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In case you haven’t seen it Stoney deGeyter over at Pole Position Marketing put up a Link Building Secrets guide today featuring tips from 12 people including your truly, so head on over and check it out.
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When someone asks me to look at their backlinks there are two problems that continually popup, websites supported by lots of tiny weak links, or websites supported by one single overwhelming link. Neither case is pretty, and if your website is like the house pictured above it’s easy to see what a precarious position you’re putting yourself in.
Link Building and Development Mistakes - Treetrunks and Houses on Stilts »
Sphere ItWhen I try to combat the Google paid linking FUD one of the retorts I quite often get is “people shouldn’t be able to buy their way to the top”. I find this naive belief that business is egalitarian really very quaint.
It’s Not About Buying You’re Way to The Top »
Sphere ItOne of the things I hear a lot is how do I do link bait for a boring industry like <insert industry here> . All you really need to do is think out of the box and go with a trend.
Ghost Riding the Whip - Insurance Linkbait »
Sphere ItIn case you haven’t made your way over to Aaron’s Blog recently check out the 101 Link Building tips that he and Andy Hagans put out. It’s got some great tips that should required reading (and rereading) before you start thinking about linking.
Sphere ItI get emails for link requests all the time. Two or three times an enterprising individual picked up the phone and left a voice mail for a link request. Today I got my first link request through a MySpace message …
Sphere ItI’ve been busy tearing down, ripping apart, fixing, and rebuilding some of my own sites and some clients sites quite a bit lately. I’ve been neglecting my linkbuilding and decided it’s time to get back on track here are few tips you might find useful in helping you build some links.
Looking at Link Building Tips »
Sphere ItWhen you are looking for “polluted” areas on the web two that immediately leap to mind are travel and real estate. I don’t think that it should come as shock to anyone that searchers are starting looking places other than search engines for information.
Building Traffic to a Travel Website with 43Places »
Sphere ItI remember the good ole’ days when you could stuff alt tags with whole sentences and it worked like a charm, then it got killed. However recently I’m seeing more and more alt tag stuffing working.
Sphere ItI’m a big fan of outside of the box thinking especially where link building is concerned. If you’re looking for some link building ideas be sure to check out Brainstorm On How To Get One Way I.B. Links on WMW in the supporters section. In particular pay attention to what Martinibuster has to say, that is a close to a free diamond in the rough as you’re likely to ever get.
Update If you are a webmaster world paid supporter you won’t be able to see this.
Sphere ItOver the past few days we’ve looked at a few different ways you use some new web functionality to drive traffic to your website (see How to Annotate Google Maps, How to drive traffic with Flickr Photos, Using Web Videos to Build Traffic). Now I’d like to take look at ways to bring it all together and build links, and expand into some new business areas.
Web Maps, Video, and Audio for Fun and Profit »
Sphere ItSo I’m finishing up Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point before my trip to Pubcon next week where’s he’s the keynote speaker. Now if you are serious about real marketing (not the push button kind) this book is required reading, you really get an understanding about how viral marketing works. Which leads me to one of the biggest viral marketing tools that should be on everyone’s mind Digg.
Malcom Gladwell, Mavens, Connectors, and Digg »
Sphere ItAt this stage of the game syndicating your content with article distribution websites is still a fairly effective strategy for building links. However as engines continue to tighten the grip on duplicate content and become more sophisticated at detecting patterns I think it’s a tactic being addressed by search engine algorithm’s. So here are my tips for getting more value out of syndicated articles.
Getting More Out of Article Distribution Websites »
Sphere ItEver since the ancient Sumerian’s started writing things down in cuneiform on stone tablets thousands of years ago, people have been modifying historical records to suit their own purposes and goals. One of my particular favorites is the story of the heretic king Akhenaten of ancient Egypt, who tried to replace thousands of years of polytheism with worship of a single deity, Aten the sun god. Now before you condemn Akhenaten’s actions the response the priests took to eradicate all traces of Akhenaten’s existence after his death are equally as self serving. Modern day netizens looking for ways to modify historical records to suit their own goals need to look no further than Wikipedia. For those of you out there who think Wikipedia is some bastion of truth not to be sullied up with personal goals, I point to the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales who was recently caught rewriting his own biography to put a different spin on things( Wired:Wikipedia Founder Edits his own bio).
Editing Wikipedia and Ancient Traditions »
Sphere ItSo maybe you think the whole “v7ndotcom elursrebmem“, contest is silly but you’re big on the idea of pulling in a few extra drachmas and getting the accolades and recognition of your peers. If so check out BizNicheMedia who is running a contest for linkbaiting ideas. If you’re idea gets chosen as the top prize you get $500. If you’re idea actually works and makes it to the delicious popular page, you get another $500 bucks. For the record I know some of the people involved in running the website/contest so I can assure you it’s legit, but I am not not connected to the domain in question in any way (stupid lawyers). You don’t actually have to do anything other than come up with the idea, you just get to sit on your butt and collect the cash, just like a real big shot highly paid consultant …
Sphere ItPerfect of example of how to take someone’s else’s content recycle and repackage it into an awesome piece of linkbait that’s actually useful.
Sphere ItRegular readers here know I’m a big fan of social bookmarking or folksonomy websites like Del.icio.us and Digg. However when I mention them as link building tools I get responses like “my sites not about technology or computers”, “my customers aren’t geeks” and even Oilman said “it’s hard to get viral links to a phen spam site”. Want some tips for getting your non tech site’s into Digg, then gather around the campfire …
How to Get Your Non Tech Site into Digg »
Sphere ItAll right the cat’s out of the bag everybody knows about and is using WebGuerilla’s excellent backlink tool the tattler. It works off of Yahoo’s Site Explorer data and lets you dump it into a spreadsheet. I also like to mix it with Aaron Wall’s Backlink Analyzer to look at anchor text. Show Me Your Backlinks »
Sphere ItNot sure why when people build things out of legos it works really well for getting inbound links. But if you got something you didn’t want for the holidays you may want to visit Toys R Us and exchange it for a case of legos.
146 people already ‘dugg‘ this lego church.
Sphere ItAccording to Usability Guru Jakob Nielsen the internet now has over One Billion Users
World Wide Web Now Serving Over 1 Billion Users »
Sphere ItI’ve been playing with Squidoo today, and here my take on how to get the most use out of it. It’s not meant to be a replacement for blogging in any way. I think the best way to think of Squidoo is as an elevator pitch. Put your ideas out there and convince people you’re an expert in your field. Should you build a Squidoo lens (what a goofy name) yes, or at the very least you should try it. Does everyone need a squidoo, nope. Do people who are selling products, services, or ideas I think so, at the very least you should check it out. My squidoo, or as I think of it Graywolf lite, still needs a little work, but you can check it out if you are in the mood. (Graywolf’s SEO Comentary)
Sphere ItI talked about the time costs of staying constantly connected however to be fair I think I should also mention the opposing side. I recently was reading a thread over at Webmaster World about domains (I’d link to the post but finding anything over there is a bit of an impossibility currently). I kicked the idea around in my head for a few hours, came up with three domain names that weren’t registered and bought them. One of the domains happened to be about the Xbox 360. The Benefits of Staying Constantly Connected »
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Now I’ve studied this picture very carefully and can say with 100% certainty that it is definitely a picture of some kind of network hardware connector stuff. Oh and it’s also a picture of someone’s bra. But the point of this post is again thinking outside of the box to get links. Someone had the idea to photograph young women doing somewhat risque things with network hardware. It’s making the rounds under things like “hot chicks and network equipment“, go ahead check it out, and BTW these pics are NSFW. Getting the Breast Links »
Sphere ItThere’s lots of talk on the net right now that reciprocal linking is dead, which I disagree with. I will qualify that answer and say crappy reciprocal lining is dead (see Link Monkey it’s time to Evolve). Lots of people are running around like chicken without heads trying to figure out how am I going to get “natural looking links“? My response is look at the Digg or Del.icio.us popular page for ideas. However this all seems a bit too cryptic for some folks, so let’s be a little more straight forward.
Let’s say you’re trying to sell that venerable old product, a widget, how do you get people to link to you? Why not build a giant size widget out of lego blocks and feature step by step instructions on your website. For the kid in the back of class mumbling yes you will have to spend the money on the lego blocks and it may take you a day or two to do it, but how much time/money were you spending getting crappy links, I thought so.
Maybe that’s not your thing, how about taking your widgets and making an entire outfit out of them. Get your attractive wife/girlfriend/niece to model it and take some pictures. Put up a tutorial for others to follow. Think that’s lame, Lizzie Gardner wore a dress made of American Express Gold Cards to the Oscars in 1994, so maybe it’s not so lame.
Lets say you’re not the Martha Stewart put things together creative type, well then how about destroying something instead. Start a contest asking people to send you videos of them destroying widgets. Somebody already has one about smashing a brand new IPod Nano, so it’s a proven concept. Give away one of your spanking brand new widgets to the winner. Side note make sure you speak to your lawyer before running any contests the laws are quite icky.
Be creative, challenge the norm, break out, do anything and everything to get noticed.
Sphere ItIf you’ve been following any of the Google Jagger update threads on any of the search engine forums some of the common things you’ll hear is “reciprocal linking is dead“, or “I’m dropping all of my reciprocal link pages“.
While this type of knee jerk reaction is understandable, I feel it’s misguided. Reciprocal linking isn’t dead, just low quality links to questionable neighborhoods are dead, or just the links you got from your link monkey are dead. Link Monkey it’s Time to Evolve »
Sphere ItMuch has been said about having a listing in DMOZ, whether it’s important or not, whether it’s necessary, or how much time and effort it’s worth to get in. I was reviewing a potential clients site and I suspect the DMOZ listing may actually be doing them more harm than good.
The company has been around for a few years but is on a newly registered domain name (ugh). They are in a finance related category, but not something that’s uber competitive. They are listed in DMOZ in an appropriate category with a legitimate description. When checking I found a little over 500 backlinks, maybe a little high comparatively speaking, but not overly excessive. However when digging a little deeper some patterns started to emerge. The majority of their backlinks came from DMOZ clones, on a final tally over 450 of their links came from DMOZ clones.
This brings up the question are these poor low quality links actually affecting the companies rankings. If you proceed from the assumption that they have a neutral rating then, no harm no foul. However I suspect each of these low quality links has a negative coefficient, and when while however minor, when multiplied out 450 times, it will amount to something.
So if you’re still looking for a way to get into DMOZ, be careful, you may get what you wished for.
Sphere ItIn part two we talked about your your blogging approach and voice (Blog News Reporter: Approaches and the News), so we’ll talk about what to do once your blog is up and running and you don’t have too many readers.
