Are There Any Great Link Building Activities Left?
A friend and fellow search engine optimization expert asked if I knew of any good link building tactics. I thought he must know the same thing that I know. That is, that relevant link building is getting harder and harder…it has been over the last 3 to 4 years. We both agreed that the best way to get links is to simply write great content and over time, people will then link to your great content. But what about beyond that? Directories? Articles? Blog comments? Online Publicity?
The search engines always seem to be playing this never ending game of cat and mouse with links and search engine optimziation folks trying to build them. Truth is, link building is not for the faint of heart. A good link today may turn sour next week or next year. Then what? Reality is if you develop a blended white hat (by the book or following each search engine webmaster guidelines), then you should not have any issues in the future. Meaning, if you know a link source is not the best, for instance, not relevant, link exchange or paid link, then stay away from it. Also, never abuse any type of link building activity. If a particular source of a relevant link is generating visitors to your website then continue, but don’t overdo anything. The reality is the search engines always change things because SEO folks (or black/grey hat ones) tend to abuse a certain link building activity. I remember 6 years ago, link building consisted of some of the same things as it does today, but you could have a site with good content and good site optimziation and then exchange links and do very well. This is NOT the case today!
But that doesn’t mean link building is a fruitless activity. I still believe in the power of good links even if they’re getting more and more difficult to find. But what makes for a good link?
Based on my experience and various industry sources that I have seen in recent times, the criteria still come to:
Not necessarily in that order, but those are the important factors to locating a good quality link. So now that we know what kind of links to go for – relevant links from authoritative sites with strong anchor text that have aged – how do you get them? First, what you should NOT do is run out and start spamming directories and social bookmarking websites. That will get you nowhere. What will get you places is to write great content and market that content to your target audience in the places where your target audience likes to hang out. If you’ll do that on a consistent basis you’ll see the links. But a moderate submission strategy to top-notch authoritative websites within your niche is a nice augment. And don’t sweat the small stuff. The most important advice that I can give you is do your research and plan out your link building activities in advance, not only does this make it manageable, but keeps your link building program on track.
21 Responses to “Are There Any Great Link Building Activities Left?”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
The links are still out there, but it seems to take a lot more labor.
Hi Mike,
I agree. Building relevant links has evolved over the years and there is no doubt that link building will continue to change in the coming years.
Thanks for the comment and for reading!
Nick
I’ve done well looking for links that have strength other than quantity. I can have about 10 links with moderate strength and rank really well for many key terms.
Hi Rick,
Thanks for the comment and for reading. Quality over quantity approach does certainly work very well…
Hi Nick,
Getting some good links is indeed becoming a time-consuming task. You’ve explained this very good in your article. If you need some quality-links for your blogging site you can read the article I’ve posted on the gonzoblog.nl today.
Also my experience how to get quality and relevant links to your corporate website is to create an award-winning design! Permanent links on some great design-galleries, best thing: it’s for free and it boosts your ego, hihi!
Keep up the good work, Cheers & Ciao …
Hi Gonzo,
Thanks for the comment and for reading…very interesting point. Having a great user experience, (with great site architecture and design) and fantastic content really does help with natural link building and develop authority overall within an industry…thanks again for reading!
I made one huge mistake two years ago by changing the name of my website to make it a shorter URL. Since I lost the ranking I’ve never been able to get it back even though I changed it back to the old URL. Now I don’t want to make another mistake by buying a number of domain names that point to my website and using one of the them instead of the permanent website name.Will this cause a problem?
Hi Barbara,
Thanks for reading and your comment!
This is a very tough question that I would need to analyze for you before I could give an educated answer on. If you would like for me to help you with this, please feel free to give me a call or an email.
Thanks,
Nick
I´m working to create some linking growth for my sites… but I´m afraid to Google think that are paid or link exchange… I have 2 new services… a directory and some gadgets… and I request a banner or reference to my web site… is there are good o bad?
Hi Ruben,
I would evaluate all of your in bound links and would conduct a link audit, using Google webmaster tools. If you have any paid links pointing to your website, I would recommend that you remove them and then start building relevant links from many different (non paid) sources over time.
I hope this helps and thanks for reading!
Nick
Great article! I think overall you have to quality in every aspect of link building in order for the link to stick. If the content is poor, regardless if it is a comment, article submission, blog entry, or any other method, it all must be of quality. Quantity may get your up there, but quality is the key to a successful campaign. Thanks for sharing!
Hi SEO Link In,
Thanks for reading and your comment. Quality is certainly much more important with link building…
Hmmmm, but then again, how would any of the Search engines even trace that it is a Paid link if the criteria is based on the mentioned 4 points?
Hi,
I have a blog. I think blog is not less than a website. I m working SEO of my blog itself. I m using an outside template for that. Do u thing adding meta description to it will work? I m also working to make useful posts for readers. Thanks
Hi Nick,
‘…Also, never abuse any type of link building activity. If a particular source of a relevant link is generating visitors to your website then continue, but don’t overdo anything…’
What does ‘overdo’ mean? How many times per week or per month should one put links on a third party website? I found some bulletin booards that are relevant to what our business does and drive traffic on our website. I post there different content almost everyday. Is this wrong?
Hi Willy,
Thanks for reading and your question. Good point, either way, I personally do not recommend buying links, of course if it is “no followed” and could generate an increase in visitors then it all of a sudden becomes a good quality link.
Hi Irina,
Overdoing in my mind means, something that is not natural. For instance 1,000 blog comments in a month or 35 press releases or 1,000 articles…none of this is good marketing, but just linking for the sake of linking, which is not a good practice to follow. Anyway, hope this helps and thanks for reading!
Sometimes I think it’s better to stay naive in the network marketing department. If you are writing an honest blog, with integrity, then people will be in touch. It’s the scammers and spammers that make things difficult. I only link with people/sites who I trust and/or feel passionate about. It’s also a “thank you” for some help in any way, like creating a community. To me that’s the power of having a blog…creating an online community of like-minded folks. WordPress has the worst spammers. I have to go through 50 comments to find one that’s not somebody trying to boost their clicks. Thanks again Nick for your insights and advice.
I would also just like to add to your comment about “overdoing”. I started my blog two years ago and write about one post per week. It has steadily grown over the months and now I have followers. None of this was “planned” on my part. I just wanted to get my message out to the world. It’s like anything in life…move forward with integrity.
Hi Reonne,
Thanks for reading and your comments! Great points, moving forward with integrity (in life and in business) is so very important!
My current focus is on obtaining top-quality links from highly-regarded blogs, especially .edu blogs. There are two hurdles to be overcome.
The first is getting past the moderator. While my comments always add something meaningful to the thread, some mods are very wary of anything that looks like it’s being done for SEO purposes. I have had my URL edited out of the comment so that just my name appears, unclickable. And I’ve had all my comments deleted when I submitted three in one day to the same blog. (It had multiple posts and I actually found them interesting.) While we would like to have anchor text, that is becoming next-to-impossible to get away with; you have to settle for just a plain old link and be happy you got that!
The second issue is getting the link recognized by the search engines, and this applies to all other forms of link-building, too. With approved blog comments, I try pinging the blog’s URL through a couple of RSS aggregators. But I am amazed at how many links don’t get found at all – including links from major article directories. This is extremely frustrating.
Given the difficulties of building good links that actually get noticed, it is vital to ensure that all your on-page factors are spot-on. Using the right plug-ins with a WordPress blog go a long way.
Hi Richard,
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts!
Having the right wordpress plugins on your blog is certainly essential as well as all of the basic SEO strategies as well.
Thanks again & Take care,
Nick