The link builder’s handbook
David Harry has done it again. He has released a fantastic follow up to the New York Times best seller of 2008 in the category of SEO eBooks that I actually took the time to read all the way through, SEO Handbook 2008, in the soon to be the best eBook I’ve read so far in 2009, SEO Handbook, The Link Building Edition.
As with all things that come out of the Huomah research center David has thoroughly researched every detail of this book in an effort to provide the reader with the most relevant and up to date information possible. Best of all it is broken down in to bite sized elements that are easy to understand and implement.
The book starts with the basics by explaining what the various link profile elements, from the old standard of simple backlinks to more advanced theories of link velocity and progresses steadily through the basics of link building. Where the book really starts to shine is when we leave the Link Building 101 and start exploring link building in social media and link bait.
Great link bait is almost as rare as a great robot assassin, they just don’t happen all that often, but when they do, look out. David takes the time to break down various types of link bait and explains how you can target your link bait at a specific audience. It’s even more rare that link bait will cross genres, so it becomes very important to tailor your link worthy content at the audiece you want to attract.
Finally everything is all tied together in a lesson on keyword research. What good is all this knowledge if you end up missing your target? No good!! Even though this section comes last, in my opinion it may be the ost important part of the book. Keyword research will help set you on the proper path and David gives you the tools to do it right.
I tend to not recommend a lot of things. I’ve been held responsible for other people’s content and I would never recommend something that I would not be willing to put my name on myself. And David’s link building handbook is one of those things that I wish I had written. But since he already did it, and definitely better than I would have, I have no qualms in telling anyone getting started in link building, or people that want to round out their knowledge, buy this book!
Shopping for blog posts and ghostwriters
One of the more common ways for you to get your name out there is guest blogging. It puts you in front of new readers, allows you to spread your knowledge, and may get you a few links in the process. But even if you find a great blog to post on, you may not always have the time to write the post yourself. So you might consider hiring a ghost writer to take care of that for you. And if that ghost writer also happens to own the blog that you are guest blogging on, where’s the harm in that?
While I won’t suggest that you go out and buy links or blog posts in an effort to boost your search rankings, you may find yourself with an opportunity to promote your website through guest blogging. It would be a shame to miss that opportunity just because you don’t have the time. But before you start paying someone to guest blog for you there are some things you may want to consider before you engage them, and by inference, things you may not want to do if you plan on using your blog or website as a marketing platform for others.
1. Is the blog focused?
One of the most common issues you will find when researching blogs is that so many simply don’t stay on topic. Let’s assume that you are releasing a great new 5 speed Action-Man rotary toothbrush and you are looking for clean teeth fanatics to tell about your new toothbrush. One possible candidate has an great site, myteetharewhite.com, and you want them to write a review. Stop. Look at the site. Not just the first page, click around, look several pages deep. Are there random posts about v1agra? colon blow? free credit reports? Maybe they have a link to Amatuer Asian Porn in their blogroll.
These are all indications that this person is less interested in developing a solid website about a specific topic than they are in making as much money as possible, regardless of the long term effects. In this case you may want to consider finding a new ghostwriter.
2. Is it part of an “SEO Contest”?
This one always confuses me. Basically someone started a blog, or changed an established blog, with the goal of winning some worthless SEO contest that proves nothing other than they can out rank a collection of even more worthless newbs all trying to prove to themselves that they have a clue. Let me say right now, if you are in one of those contests, you don’t have a clue and should learn how to ask, “Do you want fries with that?”. I’ve seen people trying to sell ghostwriting services with header logos and hundreds of blogroll links all focused on stupid SEO contests.
You won’t see it very often, but when you do, run, this blog is most likely damaged goods.
3. Excerpts or Snipettes
Unless it is a major blog with tons of traffic, I recommend skipping these blogs. The main reason is that any link that they may give you will be worthless. The link will rarely, if ever, see the home page, and in a few short posts the post will fall off the front page never to be seen again. Any opportunity to gain traffic from it will pass just as quickly.
4. Default Wordpress Install
This one just bugs me. How can you take someone seriously if they can’t be bothered to install a basic theme to personalize their blog? It shows a lack of professionalism and a work ethic that will most certainly translate in to a poorly written blog post.
5. Can’t Follow Simple Directions
When you are looking for help with a specific topic, there is little worse than people that can’t be bothered to read what you wrote. If they can’t follow simple directions early in the process, what makes you think they will follow them later?
Let’s take a hypothetical situation where I might be looking to guest blog. I put out feelers looking for blogs that discuss the intricate details of pan frying North American Condor eggs using nothing but a cast iron skillet, three matches and a magnifying glass. If you send me a proposal that says that you can get me listed in the blogroll of 72.3 vampire blogs, you can pretty much bet that I will be adding you to my ignore list and I will never see your messages again.
As always, I would never suggest that you buy something just for the links. But you might not want to miss an opportunity just because you don’t have a lot of time to spare.
Welcome to Directory Recap
After a year of development (on and off) we are up and running at nearly full speed!
Our goal here is to provide the largest, most up to date, most accurate, collection of link directories on the internet. Everyone knows that you need links to be successful. And we all agree, well most of us realists, that directory links are a part of that link building process. So why not provide a way to help people find the most relevant directories for their website?
We even made our list compatible with DigiXmas, and it’s free!! Well, out lists are at least. If you don’t have DigiXmas yet, you need to get it. It helps streamline the process of submitting your website to relevant directories.
Want to help and earn rewards? We got you covered there too. If you join the review team you can earn credits for every site you review. Those credits can then earn you some great rewards, like dedicated profile pages here at Recap. And that is just the start.
The staff and reviewers here at Directory Recap are excited about where we are heading, and as always, if you have any questions or suggestions, pop over to the forums and let us know.
Getting links from Flickr
Flickr is one of the major photo sharing websites for those of you living under a rock.. In the past people, many people, have suggested that you could get some easy links to your site by simply looking for high PR Flickr pages and then posting links to your website in the comments.. Personally, I can’t stand this type of comment spam, it ruins communities and can cause users to not share their photos.. I’m glad that they put in the nofollow tag to help cut down on this type of comment spam..
That said, there is still a way to get links from Flickr and Flicker users while not descending in to the dirty spammer mentality..
The first step is to find a picture that you can use on your website..
- It can be anything, but something that is truly useful to you..
- Check the copyright info. most will be All rights reserved but many will be available for commercial use through Creative Commons.
- Follow the license and then contact the person that made the photo and let them know that you used it and appreciate the photo or video.
- Wait for them to blog about you or link to your website to show that they are a ‘professional’ because a commercial website thought enough of it to use it.
That’s it.. Simple really.. Will everyone link to you, no.. But that’s not the point.. You got a great photo for free so that has it’s own value.. But the potential for a nice link that isn’t comment spam, or from a generic link directory is worth the effort..
Finally, to make life even easier for you, because we all know how lazy you are when it comes to link building, check out this plugin for Wordpress that lets you search flickr by keyword, look at thumbnails, and even add the photo to your post with the proper attributes..
Link Building with Directories
I’ve been playing with directory links a lot lately.. There are so many of them out there, and they worked so well for so long, that I thought that they needed another look see.. So what did I see??
More of the things we already know.. There are good directories and there are bad directories.. But what stuck out was the difference in link recognition and what happened to the website I used for testing..
The setup:
- 4 new domains in similar niches.
- Nothing but directory submissions
The Process:
- site #1 was simply hammered out using digiXmas
- site #2 used digi but only submitted to directories with a toolbar pr of 2 or better
- site #3 was submitted to pr2 and better directories in digi and then a ’small’ sampling of pr1 and pr0 directories
- site #4 was submitted to only pr4 or better directories
The Results:
Site #1: as expected, 60 days later it’s just sort of sitting there.. It’s doing fine in MSN/Live, but almost nothing in Google or Yahoo.
Site #2: did better than #1 but still sat unnoticed for more than 30 days. It was picked up and indexed, but never moved.
Site #3: actually did the best. It popped out of the nowhere land of sub 500 in Google to top 100 in about 3 weeks.
Site #4: meh. Nothing significant to report. It lands somewhere between #2 and #3 for results. I think that a lot of this has to do with the limited number of links at that level of directory. Even with paid directories the numbers just aren’t there to support a website.
Obviously you will rarely build a site and do nothing but directory submissions for promotion, at least if you want to be even a little successful. But what I’m seeing here is that new websites getting tons of pr0 and pr1 links can actually slow down your acceptance, I hate to use the term trust, with the major search engines. You can get them, but they need to be in moderation with much better links.
Also, tools like digiXmas are great for banging out some quick links to help your site along, but like any tool you need to know when to stop using it.. A quick 1600 links may sound great, but if you hold back a bit and only do the top 600 to 700 you may find that you get better results.
And yes, I know that this is hardly scientific, but I’d bet $100 that’s more testing than 99% of the people claiming to be SEOs are doing.
Buying Links
We all “know” that links pointing to you “can’t” hurt you, or at least that’s what the major search engines want us all to “know”.. Just like they want everyone to know that buying links it bad.. Evil even..
I’m not terribly convinced that it is “evil”.. In some industries it’s almost a requirement for ranking.. I mean seriously, how many people freely drop a link to website selling things without getting something for it?? Maybe a discount, or a review product, or maybe a few bucks for their trouble.. And with everyone and his brother slapping nofollow attributes on links it’s even worse.. It’s made all those “natural” links worth even more money..
I know, I know, we all already know this..
But let’s take a look at the link buying process.. Not that I’m recommending it.. Or even suggesting that you do it for your site, but let’s look at several ways you could go about buying links..
1. You could go to one of these link selling websites like Text Link Ads.. You remember them, they are the guys that don’t even come up in the search results for their own name any more because Google has declared what they do “wrong”.. There service is kind of expensive since they have to share what you pay them with the people that actually own the sites.. But they do all, or most, of the work for you..
Whether Google has their netowrk sorted out or not is an issue that is up for debate..
2. You could outsource the link building to some individual that will go out and find the links for you.. Most likely this will be an Indian, or Pakastani, or more recently even a Chinese, link builder.. But you can bet that they won’t have your best interests at heart, just getting you the 30 or 50 links they said they would and moving on as fast as they can to the next guy.
Then you are stuck with a crapload of junk links pointing at your site, you know, the ones that the SEs say can’t hurt you..
3. You could hang out one of the forums that allows this type of thing to be done in public. But again, you have to watch out for the guys that don’t have your best interest at heart.. I’ve seen people’s websites used as examples of the work they do only to see the site in question get pushed down the SERPs as soon as Google sees the post..
4. You could find quality websites that you like, that are in your niche, and simply email them and ask them if they are willing to sell you a link.. Most will ignore you or tell you to go away.. But a few will be thrilled to have a few dollars sent their way for doing what they would have done anyway..
So, while I’m not suggesting that you go out and actually pay someone for links, because that would be wrong, if you decide that buying links is something that will help your website, be careful how you go about it.. You might find out that links pointing at you really can hurt your site..
Viral Marketing: Size Doesn’t Always Matter
Want to put together a viral marketing campaign? Read my column at SearchEngineWatch about small viral campaign that gets results. Here’s the scoop. Most viral campaigns won’t become large-scale. Few actually achieve that status. In nature, viral infections rarely turn into plagues. They tend to be small — yet can have a big impact on [...]Viral Marketing: Size Doesn’t Always Matter
Want to put together a viral marketing campaign? Read my column at SearchEngineWatch about small viral campaign that gets results. Here’s the scoop. Most viral campaigns won’t become large-scale.Another one bites the dust
Seems that the power of Matt goes pretty far. I had intended to write about adding solid backlinks in your Twitter profile, but Matt Cutts decided that he didn’t care for those links.. And, of course, the Twitter guys listened and killed them..
Which started the lovely Sugarrae of on another mini rant (I do so love to read her rants)..
@mattcutts *I* gave this twitter page content, *I* got this twitter page 1700 backlinks, why should *I* not benefit from it?
And I have to agree with her.. We build the content, we put up the links, we attract the followers that make the site popular, we should at the very least be allowed to get a decent link back to our main websites.. But Google would rather see the natural web destroyed with their use of the noFollow tag on everything..
See what happens when you point things out to Google everyone?? That’s what makes writing this blog such a challenge.. How much to share and how much to hold back while it is still useful??
