February 11, 2008 9:31 pm Where Do You Start Your Link Marketing Campaign?
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.
Do you have more strategies to add?
21 Comments »
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Nice article! I touched on this in my article but you’re right - there’s so much can be done to help your linking for a large established site before you even have to email a single link request!
Oh - and thanks for the link
Comment by Tom — February 12, 2008 @ 12:05 am
You’re on a tear. This content is so useful to many.
Comment by Marty — February 12, 2008 @ 5:01 am
Just sphunn this. Searching your own name is good too, because that’s commonly associated with a site. I found Flickr photos of me and added links in the comments. A nice tool for this purpose is SERPH. (Which I just realized is a combination of SERP and Surf [the web] … wow I’m slow.] Incidentally, I think the link building blog’s 101 ways to build links had the company/site/url name one a while back. A refresher’s always good though :).
Oh, and ditto Marty’s comment.
Comment by Gab from "SEO ROI" — February 12, 2008 @ 5:09 am
Tom; You’re absolutely right & you’re more than welcome
Marty; Thanks
Gab; Searching for your own name is a great addition! Like Glen mentioned in his post as well, Serph sure is a great tool for reputation monitoring (and link building)
Comment by Wiep — February 12, 2008 @ 9:03 am
These are a great start for any linkbuilding campaign… what you say about anchor text is spot on. It’s hard to balance keywords vs. sales and a little research goes a long way
Comment by Alex - Upstream SEO — February 12, 2008 @ 3:37 pm
This is a pretty useful and helpful article wiep..^^…glad you shared it with us..hope you won’t grow tired of sharing..^^
Comment by Internet Marketing Joy — February 12, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Nice article!
You should modify the link to Google request [yourdomain.com -link:yourdomain.com] because it doesn’t work with Google (you can’t mix link:URL queries with other commands). Replace it by [yourdomain.com -linkdomain:yourdomain.com] searched at Yahoo.
Comment by Olivier Duffez — February 12, 2008 @ 6:07 pm
Why not automate the internal / external link building using a tool like Arkayne.
I’ve dropped the widget onto my blogs and it automatically finds related content. Works very well for blogs with posts larger than a few sentences. That and it will show you exactly how many users are clicking between articles on the details page:
http://www.arkayne.com/info/?origin=13401
Its a real time saver.
Comment by Paul — February 12, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
Alex; you’re absolutely right. Some tend to focus on anchor text for search engines only, while other only look at click throughs. In most cases, finding a balance between those two might be worth it.
IMJ; I’m sure I won’t
Olivier; Good point, but I can’t get it to work in Yahoo either. Point is that I use a tool for this and thought that the queries seemed to work in Google. They do, however, return at least some potential candidates
Comment by Wiep — February 12, 2008 @ 8:57 pm
[...] How To Start Your Link Building Campaign Wiep Knoll [...]
Pingback by SEO Company Reading - Hobo SEO UK — February 13, 2008 @ 4:08 am
Its an interesting balance. Its a challenge to manage all of the requests for links…but of course, I’m hoping people are willing to link to my sites! I always try to remember that when I get a request.
Comment by John — February 13, 2008 @ 5:17 am
It’s a good idea to optimize of your site by interlinking based on keywords anchor text, it help to improved ranking also. I am going to describe much because already available this post. At last Creative content with great ideas.
Comment by Suresh — February 13, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
Wiep - great stuff! One of the most under utilized and overlooked techniques is to use the power of your own site’s homepage to funnel link juice towards internal pages, especially newly created pages.
Eric
Comment by Eric Ward — February 13, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
This is excellent, particularly the one about querying anchor text that isn’t already linked. If you find enough of them, it’s not too much work to just fire off an email to webmaster@whateverdomain.com, with CC to info@ — most get through and depending on the nature of the site there’s usually a return.
Comment by Paul Burani — February 13, 2008 @ 8:32 pm
Excellent, and concise Thanks!
Comment by Wil Reynolds — February 19, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
[...] Wiep has some great ideas how to gather up all those unused link resources you already have laying around and leverage them [...]
Pingback by Natural Link Building | SEO Scientist - Applying the scientific method to SEO — February 24, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
I really like the company name and personal name idea - the epitome of low hanging fruit.
Comment by Vertical Measures — February 28, 2008 @ 1:12 am
[...] Where Do You Start Your Link Marketing Campaign? [...]
Pingback by my del.icio.us links | Koka Sexton — February 29, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
Thanks for the info. Just trying to start a link building and the internal linking is a great suggestion. I would have overlooked that. Appreciate the information.
Comment by teadog — March 28, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
You list some good strategies for developing backlinks, another good one is to write articles, this helps getting tons of 1 way backlinks.
Comment by tina — April 16, 2008 @ 4:52 pm
I love the idea of monitoring using google alerts. Simple but elegant idea. Thanks
Comment by BJ — May 1, 2008 @ 7:58 am