Are you still struggling with the start of your link building campaign, or are you still trying to make a decision whether you’ll be outsourcing your Link Building campaign or not? Don’t forget to let these 5 Reasons to build links in-house (by Justilien Gaspard) and these 5 Reasons not to outsource your link building campaign (by Roger Montti) take part in your decision process.
If you decide to keep it in house, here’s a few tips on How to set up and manage your link building campaign. Or you can try to use your positive brand buzz to attract links.

And also:

• Micheal Martinez wrote about Where to buy PageRank passing links at SEO Theory
• Google’s “new” link policy made David Wallace Trade in his white hat for a black one
• Shaun Anderson interviewed Jim Boykin at Hobo-Web
• SlightlyShadySEO listed these 13 Rapid backlink generating tricks
• Niche directories still offer link building potential, according to Brian Turner
• Brett Borders mentioned How to manage your reputation with profiles and presell pages

Oh, and make sure to read this post from Todd Mintz (and these posts as well) if you’re planning on sending out emails for link building, press releases or other issues.

Push my Buttons!

Yesterday, when I was doing some research on Digg, I spotted a page that I had seen before and wanted to check it out once more. This page in question managed to get to the front page about three months ago, but when I tried to visit it today through Digg, it wouldn’t load anymore. It was 301′ed.
After digging in a bit deeper, I noticed that this website made it to the front page five times. Four of these submitted pages disappeared and were replaced by a 301 to heavily optimized pages on the same domain. Three out of five pages were submitted by the same top Digg user, who had submitted the same pages to Reddit as well.

I used to have the opinion that you can either try to redirect as much link bait strength to your most important pages by designing your page optimally (or changing it later), or you can try to catch all strength by 301ing the link bait page to one of your important pages. This example completely changed my mind.

Using a 301 on a page that has been generating links in the past is -in my opinion- not the way to go (and can even be dangerous) because:

• It’s not user friendly. Visitors that are looking for specific content and find something that doesn’t correlate with the link that directed them to your website, will be disappointed.
• You’re deleting great pieces of content. Why would you remove stuff that made it to the front page of Digg, Reddit or any other social media website?
• You prevent the page from attracting even more links in the future. Good content will remain to attract links in the future as well. Content that is 301′ed to a heavily optimized page probably won’t.
• You get a wrong incoming anchor text/ page content relationship. Especially when your link bait page isn’t 100% related to the products you sell, your anchor text/ page content relationship will be completely off.
• This can even backfire in terms of bad publicity (gaming the system). What if a few Diggers found out that your website is 301ing several posts that made it to “their” front page. Can you imagine what that might cause?
• You might lose that top Digger. I don’t know how this website managed to let the same top Digger submit several of their posts, but if his Digg reputation is in danger, he probably will refrain himself from submitting more stories.

And the reasons mentioned above aren’t even all reasons. For example, imagine what Google would do if more and more people would use this strategy. Do you think they will remain to handle 301s exactly the same way they do today?

So what can you do to let as much link strength and link relevance flow to the most important pages on your website?

• Make sure to get a relevant link bait title.
• Use in-content links to other important pages on your website (or add these links after the first link bump is over)
• Nofollow pages that aren’t that important, or remove some navigational links on your link bait page
• Provide an RSS feed in your “link bait section”. People who liked your link bait might like (and link to) your future campaigns as well.

Of course, there are some exceptions (off-domain 301s, for example). In some cases it might be better to 301 a link bait page, but I don’t think this is the way to go in most cases. Especially in this case, where it were blog posts and an html page that got redirected, I believe that other solutions might have been better. I can imagine that you don’t share the same opinion (or perhaps you do), so my question is:

do you use 301 redirects on your link bait pages? Why, or why not?

Push my Buttons!

It is/ was Thanksgiving in the US, which means it’s been a quiet week this week. However, like every other week there are always at least a few link building related posts worth mentioning.
The first one is Roger Montti’s post about building links to a new site, which includes a few advantages that a new website has over a somewhat older website. David Peralty writes about the same subject, his point “If you can’t think of at least three ideas for great articles, you are probably not in the right niche” is solid as a rock.

Besides “regular” link building tactics, guerrilla marketing can also be a great way to obtain links and to build a brand. Skellie listed 17 Guerrilla Marketing ideas for your website at DailyBits. If you like these kind of strategies, you might also like these 10 tactics.

And also:

• Make sure to read Loren Baker’s post about 20 Essential Blog Directories
• Matt Sawyer provides some great tips in his post The Aftermath - Where Now For Link Builders at Clicks.ws
• Controlling the Flow of Link Juice was this week’s subject of SEOmoz’ Whiteboard Friday
• Another link building video: Eric Ward & Brandon Hopkins @ WebProNews
• Do you use Del.icio.us as a Link Building Tool?

BTW, if you think I’ve missed something (or if you think I should subscribe to your SEO/ link building related RSS feed), feel free to leave a comment or to drop me an email.

Push my Buttons!

“But I just have a regular shopping website” is probably one of the most common excuses from BtoC shopping websites I’ve heard for not having a lot of links. Obtaining links to a “regular shopping website” is probably one of the easiest things to do, though. If you manage to get your processes right, you don’t even have to build lots of links, you will be gathering them naturally. In this post, I will try to explain how you can get loads of natural links to a business to consumer shopping website in four easy steps.

1. Be linkable
This is not only necessary from a search engine point of view, but also if you want to attract more links. Session IDs, password protected pages and frames are potential killers of a great link profile. Be sure to be linkable. I’m not going into depth here, if you need more info about this subject check out this part of SEOmoz’ Beginners Guide.

2. Sell great products
Don’t settle with regular or good products, sell great products. You know, products that make you want to tell others “Hey, check out this product I just bought. It’s amazing”.
Selling really crappy products might get you a few links as well, but I don’t think these links are the ones you’re looking for…

3. Provide great service
Don’t settle with a regular or good service, but provide every customer with a great service. Small customers as well. You know, a service that makes you want to tell others “Hey, you know about the problem I had with that product I recently bought. You’ll never going to believe this”.

4. Encourage linking
It sounds pretty logical, but there still are loads of companies out there that don’t want you linking to them. Mentioning a positive linking policy on your copyright page can help, but encouraging linking goes much further.

• Include a link encouraging message in your confirmation email or in the follow up email. Something like “Did you like this product? Tell us and tell others! Found something wrong with this product? Tell us and others as well!”, together with the URL(s) of the product(s) your customer just bought might get you dozens of positive posts with natural links. It might also get you a few less positive posts, but this is a great way to let these customers get familiar with your excellent service.
• You might take this even a step further by offering discounts or coupons. I don’t know what Matt thinks of something like “Let others know what you think about this product and get a 15% discount on your next purchase!” in terms of paid links, but I think it’s a great way to encourage people to give you feedback about your products. Whether this is positive or negative feedback.
• If your products have a manual, use it. Let your customers know the URL of the product they’ve bought, so they can check out this page for more info, updates and more. This way, you might bond with a few customers and make them linktrigger-happy.
• Images. In stead of preventing people from hotlinking your images, encourage them! In return for a link to the source, of course. You could also use a script like this.
• Even a simple “bought this product?” button in stead of a “send to friend” button (with some explanation included) might encourage people to actually write about the product they’ve bought in the past.

While these steps look pretty easy to follow, I’ve only seen a few companies actually use this in their linking strategy. This is very remarkable, considering the fact that only a few changes might results in dozens or hundreds of free, natural deeplinks over time. And while I’ve mentioned only a few link encouraging tips, I’m sure you can come up with plenty more.

Push my Buttons!

Last week, several lists with link building techniques popped up, with a total of over 200 tips. Make sure to check out (in no particular order) these 114 tips, 12 tactics for 2008, 10 ways to build free links (and 10 more), 100+ link strategies and 17 creative ideas.
And also:

• The Linkbait debate: is it Spam or Not and what does Google think about it?
• Eric Ward explains why Link building is still fun after 14 years
• Debra Mastaler wrote about Link Building for the little guy
• Eric Enge made a great list with 7 points about paid vs. editorial links
• Justilien Gaspard explains How you can engage users, create buzz and generate links all at the same time

• H. Vasco pointed out a tool for finding blogs that don’t use Nofollow in their comments
• Loren Baker listed several Social Media websites that don’t use Nofollow
• Etienne Teo explains how to get a free link from USA Today

Push my Buttons!

Loren Baker provided 10 great tips to build links without buying them, but there’s still plenty of room left for even more free link building tactics. Here’s a list of another 10 useful tactics that might work for you.

1. Interviews
Getting yourself interviewed by a local journalist, a specialist from your market or some other influential person gives you the possibility to mention your website as well. The interview is about you, right? To give you an example, Aaron Wall managed to get 5 links into this interview with Peter da Vanzo.

2. Guestposts
Guestposting (or better: create your own network) is a great way to not only spread your personal image, but to attract (or place) links as well. Since you’re the writer of the article, you decide where to link to. And what anchor text to use. Don’t overdo this, however. Linking to your own website(s) too often may result in a bad image or in never getting invited to write another post anymore.
This works the other way round as well; check out the amount of links pointing to SEOmoz’ UGC section (and that’s just the home page)…

3. Link out
A great way to get notified and to get links. And I’m not talking about trackbacks, but about real links without nofollow. It’s not only a way to show your readers what kind of stuff you’re reading, but the bloggers you’re linking to also watch their incoming links thanks to Technorati and to their WP Admin. By linking to them, they will notice you and might even link to you.

4. Link to your own pages
Bill Hartzer explained this one better than I ever could, so I’m not going to explain this link building technique. Go check out Bill’s article.

5. Discuss your favorite topics
Commenting your favorite blogs and forums regularly not only builds your personal brand, but can lead to visitors to your websites and links as well. Lots of forums and blogs don’t use nofollow (again: don’t overdo), so mentioning your websites every now and then will improve your link popularity. Thinking about a commenting strategy might pay off in the end.

6. Teach
This is one that I already mentioned earlier, but this technique can work like a charm. Teaching your favorite subject in a school in your area not only gives you the possibility to network with potential future employees, but also is a way to build your brand and even to get links. The school where you’re teaching probably has a website where you can add your own bio and publish your teaching material. Both .edu pages, of course, include a link to your website.

7. Do some research
Publishing the results of something you researched in your field of interest can lead to dozens of relevant, high quality links. Especially if the outcomes are funny, shocking or quite interesting. If the outcome is exceptionally valuable, you might even attract links from reputable news sources, .edus or other great sources.

8. Create a contest (or an award)
Contests, quizzes or awards not only can have a great viral effect, but can attract the attention of community members as well. Creating a yearly award is almost a guarantee for lots of attention, recognition and (quite important) relevant links and rankings.

9. Make pictures
Not only is Flickr a great way to get links (without nofollow), but some influential bloggers also give credits to the photographer of the pictures they use. And don’t forget that images are quite important in linkbait articles, so try to get your share out of it.
Especially when you manage to make some out of the box photos of common subjects, terms or goods (office, targeting, discuss, etc), you might be able to attract some great links. And get some great exposure on other blogs.

10. Donations
Ok, so technically, links you receive after donating something aren’t exactly free, but in this case I guess it’s ok. The money (or products) you used for getting links was for a good cause. You should at least donate something to charity once in your life, but if you’re only willing to do this if you get a link in return, so be it.

Push my Buttons!