Is building links just to risky to do nowadays?
-
Hi,
How risky is link building nowadays? I have a site which has been left on its own and over time has generated links which is great, its a resource type of site so works well in that department. The reason it picks up links by itself is because I have spent time on it and in the past I could just leave and the links it would pick up would maintain its rankings.
Over the last 6 months a lot of marketers have noticed this large traffic, and have produced 1 page sites going directly for my main term - then putting adsense all over it.
So problem is, my site can't build links by itself as fast as these marketers are doing manually. Don't get me wrong I can do what they are doing but they don't care about their 1 pager as much as I do about my site - a lot of work has gone into it.
Can I link build without running a 'big' risk of having my site hit by Google? how does one build links the way Google is ok with?
Thanks.
-
Most of the content that I write is "evergreen".
However, I often find new information on a topic and update the pertaining pages on my site. Then I promote those pages on my site, through my RSS feed and to my email subscribers. I use Feedburner to collect subscribers and distribute the RSS feed and email updates.
Feedburner gives you links that deliver interested subscribers to a subscription form. You can use that link on small banners on your site, text links, however, you want to promote.
When Feedburner distributes the information about updated articles, I usually get a lot of traffic from subscribers, and places where subscribers have shared. I don't do much to promote my content. I let visitors and subscribers do it for me. I think that is what you have successfully done in the past.
-
Agree totally, im going to stick it out for a bit longer - make my site better and see if that helps. If in 3/4 months nothing changes ill have to start looking at ways of gaining SE exposure again because every position I lose to a one pager or brand with a blog post going for the traffic is affecting my rev stream.
I suppose the only positive is I know how to do SEO, I just don't like having to do it.
-
You're welcome Followuk,
And just so you know, the links above speak to link earning as well as the best ways to go about finding and requesting links that will hold up over time and not put you at risk of a Google penalty.
-
Thanks for the kind words.
Well my pages are better than the one pagers problem is its Q&A type of content.
So 1+1 is always 2 - once they got the answer from either me or a competitor its done and there gone. I just provide the answer better - more indepth with a better design like an actual resource so the sharing on my site is far greater than say the one pagers.
Well I got an even better design coming, responsive, faster load times, more pages so hopefully this helps.
I do have one Question for you though EGOL - how important is freshness? Can content go stale?
-
Thanks Donna for advice and the resource links - much appreciated.
-
I would be inclined to agree with EGOL, though Donna dropped some pretty good resources. The problem with 'link building' is that it will eventually look unnatural, even if one is quite artful. One person's 'good link' is another person's 'spam'.
I've dealt with people that build links for the sake of building links 'Because Link Building LOL!!!'. It never ends well and they're generally left saying; "But we paid a lot for those links!" The irony of that statement never gets old. Actually it does, but it sounds better if I say it never gets old.
It sounds like you ascribe to the concept of Link Earning, which is safer and the recommended course.
It's true enough that absolute crap/lack of content can be propped up by many absolute crap links. That is not a viable long term strategy, however. Pre-Penguin, I somewhat ruined some guy's six figure payday pointing out the same. Within a few months, without reporting the site, I was correct. He had propped up a thin site with a ton of exact match anchors. It didn't end well. (I, and my agency at the time, got called every name in the book over that one. )
So, if you must 'build links' do so in a way that would drive real traffic to your site. Avoid a preponderance of exact match anchors and try to bring some sort of value wherever you go. But it appears your core competency is adding value to your pages. Maybe you should stick with that.
There's nothing wrong with passive 'link building'.
-
The reason it picks up links by itself is because I have spent time on it and in the past I could just leave and the links it would pick up would maintain its rankings.
Nice work! Very few people are able to do this. Many could do it but they don't have the courage.
If you start putting resources into linkbuilding you will have to take resources away from what you are currently doing so then did you really gain that much?? And if you were going to put resources into linkbuilding above and beyond your current work then why don't you just invest that spend into what you are already doing that is working?
I would not put a lot of faith in the staying power of these one-page sites. I bet their content is crap and people go into those sites and then visit yours. So, I would only give those one page sites serious consideration if that one page is kickass content for what the searchers are looking for or if your traffic is really down only because those one-page sites are taking it from you.
You gotta make up your mind on what you should do.... if it was me, and I might be a fool, but, I am not going to let these one-page site people move me off of my successful course. I'll just work harder on the plan until I know that the plan isn't workin'.
-
Hi Followuk,
Good question. Things have certainly changed making link building much harder than it was not too long ago, but that doesn't mean you should stop altogether. You DO need to follow best practices though.
Where to find best practices?
I have suggestions on where to start:
- The Moz Beginners Guide - Chapter 7 - Growing Popularity and Links;
- the Link Building Category of YouMoz has lots of good and detailed information;
- I also like Point Blank SEO's Link Building Strategies; and
- Digital Current 2014 Link Building Best Practices.
You might also want to think about being alerted to new publications on the topic. Rand did a whiteboard Friday recently that explains how to setup alerts and identifies free and paid tools you can use. I found it tremendously helpful from a variety of perspectives.
Hope that helps.
D
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
-
Ecommerce seo - competitors are using spammy links to rank HELP
After setting up SEO Moz and whilst waiting for it to crawl my site i have checked out my competitors who are ranking for the keywords i am going after. It appears from what i can see in OSE that they are ranking with back links from spammy looking sites and lots of exact match anchor text. I have tried to match a few links with what they have currently without getting myself into anything too spammy but i really don't want to follow how they have done it exactly. The niche i am in is pretty boring but the rewards are great but i am finding creating content and distributing it correctly difficult which is why i need some help. My site is roughly 9 months old and the product descriptions are hand written trying to give as much info as possible with a hint of personality so no cookie cutter back of the box descriptions. i have matched a few of the links from competitors which weren't too spammy and as relevant as i could get to my niche, i have also created articles for some article directories - all of which isn't really getting me very far and i am running out of ideas on how to create new content & the types of new content to help me get back links naturally. If any of you friendly guys could offer me some assistance in setting up a basic seo campaign which would help me target my keywords i would be very much in your debt
Competitive Research | | GarethEJones0 -
Only 4 Internal Followed Links
Hello , i compared our (www.bighunter.net) and competitor pages. Only 4 internal Followed Links are in result page . I don't understand why Thanks for any answer
Competitive Research | | lbecarelli0 -
Open Site Explorer Twitter and Facebook Links
I was using Open Site Explorer to compare some of my site's links to a competitor and I noticed that my Twitter page is not counting as an incoming link, whereas theirs are. From what I can tell, we have the same kind of setup on my twitter page, listing the domain in the company information... but no luck. Any suggestions on what I may be able to change? For reference: twitter.com/mediamegamall ... I know I need to work on the twitter presence... one thing at a time 🙂
Competitive Research | | Ask_MMM0 -
Keyword based link problem on site
So I think I might have identified an issue with a site that I'm trying to get ranked for a specific keyword but, wanted to get some opinions before I started making some big changes on the site. On my homepage I have the keyword that I would like to be ranked for in the title lets say "Blue Widgets - Company Name', also on the home page I have some descriptions of our services including the keywords. I also have a couple of the keyword based links within in the content, navigation and footer. But these keyword based links all point to another page on the site: blue-widgets.htm. If I really want my home page to rank for the keyword "Blue Widgets' should all of these links point to the home page instead of the sub page? I know there are a great number of other factors that contribute to rankings but looking at my competition, this is something that they seem to be doing. The keyword based links within the content, navigation or footer all point to the homepage. I also have a higher Domain Authority than some of the sites that rank higher than me so I'm not sure if building more links is the answer. Of course I always want to build natural links but these sites don't seem to be doing that either. Any comments, suggestions or input would be greatly appreciated.
Competitive Research | | TRICORSystems0 -
Link submissions confirmed but not showing up in OSE
One of the first things I did after signing up for the 30-day seomoz trial is analyze 3 competitor's inbound links from external sites. On the Competitive Domain Analysis page, I was able to obtain links from more than half of the sites identified as their top links. All submissions were approved between 9/13 and 9/28. Now, a month later, under the Competitive Comparison section, I only have one external followed link, while the competitors have hundreds. For Top Pages, the only page that shows up is the root domain, comitzlaw.com/. For two of the competitors, 7 out of their top 10 links are from pview.findlaw.com/. I have a link from the same site, confirmed as of mid-September, yet it doesn't show up. Any ideas? I must be doing something seriously wrong.
Competitive Research | | c2g0 -
Search shows site links, but not hyperlinked?
2 of our competitors on Google have site links show in their results which brings you to that specific page. In our listing we show up with the same results a few spots behind them with our site links visible showing very similar content, but are not actually hyper linked. Is there a way to fix the issue and let people actually be able to click on our site links instead of just reading them?
Competitive Research | | sknott0 -
Is it valuable for a local business to build links into its Google Place?
G'Day All, Almost all of my clients are geo-based small service-based businesses. I've noticed during my research that the google places for our competitors in 3 separate niches (3 different clients) seem to be the dominating results for almost all relevant keyword terms. I'm curious to see if anyone has actively tried to increase the ranking of a google place by building links into it. Is this something that anyone else sees value to for a local small business? I would love to get some thoughts. And for that matter I'm also curious to see if anyone thinks there might be value to optimizing a Facebook Fan Page or Yelp Business page. They all seem to be key drivers of traffic our client websites so I'm wondering how difficult it is to make them rank as opposed to a website. Thanks!
Competitive Research | | blahblahblah20150 -
What tools do you use for competitive link analysis?
I have been using SEO Spyglass lately but it can be very slow at times. Wondering if there are any other accurate/robust tools out there.
Competitive Research | | rmteamseo0