Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I. Don't Work
1. Reciprical Links - NO
2. 3-way Links - No
3. Link Buying - No
4. PRWeb Press Release (counting on link from their site along)- NO
5. DIGG or Delicious Spam - NO
6. Content, Content, Content (just a ton of content on own site) - NO
II. Maybe?
7. Paid Directories -?
8. Paid Blog Reviews -?
9. MySpace Links (create a myspace account and put a link or create widgets for the same effect, etc.) -?
10. Blog Spam (create a blog on a blog network and link from it) -?
11. Aricle Submissions to article directories -?
III. Do Work!
12. Affiliate Links with PR - YES
13. Link Baiting (controversey) Media Blitzes - YES
14. Buy domains with existing PR and link or 301 from it - YES
15. Wikipedia Links - YES
everything you listed in don't work actually works! Also article submission, paid dirs and blogging also works.
Don't believe something you read on the internet:)
everything you listed in don't work actually works! Also article submission, paid dirs and blogging also works.
agreed.. But keep in mind some strategies work better for some types of sites than others. .
Try to avoid making generalized statements such as "X does work and Y does not work". Each market segment has it's own uniqueness which affects marketing strategies. Maybe a specific strategy does not work for you because you have no idea how to implement that specific strategy.
To state something does not work without firm examples only spreads misinformation imo.
And just IMHO but real seos/sems in the world are the ones who gets massive network of their affiliate or other sites in top positions for next-to-impossible keywords. They don't offer SEO services, don't provide seminars, don't do anything like that. They just do real professional SEO and get their huge checks from the banks. And most of them are unknown. That's what I call SEO. My dream to become on of them:)
Perhaps you have your categories mixed up b/c I see things that are in the other categories that are black hat and dont really work or risk penalties if cought . IE> "Buy domains with existing PR and link or 301 from it"
This is a misleading message.
Original quality content will always work!
K
Sadly, only if you SEO it.
One of the more insightful comments made here. Those who truly know how to position sites don't offer optimization services. They target worthwhile niches, create sites for those niches, and patiently employ long-range plans to propel their content to the top of literally hundreds of keyword and key phrase serps. They also tend not to begin threads with statements like "Google is broken" or "Why is google punishing my site".
1. Recip Links - you guys all seriously feel that recip links still work? I thought this was a general consensus - that its just not work the effort anymore.
2. 3-ways - I hear the same thing as recips ... at least as far as google is concerned.
3. Content content content - I tried building thousands of pages of original content without doing any serious link building under the notion that "if you build the content, the links will come". Its been almost a year and I'm still not on the map in any meaningful way. I'm actually quite frustrated with this approach - this is clearly Google-babble which sounds great in text books but is real-world BS!
4. PRWeb press releases - I've read numerous times now that links on PRWeb are significantly discounted now because it is recognized for abuse in terms of excessive link building.
5. Buying links - I hear that Google has people crawling the pink buying communities and actively discounting outbound links from adveretised sites in those communities.
Now - with the exception of the content issue, I'm just going off of the tidbits I've been collecting over the past few months in WebmasterWorld.
That was the first mistake. Believing anything you read here.
J/K (no seriously)
Please explain. And, if what you're saying is serious/true ... then why are we here? Better question ... why are *you* here if you truly believe that? ;-)
K
3-ways (also works, in case of site and blog, site and directory, etc.),
link buying (how you imagine google can trick these? If in case of n-way links it's possible what to do with link buying? Someone may just like me a lot and place a link or banner to me (and nobody will discover it's for money, via nature of it. also you should be do that right and list/buy from relevant sites),
content (you need to seo it, lot of info about it on the internet, it also helps a lot, and need to do this with other link work as well)
PRWeb? As far as I know many "gurus" use it:)
Social bookmarking also works.
Directoris free and paid - why not? It also was before Google.
Everything is works , just some common sense and will be ok
Explanation (excerpted and paraphrased from rule 279, page 482 of the SEO Webmaster Bible, translated from the original dutch source "Ver Flicht der huderflund auer mach zicht maaag stracht wehr einsatz dern!"):
"Loosen your collar, get a grip, and don't take any of this stuff too seriously".
Keep your folder structures flat... try to avoid folder arrangements that go several levels deep. Make it easy for the spiders to find the links on your pages.
Write page content that clearly defines the topic and includes the terms and phrases of your search terms .... then before you do anything else, add OUTBOUND links to sites that are authorities on the page topic.
Place plenty of internal links within the content from one page to another, not just your navigation links.
Then get a couple of inbound links from relevant, on topic sites so the spiders will find you. It helps if those links are on well regarded, relevant higher PR pages.
If someone wants to do a reciprocal and their page is of acceptable quality and relevant to your visitors, then do it.
Place your site in a handful of well established directories that have sections relevant to your topic. Pay the site review fee if you have to.
Forget chasing ODP as the holy grail of links. Submit it and forget it.
Forget link volume.... quality and relevance is all that matters. If your site is about Danube cruises, don't do links with Phuket hotels or Nepal abseiling. Those links are as useful as mammaries on a male bovine.
Don't fall for the mantra that links will flow naturally to quality sites. It may happen, but it's unlikely to do so in the normal human lifespan. If it did happen, you wouldn't be reading this post. You have to be pro-active in seeking links, no matter how intrusive and costly the task may be...you have to include the task in your manhour schedules and budgets.
Stay away from any scheme where you are voting for (ie linking to) yourself. No matter what the current buzz (blogs, articles) these all have the same common denominator.... they are artifical links and unlikely to retain any long term value as the level of SEO abuse grows.
.... and all of the above is utterly worthless if you choose to totally ignore the SE guidelines.
Exactly. And for this reason I believe it is best to get links to a site from:
1. pages that are connected to well-established sites (reputation).
2. pages whose on-page content is, in some way relevant to the linking page.
3. pages which themselves have some history in the SEs (older pages), and, hopefully, some pagerank (a secondary concern, but useful).
The only thing is, getting links from these kinds of pages means that you'll have great difficulty soliciting links if your site is perceived as A. cheesy, B. potentially disreputable, C. Overtly commercial, D. Lacking in quality (possibly regarding appearance but more likely regarding quality of content).
So what does all of this mean? You need quality content. That, of course, rules out most sites running adsense or hoosense. It also means that getting quality links is a hard, slow process because AFTER you've built quality content you'll be faced with the prospect of convincing other quality sites that you're not some scammy, scraping, adsense hustling scumbag.
Once you have that quality content it's much easier to get people to link to your site because they actually see the value in your site.
When I look for other sites that I want to link to my sites, I search for the keywords that I want to rank in and then try to get links from the pages or sites that actually rank in those keywords. Sometimes I'm able to get recipricals, other times I'm able to link from a comment on a blog or a forum post. This way I know that when someone searches for that keyword, they will probably land on the site that I'm liking from and hopefully continue on to my site.
Also, don't forget to empower your fans to be able to link to you from their blogs, social profiles, or mention your site in a forum they belong to. Make it easy by providing the code they can cut and paste. Offer the ability to link back using a text links or small banners. Make sure you have a couple options for each. These links are like pennies, get enough of them and you'll soon have dollars.
Ask your users to social bookmark you. These sites work on the number of times you get bookmarked, that's why adding a link by yourself doesn't work very well. I've found one of the best sites to use is StumbleUpon.
It seems, IBL development is becoming an increasingly difficult task for start-ups.
"let them discover your unique high quality content and 'vote' for you". This is ideal.
Even if they discover the 'unique content', they may want to link only according to their PR strategy.
I have seen specialised sites that have no outbound links.
K
