So how many external inbounds do you need

How many total site links until satisfied

[dougs]

Hi

So how many inbound links do people go for until they decide it is time to stop looking?

We have high and low PR sites linking to all over our site, many with good anchor text. Aswell as the PR we want inbound traffic.

It's an agressive market, hence we are aiming for 100,000 inbounds when we will give in. Hopefully we then will have an online business that we cannot stop.

At what point do other people stop?

Doug

[khuntley]

I see it as an ongoing process that never stops. Once you're number one, you forever watch your competitors and their backlinks, acting accordingly. Even when you believe you are comfortably ahead, a site should always be on the lookout for more links. More traffic is always better.
Kevin

[moltar]

How many people in your staff do you have to email people and ask for inbound links?

[fathom]

Never... but at some point it will become apparent that you are under-productive, thus innovation and new approaches will need to be looked at.

[rogerd]

You never want to give up looking for links, but I've found that some sites reach a "critical mass" of traffic that brings many links, either one-ways or requests for recips. If you are in this mode, you probably won't have to devote a lot of resources to link hunting. Link management time will make up for some of that, though. :)

[Perplexed]

100.000 inbound links, if these have all been sourced and aquired by you, is totally beyond my comprehension.

I was setting my sites on just 1% of that. :)

[dougs]

One of client sites now reports 1000's of inbounds and we are now finding that everyday we have more and more requests from other sites wanting to exchange links. These we do as long as the site is on theme. I know the arguements for on and off theme, but we feel giving links away from our site must serve a purpose to our visitors.

But our focus now is on getting the site known on a grander scale.

We have a plethora of ideas, but the main point we saw when we developed this site was to be make it so ingrained into the web, with content and links, that when we stopped work on it the traffic and inbound links would continue with or without us.

So far the client is very happy and the amount they are paying has increased 10 fold and they wish to pay even more.

Doug

[Iinkpopularitypro]

There is absolutely no end to and no limits for inbound links, as when you are on top you have to maintain your position there. But Doug, 100,000 is more than enough i guess. With these many inbound links you won't have to wait for #1 position. I think Google would be dancing alone for yuor website. BTW, how are you plannig to go about it? Make sure you are not using any FFA's or Link Farms. It is easy to get these many links from these, but can get you banned ultimately.

[Skier]

100.000 inbound links, if these have all been sourced and aquired by you, is totally beyond my comprehension.

Me too! This is a real eyeopener.

Let's see, 10 minutes per link (ha!), 6 links per hour, 60,000 links in 10,000 hours = 1,000 ten hour days...

Heck, the way I do it, I'll be in the running by...

[dougs]

Lots of people constantly searching and contacting sites....slowly slowly we are getting there.

1000 ten hour days equals 3 years for 1 person.

OR

3 people for 1 year .....we are on target:)

[nakulgoyal]

10 minutes per link is way tooo much. I can get over 20-30 links an hour.

I do this for lot of my clients.

[Skier]

nakulgoyal

Yes..., Pause...., The obvious question..., - How?

[darkroom]

nakulgoyal..
I wouldn't mind hiring you to make 1000 links for my sites then. Getting quality links does take 10 minutes per link. Atleast thats what i think.

[Skier]

First, given the topic, lets assume that we are not talking about the first 100 or 200 links.

If I was starting from zero, in a category that I have worked before, maybe I could hit a faster pace for the first couple of hundred.

Next is the question of quality, as mentioned by darkroom. I assume that we are talking about relevant, on-topic links only.

How you can both locate and inspect new sites for quality in under two minutes per site? There are lists of candidate sites, both self-generated and public. This could speed up the search process, but still requires at least checking to see that the site is still active. As for looking at quality issues, it's got to take a minute.

Filling in the submission forms. Yes I use a macro to zap info into the blanks. Still, every form is different and can be time consuming.

E-mailing the site's webmaster is always a custom job for me. Takes several minutes to an hour, depending on importance and research required.

[rogerd]

Nakul, do share some ideas for link generating productivity...

I find 2 - 3 minutes a site pretty amazing... even starting with a list of potential sites (obtained by spidering, a directory, etc.), it still takes time to review the site, check its PR and link setup, find an e-mail address, compose an e-mail or a form request, log the info so you know you've requested from them, etc.

Also, 80 - 90% of link requests end with no link, unless you apply very rigid criteria to your request (e.g., the existence of a recip links page, evidence that the site is active like recent articles, etc.)

Now if you are working with a group of sites you already know, that's a different story...

[Skier]

Oh yes, I forgot to mention the time it takes to check to see if you are already listed on the site. That can be a while on some sites.

[darkroom]

by quality links, not only do i mean on topic and relevant, but also making sure that the page on which my link appears has got some PR.

[dougs]

As I started this I would agree Iīm curious how you do it so fast. We have been doing a huge amount of this and have a team doing it, they average 10 minutes each link we get.

Doug

[rogerd]

Dougs, what's your yield like, i.e., the ratio of sites contacted to actual links received?

[darkroom]

my ratio for a new site is 10:1
for a pr 4-6 site is 10:6

[dougs]

I would estimate for every 1000 we contact 200 want to play, but only 100 actually gives us a link back.

What has become interesting is that we now list many sites that donīt give us a link back if they are decent. As we have so many sites now linking to us we find that our links areas rates higher than many of the original sites. Hence we are building lots of free quality content.

Also 1 in 1000 we make contact with someone who really knows what they are doing. And as our sites rates quite they open dialogue about doing deals together ......including paid ads on each others sites, sharing of links info and many many more ideas.

We feel this has been so succesful we are now using it for every client we have.

Doug

[Wired Suzanne]

How do you all do that?
It takes me ages to get a proper link.

I can't find more than 50 prospects in a whole day and I'm happy if 5 reply to my request.

5 in a day is about 150 in a month! How do you do that in an hour?!?

[vitaplease]

At what point do other people stop?

When competition is non-profit, with thousands of high PR non-profit links as backlinks that will normally not link-out to profit.

How do you all do that?

- Do not forget it depends on which market segment you are in.
Some areas/languages do not even have that type of inventory (100,000) of webpages to get links from.

- With all those time/per aquired links ratios keep in mind that there's a difference between asking for a link and asking for a reciprocal link.

[dougs]

Wired_Suzanne

We gte our links by having many people doing it constantly.....simple and expensive....but it works.

Doug