How do you put together a link building strategy?
-
I know after all the Google changes link building is different than it used to be. How do I put a link building strategy together that I can understand and follow?
I have fixed most of the crawl errors and my site is still low on the search for most of my targeted keywords. Is link building the answer? Or are there other options I'm missing?
-
If you are asking that question, the best way to get started is to look at what your competitors are doing. Find every backlink they have in Open Site Explorer (group by domain, external links only). Usually you can find a lot of gold, like awards and sponsorships you weren't aware of, that your business can apply for. Do this for every competitor.
Beyond that, link building is often done through link baiting. You can get some traction through a small amount of comment link building and directory listings at some of the major directories. Guest posting is probably the most actionable form of white-hat link building you can do.
Once you feel comfortable enough, you can start contacting related websites about adding a link to your website. This might come about as an incentive (a discount in your store, if you have one, as an example) or be paid outright. You can get these for free, I've found, if you engage the website owner in conversation first.
Here is a good post on contacting website owners:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/outreach-letters-for-link-building-real-examples-14902
-
When you look at the other pages in the top 10, can you honestly justify why your page deserves to rank there? Once you get your content to this level, link building becomes a whole lot easier because you have created a linkable asset.
I agree with this 100%... and when I have that type of content that compares very favorably to the best on the web, I spend zero time building links and 100% of my time making more content. My pages get off to a very slow start compared to those that get linkbuilding, however, all of my time is spent creating highly linkable assets that over time will defeat lower grade content unless it has a big investment in offpage SEO.
-
Hi,
If your site is crawlable and the on-page optimization is spot-on, link building might be the answer.
First, make sure your content is fantastic. When you look at the other pages in the top 10, can you honestly justify why your page deserves to rank there? Once you get your content to this level, link building becomes a whole lot easier because you have created a linkable asset.
As for link building strategies or plans, I recommend taking a link at these two links.
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
-
Good Collaboration resources for link building
We have recently come across this site in our work on a website: https://collabosaurus.com We are wondering if there are any other collaborative tools or sites like this that may be effective for partnering or matching with people for link building purposes. If anyone is aware of anything similar, we'd love to hear about it. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | Gavo1 -
Need clarification on Linking strategy and whether I am doing more harm than good?
I wanted to get an opinion of whether a new strategy is wise or profoundly idiotic. Here is the scenario. We have a branded site that offers villa rentals around the world but we also have separately branded geo specific websites that focus on villas rentals at a specific destination meaning the villas are mutually inclusive on the sites but we try to differentiate them with different descriptions and markups. This is what we did. We have a magazine associated with the global company that posts articles 1 to 2 times a day and it is set up as a subfolder on the global website. The articles have revelant links to the global company landing pages as well as relevant villa pages. Additionally, we embed links to the geospecific websites as well if an article features a destination, topic or villa that is relevant to both the geospecific and global website. Moreover, In we have aggressively cross linked relevant keywords from specific villa pages (ie villa xyz on Barbados) to the magazine as well as to the root domain of the global website and other relevant pages. But we do not link the geospecific site back to the magazine or global site. Since we implemented this strategy, the rankings on our global site have dropped and the specific villa page on the global site (villa xyz on Barbados) has dropped precipitously for that villa xyz keyword. The complicating feature in all of this is that we have been launching new sites and fixes in the past month so I am not exactly sure what is the cause of the drop but I have a suspicion that the aformentioned issue may be a contributing factor. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Link Building | | Isle_Blue1 -
What is the process of link earning to avoid link building?
Hi All, I want process to earning links for new SEO 2014. Can anybody explain? Thanks, Akhilesh
Link Building | | dotlineseo0 -
Link building too quickly
Hi all, I have recently started trialing to outsource some SEO to a 3rd party, who obviously promissed white hat techniques and manual links etc.. All has gone well for the first month. But on speeking to another expert they point out that the search engines will spot inconcistencies in link building and penalise me. I know there will not be a know ammount but as we stand at the moment, what is the current feeling of too fast. Links built for me in one month were 100 directory submissions 80 bookmarks 16 search engine submissions 15 Article submissions 46 forum links 10 local classified searches Is this too fast? , If to do I stop and create more inconsistency or continue at a similar rate. Of course quality of link will be an issue, but how much. Many thanks from SEO jnr
Link Building | | smartcow0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Link building using a contest
Hello, In the past we have ran many contests with aims such as increase facebook likes, twitter followers, newsletter subscriptions etc but I was wondering if anyone has had any success in gaining links through a content and if so how did you set it up?
Link Building | | RikkiD220 -
Link Building for lower budgets that work on 2012
Hello, I think many of us have re-plan their SEO strategy since the latest updates from Google and we all saw that coming anyway. We already know that link building using Directories, Article sites, Link exchange, profiles, footer/side links, paid links, press releases and other have been devalued or not working at all. For low budget websites and websites that cannot afford fresh/valued updated content or other link baiting techniques there arent much left. I my self found that Social Media and Blogging (Guest posts) are they only techniques left for websites that cannot manage to get natural links. Also i have realized that On-page optimization is getting more attention again. We all have great ideas of acquiring links but what we do when time and budget is limited? Google promotes natural link building but how you supposed to get natural links from a new low reputation website? I kinda of like the new approach since it will make SEO work a lot of harder and eliminate the easy path success. It will also focus the SEO job more on On-page and on great content. But this is getting a lot of harder for new websites with lower budgets and lower time to consume on SEO. I deeply know the answer of my question but i would like your opinion also and of course if anyone would like to share some ideas or know-how to discuss is welcome.
Link Building | | Lakiscy0 -
It is ok to link together multiple domains on the same ip?
I have multiple domains (more than 50) in the same niche. All domains are on the same ip. It is ok to link them together, or to create a piramid link between them?
Link Building | | maldiniii0