Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Most of the link solicitations I get are worded something like this:
I was visiting your site about [technical widgets] and I noticed that your visitors might like to visit my highly relevant site at domain.com
If you will do all the work of adding your link to our page, and adding the link to your page, our automated software might actually approve it some day and you will be listed on our PR0 page which is banned by all known search engines.Thank you,
Joe Scammer
joe@scammer.com
Legitimate, valuable, and truly reciprocal link arrangements are actully fairly hard to find these days but if the person is getting less than a couple of links per hour of work time I would take a different approach.
[edited by: martinibuster at 3:41 pm (utc) on May 19, 2004]
[edit reason] No url's. Yes, it's fake, but domain.com gets the point across. Thanks. [/edit]
[edited by: martinibuster at 8:17 pm (utc) on May 19, 2004]
Anyone has significant experience outsourcing this task to an external provider?
As far as a link page, what we do is have a series of newsletters we have written over the years, all on different topics and niches our industry covers. If a useful site wants a link back we will put them on a on-topic newsletter.
I would think my industry would be easy to find sites, because we are B2B and deal with about 50 different type industries.
bufferzone - I will make sure he is persistent
thanks guys
Our goal is 4 links for 8 hours of link development. That's under the condition of not being able to offer a reciprocal.
I'd say that's about right.
And I never, ever give reciprocal links. I can't believe so many people do.
We have a couple part time links people for our own sites and they get about 50 links a day.
I'd be interested if anyone gets better results?
I'm impressed; we haven't been able to approach that level. Are you automating alot of it? What percentage of sites contacted result in a link?
I just posed a few more details in this thread [webmasterworld.com]
In the old days I did a bit. You'll get a better hit rate but it's probably not worth the trouble.
A guy even came around to our office the other day to get a link swap. He got his swap but in the time it took him to chat to us, our link guys had got another 10 links.
However, if a link is a good one (high PR, relevant traffic, and few if any other links on the page), I have called to follow up if they were dragging their feet.
In another case, I followed up an email exchange with a phone call to convince a site owner to review our product, and sent him some marketing material. He gave us a positive review on his website and a link.
But as follow up in certain cases, I can see it can be appropriate at times.
But I'm with Sly on this one.
I am in the car hire industry in a European country.
Could anyone give me a few tip or specific target sectors which would be the strongest areas in which to find links and improve...Google positions and obviously business accruing from links.
I was thinking:
1) Car Hire Related Sites
more general content on hiring rather then competitors
2) Geographic Specific Travel Sites
3) Geographic Specific Accommodation Sites
4) Auto related sites (car sales & parts etc)
should these be geographic or will the topic just do
Any feedback..tips appreciated.
many thanks
Joe
that's a bit too low I'd say. I can spend 3-4 hours surfing the web following backlinks from sites related to mine in content, and emailing those people - which numbers about 50 contacts or so. The next morning I have about 10% of them replying saying they've linked back. A few more reply back in the following days.
I expect at least an average of 20 links per hour, then I can just mass contact them which should take just a few minutes.
4 backlinks a month?...
[edited by: martinibuster at 9:24 pm (utc) on June 13, 2004]
[edit reason] no specifics please... [/edit]
It depends on a lot of factors, most important of which is the approach that person is taking.
No doubt on this. You need to examine the methodology used.
No major constraints, just that we don't like to reciprocate.
Not reciprocating IS a major constraint.
Our goal is 4 links for 8 hours of link development. That's under the condition of not being able to offer a reciprocal.
A lofty goal, but likely unobtainable. The first few may come as quick as that, that's eight times better than ILLstyle's guy. I would say 1 every four to eight hours would be okay for non-reciprocating links, but those are some pretty expensive links. You might want to consider advertising on some sites. There are a lot of sites that have advertising on their pages, and as long as they don't foul up the URL with tracking stuff, Google will still count it as a link, and it's a lot simpler, you just call them up, "hey, would you guys let me advertise on your site? do you take credit cards? here's my info..." and viola, you can probably get 2 non-reciprocating links per hour that way.
I'd be interested if anyone gets better results?
SlyOldDog, I know you are talking about reciprocated links here, as there is just no way you could get 50 non-reciprocated links per day even from two people working full-time. My method ia about as optimized as it can get without losing it's individual inspection of each site. My two best people, working full-time, can inspect and grade sites, and submit them via email or online form at a rate of about 100 sites per day, each. The success rate is currently 23.3%, so two my best can get 46.6 confirmed links per day working full-time. These are reciprocated links from PR rated sites that are not FFA or link farms, sites with real content and something to offer.
[edited by: neuron at 5:28 am (utc) on June 15, 2004]
It varies considerably by industry.
Some industries you may send 300 emails and get 2 positive responses, but this is uncommon. In the travel industry people will reply back with lists on 30 or more sites that want to exchange links with you. The jewelry industry also tends to have a lot of people that love exchanging links. Every industry is different and you have to learn the rules/idiosyncrasies.
It's not so much response percentage that matters. What matters is that you are more successful than your competitor.
Yesterday I Sent over 70 Emails to people in my same category, I took a main competitor, looked at the back links and spend all day going threw them asking for an exchange and all the sites are related.
This morning I came into work and had around 9 reply’s 8 of them wanted to go ahead and link.
Does this sound like a sound plan to get links? Im thinking it’s a good idea as most of them would have been exchanging links at one point... Comments any1 :)
Wee rj
It really just depends on your site and theirs so much that it's hard to say generally what a good percentage or good amount is.
If google was offering links on a PR9 page I'm sure they'd get 98% response. If you're requesting a link from google you'll probably get a 0% response.
From my around 70 emails, i have had around 14 / 15 confirmed link to my site.
and its only day 2:)
what do you look for when you spider for sites? how do you know which email address to grab to contact them?
Just curious. I do have the capability to build a script to spider sites, but I am not sure how I would find the answer to the above questions.
I spent several months working through all the backlinks for my top competitors, that was a year ago when alltheweb.com still gave 10000 results for backlinks, and my brother and I must have hand-searched through thousands and thousands of them. It was worth it, now I have a strong PR7 and get top 5 positions for some good terms. I did think about crawling automatically and this time I might use this method, but I'll still go through them and weed out the irrelevant ones, the machine-list is a starting point only. I'd never pay "professional" link-builders to do it for me, I know my area better than they do, and I can use crawling software just as well as they can - what else can they offer?
Off topic, but I've also got a chance at a PR9 small graphic link (not text), unrelated topic for $350 a month, less than 10 outgoing links. Do folks think that's a deal worth taking, do you think it'll push me to a PR8, and if I use the <a> "alt" and "title" tags can I still target particular keywords?
Cheers,
Jeremy
I spent several months working through all the backlinks for my top competitors
- what else can they offer?
days instead of months perhaps?
effectiveness? if you had another website you needed to promote, are you actually ready to deliver something like that again, right now?
stress reduction? would you look forward to doing another link campaign of the same magnitude with a delivery date measured in weeks rather than months?
less cost maybe? how much is your time worth?
getting good themed linked directories that are of benefitial resource to site visitors is the bane of every webmaster. There's no doubt there is no substitute for the quality of a link section on a website done by someone who takes a personal interest in that site, its performance and value as well as its appeal, character and integrity, but it is possible to create a close proximally via a more industrialized process coupled with proper training and a versatile database resulting in faster implementation, potentially much greater impact, at less cost without depleting your own available resources.
That last paragraph was like one of those sentances that nearly makes you run out of breath before finishing but gets the point across so well.
Like a good closing argument.
Anyways, good advice.
Thanks for the reply, great message. I'm thinking of doing it again now and yes, I really think there must be a more efficient process than going through so many links by hand, many of them with low traffic and limited long-term benefit.
You mention a "more industrialized process" which is what I'm trying to find - could you give any pointers as to how you might ethically make link development more efficient?
Best Regards,
Jeremy
