Link Building and Development Mistakes - Treetrunks and Houses on Stilts
February 11th, 2008 by Michael Gray in Link DevelopmentIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
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.
First lets talk about link data, what types of data should you be looking at and how do you get it. Most pro/expert linkbuilders have their own set of in-house tools, and they aren’t for sale or rent. However as a newbie or intermediate SEO with a limited budget and resources you shouldn’t despair, there are options. Aaron Wall has a backlink analyzer he offers for free, Greg Boser has another free tool eSpion. There are numerous commercial applications, I like and still use SEO Spyglass (see my review of SEO Spy Glass) and since you’ll ask, yes I did pay for my copy, and no that’s not an aff link.
The types of information you’re going to want should included but not be limited to are:
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Domain link comes from
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URL link comes from
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Anchor text
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IP of domain
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Pagerank of domain
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Pagerank of Page
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Alexa Score of domain
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Title of Page
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Meta Descrption of Page
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Age of Domain
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Domain in DMOZ
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Domain in Yahoo Directory
As you can see gathering all this data by hand could take a tremendous amount of time, so it’s a perfect time for a mechanical grunt, to do the heavy lifting for you.
Once you’ve got all this data you want to analyze it, one of the easiest problems to spot, is the treetrunk problem. Imagine if your website was like a tree house sitting firmly nestled in the branches of a mighty oak. As strong as the oak may be, that doesn’t mean it’s going to last forever, and when it falls down it’s going to take your house/website with it.
Characteristics of this type of “treetrunk” problem can be:
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A majority of links that come from one domain
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A majority of links from one IP/C-Class
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A majority of links with identical anchor text/surrounding text
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A majority of the links coming to a single page
Now no website is ever supported entirely by another single website/IP/anchor text but when you start to have upwards of 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% or more it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out something is amiss, and this isn’t “natural linking pattern”. The same is true for your pages that are being linked to. Goofy linking policies aside, if 100% of your inbound links come only to your home page, you are in trouble.
The “house on stilts” flaw is almost as easy to spot. The primary characteristic of this condition is nothing but low quality inbound links. There may be a extreme diversity of anchor text, IP’s, and destination URL’s however, like a Buy One get One Free sale at Payless Shoes, the quality is often lacking. This type of linking pattern can have hundreds or even thousands of links from PR0-PR3 pages, from sites with poor alexa rankings, no quality directory support for the originating website, and domain ages of 2 years or less. Some of the causes for this condition can range from the MSSA penalty to a lack of sophistication or web savvy from the site owner/webmaster.
So what’s the solution?
You want to build as many quality links, from as many trusted sources as possible, with as much differentiating anchor text, to as many different pages, over a prolonged period of time. While concise that was probably about as helpful as Sams “How to Build a Nuclear Reactor in 24 Hours” book, so here are some slightly more instructional links:
- Creating Flagship Content - by Chris Garrett
- Link Building Strategies the Work - By Brian Clark
- 5 Link Building Experts & 11 Link Building Experts - interviews by Sugarrae
- How to Build Links to Crappy Website - by Martinibuster
- Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM - by Andy Hagans
- Almost everything in Link Week - by Eric Ward
- Why that site with 50 backlinks beats yours - by Jim Boykin
- How Links Can Build Value & Profits by SEO Guy Aaron Wall
- Everything in the Link Building Category of the Semmy’s - organized by Matt McGee
One of the things that I think is important to take notice of is that almost everyone who’s a strong link builder is an advocate of high quality content/copy, I don’t think that’s by accident or purely coincidental either, links and content go hand in hand for any successful website.
Photo credit: Collin McMillan and skampy
Sphere It
February 11th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Good stuff Michael, why not use an affiliate link? You’re giving out great advice, might as well earn some money while doing it!
February 11th, 2008 at 9:07 am
@joost thanks. Sometimes people think It’s double dipping too use an aff link for a sponsored review, me I don’t care, but hey it’s all about pleasing the crowd.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Just to round out the zillion and one weak back-links scenario, an additional problem that further compounds things is the lack of control we have — people are going to link to our stuff whether we like it or not!
But there’s a flip side to this “problem” in that despite the lack of quality in the quantity, the greater the spread (thin though it is) the better chance a website or blog has of being found by people, if not fully feeling the link luv’ from Google et al.
It’s like the nofollow anchor attribute for ecommerce website back-links — who cares if someone follows a link a buys a bunch of stuff?
February 11th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Great tips for backlink analyzer tools,most of the online checkers don’t seem to do the job well.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Nicely written. Loads of information available (we use Aaron’s analyzer all the time), but I think your last several words say it all “links and content go hand in hand for any successful website”.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:21 am
I always preach this stuff over and over again. “Natural linking structure” is constant with all my link building ninjas. So many people, even still, fall victim to what’s working now and not thinking of what’s going to work 5 years from now. The Internet isn’t going anywhere, so start thinking ahead!
BTW - Great stuff Michael!
February 12th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
This is a perfect outline of the problems associated with paid links. We should hook up some time.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Michael - Figst off, great great great post.
Second, I have a question about SEO Spyglass - do you know if it offers an export feature yet?
Thanks!
February 12th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Good Stuff, Michael. I’m all about keeping it as “organic” as possible. Google can smell a quick and trashy link building job a mile a way.
February 12th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Jason, I havn’t seen an export feature with SEO Spyglass.
Michael please tell me your secret with SEO Spyglass because 1 out of 3 times I use it I get errors or it ust stops and doesnt complete the review, I only use SEO Spyglass when starting a new campaign because of the time it takes compared to other tools like seo elite so If I’m doing a quick review of my own sites or client sites I’ll use seo elite but If an in depth review is needed I’ll use SEO Spyglass, love linkassistant though.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Great tips Micheal! Do you recommend just focusing on links or work on onpage stuff too? I found this rasof software that claims onpage stuff counts for 40% of your ranking. But I don’t know where to focus my energy. Thanks!
February 13th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Excellent Michael! I constantly have to describe the downside of the “overwhelming” link strategy versus the upside of the “not fancy but trustworthy” approach. Everyone wants to be a USA Today Web Pick, nobody wants to be a Wartburg County Librarian Best of the Web, but it’s a handful of those Wartburg library style links that often make the difference, because they send a signal of trust.
Eric
February 16th, 2008 at 3:15 am
I will take 20 links from authority sites vs. 20,000 from the bean counters (quantity) link building guide any day. Love the analogies, this was a great read and resources to boot. Thanks Michael…