Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So:
Only get backlinks from sites that are relevant:
To me that sounds like the obvious thing to do. ive got a bit of a problem though. my website is an online shop, the only other relavent sites that i can get links from are OTHER online shops. Im not going to get a link from them because why would someone that sells what we sell send a customer to us?
So i suppose the key is to get links from information based sites about the type of products we sell:
well that too sounds like a good idea, but good quality sites that talk about our industry wont link to me for free, and ive read so many articles saying that paid links could lead to being banned from search engines.
So why not just get free links?:
ive had a look into this and the only free links i can find are from shopping directories that have little or no page rank, and i thought that sites of this nature were considered to be link farms, another search engine no no.
our search engine listings arent bad, but they could be better, especially in Y.
I really do appreciate any insight anyone can give me.
Im not asking you to do the work for me as ive spent ages researching this, but every path i take leads me to another article about search engine exclusion.
Many thanks in advance.
I personally explore opportunities for direct one way links in every single area you've mentioned as 'won't'. Every single example that you've given as places you can't get links from, I get links from. I say this to illustrate the point that you just need to think about it a bit further.
You're asking the right question though - why would they link to you. The work is in answering that question.
My direct competitors link to me because I help them with SEO for free. I network a lot with people in my niche. Many link to me.
For example, one of my competitors bought like 700 keyword rich domains last year and has been sitting on them. I've been encouraging him to build a bunch of sites to take advantage of the domains. Based on my advice, he's hired a contractor to start building sites. I came across a hosting special yesterday that would allow him to cookie cutter those 700 domains. I called him and pointed him at the special. My cost for this was $0.
Oh, by the way, he's rebuilding a 10 year old site that's got some nice backlinks. He's promised me a link when he's done since I help him out with this stuff. Why would he link to me? I just answered that question, for one case. Others, I use other ideas.
The professional technical organization in my industry links to no man (or woman) :). And certainly not a crappy little site like mine. Except that professional, gov't authorized body DOES link to my site. Because I have content that no one else has, and it's content that their members find interesting and useful, and they can't get anywhere else. The webmaster declined to give me a link, so I rattled the president. The president told the webmaster to give me a link. That org has backlinks from probably hundreds of .edu's and .govs. And they link to me, becuase I have a bit of interesting content. Why would they link to me? Because their members find my content interesting and useful.
I watch my industry all the time trying to answer that question. Sometimes I already have the answer. Other times, I need to create the answer and then I go back for a link. I wanted bloggers in my niche (Very suspicious folks - they don't link to anybody) to give me a link. So I created a calculater they could blog about. And asked them to blog about it. Previously I had also contacted them, unasked, and mentioned something like 'country A is doing this very interesting thing in our industry, you might want to blog about it, because it could impact us'. That gave them something newsworthy to blog about, something other bloggers had not picked up on. Many of these very suspicious bloggers now link to me. Cost? $0.
And so on. Creating interesting and unique content then actively seeking links for it works well.
I mentioned in a thread the other day about writing an article on historical pricing trends in your niche. It's in this section of this forum, down a few. Go write an article on that, and publish it. Then go Google on 'historical {niche} prices' and 'history of {niche}'. You'll find a bunch of relevant sites you can ask for a link. Ask 10, maybe 2 or 3 give you a link. Blather, rinse repeat :).
its helped and you have given me some ideas.
Sometimes if you think a bit around the edges of what's relevant, you'll find other relevant sites. One way that I approach this is to look at industries that 'touch' mine. Industries that supply my industry, industries that my industry supplies, industries that my industry employs, industries that employ my industry, etc.
Or to put it another way, relevant does NOT neccessarily mean 'in your niche'.
I've found some top quality, untapped links in competitive niches by doing that.
For example, webmasterworld clearly would go get links from seo, programming sites, and web design sites. But they could also consider getting links from non-web related marketing sites (or associations). Or companies that build servers (since they then get used for web stuff). or even just lists of 'other large, popular forums on the web'. Or if they can find any mention anywhere that discussed building communities, they could possibly investigate for links (since they have here an example of building a community).
You can ask more if any issues remain.
thanks for taking the time to reply to my post, it really is appreciated.
can you please shine a little light on "article directory submission" for me please?
ive not heard of this
