Link Building: Feel like ive hit a wall

[defyet]

Hi, I have been doing SEO on my business website for about 4 years now. And it ranks #1-3 for my desired keywords and i always try to add new backlinks and keep uploading new content to a blog on the site as this is where nearly 100% of our customers come from so its important to me to rank high for the keywords related to my industry.

However the last few months a competitor has taken over me for a certain keyword, i have researched their backlinks and site and from what i can see they have less content, and less backlinks, onpage seo isnt that great, and alot of the backlinks arent even related where all mine are in the same industry and i always research my backlinks to make sure that site has good backlinks also (i currently have about 48 root domain and 12,000 page backlinks for various pages of my website). The only thing they have over me is domain age, their domain is about 10 years old.

I am also trying to target another hard to get keyword that im currently on Page 3 for, im sure over time i will rise to the top and its something i have to keep working at however i feel i wont get to where i want to be because im running out of ideas on where to get backlinks.

After 4 years of building backlinks i feel like i have hit a brick wall, i started out by directory submission, then just links from other related sites, then i did a few article submissions and then i started finding it hard to get links so i started buying related links, however i seem to just keep buying and buying because im running out of ideas and it feels easier just to buy them, the only problem is its getting expensive and im now probably spending $80/month on paid backlinks! Although considering im not paying an SEO company its still a lot cheaper!

I have gotten to the point where im researching sites that arent even in my industry (however still automotive related) and getting links on sites their on which was going really well,  but now even that feels like its coming to an end and im back to submitting to directories their on.

So other then directories, paid links, articles etc. what else could i be doing to build quality backlinks? I stopped doing articles because they were so time consuming and i felt like i was only getting backlinks from them that were worthless and held no authority.

I have about 4 blogs (all on different IPs) would it be worth blogging on them and building content and dropping links from those to mine or is it not worth the effort when i could just submit articles to article websites?

[jaraca]

Thanks you all for your anserws, i've learnt a lot

[AaronSchinke]

The directory submission might not be helping so much either... depending on where they are, of course.

[DiamondJewelryEmpire]

my domain is over 7 years and I have hard time ranking for some big words.

[tomcraig86]

@Scott Fern, Kris is correct in highlighting the massive average links per domain there... It should be a lot lower! The IP issue is something you might want to look into also, as getting involved with bad neighborhoods is a bad idea!

[tomcraig86]

Follow David's instructions and you'll be sorted in no time! Very useful and informative answer, thanks!

[NextPage]

I'd agree with Kris that number/divirsity of linking domains might be what's holding you back.

As far as re-energizing your link building, you might try this approach:

1. Block off a couple days on your calendar for "Epic Link Discovery Days"

2. Stock up on sugary candy and create a high-energy playlist  (>100bpm)

3. Create an spreadsheet (I call mine my "Link Building Briefcase") with separate worksheets for each category of potential link sources, for example:

• Sites/Domains you control
• Partner sites
• Associations & Charities you support
• Relevant 3rd-party sites who could link to a resource on your site
• Social Network Profiles (do-follow)
• Q/A sites with do-follow profile and answer links
• Blog and Forum Commenting
• Human-edited sites that repost blog articles
• Article Submission Sites (relevant, do follow)
• Press Release Sites
• Industry/Vendor Directories
• General Directories (free and paid)

4. When your allocated days arrive, do some warmup exercieses, put on your headphones, break out the candy and use the following tools to rapidly discover potential link sources, pasting links to the pages and sites in your spreadsheet as you go:

• OpenSiteExplorer.org (focussing on links to competitor sites)
• OpenSiteExplorer.org (focussing on finding the most powerful pages on sites you can generate links from)
• SEOmoz Keyword difficulty tool (discover competitors for your keywords, and quickly see the top links that are helping them acheive their rankings)
• SEOmoz Labs Competitive Link Research Tools (input several competitors and find links they share, that you're missing).
• SEOmoz Juicy Link Finder (great way to quickly find some links you may have overlooked).
• SEOmoz's compiled list of top paid and free directories (find ones that are relevant to your industry).

Later, you can keep going back to your Link Building Briefcase and conquer each one-by-one.

Carpe Linkum!

[defyet]

Thanks everyone,

The low number of root domain links is something i have been working on, which is why i have started submitting to directories again etc. to try and get this number up as its lower then my competitors, i also need backlinks from sites with domain/page authority. At the moment my competitors backlinks have a handful of seomoz 60+ point domain authority backlinks and i only have a few around 40.

I will definetly subscribe to paul & angelas backlinks though, i noticed a competitor came out of no where with a new domain and ranked #3 pretty much overnight and i looked into it and there backlinks looked like they were from paul or angelas backlinks, after a few months theit site started to drop off though cause it wasnt maintained. I did try picking up on some of their backlinks though.

[KrisRoadruck]

The very first thing that strikes me here in this is you say you have about 12,000 links from only 48 domains.

Site age may be helping them but I'd be willing to bet that they probably have a more ip-diverse link profile than you do as well. Sounds like you have the niche relevant links down so now its time to get outside that box and start going after other metrics. Here are the big 6 I look at:

Trust/Authority
Niche Relevance (you have this covered)
Segmentation (where the links appear on the page)
Anchor
IP diversity (links from many domains > many links from few domains) <- start here
Link-weight (link juice, pagerank, whatever you want to call it)

I'd be willing to bet your 80 bucks would be better spent on something like a pauls or angelas backlink packet than it would be on renting one or 2 links a month. And a lower risk too.

[Hondaspeder]

I agree. It's also always so hard to rank against those older domains. Stay consistent, diligent, and try to break some bigger stories. Keep on writing the articles, and get as creative as humanly possible to get those stories that bigger sites want to link to. Reach out to as many site owners as possible to form a small group that you can fall back on when distributing your content. And like Martin said, definitely leverage community on your site, and maybe even UGC/contributors to help write the articles. Good luck!

[MartinOddy]

It sounds like you have a very good idea of what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve, so I'll be brief with my response:

• If you feel like one of your blogs may be of interest to your readership of another, you should absolutely consider linking two (or more) of them. Just be honest, transparent, and try and do it in a natural way that provides value to your readership. (Glen Allsopp does a good job of this.)
• Do any of your blogs have a community element? Have you considered ways you can leverage them to essentially automate your link building efforts, either through social media (FB, Twitter) or their own blogs? If not, is this something you could work on?
• It sounds to me like by doing what you're doing, blogging, and providing high quality posts in your niches as link bait, then you're doing the right thing. You could try and scale this up with interviews, guest posts (this works both ways) etc.

It's hard to give any specifics without knowing in which niche you operate.

Hope this helps,

Martin