Module 3 DiM

Link-building

Link-building is a crucial aspect of SEO, enhancing a site's public awareness and

boosting search engine rankings. The number of inbound links to a site is a measure
of its popularity, and each backlink is a vote for the site. To build great links, focus on
creating valuable content, such as open-source software, free services, browser plug-
ins, or web comics.

Internal link-building activities include creating link bait, such as a website widget, and
using social bookmarking to make it easy for visitors to remember and share content.

Website syndication is essential for serious sites, and services like FeedBurner can
provide stats about feeds. Additionally, it's important to explore submissions to web
directories, as not all directories are created equal and can be easily found using
search engines.

Precursors to Link Building

Link building takes time. You want to make sure your time is not wasted. Before you
start your link-building campaign, perform some research to ensure that you invest
your time wisely.

1. Start Building Your Reputation Early: Despite not having a website yet,
participating in various Internet communities, such as blogging, contributing to
niche sites, and being active on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
MySpace, and LinkedIn, can help your future business grow. To promote your
new website, stay in touch with contacts and ask them to help by adding links
on their sites, spreading your news to their contacts.
2. Assess Your Current Situation: Starting a new website requires assessing its
current state, as residual links may exist from expired domains or prior site
exposure. For existing sites, evaluate inbound links by checking web stats logs
with tools like Google Analytics or Yahoo! Site Explorer. Gathering this
information helps establish a baseline for a new link-building campaign.
3. Emulate Your Competitors: To optimize your link-building strategy, it's essential
to understand your competitors' methods. Start by researching local business
listings, Yellow Pages, niche directories, and local newspapers. Research inbound
links from old and new businesses and compare them to your competitors.
Evaluate different ways to improve inbound links, such as assessing their
relative worth, popularity, and traffic. Combine multiple competitors' strategies
into a hybrid strategy. After analyzing your competition and current state,
formulate link-building goals that maximize benefits and focus on reputable,
authoritative, and noncompeting sites related to your site.
4. Natural Link Acquisition: Nothing is better than natural link acquisition. This
occurs when people who are genuinely interested in your site link to it.
Information travels fast on the Internet. As long as your site is of great quality,
you will reach a tipping point where it will no longer be necessary to invest
much effort in link building. This is something any site owner should desire:
having a site that is so infectious that it becomes the buzz.
 5. Link Sources and Link Quality: To speed up link-building campaigns, target
multiple sites to create natural inbound links. Avoid focusing on one type of site,
such as blogs, directories, or forums. All links carry some value, and determining
the worth of a backlink from a site can be determined by factors such as the
quality of the links, which are typically from topically similar pages, rank well for
targeted keywords, and appear on pages with few or no ads.

Elements of link building

Basic Link Setup:

 Provide HTML fragments for linking (e.g., "Link to Us" and "Tell a Friend").
 Run email newsletters to keep visitors engaged and encourage sharing.
 Offer members-only or registered services to attract and retain users.

Link Bait:

 Create valuable, shareable content that draws organic links. Types of content
hooks include news, informational articles, humour, contests, and free tools or
games.
 Use website widgets to embed links on external sites.

Social Bookmarking:

 Integrate social bookmarking icons on your site to encourage sharing on popular

platforms like Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
 Keep social sharing options minimal to avoid clutter, using tools like ShareThis
or AddThis.

Website Syndication:

 Use RSS and Atom feeds to distribute content. Employ services like FeedBurner
for tracking and promoting feed engagement.

Directory Submission:

 Submit to top directories (e.g., Dmoz.org, Yahoo! Directory) and relevant niche
or regional directories, prioritizing those that pass link equity.

Adding Links Everywhere:

 Publish content on external platforms (articles, blogs, forums) with proper

attribution and relevant keywords.
 Engage in discussions on forums, newsgroups, and blogs, including links as part
of your contributions.

Building Complementary Sites:

 Develop additional niche sites (e.g., directories, awards, reviews) to support

your main site, ensuring a natural cross-linking strategy.

Types of Link-building

1. Using Content to Attract Links

Natural link building requires compelling content and a good reason to provide links.
Aggressive publishers can use their link-building strategy to guide their content
strategy, but not drive their business strategy. Identifying target sites and adjusting
content plans accordingly is crucial. Keyword research can help identify relevant
content and topics for link attraction. High-quality content is key to achieving link-
building nirvana, but it requires creating standout content and considering link
acquisition throughout the publishing process.

The types of content that can attract links vary by market. Here are a few basic rules
that you can follow to maximize your results:

 Establish your site as a leading expert in its topic matter.

 Use high-quality content to build trust and increase link chances.
 Minimize the commercial nature of content pages.
 Avoid putting ads in content or linking to commercial pages unless they merit a
link based on their content.
 Avoid hiding the relationship between content and the commercial part of your
site.
 Avoid hiding the commercial part to avoid being viewed as deceitful.

Content can attract links through article content, images, videos, widgets, or online
games. When publishing content, decide whether to separate it into a special section
or integrate it throughout the site. For example, an e-tail site might separate product-
related content into a separate section, while an advertising-supported site might
integrate it into the main body.

2. Marketing Content for Link Acquisition

Content can be marketed in many ways. These include:

 Content Syndication: Publishers create content for other sites in exchange for a
link. Common form is guest posting.
 Social News and Sharing Sites: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Delicious are
useful for content marketing.
 Social Media Sites: Facebook, Google+, and Twitter are effective for content
promotion.
 Spreading Content via Blogs: Bloggers are social and interactive, promoting link
building. Active contributors to other blogs through commenting and
relationship building are recommended.
3. Directories

Directories are a popular

method for obtaining links, but
it's crucial to identify high-
quality ones and avoid
manipulative ones. Search
engines view manipulative
directories as paid links, while
high-quality ones have editorial
value. DMOZ is difficult to
access, and submissions may
not be responded to. Avoid
resubmitting and focus on one submission at a time. Remember to submit once and
forget about it.

3.1 What search engines want

from directories

Search engines evaluate directories

based on factors like editorial
review fees, editing flexibility,
rejection rates, and directory
history. "Anything for a buck"
directories don't enforce editorial
judgment and don't convey value.
Yahoo!'s Directory Submission
Terms clearly state that submissions
are rejected if not quality, ensuring
high-quality content.

3.2 Classifying directories

You can divide directories into three

buckets:

Directories that provide sustainable

links:

These are directories that comply

with the policies outlined earlier.
Most likely, these links will continue
to pass link juice for the foreseeable future.

Directories that pass link juice that may not be sustainable:

These are directories that do not comply with all the policies outlined earlier. The
reason such directories exist is that search engines tend to use an “innocent until
proven guilty” approach. So, the search engine must proactively make a
determination of guilt before a directory’s ability to pass link juice is turned off. Even
so, link juice from these types of directories is probably not going to be passed in the
long term, and they do not represent a good investment for publishers.

Directories that do not pass link juice:

These are the directories that the search engines have already flagged. They do not
pass any value. In fact, submission to a large number of them could be seen as a
spam signal. Although it is unlikely that any site would be banned from or penalized
by a search engine based on this signal alone, when combined with other signals of
manipulation, buying lots of low-value directory links could play a role in a penalty
being applied by the search engines.

3.3 Detecting directories that pass link juice

The process for directories passing sustainable links involves investigating their
editorial policies, sites they list, their track record, and the directory's name for SEO
issues. For directories that don't conform to search engine preferences, publishers can
check if the directory appears in search engine results, has unique phrases on its
home page, has premium sponsorships for higher-level listings, promotes search
engine value instead of traffic, evaluates inbound links, and if the target audience is
webmasters and SEO practitioners. Avoid directories that don't follow these
guidelines.

4. Incentive-Based Link Requests

Incentive-based link requests use an incentive as part of the process of requesting a

link. This can run dangerously close to violating the search engines’ Webmaster
Guidelines, but there are also ways to do it that remain compliant with those
guidelines.

4.1 Giveaways: Content syndication involves publishing content on third-party sites,

with the site providing a link back to the author's site. It's important to avoid
duplicate content. Widgets, often in JavaScript, package content without being
seen as duplicate. They can have an HTML wrapper, resulting in numerous links
and deep page links. Relevance is crucial for successful content syndication.
4.2 Dangerous tactics: Search engines are increasingly detecting and penalizing
sites that use tactics like buying links and using third-party reporting methods.
These practices are dangerous and harder to execute than they seem. Another
dangerous tactic is doing a large percentage of link building through reciprocal
links, which can be easy in principle but may be viewed as barter by search
engines. When swapped links become a significant portion of your backlink
profile, it looks manipulative and may be discounted.

5. Direct Link Requests

The process of requesting links for a high-quality site with unique or authoritative
content can be straightforward if there is a relationship between the publisher
requesting the link and the publisher being asked to provide the link. However, if the
requester doesn't know the recipient, the process is different. Table below summarizes
how to decide how to contact a site, including how much effort to put in.
 5.1 Creating a value proposition for direct requests: To make a potential linking site
interesting, the publisher must understand the content or tools on their site.
Site owners link to other sites because they believe their users might value
their content. Positioning a site or section related to the potential linking site is
required for link-building requests. For high-value sites, defining a compelling
value proposition or custom content development may be worthwhile.
Understanding the content of the potential linking site and matching it with the
requester's site is crucial.
5.2 Basic email pitch: When sending a link pitch, keep it short, clearly articulate the
request, and clearly explain why your site deserves a link. Remember that the
recipient may not have anticipated or expected your email, so follow simple
guidelines. Highlight the great content or tools on your site and mention major
endorsements. Remember that unsolicited emails are not illegal as long as they
follow the CAN-SPAM Act guidelines.

6. Manual Social Media Link Creation

To create links manually in social media, build a relationship with the blog owner by
visiting related blogs, adding comments without linking back to yourself, and letting
the author know about value-add resources. Be conservative to avoid backlash. Some
publishers may push the process faster, violating Webmaster Guidelines and
potentially leading to search engine action. Offending people in forums, blogs, and
social media can escalate.

7. Gray Hat/Black Hat

Some publishers disregard Webmaster Guidelines or push limits in their search for
links, as discussed earlier. The following pages will explore popular tactics.

7.1 Buying links for SEO: Link buying is a popular spam technique with advantages
such as easy content quality and anchor text. Google's Webmaster Guidelines
prohibit buying links for SEO purposes, stating they should not be used for
increasing PageRank. There are three main methods for buying links: direct link
 advertising purchases, link brokers, and charitable donations. Direct link
advertising involves contacting sites to sell text link ads, while link brokers
identify sites selling links and reselling inventory. Charitable donations can be
found through related searches on sponsor sites. Some strategies involve
money in obtaining links, such as using consultants, PR firms, and link-building
firms.
7.2 Link farms/link networks: In the early days of search, publishers used link farms
and link networks to gain cheap links. Link farms are easy to detect due to lack
of redeeming value. Link networks are sophisticated but pose a high risk of
exposure to Google. Google algorithms can detect unnatural linking structures
like cliques.
7.3 Automated link dropping: Spam tactics involve bots crawling the web, leaving
comments with links, with 99% filtered and 10,000 links left, risky as search
engines may detect or competitors may recognize it.
7.4 Spammy giveaways: Widgets can be used in link-building campaigns, but they
can be abused. One common tactic is embedding a JavaScript-based link in
NoScript tags, causing search engines to see the link instead of the widget,
leading to site loss.
7.5 NoFollow uses and scams: NoFollow is a spam filter used to prevent spammers
from flooding forums and blogs with useless comments. However, it has been
used in scams like link swaps. Google changed its handling in June 2009 to
prevent link juice loss..

Choosing the Right Link-Building Strategy

Successful link-building strategies require thorough research and methodical planning.

Poor choices can result in poor returns on investment. Choose the tactic that provides
the best long-term value and consider available resources and scalability. A campaign
targeting a single keyword or a smaller number of pages is crucial for success.

1. Outline of a Process

The process of selecting the optimal link-building strategy is complex due to the
numerous options available, but a methodical approach can help determine the best
options.

1.1 Identify types of sites that might link to a site like yours: Target sites
include noncompeting sites, major media sites, blogs, university and college sites,
government sites, competitors' links, and related hobbyist sites. Consider why
these sites link to you and create compelling content for your target groups.
1.2 Find out where your competitors get links: To gain detailed information on
who links to your competitors, use tools like Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, or
Link Research Tools. Look at their most powerful links, such as PageRank or
mozRank/mozTrust, to identify opportunities for your site. Contacting websites that
link to your competitors may result in getting links from 10% of the people you
contact. The key focus is to extract data from competitors' backlinks to decide on
your overall link-building strategy. Expand on this by looking at "similar pages" to
 top-ranked sites in keyword markets and using related:domaintocheck.com queries
to get information on other domains worth investigating.
1.3 Review your website assets: To attract potential linkers, review your site's
content and add unique, differentiated content. High-value potential linkers will
focus on unique new content and tools, rather than rewriting others' articles.
Content that leverages the publisher's expertise and presents new insights will be
more successful in link-building. Consider your content plan in a business case
format, comparing the cost of creating new content with the potential results of
other link-building opportunities. Develop a roadmap to determine the cost and
value of each group of linkers, narrowing down the list to high-value, very-high-
value, and low-value campaigns based on cost versus return metrics.
1.4 Identify any strategic limitations: The next step is to outline any limitations
you may need to place on the campaigns. For example, if you have a very
conservative brand, you may not want to engage in social media campaigns
through Digg (which does not have a conservative audience).
1.5 Identify methods for contacting potential linkers: To inform potential
linkers about your site, you can use direct and indirect methods. Direct methods
include email, social media, blogger networking, phone calls, and attending
conferences. Indirect methods include social media campaigns, PR, news feeds,
and speaking at conferences.

2. Link-Building Process Summary

Starting a successful link-building campaign can be challenging but high-returning.

Avoid chasing the first plan, as it can negatively impact results. Link building is a form
of marketing, and well-designed campaigns can offer branding and link-building
opportunities. Blendtec's video campaign showcases this, with over 32,000 natural
links from other sites.

3. Putting It All Together

The final step involves combining various factors to create an integrated strategy,
focusing on content strategy and link-building targets, ensuring a comprehensive
strategic picture.

3.1 Execute aggressively: A successful link-building campaign requires a significant

effort, resource allocation, and persistence. Despite challenges, aggressive execution
can gain an edge over competitors. If competitors also focus heavily on link building,
pushing hard is crucial to avoid losing search engine traffic.

3.2 Conduct regular strategic reviews: Link-building strategies should evolve with
business progress, learning from new ideas and incorporating new ones. Publishers
should have a constant stream of ideas to maintain their link-building plans, ensuring
continuous improvement.

3.3 Create a link-building culture: Publishers should train employees about their
link-building plan, goals, and benefits, fostering creativity and generating ideas. The
quality of a link-building campaign directly correlates with the quality of the ideas
driving it.
3.4 Never stop: Link building is crucial for businesses' success in today's search
engine-driven culture. Inbound links significantly impact a site's fate. Successful link-
building campaigns can lead to success, but competitors can continue to push.
Publishers who succeed must fight to stay ahead, while those should not strive for
success.

Approaches to Content-based link acquisition

1. A Closer Look at Content Syndication

Content syndication involves publishing content on another site, with the author
receiving a link back to their site. This is a legitimate strategy in search engine eyes,
as the site endorses the content. It's important to avoid duplicate content and to
rewrite articles from scratch. Custom-tailored content can maximize chances of
acceptance. Article directories have limited value, and focusing on high-value targets
like regional newspapers can provide higher-quality links and potentially lead to other
sites linking to the author.

2. Leveraging User-Generated Content

To encourage users to contribute content to your site, consider opening forums or

allowing comments, launching a blog, inviting third-party contributors, or selectively
inviting content. Ensure the method for content contribution is open, strictly
controlled, or somewhere in between. Engaging discussions can attract links, as seen
with Search Engine Roundtable and WebmasterWorld Forums. Third-party authorship
can result in links, as people have pride in their content and want to show it off.

3. Creating Link Bait/Viral Content

Link bait involves creating compelling content for link acquisition, such as
controversial, funny, or emotional content, to elicit strong emotional reactions and
attract more links.
3.1 Coming up with link bait ideas

To generate link bait content, follow a four-step process: write down all ideas, break
them down into Concept and Content components, evaluate the content, and mix and
match it with the Concept list. This will help optimize effectiveness, reach, and novelty
to your intended audience. By following this process, you can turn any random idea
into link bait.
3.2 How far should you go with link bait?

Lifeinsure.com, a life insurance company, used a controversial article to attract links

and maintain a page 1 ranking for life insurance. The article, "The 19 Things You
Probably Don't Know About Death," was a hit with the Digg community and gained
traction with bloggers and social bookmarkers. However, Lifeinsure's high ranking
may have been due to the article not being integrated into the site or other factors.
Link bait can take various forms, including top 10 lists, humorous videos, checklists,
and quizzes. Companies should consider these activities as an investment that
generates links, as seen with Second Chance Trees, a charitable initiative.
3.3 Encourage link bait to spread virally
Link bait distribution can be expanded by sharing a funny video clip via email,
allowing people to identify the creator and visit your site. However, hosting the video
on video-sharing sites like YouTube may result in links to YouTube, potentially
hindering your brand presence.

Incentive-Based Link Marketing

Incentives for link backs can be effective, but they are risky and indistinguishable from
direct link purchases. However, certain tactics like badges or recognition levels can
maintain editorial value, as discussed in "Leveraging User-Generated Content."

1. Helping Other Sites Boost Their Value

Linking to your site can enhance its value, especially if it's a respected authority in
your space. Consider awarding top 10 sites with badges and links to reviews on your
site. Certifications like Google's badges for AdWords Qualified Professionals and
Companies can also be effective.

2. Offering Customer Discounts/Incentives

Publishers can offer discounts to visitors from specific websites by linking back to the
publisher's site. However, Google views this as questionable, as Matt Cutts stated that
Google does not value such links.

How Search Engines Fight Link Spam

1. Algorithmic Approaches to Fighting Link Spam

Search engines use algorithms to detect and act on link spam, which can be
categorized into several types. These include links labelled as advertisements,
sitewide links, links sold by link brokers, selling sites that provide information on how
to buy text link ads, relevance of your link, quality of neighbouring links, and location
outside main content.

Some potential pitfalls include competitors reporting your site for buying links or for
other reasons, sites you bought links from for selling links, disgruntled employees
leaving your company or the broker and reporting your site, and search engine
employees conducting manual human reviews of your site.

To avoid these pitfalls, it is essential to be logged in to a Google account and use

Google's authenticated paid links reporting form. This form allows users to report sites
that are selling links or for other reasons, ensuring that they are not misrepresented in
the search engine's system. Additionally, it is crucial to be aware of the potential
consequences of reporting your site to avoid further damage to your reputation.

2. Other Search Engine Courses of Action

Google's policy involves punishing sites that sell text links by removing their ability to
pass link juice. This is a first step, followed by a closer look at the selling and
purchasing sites for spammy behavior. Google has also altered a site's visible
PageRank if it believes a site is selling links. If a large percentage of a site's links are
disabled, it could significantly impact rankings.
Tracking Web Site Activity

The principle "You can't manage what you don't measure" is crucial for web site
management. It's essential to know if your site is losing or gaining traffic, visitors are
leaving, or if people are calling, emailing, or buying. Computers are good at counting,
so all sites need traffic and sales statistics. Unless your site is large, focus on a few
key statistics. Ask your developer or web host about available statistical packages and
review them to find the best fit for your needs. Sales analytics, often bundled with
storebuilder or shopping cart software, should also be considered.

Information resources for Web Analysis: Emetrics.org, WebTrends, Google Analytics,

Web Analytics Association, WebSideStory, WebTrends.

Free statistical packages: AccessWatch, AddFreeStats, Analog and Report Magic,

AWStats, Google Analytics, StatCounter, Webalizer.

Identifying What Parameters to Measure

Key performance indicators (KPI) vary slightly for each business and website. For lead
generation and retail sites, conversion rate is the most important statistic, while
requests for quote are more important for B2B lead generation sites. It's crucial to
measure conversion rate and ignore hits, which are small files downloaded as part of a
web page. Monitor the statistics that best support your needs.

1. Which statistics to fret over

Key parameters for tracking website traffic include visits, unique visitors, page views,
URLs viewed, referrers, search engines, and conversion rate. These metrics provide
valuable information for businesses, allowing them to assess their success and adjust
their strategies accordingly. Monitoring statistics monthly or quarterly is usually
sufficient, but can be increased based on the site's size and marketing activities. Most
statistical packages allow for administrative settings to change default values for
certain statistics, allowing for more detailed analysis. By tracking these parameters,
businesses can better understand their website's performance and improve their
marketing strategies.

2. Which statistics to scan casually

Web analytics can provide valuable insights into a website's performance, including
time of day, day of week, browsers, OS, length of visit, search strings, countries, hosts
or sites, entry pages, and exit pages. These statistics can help in making informed
decisions about marketing programs, site development, and newsletter timing.
However, it is important to use relative numbers instead of absolute numbers to
understand traffic growth, and conversion rates. Some free stat software packages
may display only 12 consecutive months of data, which can be a limitation for
retailers. To avoid this, download and back up statistics for comparison and use
spreadsheet software for graphical displays. Developers should also review statistics
like bandwidth and HTTP status codes periodically.

3. Special statistical needs

For large sites with heavy traffic or extensive reporting needs, paid statistical
programs can be more effective than free ones. These packages come in two
categories: installed software and hosted solutions. High-end solutions offer real-time
analysis, visual displays, path-through-site analysis, funnel displays, conversion funnel
analysis, and more. However, it's important to stop collecting information for
information's sake and focus on making essential business decisions based on
industry averages and trends.

Paid statistical packages: 123Log Analyzer, ClickTracks, Coremetrics,

DeepMetrixLiveSTATS, Index Tools, Log Rover, Omniture, OneStat.com.

Interpreting Sales Statistics

 Online businesses face the challenge of analyzing traffic stats, similar to brick-
and-mortar shops.
 Pure-play online businesses need software supplied with their storefront
package or custom-developed by their programmer.
 Store statistics are critical for businesses expecting significant sales on a
catalog of more than a few products.
 Key statistics to watch for include internal store reports, sales reports broken
down by products, average dollar amount, and number of sales.
 Order totals should be requested for a specific period of time.
 Sales sorted by day should be available to track sales tied to promotions,
marketing activities, and sale announcements.
 Statistics on the use of promotion codes should be collected to determine which
promotions are most successful.
 Special shopping features should be monitored for items sold and those on
reserve.
 Sales sorted by customers can be useful for future, personalized
correspondence and to see how many repeat versus new customers you have.
 Understanding the shopping cart abandonment rate is crucial to make
merchandising changes.
 If an integrated storebuilder solution is not used, users often enter a completely
different website when they link to shopping online.

Diagnosing Conversion Rate Troubles

Poor conversion rate is crucial for a website's success, affecting the site's traffic and
sales cycle. Addressing audience, website, or business fundamentals can improve
conversion rates.

1. Is the conversion problem with the audience?

If traffic to a site is low but conversion rates and repeat visitors are low, it may be the
wrong audience. Check pages per visit and time on site for the right audience. Check
referrers, search engines, search terms, and entry pages. Define your target audience
and segment it for better success. Run ads and ensure landing pages are targeted and
focused. If these don't work, the site might be the issue.

2. Is the conversion problem with the Web site itself?

Website problems can arise from various sources, such as high page visits and time
spent on the site. To identify issues, compare entry and exit pages, check HTTP error
codes, and ensure the site is designed for the user's browser, OS, monitor, and access
speed. Ensure links work, no orphan pages exist, and the site meets user expectations
for speed and ease of use. Observe new users and check the onsite search function to
identify navigation, content, or product issues. Address these concerns to improve
user experience.

3. Is the conversion problem with business fundamentals?

Inkspress, a family-owned B2B promotional products company in Wichita, Kansas, has

seen its revenues grow by 30 percent since going online in 2003. The company used
web analytics to optimize their marketing strategy, focusing on key performance
indicators such as search terms, page visits, and new visitors. The company used
these statistics to tweak their site regularly, resulting in Inkspress being voted the #1
website by the Promotional Products Association International. Other factors to
consider include having enough merchandise, positioning against competitors, having
a clear value proposition, meeting expectations, reaching people at the right point in
the sales cycle, reaching the right decision-maker, and integrating sales efforts with
web marketing for follow-through.