contact info to ask for a review, and also seems inefficient to keep asking one by one.
Is there something like payperpost.com, specifically more for mommy bloggers, that has good quality blogs?
Thanks for your help
-
As mentioned above spreadsheets are the way forward or a simple word processor page. Adding all the information such as email contacts etc
Another good one is to check out whois information on sites and be like "a dog with a bone" be persistent day in day out and make sure you get in touch with the webmasters. Skype is a good tool to initiate conversations also.
-
I agree with the Twitter follow suggestion, but don't consider it even "a little grey hat."
My team and I have been able to get about one in five people we follow to follow us back. And we've seen more than a few convert into valued customers.
The best strategy is to be both selective and transparent. Don't go on a blitz where you follow hundreds of people from a few sources on a single day. Be very targeted. Follow people slowly and incrementally, after first providing something of value on your own Twitter feed....and jumping into discussions where you can provide expertise.
Too many people go on fishing expeditions in which they randomly follow people from targeted Twitter feeds. The targets may click over to your Twitter feed out of curiosity, but be turned off by one marketing message after another, but no real content. Or they may follow you -- and then have nothing more to do with you ever again.
-
As has been mentioned - links pointing to you need to be relevant and related. The place to start is look in depth at your competitors. Ascertain who they are - and see who links to them. If you can gain links from the same places that are relevant and regarded as authorities, and leave out their spammy links it will give you a good start.
Once you have found your competitors - read this post on using googles custom search engine for potential link mining here on SEOmoz, and delve into the world of search parameters to get your search for potential links on target.
When you are seeking links - avoid specifically going for just links to your home page - link diversity is key. If you are approaching an authority site about a specific product and you have a guide on how to use it or positive reviews on it, ask for a link to the deep page to ensure the relevancy is there.
-
You've received some good advice above and there's only one suggestion I would make. Although, I'm not a huge social networking fan I do think that Twitter can be a very useful tool. Although a little grey hat, the strategy is to follow users who you would like to follow you. A fair percentage will follow back. Then, mention them in your tweets, which they usually appreciate, followed by any other means of building a relationship. Once you have some sort of rapport opportunities can arise for back links.
-
I have a feeling you would do well with Mommy bloggers. Offer a giveaway to their readers or send them product for review. It's an excellent way to get exposure and links back.
Not sure where to start? I suggest finding those sites that rank well for the keywords you want and see who links to them. You may find a lot of great opportunities there.
-
Before you even start on trying to get links for the website, just ask yourself why others would link to you. You are an e-commerce website and it makes it even more difficult to get quality natural links - so being creative is important here - think of different strategies you can pursue so it makes your content more "linkable".
Could you provide any free tools or widgets that your readers might find useful? For a real estate guy, a free mortgage calculator might work well.
You could run a contest targeted towards women audience - have viral impact by social sharing - this usually ends up with several links from "mom blogs" and other portals.
As James suggested, go for Directories - those are easy links - but make sure they are thematic and relevant. There are very few general directories of value.
-
A good way to go about this is to create a spreadsheet, find niche related resources that you could possibly get a link on. Directories, Blogs, Related Websites, Guest Post Areas, etc. Organize them, than once you have a good list built, go after the links using common practices, calling, emails, social areas like Facebook and Twitter.
Once you've gone through the list you've created, target a new area in your link building campaign, and start the process over. Just keeps things a bit more organized
-
Dont worry about PageRank is is not a solid measurement of ranking anymore. In the first place you need to do up a plan of what you want to rank for as though you say you are looking for good links you are not clear as to what exact keywords you want to rank for. Look in the SEOMoz training under keyword research for some good tools on how to do this. Then I would as James suggest below start some organic and slow link building building over time.
Along with the tools here the simplest of tools is an excel spreadsheet where you build up a list of those keywords (start with the long tail ones mentioned on the page). Then go out an research what sites are speaking about this blogs, business sites. Build real relationships, work your social media strategy and over time you will get links - not lots of links but good links -
Your aim should be to be the authority in this area but in the first place work on above and even read the rest of this training page.
-
Hi,
Here are some ideas to get you started
1. Look for related directories online where you can submit your business.
2. Type in your related business keywords, then look at which competitors are ranking for these terms then go to OSE and research the links the competitors have built, you can pull a report.
3. Possibly start a blog and get fresh content related to the business on the blog each week, then syndicate the content via social media.
4. If you have social media channels for the business, start link building via them you can build links via Twitter, Stumble upon, Delicious and a host of other social website.
5. Think to yourself do you have any suppliers who you currently use, ask if they want to link to you or want to add a badge to their website which is for your business for example a partner of your website.
For further ideas here is a fantastic post:
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
-
Inbound Links/Spam Score - Disavow
Hi I have been using the Links tool in our Pro account on Moz, using the MOZ spam score/inbound links tool I can identify the linking domains and their spam rating. It shows we currently have around 4.8k linking domains and when I export the data I receive information like below. (Name - Spam Score)
Moz Pro | | mlb7
wall03d3.ga --%
wallieepattern.gq --%
ajij.tk --%
0pattern36.tk --%
70patterndesign.cf --%
discountbuy3cheap2.gq --%
androiddesktop39.ga --%
mobile2android7.ml --%
9321coupon.gq --%
9722.gq --%
blackphoto.us --%
yzbm.info 89%
e411info.info 90%
bcep2015.nl 91%
6vh.info 93% These sites are linking to our images on the site and also to the product the image is from. 80% of our links are like these ones above I understand these types of links are quite common especially for e commerce sites but should I disavow these on a regular basis or ignore them? I don’t want to ignore them if they could harm us. Thanks Mike0 -
Crawl Diagnostics saids a page is linking but I can't find the link on the page.
Hi I have just got my first Crawl Diagnostics report and I have a questions. It saids that this page: http://goo.gl/8py9wj links to http://goo.gl/Uc7qKq which is a 404. I can't recognize the URL on the page which is a 404 and when searching in the code I can't find the %7Blink%7D in the URL which gives the problems. I hope you can help me to understand what triggers it 🙂
Moz Pro | | SebastianThode0 -
Links being reported in Webmaster Tools
Hi Are the Total Links To Your Site, as reported in GWT, purely external inbound links ? Since these links are usually, as far as i can tell, much higher in number than any other link reporting tool and hence, i presume, more accurate, why don't services such as Moz etc include this in reporting ? I know its just a total number and link quality is whats important not quantity, but i would have thought interesting to show in reporting in conjunction with link quality info such as is already reported. Since most backlink reporting tools do show a total but always much much lower than that reported in gwt (i think) All Best Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
2 canonical links on 1 page, 1 for print version
Our developer has added a 2nd canonoical link for the "print" version of our page. I read on another post that this appears to be not be the correct way to do this. Is there a better way ? Here is an example of the code:
Moz Pro | | foodsleuth0 -
Inbound Link Tool?
I signed up for SEOMOZ so that I could get a conclusive list of links for my competition. I hope I can get this information with this tool. Can I? And where can I find the tool? P.S. I don't need my own inbound links; I can get these with google webmaster tools.
Moz Pro | | bachdeg0 -
I am trying to find inbound links for one of my site urls. My question is does SEOMoz able to track all internal links as the Open Site Explorer shows 0 internal links?
It shows 0 internal links when I am pretty sure we have multiple internal links.Should we use absolute urls or relative urls for internal links?
Moz Pro | | SulekhaUSLLC0 -
SEOmoz not displaying correct amount of links?
When I go to the link analysis page where ti shows how many links my site has and how many my competitors have...it shows that I have 0 links. But Google Webmaster Tools shows my site as having 149 links. Is this a glitch with zeomoz or whats going on? The reason I initially subscribed to seomoz was to track my links. Thanks
Moz Pro | | tarik30010 -
How often do you update Link Analysis tool?
Wondering how often SEOMOZ updates their Link Analysis pages? I have had the same status for a month or so - although I know we have added links, etc.
Moz Pro | | findachristianjob0