EXPERT CHALLENGE: What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change?
-
FOR ALL SEO THOUGHT LEADERS...What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change?
NOTE: My hope is that the responses left on this thread will ultimately benefit all members of the community and give recognition to the true thought leaders within the SEO space.
That being said, my challenge is a 2 part question:
-
With the 80/20 rule in mind, and in light of recent algorithm changes, what would YOU focus most of your SEO budget on if you had to choose? Let's assume you're in a competitive market (ie #1-5 on page 1 has competitors with 20,000+ backlinks - all ranging from AC Rank 7 to 1). How would you split your total monthly SEO budget as a general rule? Ex) 60% link building / 10% onsite SEO / 10% Social Media / 20% content creation? I realize there are many "it depends" factors but please humor us anyways.
-
Link building appears to have become harder and harder as google releases more and more algorithm changes. For link building, the only true white hat way of proactively generating links (that I know of) is creating high quality content that adds value to customers (ie infographics, videos, etc.), guest blogging, and Press Releases. The con to these tactics is that you are waiting for others to find and pick up your content which can take a VERY long time, so ROI is difficult to measure and justify to clients or C-level management.
That being said, how are YOU allocating your link building budget? Are all of these proactive link building tactics a waste of time now? I've heard it couldn't hurt to still do some of these, but what are your thoughts and what is / isn't working for you?
Here they are:
A. Using spun articles edited by US based writers for guest blog content
B. 301 Redirects
C. Social bookmarking
D. Signature links from Blog commenting
E. Directory submissions
F. Video Submissions
G. Article Directory submissions
H. Press release directory submissions
I. Forum Profile Submissions
J. Forum signature links
K. RSS Feed submissions
L. Link wheels
M. Building links (using scrapebox, senukex, etc.) to pages linked to your money site
N. Links from privately owned networks (I spoke to an SEO company that claims to have over 4000 unique domains which he uses to boost rankings for his clients)
O. Buying Contextual Text Links
All Expert opinions are welcomed and appreciated
-
-
I have to agree with the other responses: content is the most important thing because everything centers around that. Even with the recent link changes, that hasn’t changed. If anything, those changes plus Panda, Google+, etc. has made content even more important. You have to have good, unique content that makes your website worth linking to and worth sharing. Any business in any industry can come up with unique content that is worth linking to and worth sharing. It takes hard work, but is well worth the effort.
The problem I have with “link building” is that it becomes a separate beast unto itself where the question becomes “How do I get links?” instead of “How do I get people to know/like/trust my business?” In other words, link building is a tactic of the larger marketing strategy. I actually like Google's recent efforts because it brings link building back to what it should be.
That is how I present link building to my clients. The specific tasks within that then become finding websites for companies or organizations that are in related industries or finding blogs/news organizations talking about that industry. Certainly I automate that discovery as much as I can. Once found, the automating stops because at that point it is about making connections with those companies and organizations. As part of that connection, ask for a link. Doing that can get you a link while also helping the business. Which, really, helping the business is kind of the point of our jobs, right?
Does it take time? You bet. It is a pain and trust me I wish there was an easy way. But there is no quick fix and any quick fix tactic is probably spammy and will be shut down eventually by Google and Bing. So, why take that risk with some of those tactics you mentioned? At best, you are looking at a short term gain and a panic attack in the future when Google and Bing make a change. Why do that?
By treating link building as a form of building connections, links I built five years ago are still around today adding value to my client's websites. The best thing is that links built that way—extending a real world connection—will never be penalized by Google because there is nothing spammy about them. Sure it takes time, but I’ll take the long term effects every day of the week.
My distribution of time is dependent on the exact needs of the site obviously. But in general for a site that has been up and running for a year or two my main focus and effort is on content. From there, my time is divided something like this:
50% Content
20% CRO/Usability
15% Link Building
10% Social
5% On-page optimization -
I'm pretty new to the SEO world, but have been in Marketing for an long time. To me CONTENT is king.
60% Content
20% Social Media
15% Link Building
5% On-Site
I think you should have excellent and useful content that provides an awesome user experience on your website. If you do that, the link building and Social Media aspects of your marketing will take a life on of there own. I would spend most of my time creating the best possible product, service and content to provide to the public. The public will be happy to share your pages with everyone without you needing to manipulate the system.
I think Social Media has been and will continue to increase in popularity as "votes" for your pages. Plus, SEO aside... it's one of the best ways to reach new customers. Link building has it's place for sure.. it's huge.. but the engines are on a continual effort to make SEO about real user interactions. The engines want to rank sites that are naturally being shared and "voted" upon by real engaged users. On site SEO? is pretty simple and shouldn't take much time, just making sure your targeting good keywords and having those keywords crawled correctly.
Hope my little bit of knowledge was of some help.
-
Are you talking about the recent crack-down on link networks? I'm a little confuse, because you mention a 3/29 algorithm change and the question went up on 3/28 (at least here in the US).
I'm actually working on a post about (1), because I think it's almost completely unanswerable without specifics. I've seen people obsess over on-page or build links like crazy and let their on-page turn into a mess, and often those people would be well served to completely switch gears. Take a site that's an absolute mess on-page but has a solid link profile, and fixing on-page issues could work magic for them (for example).
Let's say we're talking about a brand new site, though. It still varies with the goals and budget, but I'd probably say:
- 40% Content
- 30% Link-building
- 20% On-page
- 10% Social
Without some base of solid content, you've got nothing to build links to or promote socially. I'm not saying content is magical - you have to pound the pavement and build those links - but you've got to at least have enough of a site that someone would want to link to it. So, in the beginning, content is still the mainstay. On-page has to start pretty strong - do your keyword research and build a decent, SEO-friendly structure, but then it can level off a little.
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
-
What is really a bad link in 2017?
Hi, Routine answer is: A link which doesn't provides any value. Tired of listening to this statement where we can see number of back-links been generated with different scenarios. There are still many low DA websites which speaks exactly about a brand and link a brand naturally. So, is this a bad link or good link? Let's be honest here. No one gonna visit such pages and browse through our website; it's all about what it's been doing in-terms of SEO. Do these websites to be in disavow list? Beside the context how a brand been mentioned, what are the other metrics to disavow a domain? Expecting some real answers for this straight question. If it's a low DA site and speaking about exactly our website- Good or bad? Vice-versa...high DA website mentioned website with less matching content. What is the proportion of website authority and content context? Can we keep a medium DA backlinks with some Moz spam score?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Is there a problem with google?
I have one or two competitors (in the UK) in my field who buy expired 1 - 8 year old domains on random subjects (SEO, travel, health you name it) and they are in the printing business and they stick 1 - 2 articles (unrelated to what was on there before) on these and that's it. I think they stick with PA and DA above 30 and most have 10 – 100 links so well used expired domains, hosted in the USA and most have different Ip’s although they now have that many (over 70% of their backlink profile) that some have the same ip. On further investigation none of the blogs have any contact details but it does look like they have been a little smart here and added content to the about us (similar to I use to run xxx but now do xxx) also they have one or two tabs with content on (article length) that is on the same subject they use to do and the titles are all the same content. So basically they are finding expired 1 – 10 year old domains that have only been expired (from what I can see) 6 months max and putting 1 – 2 articles on the home page in relation with print (maybe adding a third on the subject the blog use to cover), add 1 – 3 articles via tabs at the top on subjects the sites use to cover, registering the details via xbybssgcf@whoisprivacyprotect.com and that’s it. They have been ranking via this method for the last couple of years (through all the Google updates). Does Google not have any way to combat link networks other than the stupid stuff such as public link networks, it just seems that if you know what you are doing you get away, if your big enough you get away with it but the middle of the ground (mum and pop sites) get F*** over with spam pointing to there site that no spammer would dream of doing anyway?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Has my site been penalized by google
Hi all I have noticed a sudden drop in rankings for most of my keywords on kerryblu ,co,uk and was thinking the site may have been manually penalized by google. I have not received any notification of this in webmaster tools but can't think of any other reason for the loss of rankings. I have searched the web for info on this but can't find a definite answer. Is there any way of knowing for sure. At the time of the crash the only real change I made was adding google adsense to my blog. Could this be responsible. Thanks for looking.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Dill0 -
Is Google now punishing anchor text?
Hi All, I was just wondering if Google is starting to punish anchor text links? I've noticed that one of my clients domains has slightly reduced and they have slipped a few places in rankings for a key term since. I found this bizarre as the last few links I built were both relevant and strong but I did use an anchor text? Any feedback would be useful, I'm slightly confused here?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Benjamin3790 -
Does Google Penalize for Managing multiple Google Places from the same IP Address? Can you manage from same google account or separate? Or does it matter since it's created from the same IP?
I manage a number of client's Google Places from the same IP and heard this is not a good thing. Are there Do's and Don'ts when managing multiple Google Places? Create separate google accounts for each or can you use the same account?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Souk0 -
Reviewing a competitors links
Using Open Site Explorer I was reviewing a sites links. This site happens to appear at position 2 in Google for a key-term that I am targeting for one of my sites. Most, if not all of the links appear to be coming from some very questionable sources that have absolutely nothing to do with their sites content or business. Some of the page titles are : Free Music - Free Music Tampa Bay Florida Fishing Guide Free BDSM and Bondage Sex, BDSM XXX, Fetish Por... LAX Car Rental Reciprical Links Page - Add Your Link Casino More Links Is this practice going to end up hurting their site and catch up to them at some point? From what I have read, these are not the type of links that you want to be going after.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BrandonC-2698870 -
Will the links coming from an article in certain BLOG / NEWS SITE become a GOOD BackLink?
Such as, if i wrote a ymoz, and suddenly the articles is accepted, will the link to our site coming out of that Article Post increased our SEO Standing? Another example would be http://active.tutsplus.com , yesterday i have successfully pitched a tutorial idea, and they told me to write it so that they can published it , and they also promised that i will be able to put my site link (dofollow) ... But will these link be a Good BackLink that will increase our site's SEO Standing? The last one is exactly the same link , but this time coming from a News Site , such as http://teknologi.kompasiana.com/internet/2011/06/09/website-full-flash-dengan-inovasi-hebat-karya-indonesia/ , in this article (kompasiana is a very wellknown site news in Indonesia, in fact KOMPAS is the biggest newspaper firm in Indonesia) , our site is being featured , there is a link coming out of that article (DOFOLLOW), but will that link make our site much more SEO Friendly? Again please enlighten me 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IKT0 -
What's been your experience with profile link-building?
What have your experiences been? Short Term? Long Term? There isn't a lot written about it, and I'm wondering where it falls in the order of things. I was very hesitant to jump in, but have launched a few campaigns, both for local geo targeting phrases, and national accounts. Surprisingly, I've seen a surge in rankings, but also wonder how short lived they will be. I've noticed the links still don't come up in tools like open site explorer, but I'm able to find them when searching for the unique username I used while building the profiles. The sites I'm listing on have no relevance to industry, unless by chance, although the PR's I'm using are all 4 or higher. Is this considered gray hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | skycriesmary720