Questions about link building

[alex]

When it comes to SEO I’m generally very confident, but one aspect I’ve not been able to fully grasp is link building. Don’t get me wrong, I manage to get good quality incoming links, but certainly not in masses.

What I currently do is first of all trawl through Google (about 100 pages) and find about 20 potential sites that have links pages, directories and other such ‘sites of interest’ sections and request inclusion. I then look for blogs and articles and where appropriate leave comments. Finally I write a couple of articles and blog posts myself.

My problem is this only ever amounts to ten or so incoming links, hardly the thousands many other sites have. The biggest issue for me is that I cannot find sites where I can post blogs or articles.

My question is what do you do? How do I get the thousands of incoming links I desire (of quality) and where do people tend to post articles/blog posts etc?

 

[Blossom]

Ok, there are a number of different ways to approach it.

You'll need a spreadsheet and a coffee.

Firstly, do a backlink analysis of your competitors (whoever's on the first page of results for your target keywords) using something like opensiteexplorer.org. From the results, pick out decent links you can easily replicate such as directory listings, blog comments etc. You'll end up with a list of several thousand easily this way, depending on how many keywords you're targeting. Make sure you include which competitor has the backlink and any notes (e.g. free/paid directory, root domains only, no keywords allowed in blog comments etc.)

Secondly, get over to myblogguest.com if you're looking for guest posting opportunities. There are tons of sites looking for guest posters there, and you can get away with an averagely written blog post of 400 words or so. Another option is to just search Google for guest posting.

Dofollow directories and dofollow lists. There are tons of lists in Google - literally all you need to do is search for 'dofollow directory' and you'll find lots of places to leave blog comments. You can check to make sure the sites are still dofollow by installing Nodofollow for Firefox or similar.

Thirdly, you can buy link building lists from people. I have one which is categorised by directories, good PR dofollow blog comments, galleries, social bookmarking sites etc. There are a few for sale around the web, try to only buy recent ones though because sites disappear.

Gallery submission - if you have a nice looking site you can pay a few quid to have it submitted to plenty of gallery sites at once. These are really nice backlinks as they tend to have far fewer submissions than spammy directory sites. Be warned though that automated gallery submissions services are rarely updated.

Always record sites you submit to in a spreadsheet along with the type of link and the niche. Over time you'll build up a really nice list of thousands of sites so you can save time in the future.

 

[alex]

Wow, great post Blossom! Thank you for all the advice. I shall get a coffee and start working through it.

 

[roydovaston]

Wow, great post Blossom! Thank you for all the advice. I shall get a coffee and start working through it.

Yes I agree, great advice - my input is that when you're performing the offsite SEO to keep going even though immediate results aren't visible! I've had some good success with persistence (and coffee)!

 

[Sussexite]

Yes - top post from Blossom.

One really good link is worth 100 terrible links.

Some of the best links I have ever got have been snaffled by writing a page on one of my own sites specifically to get a link from a high ranking page on another site that linked to information like that.

 

[alex]

Now that I've started I've found loads of potential sites to approach so it will keep me going a while. I appreciate this is long-term so don't intend to stop now that I've started. I've very confident with all the onsite SEO work, but I’ve always been a little unsure of backlinks, or methods of getting them. Thanks for all the help.

SEOMoz have a low search limit without registering, but I found domain-pop.com. Does anyone know any free sites that check the backlinks of specific pages?

 

[boxfish]

Now that I've started I've found loads of potential sites to approach so it will keep me going a while. I appreciate this is long-term so don't intend to stop now that I've started. I've very confident with all the onsite SEO work, but I’ve always been a little unsure of backlinks, or methods of getting them. Thanks for all the help.

SEOMoz have a low search limit without registering, but I found domain-pop.com. Does anyone know any free sites that check the backlinks of specific pages?

LinkDiagnosis.com used to be good for specific pages, you need to use firefox though and have their plugin downloaded. It used to work through Yahoo and gave brilliant results, now not as good through SEOMOZ but still worthwhile sometimes.

 

[Sussexite]

Does anyone know any free sites that check the backlinks of specific pages?

Use the SEO for Firefox plug in.

Domain-pop is a top find Alex - cheers.

 

[alex]

LinkDiagnosis.com used to be good for specific pages, you need to use firefox though and have their plugin downloaded. It used to work through Yahoo and gave brilliant results, now not as good through SEOMOZ but still worthwhile sometimes.

Cheers for the info, I've downloaded the plugin and started running searches.

Use the SEO for Firefox plug in.

Domain-pop is a top find Alex - cheers.

Cheers for the info and glad domain-pop is useful. I was pretty pleased to come across it, been keeping me busy the past few hours. It seems perfect for searching backlinks for entire sites.

 

[Edwin]

This site I built a few years back may help. The directory's out of date, but the advice is hopefully still solid!
http://www.incominglinks.com/

 

[alex]

This site I built a few years back may help. The directory's out of date, but the advice is hopefully still solid!
http://www.incominglinks.com/

Thanks for the link Edwin, I shall look through it this evening/first thing tomorrow.

 

[cc976a]

Great post by Blossom

Haven't tried domain-pop, will give this a go, but anyone use Majestic SEO for backlink / competitor analysis....

....or just G, a spreadsheet (and that coffee) just as good?

 

[Blossom]

Thanks for the rep guys

I have Majestic, but personally I'm not a huge fan. It's good for providing reports but I much prefer OSE and Ahrefs for actual link building finds.

 

[tafuta]

Problem with Majestic - its valuations can be too high.
Problem with OSE (opensiteexplorer.org) is that it's only updated periodically and as a result the value of the latest sites may be too low...

 

[uk22]

Thanks Blossom for the input , very helpful

Dave

 

[iamrofe]

blimey, some really good info here, thanks for sharing!

 

[MASSEY]

You just have to do what everyone does, beg or buy.

 

[dexterity]

Try seoprofiler, its good at back link analysis. If there's a lot of links that look like link exchanges, get your self a decent domain in that industry with PR and create a blog or directory of your own - use this is an asset to trade links. You have more bargaining power for a link exchange plus you don't need to use your site for linking back to them for a 3-way link. Hope this makes sense