Build links to pages that link to me

Focus on weaker or stronger sites? Where to build links?

[graeme_p]

Recent threads on link building to Ezine articles, and link wheels have got me thinking about building links to pages that link to my site.

The first question is what I should focus on. Pages that already have high PR and traffic or weaker ones?

There are a lot of links on strong domains (BBC, NPR, .gov.uk, universities), but many on pages (such as blogs) which tend to get a little lost with time.

What about link sharing sites (like Reddit), or forums (provided they do not nofollow links)? Again, focus on weak, strong or medium ranking sites?

The other question is the constant one: ideas for building these links. Each one looks like it would be a different mini project. Lots of work.

[Planet13]

Been thinking about this myself a bit.

If I were to build links to a page on another site that links to one of my pages, one thing I might want to think about is the likelihood that one of my competitors would get a link from that same page.

So I look for sites that link to mine that would be unlikely to link to my competitors in the future. Maybe those sites DON'T have an OFFICIAL webmaster any more and so things like their link pages don't EVER get updated.

What I look for is a site that may not have a LOT of links, but it has good quality, relevant content to my site. And what inbound links it does have are from quality sites.

In summary, look for a page / site that has great content, links to you naturally, and where it looks like the webmaster of that site has never heard the term SEO.

[mcskoufis]

Finding sites that will link to you and not your competitors is great.

Sites which have great content and which link to your competitors offer more diversity, which I think Google in particular likes.

[Hoople]

Most of my sites are in a sub-sub-niche of another niche. Widget-wise it's: '20th century . collectable . red . widgets' if that makes sense. This gives me potential to link in/out from adjacent 'neighborhoods' (upward) and outward to adjacent niches related to the main niche.

There is little competition interference as the red widget world and the green widget world have chosen to stay separated (long, off topic story).

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Don't link to content just for the sake of linking, make sure it's helpful to your visitors and you can't go wrong.

[Hoople]

Don't link to content just for the sake of linking, make sure it's helpful to your visitors and you can't go wrong.

Very true. In my example above there was an intermediate level in that niche that had no website. I then created it. I was then able to get a link from the niche's main authority site to the newly created site and thereby pass the juice to my more specific site.

Almost like creating your own letter in the game of Scrabble.

[graeme_p]

To clarify my question, the situation I have in mind is that if example.com/redwidgets links to me, should I try to get other sites to link to example.co/redwidgets? I do not mean to link from my own sites, but to persuade others to link.

Planet13's logic here is clear. If I get a link from a site that has high quality quality but lacks SEO, then it will be easy to help that site do better.

There are lots of other situations that I am wondering about.

What about a page on a strong domain, that does not have a high page rank? For example I just found a two year old page on a major news site (front page PR 8) with three links to my site with PR3, whereas a more recent story on the same topic has PR5. Is it worth building links to that page? Would it be worth it if the page was more deeply buried and had a PR of one or zero?

Is a link from a trusted big brand site potentially worth more (if I promote it), or is it just the PR that matters?

[Planet13]

Is it worth building links to that page? Would it be worth it if the page was more deeply buried and had a PR of one or zero?

Hmm... tough question to answer.

would it be easier to build links to that PR3 News Page that links to you? Or would it be easier to build links to your home page (or another page on your site)?

Another thing:

sometimes it might be easy to HELP the other site (that links TO your site) with some basic SEO skills. You might write them and thank them for linking to you and mention that they might want to change their title or add an H! tag or something like that.

The logic here being if they can rank better through basic SEO improvements, then they will get better organic rankings, and then they will accrue links naturally.

Hope this helps.

[graeme_p]

Thanks Planet13, I had not thought of helping other sites with on-page SEO. Nice idea. I had realised that it might be possible to push them into a virtuous circle but was so fixated on link building that I had not thought of other possibilities.

It might well be easier to get links to some of the pages that link to me because they are trusted big brands. It varies with each one (e.g. an old news story may, or may not, still be relevant).

[Planet13]

@ graeme_p

It varies with each one (e.g. an old news story may, or may not, still be relevant).

For what it's worth: People are big on anniversaries. One year, five year, ten year, etc.,

Sometimes if you plan in advance, you can start mentioning how this is the 5th year anniversary of event X happening, and here is a contemporaneous news article related to that event.

I did this with the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (although the article was on MY site, not on another site) and was able to get some tweets, lots of new mid level page rank links, and a link from Public Broadcasting Service (PBS, which is an authoritative site in the US). However, that PBS link was a nofollow.

So if your site is mentioned in an article from a few years back, and it is related to an event of some kind, you might be able to get some play as the anniversary of that event approaches.

[graeme_p]

Certainly worth looking out for as part of my list of excuses to suggest links to old news. My others are "something similar happened" and "x years and still nothing has been done about it".

[Planet13]

My others are "something similar happened" and "x years and still nothing has been done about it".

Now you're thinking.

[graeme_p]

Thanks for that last bit of encouragement. I am not a natural link builder, so it is good to know that I am heading in the right direction.

[CainIV]

Since all links we build are built to impact SEO, we cross build links to most pages we receive links from, in one form or another.

The most valuable receive more attention.