Friday, September 26, 2008

Answer to: After The Basics - Now What?

TravelingNinja asked...

I've taken a new site from 1 backlinks to 350 in five months of hard work. I've done the basics: submitted to niche and free mainstream directories, posted in forums, exchanged some links, and requested some links. What can I do next?

Link building for a new site with no links is my perfect scenario. You don't have to worry about previous mistakes or link spam, and you have a clean slate on which to work. But, as TN notes, after the basics what do you do? Two word answer: vertical publicity.

What's the subject of the site? You mentioned you submitted to niche directories, but depending on the niches these are just as notorious for junk and swaps as the wannabeeyahoos. I suggest you compile a list of the top sites that appear in a both the regular and blog search results for your most important phrases. Look for common citations A site that is showing up in both results, even on page two or three, is doing something right. On the blog results, bookmark every site that has mentioned the site that is also ranking well in regular search. Also compile a list of every niche content site and blog that is not a competitor. This is the start of a publicty and public relation driven link building campaign. You aren't after niche directories here. You are seeking editorial mentions or blogroll inclusions from the key influencers in your niche.

This is just a scratch at the surface, but a good scratch.




NOTE: To ask a link building related question, click the Comments link below, or the link at the bottom of any individual posts

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posted by Eric Ward at 2:18 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

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About The Link Building Best Practices Q and A
The Link Building Best Practices Q and A is provided free by Eric Ward. For sites with high value content, I offer several fee-based strategic linking services on a project basis.

New Link Building Boot Camp

I just finished teaching a one month link building boot camp, which was a custom training project I created for a specific client in a tight vertical. During the course of the month, it became obvious the boot camp was working very well, the client was learning, becoming self sufficient at link building, and most of all getting results. They told me I should offer the boot camp to other clients...

Hmmm. Now why didn't I think of that?

After reverse organizing the previous boot camp into a service description, I'm happy to announce ...

30 Day Private Link Building Boot Camp with Eric Ward

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posted by Eric Ward at 12:52 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

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About The Link Building Best Practices Q and A
The Link Building Best Practices Q and A is provided free by Eric Ward. For sites with high value content, I offer several fee-based strategic linking services on a project basis.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

UPDATED: .edu Inbound Link Fallacies

One of the bigger link building hot topics is the impact that IBL (inbound links) originating from .edu locations can have on your link popularity and search rankings. Lost in the discussion is that the quality of IBL's from within the .edu domain varies significantly.

Rather than making this concept more complex than it needs to be, let's boil it down by example. A link from a student homepage or school paper web site isn't as valuable as a link from a professor's page, or better yet, the University library site. Why? because it's easy for those who are into black hat stuff to buy links from students, wheras a librarian isn't likely to be bought. Thus the content EARNED the link, and the source and citation can be trusted. Engines know this and will tweak algos until they get it right. I hope, anyway. Give me 10 library links instead of 100 student page links any day.

Likewise with .gov and others. Any TLD has crap, and any TLD has gold.

Another linking topic that gets folks excited is geographic IBL variety. This is another way of saying you need links from a bunch of countries. Not true. Links from around the world may not matter one IOTA for your particular site.

More fallacy regarding directory inclusion. I can say with complete certainty that the older the site the more useless those directory IBLs are. I rank 1st for all key terms and I'm in only two directories. Why do I rank? Simple. Because a). I never went after rank, and B). I stayed true to my content and expertise. That said, since I do rank high I can reverse analyze my links and learn why, but just because I can tell you doesn't mean you can get those links. You have to earn them via meritorious content.

For a newer site, the game changes. The new site's IBL profile or "link transcript" or "link signature" needs to slowly percolate towards becoming something that looks natural and trustworthy. I see evidence every day that the links that help me rank 1st will not help every site site rank 1st.

So what works for one site WILL NOT work for every site, which is why it's such a challenge to create software/tools that can analyze links with any degree of confidence. In the end, a human still has to make some very tricky decisions about whether or not ANY link is worth pursuing. The answer will be different for every site, and thus the potential link target sites need to be different as well.

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Eric's Note: I included the updated version of the above article as it appears people are as in love with .edu based link targets today as they were many years ago. I base this on several inquiries I received, the last one of which I have included below.

Dear Mr. Ward,
We are a manufacturer and seller of high end playgound equipment designed for municipalities. Our site is http://xxxxxxxx. We would be very interested in a quote from you for the following...
- obtaining 100 .edu based inbound links
/snip

NOTE: To ask a link building related question, click the Comments link below, or the Post a Comment link at the bottom of any individual post.

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posted by Eric Ward at 3:03 PM 3 Comments Links to this post

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About The Link Building Best Practices Q and A
The Link Building Best Practices Q and A is provided free by Eric Ward. For sites with high value content, I offer several fee-based strategic linking services on a project basis.