Link building
-
ok mozers i have a few questions. I am starting a new seo campaign and i want to target traffic for "how to make money on autopilot"
Question 1.
when it comes to link building i have seen some articles saying that i should not send all of my links to my landing page at once but to send links to my backlinks then index then using tiered link building. Is this a must or not?
will i get penalized if i build 20 targeted links to my landing page in 1 day, lets say 20, pr7-9 domains? or should i tier it out and link maybe 5 pr9 domains to my landing page, then link 10 pr5 domains to each of those 5 pr9 domains and maybe link 20-pr1 domains to each of those tiered 2 pr5 domains?
eq:
Tier 1 = 5 PR-9
Tier 2 = 50 PR-5
Tier 3 = 1,000 PR-1
Question 2.
Is their a certain amount of backlinks i need to use in order to out do my competitor? or does it just matter on the metrics of my backlinks?
and when it comes to indexing these links do i need to index just the 5 pr9 links? or do i need to index all of them? or should i just index the landing page through google webmasters tools and hope it indexes all connecting pages? will doing any of these get my landing page indexed faster in order to rank faster?
Question 3.
Types of link building. Ok i am targeting guest blogs, wordpress sites, etc to put a link on. Should i focus on smm 'social media marketing' as well? or can i just focus on the traditional seo tactics first?
Question 4.
Keyword research. ok so my blog post is 'how to make money on autpilot' and from my keyword suggestion tools it picked up a list of keywords suggestions to target. Competition ranges from low to high, search volume ranges from 10 to 1900 visitors per month, after organizing the most relevant keywords to add to my campaign should i target each of the these keywords by creating a link building campaign for each one and target it to my landing page or use it as my 2nd or 3rd tier?
those are the questions i really have for now. Here is my blog post
http://www.vemomedia.com/how-to-make-money-on-autopilot/
Please feel me in on what i am needing to do in order to get some ranking and on how to run a link building campaign the correct way. Thanx in advance!
-
Hi Beth,
My apologies I had a brain fart - I meant to type "LSI" keywords - it stands for "Latent Semantic Indexing".
Basically these are keywords that create syntax and context for a keyword you are targeting in your content or on-site SEO to help Google return reliable results.
Example:
Let's say a user wants to learn more about the solar system and starts searching for planets. Without the proper context, Google doesn't know if it is returning results for Mars the planet or Mars the Roman god of war. Chances are they are searching for something recent rather than ancient mythology, but since both could be possible, Google can misinterpret user intent and direct the user to the incorrect website.
Now let's say a website has statistics on Mars - its size, distance from Earth, where it is in the solar system, etc. If a user searches for "where is Mars", the context provided by the query and the stats given on the website will give Google everything it needs to rank that website above websites that focus on Roman mythology.
On the other hand, if someone searches for "Who was Mars", Google will use LSI keywords like "Roman gods" or "Roman mythology" to create SERPs and websites featuring these contextual keywords will rank higher than those that don't.
Long story short, LSI keywords are used for SERPs and queries featuring the 5 W's (Who, What, Where, Why, When) and H (How). It is a new model Google is moving towards which features a specific focus on the Knowledge Graph and becoming the answer for users rather than directing them to other websites.
Hope that helps!
Rob
-
Hey Rob,
What's an LMI keyword?
Beth
-
Hi there,
This is going to be a long response to answer so many questions but hopefully you will have your answers:
- Tiered Linking
While this is a regularly discussed topic in many SEO forums, I have personally found that link building using this method is more time and energy than it's worth. Think about it - Google is looking for a natural link profile. The question therefore becomes:
How do people naturally link web pages and content?
They link to interesting things and this linking process can be completely chaotic or follow a pattern. There really isn't a "best" way to create a link profile or structure since these things are always so random in the "real" world. If you send all links to your landing pages on the same day, this is obviously not natural. You want to spread out your incoming links across many days. They can be directed towards your landing pages, your home pages, or category pages depending on what you want to put the most emphasis on. Remember that link juice trickles down through your site from pages closer to your Home Page so linking to your Home page or category pages will create small improvements to your landing pages while linking only to your landing pages will create more authority for those pages without helping the rest of your website.
That's a choice you will have to make.
- How Many Backlinks Do I Need To Beat A Competitor?
This is an age-old question and one that isn't going away any time soon. Long story short, it's best to think in terms of authority, relevancy and metrics when contemplating links rather than sheer numbers. Start with a link audit of 3 of your competitors. Create a link report which showcases websites and domains which link to several (if not all) of them. This gives you a basic list of domains which have shown an inclination to link to domains that are in your niche. This is your link-building starter's list. After that, any domain you can get a link from which is relevant to your website's material and has decent metrics means you will be 1 step ahead of your competitors.
It's important to remember that there are other things out there which impact your rankings beyond your link profile. It's a significant chunk, but things like content, page load speed, responsiveness and on-site factors are equally important. Don't get caught up in your link profile - build links that you can from your link audit report. Anything after that is gravy.
In terms of indexing a page - that's not really your call. You can make a crawl request but Google will get to you in its own sweet time. Internally-linked pages will allow crawlers to get through your entire site, so don't worry - Google will index these links when it gets a chance. As far as indexing links goes - you don't really have a choice. In order for a link to exist on your link profile, it must be indexed. The time frame for this is typically 2-4 weeks. Be patient, it will happen.
- What Types of Link Building Should I Use?
The links you are describing are typically NoFollow links. These counts as links on your profile but they do not pass on much in the way of link juice. Regardless of the metrics, relevancy and authority of the website you generate the link from, this doesn't necessarily give you any benefits. Follow links are what you want to generate rankings, but you need NoFollow links in order to balance out your profile and make it look more natural.
In terms of social media marketing - if you are looking at purely SEO benefits, social media only has significance for rankings on the Local level. On a national level (I assume this is what you're working with), social media marketing functions as a traffic builder but does not confer SEO benefits. It may still be useful to you, but maybe not in the way you are imagining.
- Keyword Research
Chances are many of your keywords are related to each other. These are called LMI keywords and establish relevance for Google. For example, if I use the word "balls" as my keyword, it's unclear what type of ball I am specifically looking for. By adding "glove" or "bat" or "bases" it's clear I'm probably looking for baseballs. That is how Google establishes context. When it comes to your keywords, you probably want to keep them on your site and establish context for Google since this is becoming more prevalent as a ranking factor.
I would say you want to use long tail keywords as your "moneymakers" since specific queries typically suggest higher buying intent while large search terms are typically used for gathering information. You can implement both into your site to combine traffic and customers, but keep in mind that even with a 1st place ranking on SERP's, you will only be getting about 40-50% of those searchers into your website. This means you probably want to ensure that you are targeting keywords likely to convert, especially if you are putting this much effort into your link profile.
Hope this answers your questions and feel free to follow up with me. I'll help out as best I can.
Cheers and best of luck!
Rob
-
So many questions!
Let me address just two of them.
Question 1: I would suggest that 20 new links in one day, IF you're not normally getting links on a regular basis, could be a problem. If you're able to spread them out, then that would be better. I do have to wonder what kind of links these are, because organic links that come from blog mentions, article inclusions, etc. sure are hard to control like that.
So I would look at the QUALITY and DA of those inbound links.
Question 2:
Backlinks aren't the only factor in outranking your competitors, but in general "more links than your competitor." But again, QUALITY of those links really matters. So research their inbound links and see if they are high authority or not. May take only a handful of really good, quality links of most of theirs are low value. -
its a challenge i aim to accomplish even if its not number 1 on the serps itll be good to dominate an entire ad group or all the keyword suggestions, atleast that would make me feel happy a bit
-
Thats a hard niche to break into with people like Tim Ferris peddling the Four hour work week.
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
-
Reverse image search tools for link building?
Hi Guys, Looking for reverse image search tools for link building. I want to dump 1000s of images into the tool, so it can find their usage across the web. I have tried picmatch.ca but their support is not great and Tinyeye. Are there any recommended reverse image search tools recommended here on Moz? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robincar0l0 -
Pages with excessive number of links
Hi all, I work for a retailer and I've crawled our website with RankTracker for optimization suggestions. The main suggestion is "Pages with excessive number of links: 4178" The page with the largest amount of links has 634 links (627 internal, 7 external), the lowest 382 links (375 internal, 7 external). However, when I view the source on any one of the example pages, it becomes obvious that the site's main navigation header contains 358 links, so every new page starts with 358 links before any content. Our rivals and much larger sites like argos.co.uk appear to have just as many links in their main navigation menu. So my questions are: 1. Will these excessive links really be causing us a problem or is it just 'good practice' to have fewer links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee159
2. Can I use 'no follow' to stop Google etc from counting the 358 main navigation links
3. Is have 4000+ pages of your website all dumbly pointing to other pages a help or hindrance?
4. Can we 'minify' this code so it's cached on first load and therefore loads faster? Thank you.0 -
Linking to External Websites?
Is it good to link external websites from every page. Since, the on-page grader shows there should be one link pointing to an external source. I have a website that can point to an external website from every page using the brand name of the specific site like deal sites do have. Is it worth having external link on every page, of-course with a no-follow tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Links from MOZ, Harmful?
I have listed my domain in several Ask the Community requests. These have resulted in links from the Ask the Community posts showing up in MOZ site explorer. So actual links have been detected. Are these links harmful to my link profile? The content is not at all related to commercial real estate which is the subject of our website. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Link from Google.com
Hi guys I've just seen a website get a link from Google's Webmaster Snippet testing tool. Basically, they've linked to a results page for their own website test. Here's an example of what this would look like for a result on my website. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.impression.co.uk There's a meta nofollow, but I just wondered what everyone's take is on Trust, etc, passing down? (Don't worry, I'm not encouraging people to go out spamming links to results pages!) Looking forward to some interesting responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Consensus on Paying to Remove Links
Hi all, For discussion... I am painstakingly working my way through a link profile, highlighting 'unnatural links' and contacting webmasters to try and get the links removed - I haven't got as far as 'disavow' or a 'Reconsideration Request' I have found a large number (around 150) of links from http://www.bookmarks4you.com and when I have attempted to contact the site for link removals I have had a payment request in order to do so. Now the amount being requested is low and so it may be worthwhile, however, I wondered what the consensus was with regards to this sort of demand? I know I could simply add the links to my 'disavow list' but for the sake of a small payment, I could get rid of them much quicker! Also, the majority of sites that I am contacting only have a contact from as opposed to an email address that I can use directly - what I am doing is taking a screen print of each contact form in order to have proof that I am actually doing the 'hard graft' as opposed to simply adding sites to a disavow list - is this a worthwhile exercise? Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Link from archived article.
A strong news site has an "archived.domainname" folder, where they have older articles listed. I can get a link on a page where there is a 4 year old article, which will be in this archived sub-domain. My questions: Will Google view a link from a 4 year old article as less valuable. Will Google notice the article is 4 years old and find it odd why the page all of a sudden has a link to my site, and thus devalue such link the sub-domain "archived" does that tell Google it is old and a link will be less valuable thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Why traffic to my link has dropped suddenly?
Hi I would like to know why the traffic for the website link http://theindustrymeasure.com/2010/07/15/rediffmail-login has dropped suddenly on google.I used to get around 5000 page views on this page and then suddenly dropped to 15-20 . I still get good traffic from yahoo (around 500). Just before the drop I noticed that I started to get spammy trackbacks from Many questionable sources. I have not approved any of these trackbacks. The trackbacks are regular frequency of. 1 per day. is there any action which I can take to ensure that I get back my traffic. Traffic to other links are fine , only this page seems to have dropped off ever since the spam attack. As per seomoz tool I have a grade a for keyword rediffmail
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShoutOut0