Building links

Need advice please

[Celtic]

Hi Everyone. I am new here and this is my first post.

I would be so grateful if anyone could offer me advise ASAP. I work for a <snip> website which is still quite new and they have asked me to find as many reciprocal links as possible to help drive traffic to the website. I am not knowledgeable about such matters and am spending literally hours going through hundreds of pages, many of whom don't even have links. I have found quite a few, but the problem seems to be mounting and becoming exhausting to say the least.

Apart from searching other related websites, is there a quicker way of finding links and also how can I tell if they are quality links? We cannot afford to pay a company to find links right now, so it is a matter of slogging it out and finding them myself.

Your advice on this would be much appreciated.

Kind regards

Celtic

[edited by: caveman at 4:54 pm (utc) on Dec. 18, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed specifics per TOS [/edit]

[Essex_boy]

A quality link starts from a page with a PR value and has the keyword in the clickable part of the text, then comes teh traffic.

Over tim people will link to you, but it does take time and your site has to be visable for them to be able to contact you.

[inbound]

Hi Celtic,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

There's a great deal of information in the link development forum ( [webmasterworld.com...] ).

The main things to not are:

Quality links are not easy to come by for commercial sites

The best way to get good links is to provide really good content on your site so people want to link to it (think about creating useful articles on moving home, popular resources in the area you serve, anything that would halp someone who is moving to the area then get in touch with local Universities etc and let them know you have information that will help their students)

The links that work best are from sites that are in the same industry as your own - or very closely related. The other type that works remarkable well are educational links ;)

Good luck

[caveman]

Link Development Versus Traffic Development [webmasterworld.com]

;-)

[Celtic]

Thank you all so very much for your response and I shall follow your advice.

My problem is that my boss needs quality links like yesterday, and I am finding the process of visiting numerous pages, some with no links a lengthy and pretty fruitless exercise. This leads me to think that my method must be too slow, or incorrect.

<snip> It is apparent that we need to drive more traffic to the website for us to gain more clients and to do this I guess I need quality links and quickly.

This task is beginning to worry me, as it is taking me so long to find the links and am not sure if I can just copy and paste from any related site which has a links page, as with my minimal IT knowledge I am unsure as to whether the links on their pages are just for visitors to their website or for those who want to link with them. Some have forms to fill in and others don't and I have to copy paste and send them a prepared text asking if they will link with us.

Any further advice or simple step guidance with this would be again so gratefully received whenever time permits.

Does anyone know how much using a professional would cost to find the best links? I have a feeling it would be more than we could afford right now.

Thanks again.

Celtic.(Too old for all this lark anyway!)

[edited by: caveman at 7:22 pm (utc) on Dec. 18, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed specifics, per TOS [/edit]

[Shaddows]

Wow, thats a scarey post.

My problem is that my boss needs quality links like yesterday, and I am finding the process of visiting numerous pages, some with no links a lengthy and pretty fruitless exercise. This leads me to think that my method must be too slow, or incorrect.

Nope, quality links take effort. Thats why they make you better than your competitors, who don't want to put the effort in.

It is apparent that we need to drive more traffic to the website for us to gain more clients and to do this I guess I need quality links and quickly.

You can either get quality links or quick links, but generally they do not overlap

This task is beginning to worry me, as it is taking me so long to find the links and am not sure if I can just copy and paste from any related site which has a links page, as with my minimal IT knowledge I am unsure as to whether the links on their pages are just for visitors to their website or for those who want to link with them

Not following there at all. You want quality INBOUND links. You need people to link to you. You can link to whoever you want.

Copy and pasting is a terrible idea anyway. Other than stealing content, you are unlikely to get ranked as the search engines will only return one copy in the search results, and they aim to return the orginal. Net result- they do not return your pasted content.

Some have forms to fill in and others don't and I have to copy paste and send them a prepared text asking if they will link with us.

Sounds like you are looking for reciprocols. They are NOT quality links. The quality sites will ignore or delete your standard email. I do. Only the poor sites will respond. And sites that have an automated process for adding links, well the search engines will almost certainly devalue any link power from those indescrimanate linkers.

Genuinely, read through the Link developement forum [webmasterworld.com], and its Library [webmasterworld.com] in particular.

Generally, build something of value, contact people who would be interested in it, and barter for a link. Giving a service such as a review, tool or article to go on their site could be forms of payment.

edits- fixed quote markup and then link markup

[edited by: Shaddows at 9:55 am (utc) on Dec. 19, 2008]

[Celtic]

I just cannot thank you enough for this so helpful 'tutorial' You cannot imagine how much I needed someone to explain the true meaning of links and their importance etc to me,especially as I am not at all knowledgable with regard to the running of websites and merely carry out a list of basic tasks required of me. I shall dilligently study the info on the links you so kindly gave me.

Thank you again for the giving of your time and effort to send such much needed info.

Have a wonderful Christmas and may 2009 be a good one for you and yours.

Celtic.

[Celtic]

When I said I was copying and pasting, I meant that when I find a related website, I click on their Links icon, then copy and paste their links address into my Excel Sheet and then send a prepared text asking if they would like to link to us. Was this wrong?

Thanks again shadows. You are as star.

[Celtic]

One more question please; Is it legal to drop a link to our website into a travel blog? I am doing lots of blogs right now and also finding as much info on SEO as I can, but need to know if this is legal before I even attempt it.

Warmest thanks again to any respondee who takes the time to answer this trivia.

Celtic

[Shaddows]

Ah, that makes sense, but it's a really bad idea. [EDIT- referring to your link page idea]

Google's Matt Cutts, in charge of spam prevention, says he does not like links that are part of a link directory bolted on to a site. Anyway, in a page of links, your link gets less link juice. And as the page has no content, is has little value anyway. Do you visit link pages? Most people do not.

If traffic is your primary goal, buy Adwords [adwords.google.com]. WebmasterWorld has a Adwords Forum [webmasterworld.com]. Adwords are definately NOT my forte. Our marketing person deals with our adword campaigns, but other members will be able to advise. That, and obviously the pages Google writes themselves :)

Organic rankings are 'free' traffic. Obviously they are not 'free' from the point of view of the time and effort that goes into getting there. You need good links to get high up the rankings. Editorial links mid-content on pages where you are one of a small number of outbound links are a good example, but this WILL TAKE TIME. Lots of time. You will also need to understand other SEO concepts and have good content, which I suspect are not areas that you either have experience or mandate to improve.

EDIT- added
Re: Blogs

You can reference yourself as much as you like. Definately nothing illegal about it. They don't allow it here because of the potential to promote. But this site is a resource that is much better for being 'academic' in that no specifics are allowed.

That said, most blogs are 'nofollowed' which means no ranking gains arise from it. You might get traffic, but again I don't know any real people who read blog comments and follow self-promoting links. You may find otherwise

[edited by: Shaddows at 11:56 am (utc) on Dec. 19, 2008]

[Celtic]

Thank you so much for all this wonderful advice and I am learning a lot from your comments. To be frank, because I am so busy with all the other tasks connected to my work, I am going to explain to my boss that I am not adequately qualified or have enough time to dedicate to these links and he will have to go down another avenue to avail of good quality links; perhaps seeking out a programmer who will use their robot tools to search for the most important links. Does this sound more sensible to you before I put it to him myself?

Again, thank you so very much.

Celtic

[idolw]

If you guys have a really cool site a decent way to build good links is to do some PR activities including bribing bloggers in your niche to write about you. That way should give you some boost. But again, it only works with cool sites.
Recently I found buying links is more effective way of spending my time than trolling busy webmasters for link exchange. I only write 1 or 3 emails a week to exchange links.

[JerryOdom]

I had a similar problem building links for a website I own. My solution was to develop an additional website about the widget in question who's purpose was to discuss aspects of the widget and other people's websites about the widget and generally everything about the widget. It took off and other people would write asking to be on the second site. I added them in exchange for them linking to the first site if possible or if a competitor I had them link to the second site.

It wasn't quick solution however in the long term building the second site has proven to be a valuable promotional tool for the first. Maybe something to consider for the long run.

[Celtic]

Thank you all so much. The website which is a website for both owners and renters is excellently well presented and easy to navigate and we have a good number of clients considering it is only running two years. I am meeting with my boss soon and will have to discuss with him every detail concerning links and his best option for our situation,given that most of my time is taken dealing with clients, approving adds etc; It is simply too much to have the worry of finding links, blogging, doing articles on travel websites etc. As you so rightly stated, the links need to be good ones and my way seems so haphazard and time consuming without bringing any real results.

Is is ok for me to print out some of your very valuable advice please for further reference? I have learned things today on this site that I had absolutely no knowledge of before and thank you all again.

Warm Christmas wishes

Celtic ....an overly enthusiastic but also exhausted employee!