Link building- Point us in the right direction
-
We are currently fixing crawl errors and other on page issues and have taken on board that 'content is king' and have invested a lot of time and resources into writing unique content on each of the several hundred pages on our ecommerce site (not just to avoid duplicate content but add researched content that will hopefully enhance the user experience and allow them to make the best choice of products) and earlier this year started blog writing regular content about updates, industry trends and current events e.g. Euro 2012 (all content relevant to our sector and/or products).
So we are actively working to improve our SEO (and also have regularly updated social media accounts with healthy number of followers) but the problem is link building as we work in a sector where the content isn't really all that exciting so getting link backs from sharing our written content is rare and also doing an infographic and/or guest blogs would not bring anything exciting.
So how do we go about building white hat links? The only thing I can see is maybe doing press release submissions but from research there is mixed feelings about this.
Any advice that could point us in the right direction would be appreciated.
-
In my experience small SEO agencies sometimes have a more personal approach. Maybe it's a good idea to invite 2-3 agencies and you begin straight away with your questions. I have found myself in the same spot with a company who didn't want to tell about their methods and 3-6 months later they went out of business because they bought old authoritative domains and transformed them into blog networks/linkwheels. Nowadays when we want to hire a certain company we go to smaller agencies and tell them we don't want bla bla but easy answers in normal language and feedback. Good luck with your business.
-
Yep you're totally right - we didn't go with them but while considering their proposal got thinking about what they would do differently to what we are already doing. Maybe in the near future we will approach a seo company ourselves and pose the questions in this thread but for now we're still confused. Thanks for all the help thus far.
-
Thanks for the advice. But like I commented below we will still be a long way away from catching up with other companies in the sector. We are tempted at times to sign up to a SEO agency but find it hard to understand what they would do additional to the quality content work we spend time doing already.
-
They probably have a big network of sites they can put on links I guess. I don't know your site and don't know the keyword so I don't have a good answer to your question. But if they didn't want to be specific on what they are doing different it probably isn't the partner you look for to do your SEO. In my opinion sharing knowledge and building good relationships with customers is key, ofcourse you won't tell all the secrets but if an agency can't help you by answering your questions then why would you hire them?
-
Have you tried looking at where these links to your competitors are coming from? It may be that whoever is linking to them may link to you with a little encouragement.
-
It's a good question. Google blabs non stop about natural links and ranks websites based on links (big part of ranking anyway), however how are those of us that can not get lots of natural BL's compete against those who have obviously bought thousands of links?
Google is very retarded at times as it seems to reward websites doing the wrong thing over the ones who are doing the right things.
When you find out, let me know.
-
P.s this question came about after a SEO company visited our offices looking to sign us up. We told the representative that using the (amazing!) help of seomoz tool we are sorting out onpage errors ourself and do regular content writing on blogs and regular differentiated posts on a range of social platforms. And the representative then offered to increase the ranking of one of our main keywords by us signing up to £XXX a month.
This is where we got confused- and maybe you guys can help us out (without giving away any industry secrets :p), we could not understand what the seo company would do different from what we were doing ourselves (and they wouldn't really go into detail either).
-
Thanks EGOL for the suggestions. Great points - this is exactly the sort of points we cover in our blogs.
The general frustration is that some websites in the industry have 5-10x more links than us (some even started business after us) and we are finding it hard to think of ways to increase our linkbuilding organically.
-
Thank you Pr0mosZ- we publish out all our fresh content to social media platforms and thanks for the article and the guest blog suggestion- I have looked into this before and was finding it hard to locate a good quality blog that allowed guest posting but will continue this search.
-
I don't know what niche you're in, but can you exploit the "real-life" relationships the business has? Are there opportunities to build links to suppliers, partners, customers, trade associations, sponsorship etc?
It's often overlooked, but where there's already a business relationship you may find it significantly easier to build meaningful authentic links than if you're starting from scratch.
-
I don't know what you are selling, but I would consider writing SuperExpert content about the products that you sell.
-
How to select the right one
-
How to use it
-
How to fix it
-
How to get the most out of it
-
Information about vintage products
When people write to you about your products a lot of those messages can be the starting point for a great article on your website.
I try to do the above at a level that is far superior to anything that the manufacturer does.
-
-
You could publish your content on social media platforms or try to write a guestpost on a blog which has a lot of authority within your branch. There's always something thats fun or interesting to read. Maybe write about 10 reasons why your products aren't boring or something like that.
Also read Hannah Smit's post about boring niches creating great content
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
-
Competitors black-hat link building?
Hi Mozzers, <a>http://www.alivenetwork.com/ </a>is a close competitor of ours. They're ranking far better than us even though many of our search metrics are the same...except one! links! To give you an idea, we've got a fairly large backlink profile for the industry with quality links.
Link Building | | ChimplyWebGroup
34,981 links from 276 Root Domains = about 127 links/domain. Alive Network has 1,692,256 links from 705 root domains = about 2400 links/domain. Surely that looks a bit black-hat right there? Is it just a matter of time until they're penalised? Perhaps they're just a bunch of domain-wide links? Thoughts would be appreciated.1 -
Link building for a non-linkable site?
Hello, I am trying to zone in on a link building strategy for a non-linkable site. What I mean by non-linkable is I have a construction site. It's a family owned and operated small business. Our clients are farmers and older people usually. We go do a job, do it right the first time, and leave. Basically even if a couple of people who link to me for some weird reason, this is no way in the realm of 6,000 that my main competition has. I have tried to get as many quality citation resources as possible by using get listed, and white spark. My domain authority is only 16 though, so I must be able to increase this somehow. I have listed with Google +, Bing, Yahoo and every other major citation I could find. So now with trying too increase links with other ideas. I read somewhere to donate to charitable organizations, but if they link back to me as a donor, in an unrelated field, isn't that spammy like? So a construction site donating to a disease website, and then getting a backlink in return, does that look weird. It just seems like there are so many rules that I do not want to mess something up. I do not want get spammy links, but not sure if citations count as links so I am doing a win-win thing? Thanks for any tips Chris
Link Building | | asbchris0 -
I want to design SEO link building strategy for my website? Is wordpress.com, squidoo, tumblr, blogger, typepad - Good option for link building?
I am currently concentrating on 8 keywords, for e.g (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H). I will be writing blogs with 2 of any related keywords present in it. I am thinking to post 5 blogs on 5 different platforms as (wordpress.com, Squidoo, Typepad, Tumblr, blogger) respectively. I am thinking a strategy as: Monday: Keyword A,B on Wordpress/ C,D on Squidoo/E,F on Typepad/G,H on Blogger/ A,C on Tumblr. Tuesday:C,D on Wordpress/E,F on Squidoo/ etc.... and will rotate these keywords through out the week and the cycle restarts on Monday. The URL for every keyword will be different and relevant to that keyword. I need quick suggestion on this topic..Please..
Link Building | | Christain0 -
Link building service - linkfool
Hi, quick question - has anyone ever used link building service called linkfool ? I was on another reputable seo information site and linkfool showed up, i checked it out and at the bottom site was an seomoz logo to insinuate partnership of some sort. Anyway , if anyone has used this service, was it worth the investment
Link Building | | movingeverywhere0 -
Should I build links to wordpress category pages?
Hi guys, I'm working on http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com and planto build links to the category pages - is that the best strategy for a comparison site like this? This is a wordpress site and I read that category pages should be no indexed is that the case? If so then obviously I'd be wasting my time building links to these pages as google wouldn't index them anyway. Any advice on the best strategy for link building would be much appreciated!
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Press Relases as Link Building is valid?
Dear Mates, We are looking for increase our Domain Authority, so we was submitting our site to BOW, Yahoo Directory and we want to know if Press Releases sites (paid press) are too good to do the inversion. What sites are recommended, we think could be very usefull build a list of the real top PR sites (Paid and Free) Thank you for your time
Link Building | | SharewarePros0 -
Link building without using trademarked names
If a particular brand's terms & conditions stated that you cannot use their trademarked names in your backlinking strategy, what are some good ways to rank higher for those names?
Link Building | | aidin30000 -
Link building for rankings VS Link building for relationships
A Big Shout To Everyone -- Good Morning and What's Up 🙂 As I read today through seomoz professional guide to link building and the section why link building matters and in addition to this a newsletter I received today that changed my whole thinking towards link building for rankings vs for relationships. It is already happening on social networks if you are active there, but what about on your website. What are your thoughts on the following ? Google's job is provide the most relevant results to surfers online, and looking the link profile of a site & the page itself is the key to determining which page to serve on plate to the surfers link query ! Webmasters Site Objective:
Link Building | | helpwanted
I think that we as webmasters have to ask ourselves what do we want to achieve with link building. To get quick traffic or build slow authority links, high rankings, lead generation, sales & other things here I may be missing etcccc Other Objective Networking & Relationship Building Alliances : What I discovered today is that building links for 1st page rankings are great and will provide me with steady traffic, but not all of it is targeted traffic, but what else can I do to bring targeted traffic and at the same time try to build alliances with other related non competing business owners online. The idea... is to apply old school networking / relationship building alliances to get targeted traffic to my site that can actually benefit from my services. How Do We Achieve This I become a editor for approving resource links for me site, only the best will be placed on my site as a resource. Build a valuable tightly themed categorized resource section with related non competing resources that can help my sites visitors find what they are looking for, send visitors to non competing resources that may purchase their services which helps me build a relationship with them, and may can with rankings as well, provided I am selective with my qualification process. Questions & Concerns Below : What should I be thinking about when creating a resource categorized links page How many outgoing do follow links should I allow from this links partner page How will this links resource page affect my own SE 1st Page Rankings and is it worth it based on getting targeted traffic Any pros / cons I may be missing here0