SEO: Linking Strategy
Here’s my take on what you should do..
For reciprocal links.. Do it yourself and BY HAND. Don’t use one of those 1000+ link directory sites. Keep your links relevant to the PAGES you want to link to. Don’t always use your homepage as the page that the incoming reciprocal link is coming to, and try and mix up your anchor text so it’s not the same damn thing over and over. If you add more keywords and turn your anchor text into more of a one liner description with your primary and secondary keywords inside, you’ll see better results on a broader scale, rather than just hitting one keyword at a time.
For direct links.. outsource it. I always do. Don’t buy those pay per month links either, because those aren’t permanent if you decide you don’t want to shell out $50 a month anymore. Get someone from elance or RAC or somewhere like that and make them understand that you want RELEVANT and TOPIC RELATED direct links. They’ll probably charge you a one time fee of $10-$20 per link, but it’s a premanent link so it’s probably worth it. Don’t worry about pagerank either, because it’s fairly useless. Make sure the pages that are linking to you are ones that are visited often by the engines and are RELEVANT to your PAGES. Follow the same anchor text rules as above..
Be patient and once the link has been established LEAVE IT ALONE. Don’t play around with it. Let the engines take it’s course and keep updating your links every month. Don’t get greedy either. A maximum of 30 links per month is just fine.
This should give you substantial rankings over the next 3-6 months. Follow this method and I can almost assure you it will beat out whatever current method you’re using. If you’re worried about using this on a primary site of yours, then you should have test/dummy sites where you use them for testing out new seo methods without risking your primary sites.
If we can’t afford to outsource direct links, where can we find places to get related direct links ourselves?
You can try a few semi-saturated outlets such as writing articles and putting a link back to your site (which is the norm), free press releases (prweb.com), niche specific directories, blog comments, forum signatures (niche specific is best), or you can try and request direct links from resource sites that are in your industry/niche. The best of all of these are probably articles, directories and press releases.
Thanks for the post, Jon. I take it you look down on sites like Link Metro?
Mark-
Yes. Not a fan of link hubs that are made specifically for reciprocal linking strategies. It takes webmasters’ concentration off of the real importance of linking, which is, and always has been niche/market relevance.
I have used Link Metro, since it does have differnet sections, and you can choose who can request a link from you. I only get relevant links using LM. I find it saves a lot of time by giving easy access to people in your niche looking for links.
Would you recommend not using it anymore? (Actually, I haven’t used it for about a year due to loads of PR0 site link requests, but would still be interested in what you would say).
I should add that the PR0′ness isn’t specifically a problem, just the fact that they are obviously new sites, and could be gone tomorrow. At least with a PR2/3 you know its reasonably established.
When you say do it yourself, do you mean contact site owners within your niche?
The reason I ask is because I have had no replies from emails I have sent. Also I have read on boards at sitepoint and WSP that most site owners just delete unsolicited email requests… So how do you go about it?
Jon,
When outsourcing, are you having them get one way links to your site?
Hmmm. I’m kind of confused about what you mean by “outsourcing” link exchanges. How do you buy a link on elance or RAC? Aren’t those sites just for hiring coders/web designers/etc.?
Thanks Jon, Love the blog
Profecy-
Thanks for the kind words..
Actually, you can use RAC or elance for all sorts of outsourcing needs, especially for “grunt work”. Link building is necessary, but sometimes people get too frustrated with it, so if you want to focus more on something else, rather than link building, outsourcing it is your best bet. This way you can still get relevant links without the real hassle of doing it on your own. Although, if you’ve never done link building before, I’d recommend you try it first yourself before you outsource it, just because you’ll appreciate it more, and it’s always best to start out doing it on your own, so you know what to ask for from the outsourced hands.
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