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10 Commandments of Link Building: Link Building:

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Do you agree with Google’s philosophy on link-building? Share your thoughts here.

In a new post to the Google Webmaster Central blog, the company has expressed its most recent viewpoint on earning quality links.

The first piece of advice Google gives is to get involved with the community around your topic. If you were still not convinced that social media plays a very big role in search, consider this is coming straight from Google. Now the networks your community hangs out in may vary, but engaging with the community is simply a good way to get links and build credibility, which also will most likely lead to more links. Engaging is good for increasingly visibility outside of search anyway. Nothing new. Just reiterated by Google.

Sidenote: Listen to what Arnel Leyva of Covario has to say about search and social media from this recent interview WebProNews did with him at SMX Advanced:

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Another tip Google suggests is to create content that solves problems for your users – things like tutorials, videos, and tools, surveys, research results, etc. Users who find helpful content are likely to pass it on.

Google notes that humor and other link-bait tactics can work for the short term, but does not recommend counting such tactics. "It’s important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort," says Google Search Quality Strategist Kaspar Szymanski. "There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site’s reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they’re likely to have no positive impact on your site’s performance over time. If your site’s visibility in the Google index is important to you it’s best to avoid them." (emphasis added)

"Directory entries are often mentioned as another way to promote young sites in the Google index," says Szymanski. "There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it’s on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes."

Szymanski also suggests looking to similar sites in other markets for inspiration – not to copy them, but to see the things that they have done to be successful and see if there is a way to apply that to your own site.

Finally, probably the most obvious tip offered here is to make it easy for people to share your content. Things like Facebook "likes" and Twitter retweets can go a long way in creating new links to your content. Granted these won’t necessarily boost you "pagerank" but they will boost your visibility, which can lead to more quality links, and simply traffic, which is ultimately the goal anyway right?

Have more link-building tips? Share them with WebProNews readers in the comments.

I’m obviously talking about Yahoo and Bing, but Yahoo’s share is declining, while Bing’s is gaining. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway.

Do you take Bing into account when optimizing your site? Comment here.

We don’t hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don’ts of link-building for Bing. Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for honoring Bing’s policy, does not differ too much from advice that Google would give you. It is, however, still always nice to see how they feel, just to clear up any possible confusion.

Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. "Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution," says DeJarnette. "You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time."

What Not To Do

DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff:

1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time

2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites

3. Using hidden links in your pages

4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known "bad neighborhoods" on the Web

5. Linking out to known web spam sites

"When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction," says DeJarnette. "If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index."

What To Do

DeJarnette also shared some tips for getting more quality links. Following are Bing’s tips for effective link building (paraphrased):

1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently

2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they’re aware of your site/content

3. Publish concise, informative press releases online

4. Publish expert articles to online article directories

5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site’s content when applicable

6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)

7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content

8. Launch a blog/forum on your site

9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums
  
10. Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site

Most of the stuff DeJarnette shared is nothing any savvy search marketer is not already aware of. That said, there are clearly plenty of online (and offline for that matter) businesses out there that don’t have savvy search marketers on the payroll. It can be quite helpful when a search engine itself lays out what to do and what not to do to help webmasters get better rankings.

Related Articles:

> What Bing, Twitter, and Facebook Mean for SEO

> Don’t Lose Yahoo Traffic By Not Optimizing for Bing

> How Does Bing Rank Tweets?

It’s not about huge amounts of followers or traffic spikes. You can get that kind of traffic from Digg. But the advantage of Twitter, says Ward, is that people specific to an industry are out there, findable on Twitter.

So if you specialize in little plastic doohickeys they put on shoestrings, irrelevant traffic is not what you’re after. At Search Engine Land, Ward explains how a message that begins as a tweet ends up as a link from a highly trusted website:

A few weeks ago I announced a new site via URLwire, and whenever I do this I set up several alerts/trackers to see where mentions/links show up.  I also set up a Twitter search for that new URL….the new site I announced has been tweeted or re-tweeted by seven people…I discovered all of them were health experts in one form or another.  Also, all of them had several hundred followers (one had 780), and a quick check of a few dozen of those showed some overlap (expected) as well as frequent health URL tweets.  In other words, I’d found a loose community of several thousand collective Twitterer’s who had shared news about a new web site URL.

 

One of those re-tweets came from a librarian at a med school web site, who did one more thing with that URL. She added a link to it from the med school web site she’s in charge of editing.  What started to her as a tweet ended as a permanent link from her high trust web page.

What’s even better about that is that earned link was a free, organic one, the best kind. No manipulation, no buying, no trading. And that one very trusted link is likely to outweigh many links (however they’re gotten) from not-so-trusted websites.

That being said, simply whipping off an article and putting it up on your site is not going to do it. There are a few crucial steps to making the most of your efforts. It may take a bit longer to do it right but the rewards will be much higher as well. Here are the basic steps to writing an effective article that gets well picked up and can provide you with some solid traffic and links.

Pick A Topic

Picking a topic for your article can often be harder than it sounds. When you’re selecting a topic you can’t simply write about the first thing that pops into your head. There are two questions you need to ask yourself when you’re selecting your topic:

1. Will the editors care? If the editors of related websites aren’t going to care about your topic then it’s not going to get published. If it’s not going to get published then you can probably find better uses for your time – like golf or shopping for blue widgets online.
2. Will bloggers care? The second questions is whether other online publishers will be interested in the content. If an editor publishes your content and other link to it, that makes the like to you on the publisher site all the stronger.

Something I’ve found handy is reading through your FAQ’s. If clients and site visitors regularly ask you the same questions, these are likely good topics for your article (though an article on your shipping policies probably won’t get picked up too widely). Another great place to start when thinking of a topic to write about is your own brain. Are there questions you’ve asked that took a ton of time or research to answer? If so – answer the question for others and cover the research and you’re likely to get well picked-up.

Write The Article

While picking a topic can be hard, constructing the article can be all the more difficult. An article needs to have a specific point and must provide the reader with a means to understanding why you’re making that point.

Let’s take this article for example; once I knew I wanted to write an article on how to use article writing as a link building method I knew what the tone would be: instructional. After that it was a matter of deciding what I wanted to cover in the article (picking a topic, writing the article, testing the article and article syndication). After I’m done writing this article I’ll have it proof-read by a couple people who aren’t involved with our site and then I’ll syndicate it in hopes of developing some solid, highly-relevant links and secure some equally relevant traffic.

If I were writing an article on a different topic (choosing a life insurance provider for example) I may divide my article into sections such as: calculating what you need, analyzing the various options, selecting providers, choosing between an insurance company and an insurance broker). Either way you’ll want to decide ahead of time what you need to cover. You also need to decide on an article length ahead of time. As a general rule, an article between 1000 and 1200 words is good. Shorter likely won’t cover everything and longer tends to lose some people. To this end, I’ll move on to part three (testing the article) to keep things conceise.

Testing

Admittedly I don’t have a ton to say on this topic. Get people to proof-read your article. Ideally you’ll find people from inside and outside your industry to proof the article to make sure it makes sense to experts as well as laymen.

Also, watch the pickup rates on your different articles by searching for it after submission. Pay attention to the types that get picked up and where and focus future articles for the best outcome (whether that’s links or traffic or both – you’ll have to decide based on the statistics generated by each articles)

Article Syndication

And now for the entire purpose of the article – the syndication. There are two main avenues you can look down (and should) when looking to syndicate your articles. You can find an article syndication service for submissions (very good for a large number of article directories) and you can seek topic-specific sites that will accept your articles.

As I am affiliated with an article syndication company I won’t list your options there for fear of a conflict of interest and thus diminish the article. Instead I’ll focus on finding specific sites to submit your article to and will assume you will select your own large distribution options.

To find sites to submit your articles to you may need to think outside the box. You’ll need to run a number of searches for related phrases that will yield the best results. For example, if I worked for a web design company I might search for places that accept articles that are related to web design, hosting, SEO, small businesses and anything else I could think of. For example, I would begin my search on Google with “web design article submit” and extend it from there.

A helpful tool for this is SEO Quake. If you list your results in sets of 100 you can order them by PageRank or backlinks and go for the higher valued sites first.

Once you’ve got a solid list you can complete your submissions to it. Don’t forget to document your submissions as well as any account information for future reference as you’ll likely want to submit another article down the road. Also, you’ll want to add a few sites each submission so you’ve got a constantly evolving list with more and more backlinking domains.

Conclusion

Of course, you’ll likely discover more for yourself as you write and syndicate your own articles. Just don’t give up the first time and learn from every submission. It may take a bit to figure out what works best but article syndication is one of the single more effective link building tactics available.
 

At this session, Enge talked about how companies should "Think Big" in order to get the most out of their link building strategies through social media. Mike caught up with him and talked about this subject a little bit more outside of the session.

Other link building advice Enge discussed at the session included:

- Studying what has worked before
– Writing compelling articles
– Write an interesting description
– Voting for posts in front of you on the upcoming pages
– Making sure you stand out!

You can find more coverage on that session here. Watch the video above to see what Enge has to say about thinking big, and how to apply link building strategies through social media when you are a small business.

There, now that we’ve got that brilliant grasp of the obvious out of the way let’s move on to what you can do to actually create them.  Before we launch into the nitty-gritty of link building, no beginners guide would be complete without a brief explanation as to why links are important and the different elements of them.  Being a beginners guide this won’t be an entirely complete list but it will be enough to get you going on the right path.  Understanding what you’re trying to do will help you do it better and more importantly, understanding the “why” of the situation will help you stretch your tactics outside of this and other articles on link building.

Why Are Links Important?

To put it simply: a link is a vote.  Every link pointing to your site from another website tells the search engines that the other site finds your resource valuable and thus, the engines read this as a vote for your site.  So it must be about getting tons of links and you’re done right?  Wrong.  This is incorrect as …

Not All Votes Are Created Equal

Unlike your own vote in an election, some votes are worth more than others and some votes are worth SIGNIFICANTLY more than yours (unless of course you’re a content writer for the Google.com domain in which case you obviously have the top vote).  The basic factors that affect a link’s value to your website are:

The site strength – the strength of the site that is pointing to yours is a significant (and historically abused) factor in the valuation of links.  In the absence of other easily-visible criteria let’s look at PageRank as a key valuation of a site’s strength.  If a site with a PageRank 8 links to your site, this vote is worth significantly more than a link from a PageRank 3 site.  This is because a PageRank 8 site is, in Google’s eyes, a more important site than the PageRank 3 site.

Relevance – the relevance of a site linking to you is, if anything, more important than a site’s strength. If you run a bed a breakfast in Utah a link from a PageRank 3 bed and breakfast will be worth more than a link from a PageRank 5 web design site.  This area is a bit grey in that it relies on the engine’s ability to determine what is relevant and what is not however we’ve seen evidence that this area is strong at this stage in the game and is only becoming more important over time.

Anchor text – the actual text used to link to your site is extremely important.  I’ve seen extremely strong sites get beaten out by weak ones simply due to the poor use of anchor test.  If you’re building links to your site be sure to include your keywords in the text that links back and, if possible, the exact phrase you are trying to rank for.  At the same time, you can’t make all your anchor text exactly the same – how can that possibly look natural?

Position – the position of a link on a page and the number of other links on that page impacts the value of a link.  A link in the footer of a page is given less weight than a link near the top, a link in the content of a page is given more weight than a link in a list of links and a link on a page with 50 other links is given less weight than a link on a page with only a few other links.  If we think about it – this makes sense.  All of these things indicate whether the site with the outbound links actually intends for one of their visitors to click the link or not.  From an engine’s perspective – the more it appears that a site wants a link to be clicked on, the higher the weight that link (or vote) is given.

Admittedly there are a number of other factors but this is a beginners guide.  Following the considerations above will insure that as you make each link decision – you’re odds of making the right choices will be significantly higher than if you ignore them.  Ignoring them may not get you penalized or banned but it will make your task far more time consuming as you secure less valuable links and thus need to build far more than following he right methods.

So far we’ve covered briefly the why of link building, now let’s get into the real-life, here’s-how-to-do-it side of things.  Below I’m going to cover three of my favorite link building tactics.  These are tactics that apply to virtually every scenario.  The number of ways to build links is only limited by your imagination however and this should not be viewed as a comprehensive list.  This is, after all, a beginners guide and I’m trying to list the tactics that apply to virtually every scenario.

Side Note: Reciprocal Link Building

I’m not going to count this as one of my favorite and so it won’t count as one of the three noted above and I’ll only touch on it briefly.  There have been a number of assertions that reciprocal link building is dead.  This is simply not the case.  I have seen and competed against sites that were very successful with reciprocal links as their primary link source.

The problem with reciprocal links isn’t so much in their value which does seem to be a bit lower than non-reciprocal links however often more easily attained.  No, my problem with reciprocal links is in the management.  Unethical webmasters’ removing links after you’ve put the link up to them, sites expiring and not being renewed, sites getting penalties of their own due to their bad tactics are all inconveniences the reciprocal link manager must deal with.

As an SEO company, a huge issue we faced was leaving our clients with this task after a campaign was over if they decided not to go on a maintenance package.  Non-reciprocal links may be a bit harder to attain in some cases however that issue is much easier to overcome than the sum of all these issues.

And now on to the top three …

Articles

If you’re paying attention as you read this you’ll probably have guessed that I’m a fan of article writing as a link building method.  If you look to the “about the author” section you’ll notice a link to the Beanstalk site (and if you don’t, well … let me know as somebody’s stealing it without permission).  While I genuinely enjoy writing and sharing my experiences with others – the purpose of getting the article distributed is primarily as a link building tactic, secondarily as a great source of qualified traffic and thirdly for my own enjoyment.

You are an expert in your field.  Who knows more about your business than you?  So share.  Writing an article may not be easy but it is rewarding.  If you can’t think of a topic, think of what you get asked.  If you’re asked common questions repeatedly then chances are, it’s a good topic for an article.  I often get asked about link building, and you’re reading the result.

Once the article is completed you need to get it syndicated.  Using an article submission service is a simple way to get your article out to a large number of publishers quickly.  On top of this you’d do well to seek out specific sites in your field using one or all of the major search engines to find highly relevant sites that accept articles and submit to them.

And oh, don’t forget an “about the author” section.

Directory Submissions

Directory submissions are likely the most painful of the link building tactics you’ll employ. Why?  Because it’s tedious and time-consuming work.

To be done right directory submissions must be done manually, the titles and descriptions must be tailored to the specifications of the directory in question and often, you’ll have to decide if a review fee is worth it.

While there are a good many directories that accept free submissions there are also a large number that’s require a review fee.  The fee can range from a  few dollars to a few hundred.  If you see that a directory has a low PageRank, is general in it’s nature (i.e. it isn’t about your specific field) then it likely isn’t worth more than a couple dollars if that.  If the site is strong, and strongly related to your site then it’s obviously worth more.

There is no hard-and-fast set of rules for how much a listing is worth.  I’d recommend to start your hunt for directories (don’t forget the topic and/or region specific ones), submit to all the free ones and make a list of all the ones that require a fee.  After you’ve gotten a solid number in you “needs to be paid list” you can get a general idea as to what’s out there and what you can get and for how much.  This will enable you to make solid choices knowing what all your options are.

Forum Posting

I just know I’m going to get a couple comments and/or emails for listing this as a link building tactic but if it’s done right there’s nothing wrong with it.  Forum and blog posting got a bad reputation as a link building tactic when it came under huge abuse by unethical webmasters spamming forums with useless garbage just for a link.  They even went so far (and still do) as sending out spiders to automatically submit posts.  To this end, I have to agree that it’s a bad tactic however …

If you’re seeking out forums related to your site, reading the threads and responding with solid advice or with questions and not just firing off some sales-pitch then you’re doing what you’re supposed to be.  Another perk to this is that, like articles, if you do this right you’re gong to see traffic as well and what more can you ask from a link building tactic than traffic as well as links.

Conclusion

Above we’ve covered the basics of link building.  As I’ve noted repeatedly, once you’re done reading this and applying some of what you’ve read you’d do well to read other articles, forums and blogs.  This isn’t a complete breakdown of everything link-related (that would be a full book) but it will keep you out of trouble and save you countless hours of wasted time getting poor links that haven’t held value since 2003.

(Coverage of the SMX Advanced Conference continues at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

He focused on. EDUs and said to look at what industry heavyweights are doing and find charitable opportunities.  To find the heavyweights look for the top spenders on AdWords for a query and check their backlinks.

".EDUs are not a magic bullet for your rankings," Montti said and they are not special but get them if you can.

Jay Young, owner of Link Fish Media said to build links you need, "brass balls and big bucks." He said there is no place for fear in link building.

He recommended getting links from directories, best of the web, Yahoo, DMOZ, Joe Ant and Blog Catalog. Other places to get links are from non-profits. They are arguably editorial, tax deductible, in a good neighborhood and help a good cause.  You can get more links by joining SEOcialists, Digg, Reddit and Stumble.

Use big name text link brokers, blog advertisers, smaller brokers, specialty brokers and amateur brokers. Find them and use them it pays off. The majority of the time its money not wasted.

When it comes to link bait he said to, "Call Rand." "At the end of the day, we are not in this for morality, we are in this for marketing," Young said.

Buy links because they are vital for the success of a competitive campaign. Be relevant and natural, vary your anchor text and use co-citation.

Darker methods to build links include comment spam done manually, trackback spam, reciprocal links, three ways and link farms.

Things to do outside the box include using widgets, templates, template sponsorship, contests like offering a free iPhone and content trades.

Other tips offered by Young include hiring a bartender as a link builder because they have a good work ethic, are quick thinkers and good multi-taskers. Avoid buying links from forums, use moderation and common sense.

He puts up a slide of Matt  Cutts with a caption that reads, "Stop being afraid of this guy." He says to "do what makes sense for your company, if that means you have to buy links, do it."
 

Coverage of the ACCM conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

You can check the popularity of links using Yahoo’s Site Explorer, Netconcept’s Link Checker and Thumbshots Ranking tool.

 To check page rank use the Google Toolbar for IE or Firefox, the Google Directory, which only works for pages that are listed in DMOZ. You can also use PageRank Lookup tool from SEOChat and PageRank search tool from SEOChat.

When it comes to getting links Spencer said, "Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to tell your family or a Google rep about."

Seth Besmertnik, CEO of LinkExperts talked about link building for structure. The ideal structure includes a critical mass of links, well-designed page and a well-designed internal structure.

Paid links have a bad reputation because they have been search spam. Aggregator and spam sites tend to be very aggressive and thoughtless and do not consider the user.

Besmertnik said," Always be a good Internet citizen and make sure you are doing things that are good, valuable, and provide a good experience."

Neil Patel, chief technology officer, Advantage Consulting Services, said the keys to success include learning and following rules and providing valuable content. He said to participate in the community and to build relations which you know matters.

Patel said," Social media may not be valuable for every company." You can find out by researching your target audience, listing goals and researching your competition.

Rhea Drysdale, Online Marketing Director of Less Everything, said the top tips for link building were time, money and experience. If you don’t have time, money or experience you can spend 15 minutes a day practicing link building techniques.

Do your homework and come up with a good strategy. Exhaust on site optimization and establish tracking methods using Google alerts, Yahoo Answers and Tweetscan.

1. Keyword Research & Selection
2. Competitor Analysis
3. Site Structure
4. Content Optimization
5. Link Building
6. Social Media
7. PPC
8. Statistics Analysis
9. Conversion Optimization
10. Keeping It Up

Note: Part five is a reprint of a Semmy winning article written by Debra Mastaler on link building. It is of course reprinter with permission an Debra will be the special guest on the accompanying Webmaster Radio show. But without furter ado – let’s get to it

Help! I’m New, I Need Links, What Can I Do?

I took a telephone call last week from a woman who was looking to hire a link builder for a new site in a very competitive niche. I’m under contract to a business in the same industry so I passed but we had a nice chat before I sent her along with my standard list of link building referrals.

Several days went by and I heard from her again, this time in a state of panic. Seems everyone she contacted was unavailable, and she was convinced it was because her industry was a competitive one. Could I please give her an honest assessment of her website and tell her if that was indeed the case?

Well, no. I feel for her situation but in this particular field I’m under contract to a competitor and as a result, obligated to focus only on them. But I did refer her to a usability specialist and suggested her situation is probably more a result of link builders being taken rather than uninterested.

Competitive industries tend to be established industries so it stands to reason they have linking staffs in place and link builders tied up. If that’s the case, what can new sites in a competitive niche do to attract links?

To begin, do all the "foundational" link building every other site starts out doing before branching into the more indepth promotional linking:

• Apply to the Yahoo! directory (cost – moderate)
• Submit to solid directories such as Joe Ant, GoGuides, BOTW, Ezilon, Rubberstamped and Massive Links. (cost -moderate)
• Join a Chamber, your industry Association, and clubs. (cost – low to moderate)
• Issue a press release announcing the new site (cost – low)
• Buy a list of high-profile journalists and contact directly for one-on-one interviews (cost -moderate)
• Backlink your competitors and those ranking ahead of you for link and advertising leads. (free)
• Develop a "how to" video for your site and it’s products. Submit to the video and HowTo sites (cost – low)
• Buy ad space in offline publications annoucing your new site (cost -moderate to high)
• Find an established business in a complementary industry to host a co-promotion or buy their mailing list to send out link incentives. (cost – low)
• Find out who’s podcasting in your niche and buy space, offer to be a guest or donate products to be given away in exchange for either of the above. Look for high visibility podcasts to advertise in, sweeten the deal with incentives. (cost – free to low)
• Locate the prominent bloggers in your niche and start adding to the industry by commenting on their views. Don’t be obnoxious and don’t do it everyday. Join their community and they’ll join yours. (cost – free)
• Be sure to incorporate an incentive-to-link program in all your external correspondence such as autoresponders, confirmation emails, reminders etc. (cost free)
• Create a corporate blog and invite bloggers, journalists, and your customers to contribute. Continually promote the site and it’s writers and in turn, they’ll support your site by linking to it. Don’t forget to add an RSS feed as well. (cost free to low)
• Be sure to add the blog to all the blog directories as well as the RSS feeds to RSS directories. (Cost – free)

I could go on but you get the picture. While most of these tactics have a small to moderate cost associated with them, others are free. Not only will you gain links but you’ll also gain the much-needed influx of traffic competitive sites need to break into the race.

Other link building resourses:

Link building is a HUGE area. The articles that appears as the runners-up for the SEMMY are also well-worth the read. They are:

• Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and Social Media Marketing
• Revealing your Competitor’s FULL External Relevance Profile – One of my best kept secrets