Couple questions: backlink bartering and getting backlinks in less developed markets.
-
How do you guys go about getting sustainable links from high authority sites? In some markets, like say SEO, it can be as easy as writing great content and "people will share it" because there are a ton of SEO websites on the internet and all of them are talking about SEO and want to share with you great SEO content. But as you guys know there are markets that aren't as well developed online - where do you look for backlinks for these markets?
I'm working on a project and I'm trying to put together a good backlinking strategy. Part of it will be chasing backlinks from University websites (relevant to my market). What I'm wondering here is if its OK by Google to barter for links. Say you have an online store and you give the University a "student's discount" in exchange for a link (I don't know if this would be appealing enough but is it fair game as far as Google is concerned)?
-
Thanks Moosa. Great read.
-
Hi Mack,
For less developed markets, acquiring links would really cost you some money either in developing a content asset that is targeted to tangent industries (not just to the specific industry where the website belongs) or in setting up scholarship programs that aims to provide value to community user in that niche.
In fact, you don't need to tell the webmaster to link to you from their pages, if you know that student discounts is what the .edu/.gov site is interested about, then it won't be difficult for you to get links from them.
You may want to check out this post for more link building tips for boring/difficult industries: http://digitalphilippines.net/link-building
Cheers!
-
Hello Mack,
Definitely a good move and I applaud your ingenuity in your link-building processes. It can be hard to retain the excitement and drive to go out and get those authority links, so I support you for thinking outside the box.
I would add that you are fine as far as Google is concerned as long are you are not making it a "tit-for-tat" trade/bargain/sale. If at any point, your marketing technique includes a phrase such as "I'll do ____ if you do _____.", it is a non-starter. However, if you are doing it from a "goodwill" perspective, and universities just "happen" to link to you as a result of your pleasant attitude/amazing deals, etc., then that would be fine.
For example, you might consider reading the following article, which has some great tips for a project such as what you are describing:
http://moz.com/blog/filthy-linking-rich-how-to-passively-attract-valuable-links
Somewhat related - How to know when to approach a potential influencer/link:
http://skyrocketseo.com/the-moment/
I still use these as resources for passive link-building. Depending on the circumstances, this can more effective than actively pursuing links - it is also much more rewarding when it works, because you have to invest less energy.
Cheers and happy link-building!
Rob
-
Interesting outcome, Keri.
-
I think this is different:
offering customers discounts for adding links to their site to Overstock.com.
That is straight forward link buying. "I'll give you X if you link to me" isn't the same as "I see you have a page about X. We do that!". It's a good example of what to be cautious of though.
-
Actually, Overstock tried this. Worked great until Google slapped them. See what happened in 2011 at https://www.seroundtable.com/overstock-google-penalty-13004.html
-
I think it is perfectly acceptable to do so but I have a caveat.
If you say this discount only applies if you give us a follow link on your site/page whatever then you are effectively buying that link. If you make it attractive for them to give you the link but make no demands on follow / no follow or the link at all then you have done nothing even close to wrong. The key would be to really make them want to get the information to their students (hopefully via a link and social media).
I used to do this when I ran a few sites for online games. When a new game would come out, I would immediately contact the fansites and offer them exclusive discounts. They always wanted their users to know about the discounts and make a link to our site(s) and sometimes even offered me free ad-space promoting the discount.
A+ for creativity
-
Offering student discounts is a great thing to do. From experience I can say that many of them come with nice links attached .
This is definitely one of those "open to interpretation" areas. A few years ago I would have said that Google wouldn't expect links on a discounts page to be no-followed. It's harder to tell these days though. On the flip side I don't that they would be too impressed by student discounts being used as a way to game links. Student discounts bring referrals, raise profile and bring business. Do it for those reasons and enjoy any nice authoritative followed links that come with it. (no harm in targeting those with the best links first though!)
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
-
If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Hi, all please tell me. If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sourav60 -
How did these sites get two organic listings?
Hi Guys, If you type the keyword "car seat covers" on Google Australia. You will see one site screenshot below: https://image.prntscr.com/image/lgfcK6DmSSGRo3Jx06yWag.png With double listing and then a site below that with another double listing see: https://image.prntscr.com/image/4yJfPzRjR5mPaQb4rr9l-Q.png Does anyone know why Google is giving both of these double listings, is it something to do with their internal linking? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak650 -
Cleaning up backlinks and changing URLs
Currently we are performing very poorly in organic clicks. We are a e-commerce site with over 2000 products. Issues we thought plagued us: Copied Images from competitors Site wide duplicate content duplicate content from competitor site Number of internal links on a page (300+) Bad backlinks (2.3k from 22 domains and ips) being linked to from sites like m.biz URLs URLs are abbreviated, over 50% lack our keywords Lack of meta descriptions, or too long meta descriptions Current State of fixing these issues: 50% images are now our own Site wide duplicate content near 100% completed Internal links have been dealt with Rewrote content for every product 90% of meta descriptions are fixed From all of these changes we have yet to see increase in traffic...10% increase at best in organic clicks. We think we have penalties on certain URLs. My question for the MOZ community is what is the best way to attack the lack of organic clicks. Our main competition is getting 900% more clicks than us. Any more information you need on the topic let me know and will get back to you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TITOJAX0 -
E-Commerce Panda Question
I'm torn. Many of our 'niche' ecommerce products rank well, however I'm concerned that duplicate content is negatively effecting our overall rankings via Panda Algo. Here is an example that can be found through quite a few products on the site. This sub-category page (http://www.ledsupply.com/buckblock-constant-current-led-drivers) in our 'led drivers' --> 'luxdrive drivers' section has three products that are virtually identical with much of the same content on each page, except for their 'output current' - sort of like a shirt selling in different size attributes: S, M, L and XL. I could realistically condense 44 product pages (similar to example above) down to 13 within this sub-category section alone (http://www.ledsupply.com/luxdrive-constant-current-led-drivers). Again, we sell many of these products and rank ok for them, but given the outline for how Panda works I believe this structure could be compromising our overall Panda 'quality score', consequently keeping our traffic from increasing. Has anyone had similar issues and found that its worth the risk to condense product pages by adding attributes? If so, do I make the new pages and just 301 all the old URLs or is there a better way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saultienut0 -
Relevancy of backlinks for scholarship resource
Hello, We want to build a niche scholarship tool for our Ecommerce site. It will sort through relevant scholarships for a certain demographic, say, Hispanic engineering students for example. My question is: If the tool's focus is Hispanic engineering scholarships, and we sell supplies that are in the same general category as products that engineers use, will the backlinks we gain from people linking to our tool be relevant. The main reason I ask is that I think most backlinks will be from Hispanic sites, and I don't know if there will be enough relevance to make the links help. What are your thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Advanced SEO question.
Hi, I manage and do the SEO for this site: www.aerlawgroup.com. If you Google "Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney", you can see I rank well (1st page). I have managed to achieve similar rankings for interior pages within the site: www.aerlawgroup.com/domestic-violence.html (Google: "Los Angeles Domestic Violence Attorney".) Here is my question. No matter how hard I try, I cannot get to the first page on Google for the search term: "Los Angeles DUI Lawyer", for the following interior page: www.aerlawgroup.com/dui.html. Is there anyway that I can pass the authority/ranking (not sure what to call it) that I have for www.aerlawgroup.com to www.aerlawgroup.com/dui.html so that internal page ranks higher for "Los Angeles DUI Lawyer"? I apologize if my question doesn't make sense. In a nutshell, I'm trying to understand if there is anyway to use the ranking I have for www.aerlawgroup.com to help me rank higher for Los Angeles DUI lawyer for the dui interior page. If not, are there any other suggestions anyone has to achieve a higher ranking? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
How else to find backlinks for training site
Hello, How would you recommend finding and gaining backlinks for nlpca(dot)com other than looking at the top 10 competitors? Also, we could do an infographic but the owners don't have time to produce a lot of additional articles. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Ask a Question
We use DNN and we have case studies ran from our CMS. This is so we can have them in lists by category on service/market pages and show specific ones when needed. Then there is the case study detail page, (this is where the problem exists)to where you read out the case study in full detail and see the images and story. We enter our Case Studies into the CMS and this determines which website they show, and it creates URLs from the titles. However, on the detail page, the case studies all share the same page, Case Study.aspx, and they resolve to that page with their respected URLs in place. As seen here, http://www.structural.net/case-study/1/new-marlins-stadium.aspx Because they all share the same page they are being pulled as duplicate pages. They do show in the SERPS with the right title and URL and it all looks great, but they get errors for having duplicate page content and titles. Is there a way to solve this, or is this something I should even worry about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0