Has anyone ever shared a list of all their backlink sources?
-
I am currently in the research stage of finding more sites that I will be able to do things such as submit infographics, guest post, or get easy backlinks that are legit. I feel out of options, as I have already built links with a lot of sites but feel like I need more. Has anyone ever seen someone actually sharing all of their hard work by providing a list of all the sites that worked for them? Or does there come a point when really your only option left is to guest post or be a HARO source? I have been doing those things all along--I'm not just looking for easy, lazy links! Is there anyone who's gotten a site up to a high PR score who's felt out of options, like they've already done all they know how to do? I'd like your opinions. I know it seems like an outrageous question to ask, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I'd be willing to share sources too; I'm not just trying to mooch off people!
-
There are good and bad things about it. It is very well-researched and pretty complete. Whoever made it put clearly put countless hours of work into it. On the downside, it needs some serious maintenance. SOOOOOO many of the links are outdated or completely dead. Others seem irrelevant. I.E. The Huffington post is one of the things listed--how are you supposed to get a link from them? Also, a lot of the sites are listed as giving followed links when they're really nofollow, and pagerank is pretty much wrong for the majority of them.
My advice would be if you could buy it with your clients money, go for it. If you have to use your own . . . meh.
-
Hi Marissa, I see its been a while since you bought the $27 link building source, I would love to get an update on whether you think it was worth the money. Did you get any higher rankings as a result of any of those links at all?
-
I think I'm seeing the results of this in action! We just moved up to number 3 and outranked two of our competitors who we're putting backlinks all over blog networks. These competitors were previously outranking us. It's nice to actually see some payoff for doing things the right way. it's so rare!
-
Good! That's what all my competitors are doing to outrank me, and what I refuse to do! And I think I can see some evidence of this, because I was an idiot and used a link-building company for one of my sites and I found that's how they got most of the links, and interestingly enough, that site's rankings have gone down.
-
Just a heads up - there's chatter across the SEO industry that Google has been targeting (penalizing) blog networks the past couple of weeks and may be getting more aggressive. So, be careful out there.
-
I tried many of them. A lot were no longer in existence, changed to nofollow, or made no sense how you could get a link--ie, Huffington Post. I think it needs some updating, but overall it is a good tool.
-
so did it work for you. Did you end up submitting to a number of those sites and getting quality backlinks? Did any of your keywords go up higher on Google?
-
I do understand - when you don't control the budget AND your competitors seem to be getting away with every trick in the book, it is frustrating. It's tough when you believe white-hat really works and also realize Google rewards too much bad behavior at the same time.
-
I agree with everything you said, and I don't think you were accusing me of being lazy; I was just concerned I was coming off that way. SEO is an uphill battle as it is, but it's even worse when you work in-house for people who don't understand its value. And even worse when no matter how hard you try, you fall in rankings because your competitors are employing shady black hat tactics.Both are things I am grappling with.
-
Sorry - I didn't mean to sound like I think you're lazy or creating low-quality content. It's just that I see this stage as a natural evolution in a site's success, and a critical decision point. When the low-hanging fruit is gone, you have to start climbing, and that's going to take some more effort.
I just want to say that every big blog started off as a small blog. Granted, if I post on SEOmoz, I get a lot more attention than other places, but SEOmoz started as Rand's blog and built up over years. My own company blog has about 1,000 subscribers (not SEOmoz's 100K), but I've had some major content marketing success over the years, and some of those still generate traffic/links 2-3 years after they were written.
In most cases, those successes not only took an investment in the content (I estimate about 20-30 hours for a really good piece of content), but it took pounding the pavement. I had to build relationships online, find my audience, and generally promote myself and my content. That goes well beyond just posting on FB/Twitter. You have to seek out the people who are the right audience for that content, even if it's one by one at first. It's tough, but once you've built that base of relationships, they'll keep paying dividends.
-
I don't want to sound lazy; after all, I blog three times a week and do guest posts. My problem isn't that I don't come up with fresh content; it's that nobody cares when I do. The content strategy is great if you get loads of traffic on your site and people who want to share it. I could come up with the coolest piece of content ever. It doesn't do me any good if no one sees it. I could post it on Facebook. We have 400 fans--probably 40-50 will see it. Out of those 50 one or none will 'like' it. Same goes for Twitter. Content marketing is great if you're a large company. Don't get me wrong, I do it all the time--I just never see pay-off. But I'm not giving up!
-
I'd some point you have to start going for the harder links, and that really means content marketing, pushing social forward, and building industry relationships. The lists and competitive analysis will get you most of the low-hanging fruit, but then you do hit that wall.
Personally, I find I never run out of sources with content marketing. There are always new people to discover your work. The great thing about content marketing and building strong social profiles is that they're self-perpetuating. I've got posts that are 2-3 years old and still get new links, without me doing any additional work. It's more work up front, but it pays off by 10X-100X in the long run, IMO.
-
Hi Marisa,
yes I know what u mean hope linkbuilderstoolkit.com that Vahe suggested helps you!Harry
-
Well, I just bought it regardless. It turned out to be exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks!
-
Wow, that's a really awesome website! i cannot believe they have no social shares!
-
I just purchased it out of sheer curiosity, I'm sure you may find some gems, but if you've exhausted your list - you've more than likely run into most of these sites. Still may be worth a look, for $27 this is a good list to start with and at least it's organized.
Also check out: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
-
Thanks! This link builder toolkit thing looks like a scam site. Is it actually good?
-
Hey Marissa, Try this http://www.seomoz.org/directories and this http://www.linkbuilderstoolkit.com/ . Removing all the dead and irrelevant sites I think you can get atleast 400 various sites. Should be a good start. In addition to OSE and Majestic (moreso for competitor backlinks), I would also suggest for you to: 1. Export linking domains list from your clients from their Google & Webmaster Tools Account. You would then need to filter it out. 2. Most importantly using advanced search queries and finding quality sites in search try http://tools.buzzstream.com/link-building-query-generator or citation labs ( a link scraper). Trust me it's never easy, but once you build your database, u'll be sweet. Hope this helps, Vahe
-
Well, I use Open Site Explorer and similar tools, but with some of the results, just because a competitor had a link from a certain site, doesn't mean I'll be able to get one. A lot of the time, it is one of their clients mentioning they did business with them. A lot of the others are paid links and stupid, low quality directories. I am struggling with the fact that all my competitors are all employing black-hat, spammy link acquisition methods, and here I'm trying to do everything the right way, which takes forever with so little payoff. I could spend three hours for one guest blog backlink. Not to mention I keep dropping in the SERPs while they keep rising.
-
Hi Marisa,
are u using tools 4 Link research?If u want send me a mail put in your 5 hardest competitors and I will send u most of there backlinks unsing our Linkreserch tool
Harry
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlinking and Redirect links
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links?which one is better to rank a website? i am looking for the help for one of my website lottery
Link Building | | murataft0 -
A lot of backlinks from outside of niche – bad?
We have received a lot of backlinks over the years by users putting links on their websites to their home pages on our site, eg: our.domain/user1 our.domain/user2 … our.domain/user100000 There are 10’s of thousands of these backlinks, all natural, but many of them come from blogs that are completely outside of our niche. Only a small percentage of our backlinks 1% to 5% could actually be coming from pages related to our niche, the other 95%+ could be users just linking to their home pages. Could this really hurt us..? We have 1000’s of backlinks related to our niche, yet we’ve noticed that some competitors with less than 50 backlinks can outrank us for certain keywords.. Also related, we’ve noticed these user links popping up on a lot of spammy sites, directories, etc. We didn’t create them but we’re disavowing them now to be safe. So this could also be hitting our rankings.
Link Building | | dsumter0 -
NoFollow & Directory Scraper Backlinks
I was wondering how important it was to remove/disavow: NoFollow backlinks - many ("buy viagra" etc). Directory backlinks - many questionable/generic directories. Obviously the focus is the equity passing links but both of the above constitute a significant proportion of backlinks to the site - I've seen that "scrapers" are seen as natural and obviously NoFollow do not pass link juice - but does the sheer number have a bearing and therefore make them equally important to address? Thanks in advance for your responses. Regards
Link Building | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Backlinks through dofollow commenting
I'm interested in building backlinks to my photography business site by leaving good, engaging comments on other photographers' DoFollow blogs. Is this a good idea? Is it worth the effort? Through a little research, I've managed to locate more than 40 dofollow photographer blogs that have a domain authority of 35+. The idea is to take an hour or so a week to leave 10-20 comments on their blog posts. Would you consider this a good strategy? I rank on the first and second page of most of my keywords that I'm working on, but I want to rank 1st or 2nd on them. I used the keyword finder tool on google adwords to find the keywords that are the most searched for in my area. Surprisingly the competition is not large, so I'm fairly comfident I can get there. I've already optimized my site substantially and I'm looking into link building. Thoughts?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
Is there a difference between .com backlinks and .co.uk?
(We are a UK based business) I am currently looking for sites for guest posting opportunities and I am not sure whether I should prioritize .co.uk sites or go for .com sites. Does it matter? Is more weight given to .co.uk sites if you are based in the UK?
Link Building | | JamesG0750 -
Why is this link from a .edu source not being counted?
The site in question is: http://Ellenensher.com We are wondering why a powerful edu link is not being counted in opensiteexplorer. Is it not being indexed? Or is it some other issue? It shows up in webmaster tools and is a PR 5 link. Let us know if you have any ideas on this issue! http://cba.lmu.edu/facultyresearch/meetthefaculty/ellenensherphd/ Thanks!
Link Building | | JamesBSEO0 -
To list in paid directory or not to list in a paid directory?
Can anyone give a yes or no as to whether paid directory listings are any use from an SEO perspective or is money better spent elsewhere? Thanks!
Link Building | | ebowdublin0 -
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
Forgive the newbie question, but now that I have found SeoMoz and OpenSiteExplorer, should I just piggy back on my competitors backlinks? What would be the downside? By way of explanation, I've never had the need to explore SEO before. Our site, Widgets.com has always ranked highly for all Widgets keywords because we have the keyword in our domain and our site has been around since 1998. But out of the blue this summer, a site, let's call them WidgetsCircus.com suddenly began outranking us on widgets keywords, and pretty much every keyword we can imagine in our little widget universe. Now that I have run OpenSiteExplorer, I can see how they've done it. They've pretty much spent the last year commenting on blog posts all over the place, editing wiki pages, etc., and built thousands of links for all these widget keywords. So, I'm wondering: why shouldn't I just go down the list of links and do exactly what they've done? Where they commented on a blog, why don't I just comment right along side them. Obviously, this has worked for them! Wouldn't it work for us too? Or is that too simple?
Link Building | | brianmcc0