My Top 3 Link Dev Techniques

[ThisIsOli]

I am a long time Internet Marketer, new visitors to this forum. I thought therefore that I would share my three top Link dev techniques. These have helped me propel multiple sites to the top spots in Google, but they also require a fair amount of work.

Tip 1) Private Site Networks.

I'm not talking about sites that accept crap content here, I am talking about gaining access to site networks that require you to post legitimate content, that have quality guards, and that have zero footprint measures in place.

Tip 2) Guest Blog Posts.

Guest blog posts are a great way to gain a quality backlink. Just to clear up my definition of what one of these is, I do not mean glorified article directories that try to disguise themselves as websites that 'accept guest blog posts' when in reality they are composed entirely of 'guest blog posts'.

Legitimate guest blog posting takes a lot of networking time, but can be well worth it.

Tip 3) Social Link Bait.

For a while creating 'link bait' articles was a great way for me to build backlinks. I found that I could supercharge that backlinking technique by running link bait articles through social media with 'snippet bait'.

Using this technique I get much more virality, social trust, and backlinks from people who write their own blog posts about what I wrote.


I hope you guys find some use out of this!

Oli

[Planet13]

Thank You, Oli, and welcome to the Webmaster World forums.

When you say, "creating 'link bait' articles was a great way for me to build backlinks," what exactly do you mean?

I hear lots of people throw around the term "link bait," and I would like to hear what exactly your interpretation of link bait is, and how you use it.

Also, what do you mean by "snippet bait"? I am not familiar with that.

Thanks in advance.

[ThisIsOli]

Snippet bait is not a real term, I use it occasionally to talk about how I use a few words (ie. a twitter post) to draw people in to reading an article and backlinking.

Link bait is any article that engages people and makes them want to provide a link back.

You can do this directly (Ie. mention a related site in good light) or indirectly (ie. create an article on a controversial topic).

There are various other techniques, and it often comes down to personal writing style over particular niches, since some people are better writers in certain areas.

[Robert Charlton]

As ThisIsOli suggests, there are direct and indirect ways of attracting links. Historically, "link bait" might be anything from a useful tool or entertaining article intended to build online recommendations, to any kind of article that attracts online attention.

IMO, the use of valuable and engaging "bait" will in the long run produce greater and longer lasting benefits than the use of controversy. Google has become better at sentiment analysis and at parsing social comments, and creating negative online comments, eg, to attract links can now be a dangerous technique.

A little over a year ago, The New York Times published an article about a merchant who used extreme link bait techniques... extreme to the point of being abusive... which eventually backfired....

Google Acts to Demote Distasteful Web Sellers
The New York Times - Technology
December 1, 2010
[nytimes.com...]

Mr. Borker claimed that he purposely shouted at and frightened some of the customers at DecorMyEyes.com because the online complaints actually worked in his favor in Google search results.

In essence, he claimed, Google’s search engine is unable to tell the difference between positive posts and withering online critiques. Therefore, the more complaints posted about Mr. Borker’s site, the more likely customers would be to find his store ranked high on a Google search, which yielded him more revenue.

Google's official reaction and announcement of corrective measures is instructive about why Google prefers algorithmic solutions...

Being bad to your customers is bad for business
Official Google Blog
12/01/2010
[googleblog.blogspot.com...]

We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience.... Instead [of simply blocking him] ...we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience....

Both articles are worth reading. They're about 14 months old now... pre Panda. The Google Blog article suggests a few of the many different ways the effects of links were then being modified by offsite and onsite factors. Panda undoubtedly will extend the number of factors involved.

In this mix, I feel, the type of bait you use is likely to matter.

[Planet13]

Hi there, ThisIsOli and Robert Charlton:

Thanks so much for the replies.