Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My goal with "link building" is to turn a profit on the campaign, by itself. Let's make money on the promotion, so we can keep doing it, no matter what happens with search engine rankings in the short term.
I 'spammed' all the sites that were included in the guide to tell them that they were selected in my guide.
fourchette, excellent point. That's a variation of naming a website as a trusted authority from within an article, then contacting that authority and asking for a link back. Still works. But even if it doesn't work for getting a link, it could still spark a dialogue with an industry biggie.
I'm also with martinibuster, in that I would not overlook the excellent comments made by odddogatwork.
Much of the conversation in this thread is on process and division of labor and that's good since that was the question posed in the original post. But beyond the "what's" are the "how's," which are also getting touched upon.
Let's remember that G, and to an extent all the SE's, are or will be employing assessment of not just backlinks, but the pages and sites providing the backlinks. Relevance is key. But what is relevance? On the consulting side of my business, one problem I see with many link dev and partnering efforts is "narrowvision": "I sell shoes, better partner with other footwear sites." For this webmaster, even a site about socks seems to be a stretch.
I'm not sure if this is what odddogatwork meant when commenting on a marketing thought-set, but IMHO, what so many Webmasters fail to do, is something that many marketers do almost intuitively: Put themselves in the mindset and emotional stance of the user.
We're selling shoes? What kind? Running shoes? OK, how about casual wear sites, sports sites, nutrition sites, health and fitness sites, vitamin sites, early riser sites, youth/middle age/aging sites, etc. This is not new thinking; it's just thinking not being done by most Webmasters that I can see. It oughta be.
I agree that marketing partnerships are a great path for moving ahead. The best ones are almost always struck between complimentary sites, not competing ones. So the point of all this is: If you're gonna partner your way into the future, think like a marketer and you'll almost certainly get more and better partnerships struck.
As for those wondering if the SE's won't see the relationships between sites/pages not directly related (like shoes and vitamins), don't bet on it. Algos are FAR better at seeing the relationship between toasters and bath towels than most people are. (Yes, there is a relationship between toasters and bath towels.)
;-)
Linkers primarily work at getting reciprocal links. This is because direct reciprocal linking is still the best-tried-and true method of getting links for new sites. A lot of people equate reciprocal linking with spam linking, as here [webmasterworld.com...] but that is simply not the case. Direct reciprocals can still get sites thousands of inbound relevant links that will help you in the search engines if you pay attention and are careful who you link to.
Next on the tier are 3-way links. I have clients that swear by these and find it distasteful to link out to other sites. It's more difficult and I would never do these for my own sites, but then, I don't drive a DeLorean either, and don't intend to.
I also have a group mysteriously named “the sniper division” which gets only one-way links. This does not include blog spam links, guest book links, forum sig links, or referral log spam links (which in my opinion are the majority of one-way links created), but they are one-ways generated by the same techniques as used to get recips or 3-way links, by asking for them.
All of what I consider full-time linkers are busy contacting relevant sites one-at-a-time. We don't spam emails. Each site is reviewed individually. If you spend eight hours on a link campaign and end up emailing 10,000 sites, that is not going to build a quality link directory for you, even if you do use the latest and greatest super-linking script out there.
Here are some stats on my linkers:
Linker daily quota: 180 sites reviewed manually each day.
Avg. number of deleted sites:120
Avg. number contacted by email: 20
Avg. number of contacted via online form: 40
Avg. number of linkbacks per day per linker: 6 to 12 depending on many factors, but sites do vary in their linkback rates, sometimes dramatically. I've seen linkback rates of over 30% and as low as 5%.
As sugarrae keeps wisely saying, reciprocal linking is only one form of links, and while it is one of the best ways to jumpstart a site, there are many other methods for getting links that for long-term longevity and prosperity should not be overlooked.
The one thing that I am doing that you don't mention, and which I'm beginning to put more and more resources into is outgoing, non-reciprocated link building. That is, I am working towards making each of my sites industry hubs for their particular industry. I do this by building relevant to my industry link directories and review every site in the industry and have my linkers write unique descriptions for each.
I do this this for two reasons. The first is that I have a soapbox, a website, and with that comes a responsibility to be be useful, to serve those who would honor my site and visit it, and one of the best and easiest ways I can be useful is by demonstrating expertise on that soapbox by linking to other industry sites, briefly reviewing them, and providing them the anchor and descriptive text of my discretion, original content.
Some people don't want to link out to anyone that could possibly be their competition. I say, “here, take a look at my competitors”. You say linking out to competitors will not be good for your business, but that attitude is in opposition to long-term survival in the search engines. The search engines depend on websites to build the spider tracks, and I bet they have a way to tell who lays the best spider tracks.
Search Engine Friendly takes on new meaning. It used to mean that the search engine could spider all the pages you wanted it to spider. Now, it also means that you help the search engines document the web itself. If you aren't there to help, then are you there to hurt? Is your site useful to the search engines or is it just a leach? Sites abuse linking algorithms. That doesn't mean that link analysis isn't a boon to the search engines. It just means sites need to be qualified to receive the benefit of all the links out there to them. How do they deserve it? By being hubs in their areas. If they can establish trust in the way they link out, then the search engines will trust the incoming links more.
I think there is one metric the search engines are missing in the way they rank sites, and that is the ratio of visitors who visit your site and leave via a link on that site to another site. The more people that visit your site and leave it via a link on your site, the more valuable you site should be. If everyone who visits your site leaves either the back button or by closing the window, or via bookmark, then your site is not offering as much to users.
Another thing about linking-out is that the rate is way higher than doing reciprocals or chevron linking, because the whole deal of “exchanging” is removed. I good linker can add 100 links in a day, all with original anchors and descriptions. If you just keep your outgoing links to 20 per page, then a month of work can equate to 125 pages of content related to your site, all linked logically and with reason. A good writer can produce 2000 to 4000 words per day. If these are made up of 100 to 200 word blog entries, then they can write 10 to 40 blog entries per day, probably 25 on average. That's 500 blog entires per month per blogger. And, amazingly enough, the one thing the search engine is wanting, original information on as many other web sites as it can get.
The easiest way to do this is to blog for links. That way, the linkers (bloggers) can work on particular topics for you, and link to as many. All you really need is a good writer who can write on any subject and have them blog on the industry for you, writing 100 to 200 word articles with links to the appropriate sites. The blog should have DB so that additional information can be added for each blog entry but not displayed for everyone, such as the email address of the contact person at the site you are linking to. Then when the blog entry is posted, the script sends them an email telling them “we just blogged about your site www.here.url.com and said: blah, blah, woof, woof about you and your site. No link back is necessary, but if you do link back, please feel free to.
So, I'm always hiring and training new link monkeys, but I'll probably will not have a lot more of them a year from now than I have now. However, I will probably have many, many more writers. The content they'll be writing will be full of outgoing relevant links to industry related sties and points of interest for our site visitors. This is pretty much what fourchette said he's doing in msg# 23.
That's what I'd do. Man, would I!
funny.
One site has risen to dominate the SERPs in my neck of the woods over the last two years. They write good unbiased reviews of items relevant to the demographic.
Yes, for sites that have local content.
To do this, blog about other plumbing supply sites, no matter if they are in your local area or not, but usually people don't want to link to their own local competitors, and blog about any and all other local services that have websites.
It's true that after several years in this industry I've started to get lazy and bored with the mundane tasks of building the popularity of websites. However, I'm not convinced that if I hired someone to help me, that they would be able to generate enough profit to pay for themselves and my time training them.
Does anyone have experience with this? If so, what do they pay people? And how do they hire them?
However, I'm not convinced that if I hired someone to help me, that they would be able to generate enough profit to pay for themselves and my time training them.
That's an important concern.
All the links were according to specification, i.e.:
Topical
No more than 20 links per page
Pr3 +
Must be clean links, i.e. no cgi redirects
This process I developed resulted in about 40+ spreadsheets. The hardest part of the mission was finding the sites, monitoring progress i.e. approved/declined/active/error and ACCOUNTABILITY (who submitted, who slacked off).
The bottom line, I am 99% complete with developing software (in-house only) that manages: accountability, status and submission. Without it I would not embark on the mission again.
I cant believe people are discussing reciprocal links here, burn those links, and head for the hills!.
I also think very few people on these forums would generate any form of R.O.I with 10 link developers. There is so much failure with this type of link building, so much repetitive work, and also lots of ground work finding the right sites, categories etc. The link builders are also not loyal and its difficult justifying the costs with clients with results of ranking (not quantity of links).
Still, it's just trench warfare with better shovels.
Thanks for the detailed post which is very useful indeed. Just a quick note about a statement I don't agree with:
I think there is one metric the search engines are missing in the way they rank sites, and that is the ratio of visitors who visit your site and leave via a link on that site to another site. The more people that visit your site and leave it via a link on your site, the more valuable you site should be. If everyone who visits your site leaves either the back button or by closing the window, or via bookmark, then your site is not offering as much to users.
So you are saying that the most people leave a site via a useful outgoing link, the most value should be related to that site? After having a successful informational website of 30,000 pages with useful content for the last 5 years and offering only some dozens of outgoing links, I confirm that the above statement is false.
It makes sense to me: if too many people leave a page they found in the SERPs by hitting the back button, that says negative things about either (1) the page itself or (2) how well it fits that set of search results. Either way the page ought to get less credit for that than if users find something on the page they think is worth exploring, whether it's a link to a different site or other content within the same site.
Bottom line is that a green link dev's time should, in theory, be worth much less than your own - so if their efforts are not generating the profits to justify it, then your own efforts (assuming they have the same result) would lose even more money. Of course, tons of people are making money online, so obviously, links can and do generate enough money to pay back the time getting them.
Finding a *good* link developer is the issue - not whether or not a good link developer will have ROI, IMHO.
The thing is I would never want to do link dev by myself. My time is used more effectively thinking about all the peices and how they go together. So the guys asking those questions about effectiveness are one man bands and should think about taking their business to the next level. Why do it yourself when you can pay someone minimum wage to do it.
Anyway back to the initial question. Reciprocal links worked fine for 3 years for us and still work but your site needs to be trusted first.
So the way we will continue
A. more focus on RELEVANT links.
B. more content writers opposed to link monkeys
C. Automate the whole process to make it more effective( we still have some cool tools from our recip days)
D. A few other tricks we devised but want to have an edge on all :)
B. more content writers opposed to link monkeys
So have them write one high quality article per month and submit it to the top article directories. It would take a minimal amount of extra time, but it could pay big dividends if the article gets picked up with your links in it. On good sites, those one-way links beat recip links. Less time to get 'em too... a lot less.
So have them write one high quality article per month and submit it to the top article directories.
1: One quality article per month isn't very much. It doesn't take that long to write a quality article.
2:Writers in the third world will have a harder time writing them if English isn't their first language.
On good sites, those one-way links beat recip links. Less time to get 'em too... a lot less.
Hmmm... Playing devils advocate here:
What's a good site doing hanging around an article directory? Aren't good sites distinguished by their originality?
After having a successful informational website of 30,000 pages with useful content for the last 5 years and offering only some dozens of outgoing links, I confirm that the above statement is false.
Okay, you've had 30,000 pages for about 5 years thereabouts or so, and dozens of outgoing links, isn't that a ratio of, like 1000 to 1, or less?
I would also suggest that data from as far back is 5 years, in many cases, is hardly releveant as fast as the search engines are changing things around today, and that metrics from then are like, well, like cell phones from then, still useful, but not a good indicator of what you are going to find marketable next year.
That's not a relevant sample. I'm talking about with as many outgoings as incomings, as a rough ratio. Balance. yin-yang, reap what you sow, smile, be useful, that kind of thing.
2:Writers in the third world will have a harder time writing them if English isn't their first language.
If English were their first language they wouldn't be third World. That's a geographical fact.
Let me tell you a bit about 1st world English speakers. Less than 10% of the population, probably less than 5%, would I let write content for one of my websites. Yes, even in America, the bulk of the population is functionally unable to reliably compose informative, engaging copy. If you want good writing you need to hire a writer.
So, yes, it's true that a very small number of the people in a country you may outsource to will have good enough english to write for your website, but the same is true right here in the US of A. The fact is that dollar for dollar, pound for pound, if you want great content, you can get a lot more of it, cheaper, overseas. Yes, it's rare to find it, but when you do, it can very very good, and a lot less expensive than from here.
The trick is knowing how to find the few nuggets that are out there, not whether or where they exist the most.
If English were their first language they wouldn't be third World. That's a geographical fact.
That's my point.
Being in the third world puts them at a disadvantage. I'm not being xenophobic, just stating the reality of the implications of having a non-native speaker pump out articles.
There are plenty of intelligent college students wasting their time at Starbucks who could be making more money working from their dorm room writing articles.
There are also many retired senior citizens with a wealth of experience and excellent writing skills who would gladly do the job at the same rate or less that someone in the third world will do it for.
The above is not my opinion, it's my personal experience.
Have knowledge, need beer. ;-)
"EN MASSE" - is this really possible? I haven't been doing this very long but it just seems that truly related, high quality leads are difficult to find and aren't found in bulk. :) Of course I am in a very competitive service industry and think that has to be part of the problem. That and the fact that I'm still trying to figure things out.
By en masse, I didn't mean pressing one button and getting 300 quality links. I meant as far as quickly finding multiple avenues not currently being explored by the client or comeptition and getting links from them in a quick manner. Sometimes, a good viral campaign can you get you tons of links from "one effort".
1: One quality article per month isn't very much. It doesn't take that long to write a quality article.
It's one times ten (see the post headline). Ten quality articles per month can do you a lot of good over time.
What's a good site doing hanging around an article directory? Aren't good sites distinguished by their originality?
All I can tell ya there is that I've gotten some really great links from articles picked up on top directories and published on authority sites. Not all articles submitted to directories (especially the picky, human edited ones) are crap. Some are damn good. I know because I regularly write 'em!
