Best place to start link building
-
I am new to SEO and want to start doing some link building using SEO moz to help. I am looking for pointers on where to start. Our business is www.hairbowcenter.com and we sell ribbon and hairbow supplies. We are lacking a lot of good links and I wanted to start focusing getting more. What tools should I use and where do I begin. I noticed our Pagerank is only 1 for our site and I want to get that up as well.
-
Are directories still a relevant way to start with link building after the latest google changes?
-
I usually don't use shortcuts when I research Mommy Blogs. The quality ones get a ton of requests for reviews and giveaways. You have to find a way to stick out from the bunch. I usually read a handful of posts and the "About Me" page before sending an email. That way I can personalize it, and possibly even find a good pitch (ie - if they do a product of the week, etc). Most good Mommy Blogs have a page devoted to PR or you can just use their contact form.
I haven't used them so I can't vouch personally, but http://momsparkmedia.com/ might be a good option for you. Looks like they act as a liaison between bloggers and companies.
I hope that helps!
-
Can you recommend some sites that you contract mommy bloggers from? It seems like from sites like this http://goo.gl/tJFSG, you cant easily find the contact info to ask for a review, and also seems inefficient to keep asking one by one.
Is there something like payperpost.com, specifically more for mommy bloggers, that has good quality blogs?
Thanks for your help
-
As mentioned above spreadsheets are the way forward or a simple word processor page. Adding all the information such as email contacts etc
Another good one is to check out whois information on sites and be like "a dog with a bone" be persistent day in day out and make sure you get in touch with the webmasters. Skype is a good tool to initiate conversations also.
-
I agree with the Twitter follow suggestion, but don't consider it even "a little grey hat."
My team and I have been able to get about one in five people we follow to follow us back. And we've seen more than a few convert into valued customers.
The best strategy is to be both selective and transparent. Don't go on a blitz where you follow hundreds of people from a few sources on a single day. Be very targeted. Follow people slowly and incrementally, after first providing something of value on your own Twitter feed....and jumping into discussions where you can provide expertise.
Too many people go on fishing expeditions in which they randomly follow people from targeted Twitter feeds. The targets may click over to your Twitter feed out of curiosity, but be turned off by one marketing message after another, but no real content. Or they may follow you -- and then have nothing more to do with you ever again.
-
As has been mentioned - links pointing to you need to be relevant and related. The place to start is look in depth at your competitors. Ascertain who they are - and see who links to them. If you can gain links from the same places that are relevant and regarded as authorities, and leave out their spammy links it will give you a good start.
Once you have found your competitors - read this post on using googles custom search engine for potential link mining here on SEOmoz, and delve into the world of search parameters to get your search for potential links on target.
When you are seeking links - avoid specifically going for just links to your home page - link diversity is key. If you are approaching an authority site about a specific product and you have a guide on how to use it or positive reviews on it, ask for a link to the deep page to ensure the relevancy is there.
-
You've received some good advice above and there's only one suggestion I would make. Although, I'm not a huge social networking fan I do think that Twitter can be a very useful tool. Although a little grey hat, the strategy is to follow users who you would like to follow you. A fair percentage will follow back. Then, mention them in your tweets, which they usually appreciate, followed by any other means of building a relationship. Once you have some sort of rapport opportunities can arise for back links.
-
I have a feeling you would do well with Mommy bloggers. Offer a giveaway to their readers or send them product for review. It's an excellent way to get exposure and links back.
Not sure where to start? I suggest finding those sites that rank well for the keywords you want and see who links to them. You may find a lot of great opportunities there.
-
Before you even start on trying to get links for the website, just ask yourself why others would link to you. You are an e-commerce website and it makes it even more difficult to get quality natural links - so being creative is important here - think of different strategies you can pursue so it makes your content more "linkable".
Could you provide any free tools or widgets that your readers might find useful? For a real estate guy, a free mortgage calculator might work well.
You could run a contest targeted towards women audience - have viral impact by social sharing - this usually ends up with several links from "mom blogs" and other portals.
As James suggested, go for Directories - those are easy links - but make sure they are thematic and relevant. There are very few general directories of value.
-
A good way to go about this is to create a spreadsheet, find niche related resources that you could possibly get a link on. Directories, Blogs, Related Websites, Guest Post Areas, etc. Organize them, than once you have a good list built, go after the links using common practices, calling, emails, social areas like Facebook and Twitter.
Once you've gone through the list you've created, target a new area in your link building campaign, and start the process over. Just keeps things a bit more organized
-
Dont worry about PageRank is is not a solid measurement of ranking anymore. In the first place you need to do up a plan of what you want to rank for as though you say you are looking for good links you are not clear as to what exact keywords you want to rank for. Look in the SEOMoz training under keyword research for some good tools on how to do this. Then I would as James suggest below start some organic and slow link building building over time.
Along with the tools here the simplest of tools is an excel spreadsheet where you build up a list of those keywords (start with the long tail ones mentioned on the page). Then go out an research what sites are speaking about this blogs, business sites. Build real relationships, work your social media strategy and over time you will get links - not lots of links but good links -
Your aim should be to be the authority in this area but in the first place work on above and even read the rest of this training page.
-
Hi,
Here are some ideas to get you started
1. Look for related directories online where you can submit your business.
2. Type in your related business keywords, then look at which competitors are ranking for these terms then go to OSE and research the links the competitors have built, you can pull a report.
3. Possibly start a blog and get fresh content related to the business on the blog each week, then syndicate the content via social media.
4. If you have social media channels for the business, start link building via them you can build links via Twitter, Stumble upon, Delicious and a host of other social website.
5. Think to yourself do you have any suppliers who you currently use, ask if they want to link to you or want to add a badge to their website which is for your business for example a partner of your website.
For further ideas here is a fantastic post:
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
-
What is the best way to increase the DA and PA of website?
Hello, I hope everybody is fine. I am looking for a right way to increase the DA and PA of the website and its webpage. I have a lesco duplicate bill info related webpage which I want to increase the PA. Kindly guys guide me the legit way of increasing the Page Authority. Thanks
Moz Pro | | rankvizguru1 -
Does Keyword Tracker rank eBay links as weaker competition than they actually are?
This might be a confusing question but hopefully I can explain it well enough and someone is able to understand where I am coming from. I have used the Keyword Analysis Tool to search the keyword "alice in wonderland fancy dress", the results come back saying that the competition for this keyword is 24%, which I consider to be pretty low. When I look at the Page Authority, Page Linking, Domain Authority and Domain Linking of each site which rank in the top 10 for this keyword I see that places 4 - 7 are taken by eBay links. I then look at the bottom three places (8 - 10) and although their Page Authority and Page Linking is not very high, their Domain Authority and Domain Linking is reasonable. Based on the results I have seen for other keyword, who's overall competition % was higher than 24%, I thought to myself that these bottom three links were actually quite strong, which made me ask the question "why has this keyword got a competition % as low as 24%?". I then wonder whether it was because the Keyword Analysis Tool ranks the eBay links as weaker competition than they actually are? My question to you guys: Does Keyword Tracker rank eBay links as weaker competition than they actually are? Or can anyone explain why the competition % for this keyword is so low but the bottom three links are actually relatively strong? And how do the eBay links rank higher than these bottom three links? Yes the eBay links are relative to the keyword but these eBay links are ranking higher solely on the fact that the Domain Authority is so high and have very little SEO in relation to the keyword, does Google not recognise that the bottom three websites would be more beneficial to customers than the eBay links? And if the eBay links are ranking so high solely on the fact that the Domain Authority is so high then shouldn't they be in the top 10 for almost every product related keyword? Thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | conor10050 -
How to find the authorities site to link from
Hi It seems getting quality authority backlinks is the main priority to success in your SEO which is also most difficult task as well . How do you find these authority sites that allows you to backlink from them? is there any tools to find good quality sites for backlinks? Thanks
Moz Pro | | Matt-kind0 -
How can I recognize spammy links that harm my website
Hello, Can someone tell me how I can recognize links that can harm my website? I have OpenSiteExplorer and CognitiveSEO as tools to create nice backlinking reports for me. But my problem is, how do I know if a link shown on these reports can harm my website so I can remove them? Is it linktypes, low auth. links etc? Thank you for your answers in advance! Regards, Thomas
Moz Pro | | ThomasH0 -
How often does the competitive link checker get updated?
I just found a link in the competitive link checker that links to a couple of my competitors. The checker says that i do not have a link on that page, but there is one.. i recently (last week) obtained that link. So that raises the question: how many times is the competitive link checker updated? kind regards
Moz Pro | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Why is the linking root domains count not increasing
For the last month I have been tracking my backlinks thru open site explorer. Over the same period I have gone on a minor link building exercise via social media, some directories as well as writing fresh new content for the site. However, my backlink count has increased in the Rank Tracker tool but my root linking domains have remain at the same level. Is there a lag or is this because some of these site are not in the open site index? To be specific - I have personally setup follow links from sites like tumblr, posterous, stumbleUpon, delicious and other like these. Would really like to understand the limitations so I can take the appropriate action. Thanks
Moz Pro | | versinge0 -
Latest OSE Update - Strange Numbers and Links
Hey everyone. I just checked our website in OSE with the latest update and noticed some strange numbers. The number of linking domains skyrocketed from 300 to 785 which definitely caught me off guard. Like all good SEOers I work hard to get links, but in a typical month I usually get between 40 and 50. To suddenly jump up by over 300 seems odd. Digging deeper, I noticed that some of the incoming link domains could be considered less than trustworthy (pages filled with links), while others I couldn't find at all on the page in question. I also never ever asked for any of these links, nor did anyone on my team. Should I be worried? I've heard of websites who purposely gain bad links to their competitors in order to penalize them. Is there an easy way to find out if this is going on? Could this possibly be a problem with OSE and just reporting non-existant links? Thanks for your feedback! Andrew BTW, the website in question is www.gooverseas.com
Moz Pro | | dunklea0 -
Best Practices for having Social Profiles indexed
There has been a lot of talk lately around social profiles potentially improving your brand as well as search. What I'd like to know is the best practices for getting those social profiles crawled and indexed so they actually provide a good link to my site. I'm also wondering what the difference between what Linkscape sees and what Google sees and when I'm looking at Open Site Explorer's rankings on one of those social profiles how can I be sure that Google sees it the same way. I ask this because a lot of these profiles are not well internally linked to. An example is about.me, it's a potentially great link, but it's essentially an island, and even after dropping a couple Twitter links to my profile, Open Site Explorer shows and Page Authority of 1, and it's not even indexed with Google. What I did last night was put a link to my about.me, flickr and wedding wire in my Connect menu drop down on my site to get that crawled hopefully soon. Are there other methods of getting those crawled and indexed so it starts passing some juice?
Moz Pro | | WilliamBay
What do you guys do?0