[EDIT: Man I hate this post. Go here for link building tips and explanation why!]
With all this talk of link buying and how it can effectively cause your much valued website to drop out of the serps altogether, maybe it’s time to review your methods of acquiring links and for us to discuss the steps to take in find good websites to link to that add value to your own site.
Sifting through the many sites out there is without doubt a laborious process and requires time and dedication. A good link builder needs to take into account a multitude of considerations, mainly how the acquired link will affect the website not only now but in the future too.
Lets make a list of tips for link building. I’ll start the ball rolling, by the end of comments I will compile the top 20 tips so you too can become a professional link builder.
1) Check out backlinks to your competitors website, make a list of these links and by the time you have researched a number of sites you should start to see a pattern emerging.
2) When negotiating links, think very carefully as to the angle you will approach the webmaster with. OK, that link may benefit you, but what does he/she get in return ?
3) What methods will you employ to make sure the links remain on your chosen site ?
4) ( I always struggle with this one) Determine if the site is a good linking partner. What’s the nature of the site? What impact will it have on your site if you link to it ? Who owns the site ? ( Some people such as Dave get a gut feeling about a site, but here we need to establish a definite method for filtering out the crap)
67 Comments
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Once you have a list of sites you want to have links from, never (NEVER!) send out a bulk email where you just insert the name/url etc. Make each one unique and natural (not selly-selly) sounding. Also, there’s always the chance you’ll miss one or two and forget to change the name/url or something if you go the bulk route, and that just looks bad.
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Find footprints of dofollow blogs / sites that allow link submissions amass a list for link dropping.
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Great start guys thanks, keep them coming !
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Start a competition – best sites in particular niche. Display the best sites as voted by your readers. Contact the winners, provide a link to the results page on your site, provide some html for them to display a ‘won best in category’ with a link back to your ‘winners’ page.
Optionally provide a dynamic voting image similar to digg.
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My 5 Cents: Resarch the links that you have on other sites. Push the Pages that have already links to you with new Links. Indirectly linkbuilding!
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[...] Natural Link Building Top 20 Tips, David Naylor [...]
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Thank you for the list of tips for link building.
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[...] pay for some quality links, but check at Daves to make sure the are [...]
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[...] pay for some quality links, but check at Daves to make sure the are [...]
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Forget PR…or at least don’t pay too much attention to it. Check out the backlinks of the backlinks instead…
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I highly recommend using something like “backlinkanalyzer” to compare the top 3 sites in your niche to see who’s linking back to them and approaching as many as possible. Some you will be unable to contact/obtain because they are suppliers/clients of the other site but you’ll be amazed how many other links can be obtained.
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this is so useful! give us some more, pls.. =)
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When looking at competitors consider that just because they do the same thing doesn’t mean they’re your online competition. A lot of direct competitors do a terrible job of ranking for long tail terms. Do the keyword research, find the sites that rank for those regardless of obvious competition and then rinse and repeat #1 for them.
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Remember it is about quality not quantity. Using an automated tool to submit to 100,000 search engines/directories may sound impressive but is likely to do more harm than good. Concentrate your efforts on highly relevant sites that may take some time but will yield better results.
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Find leading e-zines or blogs in your niche and contact them about writing a guest article in exchange for a footer. Make the article especially informative then ask if they mind allowing you to do it again.
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Thanks guys, keep it rolling..
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To Dan’s second point above, offer an incentive to people to link back to your site. Start an affiliate scheme. We are currently planning to launch a scheme where partner sites will advertise from 1 to 10 french properties for sale (where each is a link). We will offer a partner 5% commision if we convert an enquiry that originates from their site.
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I’m surprised no one has mentioned article submission. I consider this one of the most powerful natural link building strategies and should be used in any seo project if possible.
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Don’t be afraid to buy links from websites and directories if you have to – just make sure that a) they are not site wide and b) that the site is not actively touting links as a method to get round the SE’s. Also don’t go PR chasing
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[...] This article is a great piece for two reasons: [...]
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Create good content that people want to reference, this blog is a perfect working example. Oh and by the way Dave or Dan can I write a guest post for you …
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Hi
Hope that this is an appropropriate category to post toDo generic domain keywords have an advantage in search engines ranking when the content is relevant / unique.
I ask this question as it was my rational in 1999 to register groups of generic domains in clusters rather than one off registrations, These registrations are dormant whilst I waited for broadband to become available throughout Europe and for the European online markets to evolveIt seem to me that the generic domains as a group would be more powerful when each can offer unique content with the ability to support each others SEO, with the ultimate purpose to support a new brand name without high long term marketing costs
The domains are TLD’s in a European language .com’s equivalent to the English terms insurance, motorcycleinsurance, carinsurance, houseinsurance, lifeinsurance, carsales, carprice, carmagazine…………………………………all initially registered to enter the online insurance marketsI know that the direct link to the generic url is only a small part of the SEO but is it still an advantage to have the generic keyword registration apart from possible type in traffic?
If it is your view that it is just a bunch of domains then so be it, I will then know that the direct link in linguistic search or the coming spoken search terms have moved on - 24
Post contributions to relevant forums. Put your website URL and blurb in your signature file. Every post you make in the forum will earn you a back-link to your site.
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I agree it would be great if a site has a very unique and relevant content.by having this search engines would crawl on it and can view it as a very relevant site.
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While browsing the web, take note of sites which give away free links to quality sites in an specific topic; then, write a high quality page at your website about that specific topic; then, contact the webmaster of the site and ask them to consider linking to you.
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I found writing a press release for PR Web worked really well, I did it a few hrs ago and now it’s all over google, even Yahoo News have ran the story about my new cruise holiday website. socruise. Google socruise and you will be able to see it.
Plus getting links on sites like tect crunch will make your seo fly.
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Thanks for the advice. I have found that getting quailty backlinks is tough and always an ongoing process. I keep reading that Google keep changes the way they rank sites hence why your ranking can vary so much
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Thanks guys for this great advices.
From my own experience article submsion and distribution is a great to improve your website ranking for the anchored text.I still can’t understand how press releases work. Do you think it would be helpful for small markets with less searched keywords as well?
Also do you guys think it is possible to create 2000 one way link in a 3 months priod? if yes what is your top 3 suggestions for doing that?
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[...] blog. 2. How to make people link to your website. 3. 15 Link building tips for new websites. 4. Natural Link building Top 20 Tips. (check comments for [...]
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I think that as long as your link profile looks natural then you can achieve high rankings, for example, by alternating the anchor text that you use within links.
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Thanks for you tips, I shall use them frequently and shall keep coming back to know more.
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Nice blog! I think, there are plenty of ways for link building but it would be great if you know where and how to start? Then you need to distinguish between low-quality links and high-quality links, or between links that have little value and links that have the potential to be valuable.
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Links from Social Networking sites can also provide valuable back links.
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Good blog !
Submiting your site to obscure search engines can also help – but always check their PR first.
I think the best advice from above is to check the links your competition has – I have found this to be effective – why – because the competition has done most of the hard work for you already !
The ‘hub and spoke’ method can also be very effective – this is where you have several sites that you create ( full of relevance ) that all point back to your main hub site. It takes work but at least you have full control and with hosting now so cheap – why not. This is a very popular method amongst porn sites – a bad example I know but it is one of the most competitive industries and a lot can be learnt from the tactics of these people when it comes to SEO.
The social networking comment above is also a good one – get yourself onto facebook, myspace etc… again it takes time – but its all free.
The latest tagging ( social bookmarking ) techniques are also worth considering – diggit, del.icio.us if you have forums or blogs
KD
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I think a really good tip is to realize that not all paid links are bad, you just need to make sure you buy them from discrete site owners or trusted directories. Usually when you negotiate a link from a site you’ll need to give them something in return, but just because you pay them doesn’t mean that it’s a forged link, merely an exchange of assets. As long as the company doesn’t advertise “links for sale!” like so many do, you’re most likely safe.
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Great tips.
Do you guys know of any good web design forums/blogs use dofollow (does this one)?
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I agree with your method #1 (as well as others — no reservation) — I visited other similar websites (more successful websites which started/launched in the same month, the month I launched mine) and study their backlinks (using backlink analyzer tools). I learnt a lot from the backlink analysis result. Some actively do blog hopping. Some actively do forum posting. And various other strategies, proven strategies to be exact. I also studied the backlinks of my own website. Then I realised I did many mistakes; such as actively participating in nofollow forums and actively commenting in nofollow blogs. Thanks. Nice article.
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the new buzz word “natural” whether it be for content or links. To much of anything is not good even when it comes to links and content great info. I look forward to the other 16 reasons.
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Sorry James I have to say I completely disagree.
Too many links – a bad thing – how and why ?
Relevant, quality links are worth their weight in gold in the SEO world
re: “the new buzz word “natural” whether it be for content or links”
“Natural” is not really a new buzz word – its been around quite some time - 41
Would like to of seen more information about link baiting, ie creating applications and / or actually writing articles of interest that often result in natural link building as opposed to manipulating your competitor’s.
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for seo service take a look at shoponlinegoods.com
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I find article websites to be the best why of link building
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Try these
http://www.ezinearticles.com/ ( popular article site where you can submit your article for inclusion )
http://www.isnare.com ( they publish articles to other sites for you – small fee if I remember )
KD
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Thanks for the tips. Wow so many different options!
Where to start?
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I wanted to comment on a couple of the above.
1. Hub and spoke – tried it and it sort of worked, i bought 5 domains related to hats and pointed all to my main hats site. It does require relevant and unique content on each site, not fantastically successful for us.
2. keyword rich domains – definitely makes a difference, especially, it seems with Yahoo. We bought a couple of these “running-clothing.co.uk” and “korean-fashion.co.uk” and, now live for one month, we seem to receive many relevant clicks from Yahoo but nothing related to the keyword from Google?! - 47
[...] – Top 20 tips for Natural Link Building – Dave [...]
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My Link Building methods Directory Submission, Press Release Submission, Social Bookmarking, Article Submission
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Very useful information to share with the readers that cool. i agree with you the tips which you discuss is the essential part of natural link building . any i find this article very informative and useful.
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Nice work dude… It is helpful for me as well as others..
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I found this site the other day – it shows all backlinks to your site ( or your competitors )
Its FREEIts really useful beacuse it also shows the PR of the site linking back to you and the PR of the page with the link. Very useful freebie tool – enjoy !
http://seopro.com.au/free-seo-tools/link-checker/
Kev
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To get good quality links is hard work, but they are worth it.
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Nice Tips David, explicitly for beginners, keep up the good work!
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Asking people for backlinks isn’t really “natural” is it…?
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Thanks for the ideas I tried the first on out all ready
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Great Tips, building backlinks is a hard work task, it wastes a lot of time, but when we want to get backlinks the best is to get quality backlinks not quantity backlinks
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One of the most important things to look at when researching websites to get links from is to check how many backlinks the page your evaluating has directed to the page you want the link on. The best pages of content to receive a link will have great backlinks to that page. If they have a link from a .edu or .gov it is even better.
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Its still ok to establish link exchanges, but not from crowded link pages with no content except dozens of outgoing links though. Exchange links between relevant internal pages of your related websites. Search engines like to see deep links as it tells them that you have interesting content throughout your website.
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Great advice, quality backlinks make a whole lot of sense for web site success. I’d rather have 100 quality visitors than 100,000 people that aren’t interested.
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Nice Tips, getting more backlinks can get website higher in Search engine results, for me I think the very important backlinks sources are :
article submission
blog commenting
social bookmarking - 61
Basic info but still a great list of tips for link building. It is important website owners are aware that link building is critical to an effective SEO campaign.
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Simple but good tips. I dont know if Im blind, but isnt it meant to be 20 tips, I only see 6??
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Once you get visitors to your site give them the option to sign up to a newsletter or add your site to a social bookmarking site. Build links from the inside.
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In response to Danielle – 20 tips – there probably arent 20 tips for natural link building, per say, other than whats already been said.
Link building is just one factor that Google will use when indexing and ranking, however its very important.
BUT – I’ll give you all a really good tip – and its controversial !!
FORGET quality links, you’ll never get enough unless your in a really niche market – go instead for QUANTITY – it works !
Why ? – because the best quality links you can get are often from your competitors, hence, by exchanging links ( if they even agree ) you are merely cancelling out each others SERPS or ranking gain. The majority of search engines, directories and article submission sites will NOT give you ‘quality’, ‘relevant’ links.
Having tried a few free backlink checkers I now just stick with Yahoo, which always seems king – ironically Google is not, and yet it pays more attention to backlinks than other search engines. Strange but true.
To see backlinks to your site from Yahoo goto the below link
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
At this stage your probably thinking who the hell is this Kev D and what does he know ?
Well check the numbers of backlinks I have on a couple of my sites on the above link and look at the number of backlinks.
http://www.click-divorce.co.uk
http://www.1stchoiceroofers.co.uk
http://www.santas-christmas-letters.comAt the time of writing this there are probably around 25,000 – 30,000 backlinks for each of the above sites.
Now, search for “diy divorce” or “online divorce” at Google and look for click-divorce.co.uk, the results speak for themselves.
Pretty impressive, but notice that the backlinks are mostly irrelevant, to get this many relevant, quality links would have taken me years, plus I probably wouldnt have found enough relevant sites willing to exchange links anyway.
So how did I do this ? – I paid to join a network of site owners basically, and its an ongoing fee.
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Hi Kev,
Thanks very much for that. I agree about the quantity thing. I’ve noticed that my competitors on the top of google just have loads of random links and not quality links. So if it works for them, Im obviously going to copy, regardless of what I read.
Thanks again
Danielle - 66
do you call these link building tips, i am disguested!
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anon
dis-guested, you certainly are, I would add dis-illusioned and dis-respectful !
I just checked your SERPS results for flightsexpress.co.uk – not good is it. I suggest the read the post entirely and learn something.
Thanks for the advice. I’ve developed an aikido web site and I’ve researched the top 25 websites for the term aikido. I now have links from some of the highest ranking websites, for the term aikido.