Link building is one of the most controversial subjects when it comes to search engine optimization. It is a very vital and still necessary part of getting rankings so no matter the controversy it is still a big part of the algorithm of search engines. When link building is done right it can be a huge driving force in getting organic rankings. When done properly it is your content that will earn you links as well as your reputation and any useful tools or unique information you bring to the table. That is doing it the right way or white hat way. There are of course other ways of doing things like using private blog networks and purchasing links which we do not advocate.
Get A Custom Quote!
Our philosophy on this aspect of SEO is to use a mixture of traditional marketing strategies like press releases combined with outreach to find the best possible links that are most appropriate for the site in question. Link building has become much more complicated with the Penguin penalty links have to be acquired properly for long-term organic results. Yes, there are quick ways to get links that are not in line with what search engines best practices recommend and while they work you are taking a chance on getting caught in an algorithm or even worse a manual review which can have devastating results to your search engine rankings. We advocate using proper link building practices that are sustainable in the long run and do not adversely affect your site in the long term. Now there are no guarantees that the search engine will not decide a common current practice is something they will not frown on in the future so there is always a chance that the algorithm will change.
However, we have seen a good site that used only white hat link building techniques get caught in a penalty algorithm just as well. As long as we are slaves to a third party like Google there are no guarantees what the future will hold.
Proper Link Building Is Link Earning
The best way to acquire links to your site is to provide pertinent and unique information to end users. This can be done in the way of content in the form of written information like an article, a useful video like a tutorial or dissertation. Basically, any kind of content creation that is unique and brings helpful information to the end user will work as what we call link bait. We use this information and work on making it go viral to build links that are proper white hat links.
Ways We Aquire Links For You:
- Links from Press Releases – We work with you to get pertinent newsworthy information to write a press release around for your site which we then push out via newswire that distributes the press release to hundreds of authoritative news sites. The press release will have some pertinent links embedded in it that point back to your site. While just doing this alone is not a good practice combining this with other techniques makes for a natural link profile. Like most things, if you overuse it the effects can be adverse instead of advantageous.
- Out Reach – This is the most time consuming as well as also one of the best ways to acquire links. We reach out to pertinent sites in your industry as well as related industry and pitch them a piece of pertinent content or a useful tool they might want to link to because it would be useful to their visitors.
- Guest Post – This is another method where outreach is combined with producing quality content that is then placed on sites related to your industry which is then linked to content on your site with even more in-depth information on the subject matter.
- Working with editors of major authoritative sites – This method also involves outreach as well as working with editors we already have relationships with to get a link from their site to yours. This could be done with a mention or some sort of quote from you or a whole piece of content we create. The types of sites we target for this type of outreach are sites like Forbes, Inc., Huffington Post, Entrepreneur and many more that maybe depending on your industry.
- Placement on relevant industry related sites – We find this to be one of the best ways to build authority as well as brand awareness in your industry for you. We look for sites that are related to your industry or are authorities in your industry and work on getting you a link to a relevant piece of content on your site or a tool that you provide that is useful.
- Industry Directories – This is done very selectively and we truly only target industry directories that are actually relevant and not just giant link farms. We look at the authority, relevancy as well as actual traffic before we decide to get a link from a directory. These links have a bad rep but when there are relevant directories in your space they still have value. Directory links also tend to work better for local optimization then national because we have found a lot of the pertinent directories of value these days are built around providing useful information around a local area.
- Citations – This is done for local SEO campaigns. Citations are authoritative directories that aggregate business data of legitimate businesses nationwide as well as locally. Citations are a big part of running local optimization campaigns as well as campaigns that are geared towards brand awareness.
Types Of Domains We Get Links From:
When we work on building a link we look at a sites authority as well as how many links it has and if it has actual rankings and relevant traffic coming to it.
- High authority domains or relevant domains – We look for domains that are relevant as well as of the highest possible authority. Relevancy will trump authority since at times smaller but quite relevant sites may not have the authoritative standing but are quite pertinent to your industry.
- Dofollow links – Do follow links are the ones that pass link juice which in turn will help build your own site’s authority. We focus on these types of links, however, we also work on no follow links from sites that get lots of traffic which will bring referrer traffic to your site.
- Nofollow links – These are links that generally come from highly authoritative sites and will bring extra traffic to the site as well as legitimize the brand and business as a true entity. Also, a natural link profile will have a mix of nofollow and dofollow links so it’s always a good idea to have a mix of both.
- Top tier domains – What is meant by this is sites that are .com, .net, .org, .gov and .edu. As much as possible we work on getting links from domains with those extension types. While the .us and .info’s of the world may be pertinent as well and when they are we certainly target them as well.
Our criteria for links is to find a site that is willing to link to your site. We look for real websites meaning a site that is not just created to build links out of but rather has its own traffic and rankings. We believe a site that should have its own lifeblood in order for us to consider it as worthy enough to be used.
For best practices, we advise mixing up all of these and maintaining a natural looking link profile. We also advise against to heavily using anchor text that has money words in it without balancing this out with other types of anchors.