List of link building tactics for 2018

[Domainchest]

Great list of link building tactics here. It's huge! 400+ pages long.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/68rd9j3eytnk3pv/link-building-strategies-2018.pdf?dl=0

 

[seemly]

Without even clicking on and looking at the content; This doesn't half look like a malicious post.

Warning: Be careful to anyone clicking the link.

 

[woffer]

PBNs I agree to a certain level, but there are quite a few well known agencies who work with very large clients and get silly money to do this. If done properly it is highly effective. But you do need to know what your doing and "1 dollar hosting" and any one selling PBNs for 30 quid will end up with penalties sooner or later if they scale it.

Morally PBNs are questionable although you could argue the same about some guest posting and even PR when objective was for a link. In terms of performance however I have seen sites powered solely by PBNs for mega money keywords (gambling affiliates) out ranking the casinos who spend tens of thousands a month on backlinks.

 

[Edwin]

It certainly suggests they're not "viable" techniques for the average business, even without opening the document itself.

 

[woffer]

I have not and will not even look at the document posted as the person who has posted it probably doesn't know what they are talking about. It was just a response to the comment about banning anyone using PBNs. You cannot really make such a sweeping statement. PBNs are a link building method which when done correctly is very powerful. As mentioned I do not think there is that much of a line between PBNs and other link building tactics like most link focussed PR, Guest Posting Or even simply going round and telling people to link to you. Effectiveness and time and so many other factors must form part of the decision. In an ideal world no one would ever use any link building techniques and everyone would produce such fantastic link bait worthy content that all relevant websites would want to link to.

Then try that for the gaming niche or other competitive niches where you need thousands of good quality links.

It certainly suggests they're not "viable" techniques for the average business, even without opening the document itself.

 

[Adam H]

PBN as much as you like for churn and burn or money sites of your own, it could then be considered a "link building tactic" where there is no risk or liable for a 3rd party.

However start using them on client/3rd party sites of legitimate businesses "without their knowledge" and you deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered.

Link building work should be sustainable long term without fear of it being removed at end of contracts or worse get whacked because of dodgy footprints.

The PDF is Junk and clearly a sales pitch for the PBN, most references on the PDF been ripped/syndicated from http://theseoproject.org/ which was created by Josh who used to do some work for me some years ago. He now writes alot of ahrefs, worthy read for anyone...without the need to go to the dodgy PDF.

There is always room for grey areas in most verticals, split testing and understanding what's effective short and long term is apart of the game. IMO any marketer worth their salt would have explored, but with everything its knowing when and where to pick your battles.

Any marketer that haven't dabbled in grey areas, are not really marketers. They're what was previously known as writers, who jumped on the content marketing bandwagon.

 

[Edwin]

One tactic that used to be surprisingly effective (and I'm guessing it still is, though harder to execute) was to make use of the death of other sites related to yours to promote your own.

By that, I mean if you have a site with solid, decent content on Topic X, then an effective way to build links is to find sites that link to dead Topic X sites (sites that no longer exist) and politely tell them about the defunct link, and suggest your own as a substitute.

This works (or worked) extremely well so long as your site really was both a substitute for, and "better" than, the dead one. Back in the day, I built up hundreds and hundreds of links that way. But the strategy hinges entirely on putting in the work FIRST to have a super high quality, on topic resource that you can talk about. If it's clearly a thin, affiliate spammy play, why should anyone bother to replace a link with yours?

And one of the best sources of dead sites was Dmoz and the Yahoo directory. Other good sources included other large directories and on-topic directories (for example directories of golf sites, if your site is about golf).

Now most if not all of those are dead/gone, because there doesn't seem to be much mileage in directories these days, but it's surprising what might still show up in the Wayback Machine if you go digging.

Run something like Xenu Linksleuth to check the links, and you could turn up a mass of candidates.

Oh, and there are over 600 themed directories-of-directories listed on my site at http://www.incominglinks.com/ - it's over a decade since I've touched it (other than to update the copyright statement) so many/most will be gone, but the breadcrumbs are there to start your research.

 

[ausername]

Best link / authority building strategy = Create content / services / products / tools that people find useful, valuable or interesting enough to share on forums or write about on their blogs.

I honestly think the only necessary 'link building' that the webmaster / owner needs to be doing is creating profiles on sites like Crunchbase and Linkedin to appear credible and accessible, and the social pages (Google+, facebook, twitter, Youtube).

The site I've been building for a couple of years is now getting 3 or 4 organic backlinks on message boards or manually written blogs per week and has finally started to gain momentum on social media (30ish new followers per week at the moment). Long hard slog to get there, but all done entirely organically.

"Build it and they will come", as they say.

Yes it has taken a good 18 months to gain any sort of momentum, but I bet it will serve me so much better in the long term (I'm talking 10 years here! People expect to build something great in a year, flip it, rinse and repeat.... why not build real authority?).

ps. Google is indexing my posts within 60 seconds now. It used to be 48 hours

 

[ausername]

Although buying an old domain and 'resurrecting' it is a nice idea. Narrowly missed out on a closeout auction for a domain which was once quite a big deal in my niche and had a solid + clean backlink profile. Not sure if I'd have just done redirects (including the deep ones, direct to relevant associated page) or actually used it as a primary domain. Still regret missing out on that domain, had some tasty old links.

 

[Edwin]

Although buying an old domain and 'resurrecting' it is a nice idea. Narrowly missed out on a closeout auction for a domain which was once quite a big deal in my niche and had a solid + clean backlink profile. Not sure if I'd have just done redirects (including the deep ones, direct to relevant associated page) or actually used it as a primary domain. Still regret missing out on that domain, had some tasty old links.

If we're talking about "fish that got away" I was within hours of purchasing a genuine PR9 domain in the mid-2000s, back when PR meant everything. It had been a massive chat site (hundreds of thousands if not millions of users) that closed down abruptly due to the bankruptcy of the site operator. But I wasn't able to put together the bank wire in time from Tokyo (where I was living at the time) even though the lawyers handling the sale would have been happy to take my money. I grovelled and begged, but they were unable to extend the deadline by 24 hours. So I missed out, and the creditors missed out too, because I know it went for a lot less than I had offered them.

 

[Oceanic]

Those who frown upon or disagree with PBNs would probably be surprised by the scale of PBN usage, especially by more well-known brands!! If you are worth your salt in SEO you probably have spotted this if you are involved in link-building.

 

[scottmccloud]

Those who frown upon or disagree with PBNs would probably be surprised by the scale of PBN usage, especially by more well-known brands!!

Very true, and by more than one famous 'SEO experts' who make a great living advising people against using them, whilst using them themselves.

 

[Adam H]

Don't hate the player, hate the game

 

[Edwin]

I know of one company that operates 7-8 fairly large info sites around a particular topic (all modestly cloaked so as to not be instantly traceable back to them) where the only banner ad slots are for themselves in their primary business guise.

In other words, all the content is nominally editorially unbiased, but the sites clutter up the SERPS and no other advertiser can get a look-in at the secondary traffic. I guess that's a different take on the PBN strategy.

 

[ausername]

I know of one company that operates 7-8 fairly large info sites around a particular topic (all modestly cloaked so as to not be instantly traceable back to them) where the only banner ad slots are for themselves in their primary business guise.

In other words, all the content is nominally editorially unbiased, but the sites clutter up the SERPS and no other advertiser can get a look-in at the secondary traffic. I guess that's a different take on the PBN strategy.

Not if the banner links are nofollow.... worth checking.

 

[Edwin]

Not if the banner links are nofollow.... worth checking.

Makes little difference. They're still getting 100% of the traffic that goes:
Google ----> Info Site #1 --via any banner or other ad type--> Commercial Site
Google ----> Info Site #2 --via any banner or other ad type--> Commercial Site
Google ----> Info Site #3 --via any banner or other ad type--> Commercial Site
etc.

You're right that it would make the strategy stronger still (in some ways) if the banners and other ad units passed PR, but I reckon they're getting a very handy number of visitors via the above route given the size of the topic and the number of their sites that rank on the first and second pages of Google for obvious searches around the theme.

 

[ausername]

Makes little difference. They're still getting 100% of the traffic that goes:
Google ----> Info Site #1 --via any banner or other ad type--> Commercial Site
Google ----> Info Site #2 --via any banner or other ad type--> Commercial Site
Google ----> Info Site #3 --via any banner or other ad type--> Commercial Site
etc.

You're right that it would make the strategy stronger still (in some ways) if the banners and other ad units passed PR, but I reckon they're getting a very handy number of visitors via the above route given the size of the topic and the number of their sites that rank on the first and second pages of Google for obvious searches around the theme.

What you describe is more of a funneling technique. As long as the banners are all nofollow then it wouldn't be perceived as blackhat SEO, wouldn't be considered a spammy backlink profile by Google.

Although don't rule out the possibility that they are using PBN's to rank the small info sites, safe in the knowledge that their primary site will be left untouched if the PBN's are uncovered. That's a bit of a loophole isn't it.... use a PBN to rank your microsites, funnel the traffic through nofollow links to your primary site (maintains clean link profile), could that be what they are doing?

 

[Edwin]

Although don't rule out the possibility that they are using PBN's to rank the small info sites, safe in the knowledge that their primary site will be left untouched if the PBN's are uncovered. That's a bit of a loophole isn't it.... use a PBN to rank your microsites, funnel the traffic through nofollow links to your primary site, that could well be what they are doing?

It could be, but in this case it's not.

What they've actually done is open their chequebook and gradually bought up more and more of the existing info sites (some of which were established 10-15 years ago). They've then made very modest changes at best, and put their own ads in place of whatever was there before (usually Adsense, in a couple of cases no ads at all).