Just recently, someone asked me what automated link software I would recommend. When I asked him if he meant useful tools like Link Diagnosis, he made clear that he actually was looking for software that sends out a bucket load of unsolicited link request emails with the speed of sound to use for his main link building strategy for a white hat site. I really thought stuff like that had already died out, but apparently (and unfortunately) not.
Sure, link software may get your niche affiliate website a few nice rankings for a few days, but that usually doesn’t last longer than Milli Vanilli’s singing career. For everyone who’s still looking for software that inflates their rankings, here’s why these kind of tools just make my skin crawl…
1. Far from personal
I have received link requests that started with “Dear Sir/ Madame”, “Hello Webmaster” or even “Dear [NAME]” in more than one occasion. Not only does sending out link trade request emails that mention the term ‘PageRank’ more often than Larry and Sergey’s original patent to the owner of a link building related blog already makes me think that you possibly haven’t taken a thorough look at my website, but if you also can’t even find my name on this blog…
2. It results in an unnatural link profile
If you use link software as your main strategy, you’ll end up with a link profile that’s more artificial than Michael Jackson’s nose. Sure, Google doesn’t mind a few anchor text rich links on links.htm pages, but even Live frowns upon the kind of pattern that software can build for you. Okay, maybe that last part isn’t entirely true
3. Sensitive to flaws
You just hit the ’send’ button and realize that you misspelled both your own URL and your company name. The problem is that you didn’t send out just a single email, but you sent it to nearly a thousand website owners. Doh!
4. Easy to copy
Automated link software is easy to get and easy to use. Any one of your competitors can copy your entire linking strategy within an hour, which means you’re already at the same level again.
6. You only get low quality links Just to let you know what you may expect from link software: the so called link partner -that you’ve carefully selected- links back from a robots.txt’ed out resources page, and you may find another one of your links ending up on a page with nothing but viagra and poker crap. Absolutely not worth the trouble…
7. The big boys don’t use it
Do some research on SERPs for keywords like ‘car insurance’, ‘celebrity news’, or even ’seo’ and I will assure you that you won’t find a single one that uses automated link software in the top 50. Seriously, there’s a reason why…
8. It shifts your focus the wrong way Although it usually doesn’t take a whole week to find out what your brilliant piece of software can do for you, you could have used that time more efficiently. By creating killer content, by networking with the best or simply by serving your customers, for example.
9. You always miss the links you want And this is the most important reason. Automated link software won’t bring you the links you really want and/ or need. Do you really think that using link software will end up in getting a link from the NY Times, Wikipedia (one that stays in ) or that niche portal you’re dying to get a link from? Or that it will result in a Digg front page and thousands of StumbleUpon referers? Think again.
Oh, and if you happen to own or use link software (and I don’t mean link tools) that you do think will bring in valuable links, feel free to drop me an email and prove me wrong. But I don’t think that will happen
Last week, I noticed that the PageRank of Wiep.net dropped from 4 to 2. The PR of all internal pages, such as the Link Value Factors, dropped with two points as well, so this is clearly a manual PageRank penalty. After discussing this with several folks, the only reason I can think of why this happened is the footer of my blog (this design is a free WP Theme). It’s either that, or it’s because I haven’t been blogging a lot lately and this is Matt’s way to let me know that I should post more often
First of all I want to stress out that I personally couldn’t care less about this penalty and this is not an “I want my PageRank back!” scream. I wouldn’t even care if Google turned it into a PR0, a greyed out PR or even a red or purple PageRank, but I do care about the reason why. If this PageRank penalty is because of the links in the footer (it actually is my only website that’s 100% clean ), it’s wrong for several reasons.
1. Lots of WP templates work with ’sponsored by’ footer and/ or blogroll links and lots of mom and pop bloggers have never heard of either paid links, Matt Cutts, or even Google. Others may think that PageRank is directly related to their rankings and will turn hysterical if they see that their PR has been lowered because of factors that they don’t know is wrong.
In stead of lowering the rankings of the advertisers, Google thinks it’s more appropriate to lower the toolbar PR of template users who -in some cases, not in my case!- don’t even know they’re doing something wrong.
2. How about ‘designed by’ links? Can your PR get lowered because of linking to your website designer as well? This is pretty much the same.
3. This actually is a penalty for linking to irrelevant websites. Besides using the WP template, I never accepted any form of payment or whatsoever, so technically, the links aren’t even paid ones.
4. Indirectly, Google’s telling people which website template they can use and which ones they can’t. It’s either breaking the template’s conditions of use (leaving the links up is mandatory), risking a lowered PageRank, or following the Rules Of Google.
Some have suggested to nofollow or remove the links in the footer and to do a reinclusion request, but I’ve decided not to. In stead, I’ll do exactly what I said I will do my footer; I’ll leave the links up (which is mandatory when you use the template) until I have a new design. Do you have designing skills that rock and some spare time? Drop me a note and you might just end up with a ‘designed by’ footer link. From a PR2 blog…
Until then, does someone have a green pen, so I can fill up the void on my toolbar?
When you read these guidelines (I’ve read it before, but it’s great to read it again as an eye opener), there are a few things you might pick up and use when you’re building links. These tips aren’t ground breaking and it also isn’t a complete list, but it’s nice to see these things confirmed by an official Google document.
1. Go for niche directories in stead of general ones.
The best links you can get are from websites that get lots of ‘vital’, ‘useful’ or ‘relevant’ ratings. Niche directories will not only pass more relevant traffic, but will also receive more positive ratings because of their specific focus. Therefore, you should definitely focus on niche directories and only the top general ones; getting hundreds of general directory links is just not worth it anymore.
2. Get links from your country.
If you’re looking for a book store in the US, the web shop of Amazon.co.uk will be rated as ‘not relevant’. And so will your link on that UK website probably (partially) as well. However, focusing on getting as much links from your country doesn’t mean that a link from BBC.co.uk isn’t valuable
3. Go for news groups, but keep it informational.
For informational queries, newsgroups which are focused on the subject and provide helpful information will receive a ‘useful’ rating. This means that these newsgroup pages might show up in the top of the SERPs, so if your link is on that page, it might receive a lot of click troughs. Remember to keep it useful for the user though, because the page might not get a ‘useful’ rating if you’ve spamming the page.
4. Offer to write FAQ’s. Informational pages such as FAQ’s can get ‘useful’ ratings. If you offer to write an FAQ for a website you’d love to get a link from (and of course include a few links to your own website), you might be able to score a few links from a valuable, ‘useful’ informational page.
5. (Not link building related) Bonus Tip
Do you have an affiliate website and you don’t want to get labeled as a ‘thin affiliate’, which is considered as spam by Google? Adding a ‘become an affiliate’ link to your footer might help
Last week, I had the chance to addend the SearchEngineStrategies in London, together with three of my colleagues. For me, it was the second time to attend a search engine conference, the SES in New York last year was my first.
Unlike usually, I haven’t seen a lot of reports and recaps of the sessions of the SES London. I’ve seen more thana few, but not as much as normally. Since Lee Odden already discussed the session Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions perfectly, I’ll refrain to the other link building related session only.
Dixon Jones, Matt Paines, Ken McGaffin and Brian Turner were the speakers during the session that discussed Linking Strategies. Receptional’s Dixon Jones opened this session with an excellent presentation.
Next up was XSEO’s Matt Paines. He discussed a few of the most popular and common link building strategies and explained which strategy still is effective (according to him) and which one isn’t. I missed the enthusiasm and passion that most speakers have, which resulted in a presentation that I actually didn’t like. No offense, but I really didn’t.
Ken McGaffin was the third to give a presentation. While he left the link building business for a job at Wordtracker a while ago, he showed that he still most definitely knows what he’s talking about. One very important point he stressed out was the fact that, for optimal results, your marketing department, Public Relations and SEO/ Link Building should work together to a common strategy. Ken also gave 6 possible strategies to get a better link profile. In stead of naming the ordinary stuff, he listed some interesting tips that you don’t see every day:
1. Control the flow of your existing links
2. Find out who links to you and how
3. Get the most out of existing links
4. Look at sectors where you’re weak (new market opportunities)
5. Look for emerging markets (gave the example of Mark J. Penn’s MicroTrends)
6. Plan your initiatives for the year ahead
The last in row was SES virgin Brian Turner of BriteCorp. You certainly couldn’t tell that it was his first SES presentation, which means he did a remarkable job. He divided all links into three different categories; Submitted links, Paid links and Editorial links. Brian also explained how you can obtain links from each of those categories and mentioned that the last category is the one where you want your links from.
As you can see, this was a very short recap of two days SES (I missed the first day). While I’m not very good at summarizing PowerPoint presentations, I still wanted to share this.
For websites that have been around for a while, starting a link marketing campaign is much easier than you might think. There’s no need to go out and hunt for new links straight ahead, because it’s usually much easier, faster and more effective to take a look at nearby data.
1. Internal linking structure
Optimizing the internal link structure of a website can be highly effective, but is often underestimated and therefore neglected. Check out Jim Boykin’s post about optimizing internal links and Aaron Wall’s follow up on that post for some great tips.
2. 404 page statistics
Are people linking to non existing pages on your domain? Use Google Webmaster Tools (or your own web stats) to find out which URLs have received links (and /or clicks), but return a 404 page. Contacting the webmasters of the sites that are linking to the non existing pages and letting them know what the correct location should be is a guarantee for success.
3. URL search queries
Contacting websites that mention your URL, but didn’t make it a clickable link, might result in a few easy links as well. If they list your URL, they’re probably willing to make it clickable (and perhaps change the anchor text?) as well.
4. Company name search queries
See #3, but search for web pages that mention your company name (but don’t link to you) in stead. After you contacted about every webmaster that mentioned either your URL or your company name without providing a link to your site, don’t forget to add both queries as a Google Alert or something similar. It’s not only a great tool to monitor your online reputation, but you can use it as a link building support tool as well.
5. Optimizing existing links
Another strategy that can be very effective is optimizing your existing links. There are two ways to do this; either by making the link more attractive for visitors or by making the link more appealing to search engines. Investigate which links send you a reasonable amount of traffic and see if you can improve this by altering the anchor text to something that encourages clicking the link. Investigate which links are the most important ones according to Google and see if you can improve the relevance by altering the anchor text to something that adds even more value. Keep in mind not to overdo this in both cases; “Now with a 6% discount!” isn’t a great anchor text for search engines, and a “keyword keyword keyword” anchor text probably doesn’t attract a bucket load of visitors in most cases, so finding a balance is important.
See? Five easy link building strategies that don’t involve scavenging, hunting, baiting or other work intensive tactics. Using easily accessible data and contacting people that are already familiar with your website in some kind of way is not only efficient, but can be very effective as well.
), it’s wrong for several reasons.
