Warning notice: while this post is easy to digest, it also contains a lot of crap.

I’m sure almost every search marketer has been in the situation of thinking “so how am I going to tell this friend/ prospect/ client that his website is crap in a polite way?” in at least more than one occasion. Some people are in the situation of being able to decline such opportunities while others even publicly talk about the fact that they won’t do work for certain websites. However, numerous companies will happily accept to build links for a crappy website, because they only see the big bag of money that this new client will be bringing in. For this last group, I’ll be diving into the art of getting links for crappy websites today.

Image: Ashahi Beer’s Golden Crap, by chrissam42

This starts with analyzing the link profiles of the competitors of the crappy website. Neglect the good links from high authority domains. Let’s face it: these sites probably won’t be linking to your client, so you’ll just have to focus on websites that look like or are just plain crap and settle with links on resources page #4. Together with 99 more crappy links.

- After this, you can submit your crap to dozens of SEO friendly directories that all look the same and almost instantly accept all kinds of crap. You’ll end up with a few links from AdSense overloaded pages that get crawled even less than a suncream salesman visits Norilsk, Siberia. But the website you’re promoting is still crap.

- You can try to create bait by painting your crap gold. You’ll be getting some attention and might even attract a few links from people saying “Hey, look over here, I’ve found golden crap!”. But it’s still crap.

- You can try to get people to write about or review your crap. The quality of the links you’ll gather usually correlates with the amount of money you’re able to pay, but it’ll only get you links of a certain quality level. These links will be from posts or pages stating “this company sells great crap, so check out their crap website!”. But it’s still crap.

Ok, I guess you get the point by now. My point is that you may have to think twice, if you’re planning on earning a quick buck by accepting nearly everything. You might fool search engines for a short while, but eventually, search engines will come to the same conclusion that the visitors of your client’s website have already came to: the website is crap and shouldn’t be ranking where it does.

In stead of promoting crap, make sure to start with improving the website, for example by changing the website structure, its layout or by adding quality articles. And I don’t mean adding 297 crappy turnkey articles, but quality stuff that people might actually enjoy reading and may be willing to link to.

Well, that’s because both Jim Boykin and Debra Mastaler’s The Link Spiel won a Search Blog Award in the Link Building category. Congratulations to both! I can’t think of a better result than these two finishing in first place together, because I’ve been reading both blogs since the moment I started to read about SEO.

While Search Engine Journal already covered the overall results, here’s the list of all the nominees in the Link Building category with their final scores:
1. Jim Boykin (3.2)
2. The Link Spiel (3.2)
3. Wiep.net (3.04)
4. Eric Ward (2.99)
5. Martinibuster (2.92)
6. Justilien (2.87)
7. LinkJuicy (2.77)
8. Link Building Blog (2.62)

Although I am really amazed, impressed and delighted at the same time to see that -if you look at the averages- I finished third, I think that the results are a bit biased because of the way of voting. I’m sure that this was a bit unclear for at least some folks (although Loren explained it crystal clear). I also think it’s impossible to believe that 25% thinks Eric Ward’s blog only deserved a single point. Nevertheless, I’m still honored that my six month old blog was nominated for such an award in the first place :)

Yesterday, I received yet another unrelated link request, which suddenly made me think about Joe Pulizzi’s post about myFord Magazine I read earlier this week. The link request I received was set up in exactly the same way. The email contained no less than 17 times “we”, “me”, “I” or “us” and only two times “you”. And both of the you’s weren’t even positive you’s.

If I’m not linking to your website, and you think I should, you have to explain why. This sounds stupidly simple, but this principle is the foundation of every link request. If you manage to do this correctly, you might end up with a link. Seriously, in some cases an email can make me think “You’re right, that page is relevant for my visitors.” However, if you’re willing to make me think this, you have to convince me. And convincing doesn’t mean throwing in random arguments that aren’t relevant for me.

Sending out link requests involves empathy. If you want to convince me to link to you, you’ll have to know what arguments might be valid for me. Although it might seem somewhat unbelievable, both ‘helping you to rank better’ and ‘improving my PageRank’ don’t sound very interesting to me. Thinking in terms of relevance for my visitors, increase in sales (and I mean my sales, not yours) or just great content might improve your chances for success.

So, if you’re choosing for push link marketing in stead of pull link marketing (and sometimes you have to), try to push the right buttons. A successful link request email includes at least one solid argument why linking to you is good for me. And, because something that’s good for you does not necessarily mean that it’s good for me as well, coming up with a solid argument might take some research first.

SEOmoz’ Search Engine Ranking Factors is probably in the top 10 of the most valuable pieces of SEO documentation online. Where else can you find over one hundred years of SEO experience on one page? While link value is one of the factors being discussed in this piece of research, I would have loved to see more about this subject. And this is why I tried to do the same for link value influencing factors.

17 Link building and SEO professionals have shared their thoughts about nearly 40 different factors that might (or might not) influence the value that search engines can assign to a link. These opinions have been bundled into one document: The Link Value Factors.

Like stated in both the intro and the comments, it’s nearly impossible to design a piece of research that is 100% accurate. Especially when it comes to links, because no two links are exactly the same and no two links will be treated exactly the same by a search engine. In my opinion, however, the page with Link Value Factors is an in depth piece of content that can serve as link building background info for both link building newbies and pros from the field pretty darn well. Enjoy!

“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.

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.