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
-
Blogging just to manipulate rankings?
Hi, I have been playing with Open Site Explorer for a while and have been trying to figure out how some of our competitors could rank with "not so great" articles. I don't want to sound harsh here but some of the articles outranking us are nothing but 6 images + 200-225 words from a press release and a Video. How exactly does Google justify this by ranking them higher than a 1500 word unique article that has been written in no less than 7 days? According to OpenSite Explorer, about the two pages compared, the difference is the number of LINKS. The sad part is, without 1 exception, all their links are coming from blog pages like *.wordpress.com *.typepad.com etc. I would have been just FINE if their links were NATURAL. You may ask me why I assume those blogs are created by them. Because every single post on those blogs are pointing to their domain... I don't think a normal blogger would keep pointing to the same domain. So what are we supposed to do here? Wait 3 months so people discover our articles and natural links will come? (It happens sometimes but then it may not...) Do what they do? Sorry about the ranting but I have one question if you don't want to read the rant. Is blogging to build links, considered black hat or not?
Competitive Research | | Gamer070 -
How does the timeline look for the next Competitive Link Analysis? Thanks!
Hello, Just wanted to see if there was an update on the horizon. The last update on my campaign shows 2/28/12. Am I not setting updates correctly on my dashboard? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | GRC0 -
Manta inbound link in OSE - competitor site yes, my site no, why?
Our site has had a link back to our site from Manta for a long time, but it's not appearing in our OSE results. One of our competitors similarly has an inbound link from Manta and that link DOES appear in their OSE results. I'm not certain whether that matters for us. Does it? But in any event, why would the one link appear but not the other? Thanks! Tim
Competitive Research | | tcolling0 -
Important link building question for me!
Hi, When building backlinks how important is the location of where the website resides? For example, if I was targeting a search term in Google UK, will link building from websites hosted on UK servers have a higher positive impact on rankings then building links from websites hosted on US servers? Lets say in the above UK hosted is better, what if you have 2 websites hosted in the UK but one with .com and one with .co.uk, I take it from a domain point of view the .co.uk will have a better impact on SERP's then the .com. Now looking at the above from a more wider scale lets say I have the following: A .co.uk website aimed at a search term in Google UK. Example: 1. 100 backlinks from websites hosted in the US with .com extension. 2. 100 backlinks from websites hosted in the UK with .co.uk extension. Is it a FACT that number 2 will 100% be more beneficial in UK rankings? Cheers
Competitive Research | | activitysuper1 -
Internal linking structure
Hello, Is there a way to see the most anchor text of a sites internal linking structure, that is not mine. For example how many times a competitor used the anchor text "door" on their site. Not external links though, just the internal ones. Thank you, Ada
Competitive Research | | digitalops0 -
My Competition is using some Strange Achord Text and Inbound Links
I was doing some research and a lot of my competition are websites from Universities, but I got surprised when I saw that a lot of their Anchor Text where things like Buy Viagra , Play poker , Buy Cialis , a lot of their inbound links where about things like that , one of the sites I was doing research on was www.imba.ie.edu , this site was #1 for the keyword I want that is related to education. Also other sites on the #1 page of google for this keyword (universities websites) had the same kind of inbound links and achord texts. Whats going on here??
Competitive Research | | globalcampus0 -
My client has shown me a similar site, though not a competitor. He wants to know what sites they are linked from that give them such a good Google rank for certain kewords. Can SEOMoz tell me this?
When using google.com.au and searching for "travel to france", www.frenchtravel.com.au is the 3rd organic result. (the 1st two are not travel businesses, they are non profit travel guides) My client, who runs www.visituk.com.au, an Australian site that organises tours of the UK, said "so we just need to add these sort of words to the site?" I said, yes, but it doesn't end there. The real task is to have a link to your site on other sites surrounded with the words "travel" and "UK". He asked if he could see a list of the sites the french site was being referred by relevant to the search phrase. Is there an SEOmoz tool for this? Or is there another way I can generate that list? Thanks Simon
Competitive Research | | electrik0 -
In Open Site Explorer, what does it mean when a linking page does not contain any reference to the URl entered?
When running Open Site Explorer on a particular URL, I get a list of linking pages. Many of these pages have a high Page Authority. I am assuming that this is a list of pages that presumably link to the URL I entered. First, is this correct? Next, when I click on an entry in the list I don't see any reference to the URL on the page, even viewing the page source. What does this mean and why is the link in the list?
Competitive Research | | jkenyon1