What is the best white hat seo link building strategy?
-
My goal is to build links that comply with Google's Quality Guidelines. I am wondering what is the best way to approach webmasters or bloggers about submitting guest posts or writing content. I have done a competitive analysis, and have a list of potential link sources, but I am not sure what approach to take next. Any advice or strategy would be appreciated.
-
Hey,
This is a hell of a question and in honesty, there is no 'best' strategy and the best strategy is the one (or many) that works for you and your business.
There are two main link building strategies from a pure performance in the search results perspective:
1. Manual Link Building
You actively seek links from sites that will allow you to link back to yourself. In this category we can have everything from article marketing and press releases through to guest blogging. Even the lowly directory can feature in this approach.
Some ideas that fall under this category
- topically relevant & local directories (that are high quality) - article marketing (squidoo) - press releases - infographic submission directories
Really, we are looking at places with little to no editorial control and that have a fairly low impact when it comes to moving the dial. You will also hit a wall with these approaches and whilst there is really no limit on how many articles you could submit to squidoo there is a limit on how much value they pass. (obviously, if your squidoo stuff is super awesome and gets tons of links it's better but really, if it was that good it should be on your own site).
This approach also does not scale awfully well so by all means, pick the low hanging fruit but don't expect it to be particularly sweet!
2. Content Based Link Building
Next up we have all the ways we can use content to build links and this includes various strategies (some of which we covered above but)
- guest posting (the fashionable one) - getting interviewed if possible - blogging - big content - infographics and directories - ebooks
Now, with content based stuff, we are seeking to identify useful and in demand content and hoping that it generates links. Well, it would be great if you could do that and it 'just worked' but the reality is that it takes time and effort to get to the point where your blog is in such demand that people are tripping over themselves to share and link to it (but you can get there).
There is no reason why you can't look at the easy options or even guest blogging but it is not a process you can scale very well and it can be a slow, painful process to build links in any volume whilst maintaining quality. To put this into perspective the textlinkbrokers people offer a high quality guest posting service - I have not tried this but it is like $800 a pop. Now, I don't know how many $800 links you want to buy but clearly, whilst there are other options, this is going to get pretty expensive pretty quickly.
My suggestion would be some kind of long term structured approach starting with a six month program. An approach that focused on identifying at least two to three pieces of big content that you can use to attract links and then using social media to help promote that content.
A process like this has been pretty well covered here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
It includes social outreach to build a network, identification of link targets, identification of influencers within your niche that you can use to help seed out your amazing content and techniques and strategies to help build relationships with the people you are asking to share your content and link to you.
This is not a paint-by-number approach, you are going to have to use some smarts to help identify valuable content but all the tools are out there.
Ultimately, I expect people to dive in with the usual content, content, content approach and that is right to a point. But what you really need is great content and a well established network of people that you are going to get to share your content and link to it. (think blogger buddies).
Point I am trying to make here is that any one 'strategy' is not going to win the war. You want diversity, you want scaleability and true content driven strategies like infographics + guest post on an established site, ebooks + guestpost on an established sites, ego bait, social outreach etc will help you take great content and give it the audience it deserves.
If you follow this kind of approach for six months or longer (try to think 2 year strategy if possible) and build up a great social network winning links can become easy. A client we work with who has gone through a similar process can pop a blog post out, promote it via the social channels, see a large number of retweets, likes etc and expect several links. A recent piece of content that hooked into halloween generated over 30 links from a single, fairly pedestrian piece of content.
Summing up
Really, you can't replicate this kind of scale or success by manually building links and you can't get to this point over night but if you hunker down and play the long term game, build a big social network, develop content people are actively seeking, blog and network with blogger buddies then long term you can get into a position where the external portion of the SEO should take care of itself!
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
I think you can write an introductory letter, showing your interest of why you want to be guest poster on their blogs. Also, introducing your business background and explain how you can also bring benefit to them.
In the end, you need to show that there will be a mutual relationship between you and them.
Make it as appealing (and honest) as possible
-
Hello,
I think that a great start is to to watch this great webinar by Rand
"Using Open Site Explorer to Uncover New Marketing Opportunities"
http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/using-open-site-explorer-to-uncover-new-marketing-opportunities
Here you will learn some tips for linkbuilding and how to use SEOMOZ available tools to be more productive inthe Linkbuilding process.
using-open-site-explorer-to-uncover-new-marketing-opportunities
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
-
About link building strategies and article publishing
Hi friends. What could be the best strategies for article publishing with links and anchor text. I did the next. I published original article in my website blog section and then next day published the same article in few news portals with links and anchor text to product landing pages. But google indexed only article from my blog. News portal in my country is with highest DA. Is it ok to do this way or better is make uncial article for every news portal and do not publish in own blog so there is no duplicates? I am afraid that doing my way is waste of time and money. Thanks for help.
Link Building | | netcomsia0 -
What should be the step after building links?
Hello, I regularly build links and save them in excel file. But I don't know what should I do after building them? Should I ping them? Share on social media or leave until they are not indexed? thanks
Link Building | | ksmith880 -
Is it time to pay for link building?
I've been using the Moz tools for a while now and love them. Our SEO efforts are certainly paying off as we're ranking well for a lot of our desired keywords. That being said, I'm finding link building to be a very frustrating process. As much as I like to be hands on and try to do everything, I'm wondering when it's time to "throw in the towel" and hire someone? Is there anyone else who might have gone through a similar evolution? I'd love to hear some other stories about how or why you decided to hire out your link building. I'd like to think that whatever we spend on link building could likely reduce our reliance on AdWords, although I'm not sure how this would really play out over time.
Link Building | | koalatm0 -
SEO Value Of Non-Indexed Links
I have a link built to a site, but it's not showing up in Open Site Explorer and doesn't appear to be indexed currently by Google. Does anyone know of any research done on SEO value if any on non-indexed links? Thanks
Link Building | | EmarketedTeam0 -
Which Link Strategy is Better: .edus or Blogs?
Suppose you only have enough resources to execute a strategy that will earn links from 100 .edu sites or a strategy will earn 100 blogs on your industry. Which would you choose?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Local service site link building
I have a local service site http://winecountrycarpet.com/ and I have been link building as much as possible for my landing pages (which aren't local to my city, but are within 20 miles). I would like to keep my link building as above board and white hat as possible (so i do a lot of forum sigs and links in do follow forum in my industry) I do not seem to be seeing any results though. My pages are on the first page for their targeted keywords, but I think this has more to do with onsite SEO and non competitive keywords. I am wondering if anyone can recommend any strategies that I might find more effective. I have thought about leaving blog comments on do follow blog's but it just seems so spammy its hard to imagine it working. I am open to any ideas.
Link Building | | ayetti0 -
Press Releases for seo links?
With panda etc is publishing Press Releases with prweb etc a strong seo method of getting good links form strong domains?
Link Building | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Good link building companies
I'm wondering if anyone has had good experiences with any of the link building companies out there. I'm really looking to hear about those companies who go beyond the mundane forum links, blog commenting, bulk directory submission, article directories etc. It's all been done to death. I've used webuildpages.com, they are pricey, but are good at getting high quailty links.
Link Building | | PeterM220