Inbound Linking for SEO - Where the Hell to Begin?
Ahhh… to begin an SEO linking campaign. The biggest pain in the butt is… “where the HELL to begin?” Also, lately, getting inbound links has become more about what you can afford than the value of your site. Welcome to the SEO Industrial Complex. All bitchin’ aside, here are the types of links there are to be had in order of importance (and lack thereof). You’re gonna need to bookmark this one. Just start at the top and work your way down… methodically study all 7 (what is it with all the 7s lately?)
1. Links from Authoritative Sites
Incoming authoritative site links are a requirement if your site is to be trusted by the search engines. As the number one goal for a new site, you should dedicate your initial link initiative with finding them and getting them. Beg, borrow, barter AND steal. In other words; do whatever it takes to grab some quality, trusted authority links. This initial effort will make all your other web traffic efforts more effective.
2. Links from Press Releases
Let us submit your press release and we’ll make sure you have the most appropiate anchor text mixed up in the body (for those aggregation’s that allow it) as well as bio links to your website. This does build trust in the search engines. They will know you have a budget and are a “real” website that is, at least attempting to add value. It is definitely a way to explicitly separate your site from the MFAs and Scraper sites.
3. Edu and .Gov links
Many people claim that these links carry some amount of “special authority.” My question is, is it the TLD that caries the authority or are most .EDUs and .GOVs actually authority sites? Don’t go too far out of your way to snag these but it’s not a bad idea to mix up the TLDs your links come from… to a point.
4. Reciprocal links
If you are a Blogging Pro, let this happen naturally. Reference some good posts and sit back and bask in link love. The way NOT to go about it is to spend your time asking to swap links. If someone who has a site that you value asks you to link to them, sure. Better yet, ask them to contribute content that they will be referenced to as the contributor. Let’s call this “Reciprocal Linked Contributions” (more on this later).
5. Directory links
My advice is to go easy on the directory links. Make it part of a slow but long-term linking strategy and only add 10 or so a month at the most. Also, make sure that these are not the only links you have. Try to keep the percentage of incoming links from directories to under 20%. (we’ll be following up with a list of the only one’s you really need to consider)
6. Paid Links
You can always go the route of paying for TEXT LINKS or purchasing REVIEWS. Don’t do this unless your are flush with cash, short on time and lack the motivation to do the above steps. (in fact, if this is the case, you may be better off spending your cash and time elsewhere) This my have risk as the SEs have implicitly frowned upon this practice and may penalize your site if discovered. Better yet, build your own network of trusted sites and pimp for each other in Web 2.0 “la-la-blogo-land.” Try to impress your friends and (if successful) ask them to go to bat on your behalf. Then, expect them to ask the same at some point. If enough people tell someone that they need to link to a cool story - they will. Freely. You can take this sort of pimpin’ action over to Digg, Furl and Delicious as well (just push the icons at the end of this article and practice bookmarking this story there. BOOM! Free Text Links and something to have a whiskey over.
7. Comment and Profile Links
Contribute something worthwhile to a community or blog. Stick around awhile - don’t be a jerk and jus’ spam sites, you’ll probably get turned off or blocked anyhow. Contribute because you add value and want to be part of the community. These links don’t add an extreme amount of value from an SE perspective. The real value is, you are interacting with your niche and become trusted on the value you add.
Coming next week. Link Profile Weighting.
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