What are some of your best tips, strategies or resources for link building?
-
I currently work for a contract manufacturing company so when I think about building links it seems as if it's going to be a daunting task. Mainly because any kind of content that you can come up with is rather dry. When I go about searching for links I usually run into a lot of directories that charge anywhere between $25-$50 for a listing.
I've had a hard time convincing marketing that we should start a blog which may be a good way to build some links if we come up with quality posts but those posts may be few and far inbetween.
Does anybody have any recommendations for building links for this type of company or subject matter?
Also, and I'm sure we have all heard this. When I mentioned the fact that we should be building some quality links to the site marketing first asked why and then commented "Well that shouldn't take you too long". Why is it so difficult to get management to accept the fact that managing a website is an ongoing and constantly changing process that involves research and experimentation?
-
Gyi Tsakalakis
I actually went to management with three sites that ranked on page one of Google for our most important keyword and asked them to verify that the companies were our competition. Management countered me by printing out some pages from a competitor that they knew of but ranked no where near the top of Google. So I think they kind of missed the point of what I was trying to prove. So I've had some difficulty even getting off the ground.
-
That's a lot easier to make a connection than say a travel website... What, you don't want your hotel to associated with roaches?
-
They don't understand that top rankings in money SERPs are usually deliberately done and highly competitive. It's just like war!
-
Why is it so difficult to get management to accept the fact that managing a website is an ongoing and constantly changing process that involves research and experimentation?
+1 for competitive analysis. Show your client what their competitors are doing and what impact their efforts are having. In my experience, even if they don't quite "get it", they will be forced to acknowledge that their competitors are, and that can be enough to drive them to understand this. Especially when you can show changes over time.
-
You've got stuff on the blog about humanely dealing with pests, and about how pest control is better than exterminators... along with saying annihilation of the pests isn't what you want, so maybe...
http://arachnophiliac.info/burrow/how_to_get_rid_of_spiders.htm
Worth a try
-
Letting like minded link friendly people know that you have a site you'd like links for. Honestly, be direct and ask. I am pretty sure I could find you a link if I knew what site you wanted it to and as long as it's not a bad neighborhood.
This may not be the best place to try it but let's see... Can anyone here find a me a link for www.BlogPestControl.com?
Well if it doesn't work here try Twitter. Twitter is a great link building tool.... not Tweets but DMs. Feel free to DM me your website.
-
That PowerPoint presentation sounds like a good idea.
If you can include data about your competitors.... about how they have a ton of links, busy blogs, tons of content. etc. They have been investing in this stuff for at least ten years and you are playing catch-up.
Also let them know about SEOMoz and other training that you can attend. They are asking you to go out and fight the heavyweights in your SEO niche. Would they ask you to go into the ring with the boxing heavyweight champion without a lot of training, investment and preparation. They wouldn't. This isn't any different.
At the places I have worked I would have to be careful about getting the boss into a training session like this. It has to start out punching with vital information and stay that way to the end or he would get itchy. I think that it would be better to shoot for a short presentation that would put seeds in his mind and make him ask for more rather than try to get him for two hours. Just sayin' how things were were I used to work - your boss might be different.
-
Thanks for your response. I have been spending some of my own time gathering some data on our current rankings for some our most important keywords. I'm happy to say that some time that I've spent recently on some on page optimization have increased our rankings for some keyterms. But now it's time to push the site to page one of Google instead of page 2-3-4 or 5.
You hit the nail on the head regarding my current situation. A very small amount of my time is spent managing the website but I feel as if it should be a full time position. Instead of letting it sit and HOPE that people will visit and contact us, we need to spend more time climbing the ranking and then experimenting with landing pages to get visitors to convert.
Perhaps a power point presentation with graphs, historical rankings and suggestions and what to do moving forward is in order?
-
Why is it so difficult to get management to accept the fact that managing a website is an ongoing and constantly changing process that involves research and experimentation?
I think that a lot of people in your position have the additional job of educating other key people in the company about how search engines work. Without that they will think that all you have to do is tweak the pages and the rankings will rise. But, as you know, SEO is a "battle of resources" and those resources can include: content, links, social presence, education, allies, time and more. Since those resources all cost money then you have to educate them to get the allocation. If you don't do that then they will think that you are a failure at tweaking and hire someone else. So, this education is of jugular importance to your status at the company and your recommendations when you leave.
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
-
Best Software To Alert On Incoming Links?
Hi Guys, I've got most of the software I need for general link analysis, Moz/Majestic etc. But what I am lacking is software that would give me an update when one of my websites receives an incoming link? That is if there is such software available. All suggestions and help appreciated. Sam
Link Building | | Sandicliffe0 -
Content Marketing and Link Building Strategy in Industrial B2B
We struggle link building because engineering sector has few blogs and is much more traditional than many industries. I've just had a new idea on how to do this and wanted to bounce it off people to help refine it and improve it. Search LinkedIn for "content marketing" or similar Refine by Industry etc Ask people on resulting list to guest post on our blog - which is focused on engineers in our sector Then..... For us it boosts our blog content with high quality posts that are interesting for our audience and maybe some traffic benefit. For them it provides SEO benefits and possibly some market exposure. How can I parlay this into getting a link back as well? What else can I do to make it more effective? Cheers Denis
Link Building | | Zippy-Bungle1 -
Link building via Rafflecopter
I received an invite from a company to enter a contest for a chance to win a prize. The contest is run by Rafflecopter. Rafflecopter looks interesting because you can place the contest anywhere including social sites and your own website. Contestants can increase the chances of winning in various ways such as an FB like, tweet, etc. The largest number of points (for this particular contest) are awarded for linking from your website to their website. Given that the contestant must add the link to their website and the sponsoring company can not control whether they use nofollow, couldn't this contest approach to link building cause problems for SEO? If the contest included instructions to copy and paste the html with a nofollow, that would seem like a better solution, but the only guidance given was to link to their home page. Your thoughts? Best,
Link Building | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
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.
Link Building | | jannkuzel0 -
Link building for eCommerce
I have an engraving site where I am looking to increase traffic/ sales. We do local engraving services and sell engraved products via eCommerce. Perfectindesign.com It seems to me that locally I can't compete since most search terms are washed over with every local directory in and around the city that are selling there memberships. So I thought I could compete nationally via the 200 products we carry. I have used site explorer to go through my competitors links. My findings show that other then their twitter accounts and dmoz listing most everything else are paid links and lots of them. Keeping in mind I have 45 root domains with 411 links to my site. Three competitors links data. I probably shouldn't name them right? competitor #1 1k root with 13.9k links competitor # 2 147 root with 16k links competitor # 3 427 root with 28k Should I just start buying these links that range from $10-50 per link or is this a waste of time? Are these truly my competitors or am I comparing my tiny site to the major leagues?
Link Building | | YYV0 -
Link building for eCommerce website (Software Products)
Hi. We have two websites, where we develop extensions and templates for various CMS. Thats like , we have around 500+ specific products pages now and we have optimized each and every product page with natural SEO techniques. No over at all. Im very specific about it. But I want to know, how to make a link building plan for those sites. Can anyone help ?
Link Building | | mageclub0 -
Link Building & Juice
I have a corporate client which has multiple franchises, therefore microsites (www.example.com/cityname) within their corporate website(www.example.com). I am trying to build some links for these microsites that are lot weaker than the corporate web page in terms of PA. We worked hard putting most of these locations into local directories such as Google places and yahoo local, but the ones on yahoo local are all pointing to www.example.com even when you search a specific city when it suppose to be www.example.com/cityname. So first thought is to edit all of the yahoo locals to the microsite webpages for every locations but then I thought that wasn't a good idea since I will split the juice passed to the corporate website www.example.com. The corporate website is really important and wouldn't want to weaken its PA. Can someone tell me what are my options in order to not hurt the corporate website and to improve ranking for these weak microsites? should I still edit those yahoo listings to the microsite website or not? if not what how will I be able to build more links? Thank you!!
Link Building | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Link Building Strategy - Please Give Feedback
Hi, I"m moving forward with link building for nlpca(dot)com and here's my plan I know my industry, keywords, and this site very well so I'll start by: Analyze Top content for top 10 competitors and see where the links are currently going. I'm assuming a competitor is someone similar to me and not sites like wikipedia in this case Make a spreadsheet for all of the worthwhile links that I find by using OSE and the top 10 competitors, places where if we're good enough we can get a link on that page. See what they're linking to Use (1) and (2) to discover what stelllar targeted content to build Use infographics, a blog, and articles to build targeted content to request a link from the people in (2) building out facebook, twitter, and Google +1 for the site is coming too. Your thoughts? I'm completely open to improvements via feedback.
Link Building | | BobGW0