Link Building this Month (04.2009)

Some months are relatively quite, while you get overloaded with awesome link marketing posts during other months. Luckily, this month was one of the latter, which kinda makes up for the lack of posting on this blog. If only I could find a way to fit 30 hours into a single day, but I guess I’m not the only one with that problem…

A Sphinn thread caused quite some stir about dofollow link building. Just hearing the term dofollow already makes my skin crawl, but luckily I’m not the only one. Also, Yoast mentioned Dave Naylor’s comment referer plugin at A4U, which tells you which comments were dropped by visitors who came from (i.e.) dofollow search engines. I will definitely try that one out.

In the ‘scientific approach’ category, Marie-Claire Jenkins (a.k.a CJ) wrote about more link analysis methods. Combine these methods with an awesome tool like Majestic’s Compare Domain Link History and a link prospect qualification guide, and you’ll definitely be able to find some great link targets. And if you still fail to get these targets to link to your website, you might want to improve your email subject lines, or use any of the link attraction catalysts. Or you could create fake websites :)

Ian Lurie published a series about link building, which -after part 1, 2, 3 and 4– ended with some tips to out-execute the competition. He shared some great tips (quite a big bunch of link building tips, actually) and although most were of a beginner to intermediate level, his fine writing style makes the series a great read.

Lastly, I came across few presentations I believe are worth sharing. BuzzStream’s Jeremy Bencken spoke at the Austin SEO Meetup earlier this month, and, although the presentation took place in January, Wil Reynold‘s 1 hour talk at Affiliate Summit is definitely worth listening to as well. The 3rd presentation is one of my own; the guys from A4U Expo already uploaded my presentation about link building for affiliates to SlideShare.

And also:

• 21 Tips to earn links and tweets to your blog post – Rand Fishkin
• SEO: Do link builders need to know it? – Julie Joyce
• 6 Real linkbait examples and the lessons learned – Dave Pye
• How NOT to request a link via email – Rebecca Kelley
• Increase online visibility for sales and links – Justilien Gaspard
• 10 linkbait strategies to build links and drive traffic – Chris Lake
• Optimizing anchor text and titles – Eric Enge
• Guest blogging for (a lot of) backlinks – Richard Baxter
• 15 Ways to measure (and GROW) your site’s linkability – Garrett French