Link building questions for large, directory type sites

[Kriss Johnson]

PLEASE EXCUSE MY POOR GRAMMAR, I'M NOT NATIVE ENGLISH


Hello Guys,

First I want to say Webmaster World is the best forum out there. This forum helped me to start in the SEO business few years ago. Unlike the most forums, full with all kind of people, the users here a mostly professionals and know what they are talking about. So one big thanks to all of you guys !

About my site:

Few years ago i have started to build custom business directory. The project took around 3 years and finally i have realesed the site on 08 of November this year. It took me so much time, because my dream was to build a great website, not just next fly by night directory (my budget was very limited as well). The site is focused on user experience but also with SEO in mind. I have started advertising it around the web ,but not sure what are best practices to do it.
I did SEO for many websites during the years and got success with most of them, but never did SEO for such a big website with thousands of pages. I want to share with you what i'm doing for link development/advertising and to ask you for your advice.


My main techniques are:

1. to mention the site on webmster forums and business niche forums
2. to add contact details on reputable citation sites like Yelp, Yellow Pages,Four Square...and make sure to get some positive reviews.
3. to build social pages (e.g. twitter,fb,pinterest ) and get follwers and likes
4. to publish local business seo tips on my blog every day (articles are researched by me and written by native writer so they are high quality and useful for users)
5. to contact webmasters of sites which are on 1st page of SERP's for lists like: "list of best directories" and asking them to include my site.


I'm planning to use few more techniques but not sure if they are safe these days ,so here are my questions:

1. I want to write some useful Word and PDF documets and submit them to sites like Slide Share and Scribd. But how is the best way to do it? Should i use my blog posts (which are indexed first) or to write unique documnets for some distribution around the web? I'm afraid that distribution of my posts can trigger duplicate content issue and can lower their quality. So how you are using document sharing websites to get some attention/visitors/links ?

2.I'm planning also to try PR distribution (never did it before). Is it still useful technique? Not talking about building links but as a way to get some attention to your site. If I decide to do it, what will be the best way? Should i include links to my site? If yes, should i add nofollow tag? Should i use anchor or just site url? And finally how many links should be included in each PR?

3. What do you think about videos? I'm planning to make a nice video and distribute it on some video sites (e.g. YouTube, Daily Motion..) and include a link to original source. Is that a good practice?

4. I'm planning to start a few blogs on free blogging platforms like wordpress.com, blog.com... Then to create useful list like "List of best directories" and to include links to my site and other high quality directories. The other thing i'm planning is to upload reviews for my site, written by others (only 1 review on each blog). Is that a good practice?

5. As guest blogging is not the same anymore i'm planning to find authority websites in my niche and ask them to write a review about my directory. I will choose sites which doesn't accept every blog post in the world but only useful posts for their readers. Is that a good pracitce?

6. Can you suggest me other methods to build some quality links and to get visitors to my site in the same time?

7. On my main blog, i include 3-4 links on each post to internal pages of the main site (with anchor). Each post has links to a different internal pages.Is that a good practice?


The other thing i was wondering is:

Is it possible to rank many pages of a large directory type website if it doesn't have enough link juice? If it is possible after all, how much time is needed for a new domain with many pages to get some authority and start ranking well in SE?
I'm asking this , because found many directories which are lower quality then my site but have very good rankings for multiply keywords in Google.

If you have experience with large, directory type websites i will be more then happy to hear your opinion.

[martinibuster]

I'm not sure where to start, but most of what you list are no-quality techniques.

...have very good rankings for multiply keywords in Google.

If those keywords are like "Keyword Directory" and variants of that then those phrases are not particularly useful and whatever traffic they attract is going to be the wrong kind.

[Kriss Johnson]

Hi martinibuster,
Can you be more specific? As you are one of most trusted users in the forum advice from you will be very useful for me. Can you answer my questions when you have some time. Thanks you.

[martinibuster]

1. I don't use document sharing websites for links. When I speak at conferences the conferences link to the presentations and that's nothing I can do about. Here's one of the presentations, Link Building Fundamentals [slideshare.net], perhaps it may be useful to you.

I don't use document sharing sites for links because those are not real links in the sense of citations. Look up what that word citation means, it's fundamental to this discussion. What you really want is a citation, not just a link. There's a world of difference between a citation and just a link. A citation is something done independently from you. So if you're going about uploading docs to slideshare, contributing guest articles, creating blogs to link to yourself- you are creating just links but not citations. Google and Bing have many ways to identify and discount just links. What works best are citations.

The right way to go about it is to do things that will result in independent links. Yes there are ways to go about it that encourage others to link and that's ok. What's not ok is doing things for which you have control. It's not a moral issue. It's not about being afraid of Google. It's about knowing what is possible, what is not possible then going about it within the practical limitations. It's about doing things in a way that will last, will have a lasting effect.