Link Building Strategies
If, in the course of this, we had seen something that worked well but runs counter to what we have been doing all along, then we'd most certainly advise that to our dozens of clients. That would be the logical thing to do. It would be very counterproductive for us to send our clients down a dead end path with poor link building strategies. Link campaigns that ignore gamesmanship and treat linking as a branding function of the business is what works best over the long haul. This exercise is all about website promotion. As a website owner, you should do what is best for your site visitors. Forget about PageRank. Forget about demanding reciprocity. Forget about trying to game the search engines with contrived link networks, and the rest. All of that is way off focus, and some of it is quite risky, if they catch you. (Or more likely, your competitor tattles on you.) SEO Link Buidling TechniquesThere are several link building techniques, and more are being invented every day. Let's discuss some here. When considering link exchanges, based on our own experienced analysis, here's what Goggle appears to reward, quite consistently: Sites that establish a genuine, well-structured resource directory for their site visitors, with low reciprocity rates. This establishes the site as a hub; or resource, and not just a contrived effort to establish reciprocity. It does appear that Google can see this effort, and sites with large resource directories seem to do well in the indexing results. Then go out and ask for links back from the sites listed in the directory that make offers to reciprocate. Maybe they all offer, but typically, only 20 to 30 percent will reciprocate. Don't worry about it too much, and never, ever send out those link back or else! notices. Those are very counterproductive. Google appears to reward sites with a large number of links that come from a wide diversity of unique (but relevant) domain names, spread across the web. This is from sites with a wide variety of PageRank, not just high PR sites. This kind of linking seems to do the best in index results. In practical terms, this broad-based, branding approach toward linking represents a well established website that is not playing games with their linking. It represents a site that is willing to link democratically, based on content, not PageRank. Again, think in terms of your site visitor, do you believe they want to be linked to anothersite that has a different theme? If you are on a real estate agent's site, would youlike being linked to a basketball statisitcs site? SEO link building is aboutpromoting your site but if you were selling candles at the mall would you hand out flyers topatrons walking out of the athletic shoe store? Your link building techniques should always consider your site visitors/ Advertising Your Website ThemeFrom a practical analysis, establishing a "theme" for a website, algorithmically, is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a search engine. There are just too many overlapping terms in too many realms of interest to do it, and enforce it. And there is the matter of "free speech". Search engines should not try to dictate the content on a website, rewarding some content and "punishing" others. They should, and do, is simply analyze what is presented. What is very possible for search engines is to see is the keyword density on a specific page where a link appears. After all, Google AdWords does exactly that, in order to deliver the appropriate ads to a page. For specific keyword terms, is very likely that that the keyword density on pages where a link is placed plays some role in the indexing results for that term. As well as the anchor text of the link itself. Analyzing that further, the theme of the site reveals itself in the keywords found in the title, or anchor text of the page and the link itself. It is a page-to-site keyword analysis taking place here, and not a site-to-site theme analysis. Themeing penalties appear to play no role whatsoever in this process, and these so-called penalties are merely the gray matter product of over-imaginative search engine analysts. 
Links on real working websites come from all kinds of places, and point to all kinds of places, many of them seemingly unrelated, but in fact, there may be a lot of legitimate reasons for the links. Once again, it is well beyond the search engines to try to enforce some kind of compliance or determine link theme legitimacy. In practical terms, they can only look at the keyword density of a particular page, and react to that. This also explains why links from un-focused, un-categorized free-for-all links pages aren't worth much, since the keyword density is so horribly random. These pages are so hopelessly un-focused that Google appears to just discount them entirely. Lots of links on a page, and no discernible focus is easy to see. Link building strategies rely on on-page SEO Best practices. Given that themeing is only on the page-to-site level (and it is keyword-driven, not theme driven), this might encourage some people to go after any and all links, regardless of what realm of interest those links come from. And some people do pursue this. The limiting factor here is that asking for links outside of an appropriate realm of interest is a huge waste of time and a quite inappropriate thing to do. (Go back to our mall candle shop analogy.) Themeing is really driven by the website managers themselves, when deciding to link or not link to each other. This is quite appropriate, and it is the limiting factor to just asking for links at random. It is simply not productive to seek links from sites outside of a realm of interest. Most of the requests will be ignored, and some people will report the requests as spam. It's counterproductive. When considering listing your website in a web directory. the directory's human editor reviews your request and determines if it is appropriate for their directory. The editor simply looks at the anchor text and description of the link. When blogging or participating in forums, editors and owners scrutinize your post for relevancy and the value it adds to the discussion. Given all that we have said, the most successful SEO link buidling strategies most definitely follow similar paths. 
If Google did not exist, then successful link building strategies would set out to establish as many links as possible (within a realm of interest), in order to establish the brand as broadly as possible. This is exactly how linking was approached by the most successful sites in the days before Google, and we ran one of those sites. Then Google came along and recognized this practice. They rewarded sites with deep, well-established, broad-based link popularity, and they continue to do so, to this day. Attempts to shortcut this with a smattering of high PR links might work in the short run, depending on the competitive situation, but we have never honestly seen that approach work over the long term in a highly competitive arena. The sheer number of links, from as many unique domains as possible, spread broadly across the spectrum of IP addresses, is what appears to drive the index results. Keep in mind that links from common directory-to-directory link exchange efforts are usually only PR1 to PR3, and many sites that index well have a modest PR4 and PR5 on their home pages. Focusing on PageRank with respect to link exchange is a wholly misguided practice, and it significantly thwarts the real and meaningful goal of establishing as many unique domain links as possible. Certainly, on-page optimization plays a significant and very important role. It is possible to have a lot of links coming to a poorly structured website. We have also seen this first hand. The result is poor indexing and low traffic. Site owners must determine the most relevant keywords, and optimize their site to garner the traffic for these terms, in a way that provides real visitors with real content, and in a way that provides full-circuit linkage into and out of these pages. To do otherwise risks penalties. But page titles, urls, headlines, and textual content must be well-considered and well-presented, for maximum effect. The most successful sites approach linking as a long-term, never-ending process to establish their brand on the web, regardless of PageRank. It takes time, commitment, preparation, and determination to keep it moving forward. Doing anything else is to risk losing their link dominance, or never establishing it in the first place. Earning 50 or 100 links and then quitting, even if it is successful, is a short-term approach that leaves a site vulnerable to competitive reaction. After all, links are basically public-domain information, and competitors look at the link profile of other successful sites. But achieving parity is work, so the best defense to this is a consistent, focused offense. Link as if Google did not exist, and as if your site traffic depended on nothing but your links. That is the motivator here, but it is also represents sound business practice, and not a game. But it is not free, either. In the overall world of web marketing, SEO link building can be a raging bargain, once the effort begins to bear fruit. This approach, unfortunately, is not suited for every site. It takes a site that can afford the cost of establishing that link dominance, then can attract meaningful traffic once that is established, and can convert that traffic into revenue or action. For a customized quote to consider link building strategies for your website through SEO Link Building, please complete the form below. |