Couple questions: backlink bartering and getting backlinks in less developed markets.
-
How do you guys go about getting sustainable links from high authority sites? In some markets, like say SEO, it can be as easy as writing great content and "people will share it" because there are a ton of SEO websites on the internet and all of them are talking about SEO and want to share with you great SEO content. But as you guys know there are markets that aren't as well developed online - where do you look for backlinks for these markets?
I'm working on a project and I'm trying to put together a good backlinking strategy. Part of it will be chasing backlinks from University websites (relevant to my market). What I'm wondering here is if its OK by Google to barter for links. Say you have an online store and you give the University a "student's discount" in exchange for a link (I don't know if this would be appealing enough but is it fair game as far as Google is concerned)?
-
Thanks Moosa. Great read.
-
Hi Mack,
For less developed markets, acquiring links would really cost you some money either in developing a content asset that is targeted to tangent industries (not just to the specific industry where the website belongs) or in setting up scholarship programs that aims to provide value to community user in that niche.
In fact, you don't need to tell the webmaster to link to you from their pages, if you know that student discounts is what the .edu/.gov site is interested about, then it won't be difficult for you to get links from them.
You may want to check out this post for more link building tips for boring/difficult industries: http://digitalphilippines.net/link-building
Cheers!
-
Hello Mack,
Definitely a good move and I applaud your ingenuity in your link-building processes. It can be hard to retain the excitement and drive to go out and get those authority links, so I support you for thinking outside the box.
I would add that you are fine as far as Google is concerned as long are you are not making it a "tit-for-tat" trade/bargain/sale. If at any point, your marketing technique includes a phrase such as "I'll do ____ if you do _____.", it is a non-starter. However, if you are doing it from a "goodwill" perspective, and universities just "happen" to link to you as a result of your pleasant attitude/amazing deals, etc., then that would be fine.
For example, you might consider reading the following article, which has some great tips for a project such as what you are describing:
http://moz.com/blog/filthy-linking-rich-how-to-passively-attract-valuable-links
Somewhat related - How to know when to approach a potential influencer/link:
http://skyrocketseo.com/the-moment/
I still use these as resources for passive link-building. Depending on the circumstances, this can more effective than actively pursuing links - it is also much more rewarding when it works, because you have to invest less energy.
Cheers and happy link-building!
Rob
-
Interesting outcome, Keri.
-
I think this is different:
offering customers discounts for adding links to their site to Overstock.com.
That is straight forward link buying. "I'll give you X if you link to me" isn't the same as "I see you have a page about X. We do that!". It's a good example of what to be cautious of though.
-
Actually, Overstock tried this. Worked great until Google slapped them. See what happened in 2011 at https://www.seroundtable.com/overstock-google-penalty-13004.html
-
I think it is perfectly acceptable to do so but I have a caveat.
If you say this discount only applies if you give us a follow link on your site/page whatever then you are effectively buying that link. If you make it attractive for them to give you the link but make no demands on follow / no follow or the link at all then you have done nothing even close to wrong. The key would be to really make them want to get the information to their students (hopefully via a link and social media).
I used to do this when I ran a few sites for online games. When a new game would come out, I would immediately contact the fansites and offer them exclusive discounts. They always wanted their users to know about the discounts and make a link to our site(s) and sometimes even offered me free ad-space promoting the discount.
A+ for creativity
-
Offering student discounts is a great thing to do. From experience I can say that many of them come with nice links attached .
This is definitely one of those "open to interpretation" areas. A few years ago I would have said that Google wouldn't expect links on a discounts page to be no-followed. It's harder to tell these days though. On the flip side I don't that they would be too impressed by student discounts being used as a way to game links. Student discounts bring referrals, raise profile and bring business. Do it for those reasons and enjoy any nice authoritative followed links that come with it. (no harm in targeting those with the best links first though!)
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
-
If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Hi, all please tell me. If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sourav60 -
How i get link to my website
hi i'm very new in seo want to have links to my website:www.warningbroker.com how i can get links to my website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marketing660 -
Do I want backlinks from companies my site has a business relationship with
I automatically think yes... but nofollow links will be safer - that would be my choice as I always err on the side of caution... If I reached out to the entire network with quality content, as I would through a PR campaign, I am wondering whether the pre-existing business relationship would mean the link wouldn't be seen as truly independent by Google. Your thoughts would be welcome, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Robots.txt and redirected backlinks
Hey there, since a client's global website has a very complex structure which lead to big duplicate content problems, we decided to disallow crawler access and instead allow access to only a few relevant subdirectories. While indexing has improved since this I was wondering if we might have cut off link juice. Since several backlinks point to the disallowed root directory and are from there redirected (301) to the allowed directory I was wondering if this could cause any problems? Example: If there is a backlink pointing to example.com (disallowed in robots.txt) and is redirected from there to example.com/uk/en (allowed in robots.txt). Would this cut off the link juice? Thanks a lot for your thoughts on this. Regards, Jochen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy0 -
Scraping / Duplicate Content Question
Hi All, I understanding the way to protect content such as a feature rich article is to create authorship by linking to your Google+ account. My Question
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
You have created a webpage that is informative but not worthy to be an article, hence no need create authorship in Google+
If a competitor comes along and steals this content word for word, something similar, creates their own Google+ page, can you be penalised? Is there any way to protect yourself without authorship and Google+? Regards Mark0 -
Are backlinks the most important factor in SEO?
I have had an agency state that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO". That is how they are justifying their strategy of approaching bloggers. I believe there are a lot more factors than that including Target Market definition, Keyword identification an build content based on these factors. What's everyone's thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndySalmons0 -
Does Twitter Feed create backlinks?
Hi all, This morning I have seen a new backlink coming to one of our client's website. I have checked the link and it is a page full of social network feeds. I guess when i tweet something related to their subject it came up on their page and that has became a back link for me . Here is the link for the page that i get back link: http://www.brandigg.de/nachname/Burns I don't think this page has a pure link coming to my site but My questions is that does twitter or facebook feeds give back links? If they are backlinks then are they considered as spam links? I am also trying to recover from penguin update, I was wondering if this could be the reason for my Penguin hit or not. Thanks for any input in advance, Seda
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0