• Can a Broken Sitemap Hurt You?
• What about the Risk of Social Media?
• The All-Time Top-Secret Search Marketing Trick
• Is SEO no longer important?

Thank you very much for this article. I've been kicking around what to do about links for a week now. Then I 'just happened' to see this article. You make very valid points in a no-nonsense way. Thank you, thank you!!!

Posted by: Robert on January 22, 2009

I would advise him to do both. I am saying this because there a lot of blogs out there that write classic materials. Their materials are master piece, but no one sees them. But with links, people will visit your site, but if your content is not solid, they would leave.

But if you are using both methods, when people visit your site from links, they would visit your site. Then with your classic contents, they would become daily readers.

Posted by: Dalirin on January 22, 2009

"...you could probably write new content for your site that would attract links without you ever asking." Article submissions do really help.

Posted by: affiliatemarketingservices.net on January 22, 2009

I have been learning about linking for sometime and this will help out with my current campaign.Video links are a very good way to get high quality link, just search for lists of submission sites.

Posted by: Jim Gibson on January 22, 2009

I totally agree that taking the approach of "giving" and adding value will fuel the flames to building links, on the other hand you first need to create a spark to develop the beginnings of that flame and that is why I also agree with Dalirin that a combination of approaches will work best.

With anything in online marketing and business in general there is not single solution, it is all about developing that mix of traffic sources, which includes, SEO (both on and off-page), SMO (video, blogs, social bookmarking...), PPC and a number of other methods that are developing with each passing moment.

Great post!

Posted by: Tim Livian on January 22, 2009

You provided the ski guy excellent advice and if he follows your tips, he'll be taking it to the bank. Over the next few years, I think you'll start to see many more small businesses get serious about Web marketing. It's a vast, yet untapped reserve of creativity that will swell the ranks of those making their living from the Internet.

Posted by: Pete Prestipino on January 22, 2009

Writing and publishing articles is a great way of getting links to your site. Check out EzineArticles for more information.

Posted by: Majormarine on January 22, 2009

Hi,

I've always supported the idea of creating content that provides value. And I think the first thing you have to do is creating content for humans not for Google - use SEO just to give a clue to the Google Robot of what the page is all about but that's it. Concentrate on what a human would want to read.

Creating great content along with ways of marketing that content using the social media tools available will get huge benefits in time - and also organic traffic that is there to stay.

PS : TomaBonciu on Twitter

Thank you

Posted by: Toma Bonciu - SEO Services on January 23, 2009

Well put! People always want a shortcut but linkbuilding in and of itself is no shortcut. You start building links to your site but what do you have to offer when they get there? Like you said, time could be better spent building great content and most of the sites I work with are definitely light on the content. They want links but there's not much to look at once people get there. As other commenters said, you need both. Great content + some quality links.

Posted by: Orange Spot on January 23, 2009

Link baiting is definitely the whitest-hat, preferred method for getting links to one's site since it serves a number of positive purposes. However, link baiting even with excellent content can't substitute for a balanced link building campaign that incorporates multiple methods of getting links posted to your pages. You don't necessarily have to spend hours every day begging sites to exchange links with you, but dropping blog comments, submitting to good directories, AND creating good content (both for link bait and just because it's a good practice) will probably produce the best long-term results.

Posted by: Eli S. on January 23, 2009

trying to build links to your site can be a Hair pulling experience. But i think the problem is that people think that link building is a quick and easy task. You need to put the effort in to see the results. People can utilize facilities such as article directories, forum, blog, press releases, squidoo lenses, hubpages. These are somes places where people can build links to your online venture i hope this helps.

Posted by: Mark Whiter on January 23, 2009

several ago, we have reciprocal, 1-way and 3-way linking. with web 2.0 coming into the mainstream, begging for links have become the thing of the past.

just post an article to ezinearticles and you get a link

reply to a forum thread with your sig and you get a link

post a blog comment on a do follow blog and you get a link

there is yahoo answer, various social networking sites where you can drop your links. there is no limit to your imagination where you can have your links in place.

the only question is do you have the time to do it? i for one (being a one-man team that i am) find it too time-consuming to develop links for my sterling silver cz rings site. i am considering hiring a staff to do pure linkbuilding for my site.

but i still have to determine if i will get my roi. increasing my rankings and traffic. as you can see, it is sometimes a chicken and egg situation. for me to increase my rankings and traffic and eventually revenue, i need more links, but need more time to do that, which i don't have. if i were rich, it would be an easy decision to make.

Posted by: Mike Cooke on January 24, 2009

There is no doubt that content is still king. Getting people to find that content can be a daunting task. When writing content you should appeal to your readers and the search bots.

A little keyword research before creating the content to find some long tailed keywords that will effortlessly fit into your content is critical.

Setup a remote blog and link to your main website using the keywords. Make sure the content is not a duplicate. This makes linkbaiting pretty simple and quick. Most of the popular link building strategies have been covered by commenters here except directory listings.

Using directories to get 1 way inbound links is easy and many are free to get listed. List of Directories

Posted by: Hal Major on January 24, 2009

While I agree with the whole content is king thing people with new sites need to be very careful employing only this strategy. Before anyone knows about you they won't link to you. That is why it is important to submit the reference to your articles and tools in as many bookmarking sites as possible. Even free needs to be promoted at first to gain some momentum. And at first you need to be proactive at getting links to the free content as you would to sales pages.

Gavin

Posted by: Gavin Grant on January 24, 2009

Excellent advice however your advice assumes the owner of this site is also the webmaster. If he is great. If not he will have to have at least a minimal understanding of how to edit the content on his site without screwing up the existing content or page formatting. If he doesn't posses these skills then he will be forced into the position of having to pay a webmaster to edit and add new content for him.

Kitchen Plans

Posted by: Gerry on January 24, 2009

This information is sought by every webmaster. Link Building or Campaign is the most important and the one way is make a good content. But it is not easy too. Do you have idea for all webmaster could create a great content?

Posted by: bandisusi on January 25, 2009

Great points all. It's true that the most important part of any Web site is the ability to change it, which I have written about in the past, and it's also true that good content is not an easy road. There's no one-size-fits-all advice. You must analyze what your customers need and fulfill that need with the best information you can.

Posted by: Mike Moran on January 25, 2009

I would have to say that this owner is a little more advanced than most you will run into. There are thousands of SEO companies that will charge upwards of $1000.00 per month do go on a link building campaign. Many people a fortune just by setting up businesses with capture boxes and autoresponders. Now days it seems google is looking more down on recipical links and better at one way links.

Posted by: James Mcclellan on January 27, 2009

I agree with you that writing great content is key and is one of the most important things.

However if your site is relatively new and you don't build any links to it, then it is likely to stay buried in the search results.

I always like to build links by doing some article distributions, press releases, directory submissions etc.

SEO Tips

Posted by: Suzanne Morrison on January 28, 2009

Putting up video seems to really be hot right now for SEO, but you also have to let others in the industry know about it so you'll need an active campaign to reach those people.

Posted by: Anthony "Mobile Marketing" Wayne on January 28, 2009

"They'll be much more likely to link to those pages than to your product catalog." Who is they and how do they know you?

You are not being realistic Mark. If he takes your approach, when do you think he will rank for his keywords, which sound competitive? 5 years from now? What, until then? You will feed him?

It is one thing to say and another to do. It sounds very ideal to crack out great content and then wait for people to link to you. Unless his content comes in the frontpage of Digg, or any other super popular social media sites, people won't even take notice. Plus, Google takes backlinks from social sites with little weight.

If you want to build good links, go out and ask, if possible pay (not paid reviews, not sitewide), run multiple campaigns such as article marketing, guest blogging in related blogs for in-links. In-links are very powerful and they build weight as they age.

Let great content and viral videos be a small part of your campaign, and not the campaign itself.

Posted by: Al on January 28, 2009

Personally, I'm all for providing great content that would benefit users, which will translate to trust and eventually conversions, and for Search Engines. So link baiting is clearly a needed and integral part of the entire ranking / backlinnk strategy.

However, putting everything into perspective, one needs to be 'extremely patient' if this is the core of his linking campaign, which over time, possibly a long time, will reap rewards of getting viral, and an 'automated' passive way of attracting links.

For sites desiring fast ranking, link bait should be a longer terms strategy that complements some shorter term linking strategies, e.g blogging, directory / article submisions and social bookmarking.

Posted by: Online Florist Flowers Delivery on January 28, 2009

Write good quality articles is very tough task, and to popularize it is another tough task. Yeah, you are right. It is the best way to get quality links, but both of the tasks require longer time span. I completely agree with Dalirin, one needs to use both the methods to get results quickly.

Posted by: Joe on January 29, 2009

Lots of great feedback. Several of you have pointed out that you must do more than create the content, but that you must promote it, using social media and other approaches, which is certainly true. Some of you might think this is unrealistic, but I've seen many businesses take this approach and win.

The reason it works is that the keywords that are least competitive in the search engines are the ones that describe the problem you solve. People search for those keywords as much or more as they search for the product words--it's just and earlier part of the sales cycle.

If you're having success buying links or trading links, I won't question you, but in my experience you are a rare bird. It's far more realistic for people to create content their customers want, promote it, and reap the benefits.

Posted by: Mike Moran on January 29, 2009

I agree with Gerry, there are a lot of us with no direct control over the content of our websites so have to rely on (and pay) others to update it on our behalf. However this article + everyone's comments has raised some interesting ideas for link building that hadn't occured to us before, thanks!

Posted by: L'atelier on January 29, 2009

I agree with Dalirin. People won't link to your site or blog (or find it for that matter) unless it's visible to the search engine first. So ensure visibility of your site and links are accessible by the search engine. Get some search engine and directory submissions done initially, build some quality links then ensure its usability and keep that fantastic content updated on a regular basis, together with regular link building and optimisation.

Posted by: Spiro on January 30, 2009

The most difficult part is when you start to build links. Even if you do have good content people might not find it at first and would never link to you. Of course time is of a matter here, but still doing nothing wont help. I believe that at first building links in forums would be reasonable. Once people get to know your good content links are gonna be build up faster.
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Bangkok Food

Posted by: Denis P. on February 10, 2009

Hi, I find this article informative…thank you for clearing things up regarding about SEO. :)

Posted by: S-Axxis on February 11, 2009

Well if you want to do it in a white hat way, i'm sure its mainly hard work.

But otherwise a lot of people buy links or even create links via automated systems that creates blog-post in more or less random blogs. Had some of this linkspamming on my blog last week.

Steen Öhman

Posted by: Steen Öhman on March 2, 2009

Thanks everyone for a very interesting discussion. One practical tip to add: when leaving your signature, use keywords in it. I seem to remember reading somewhere that they count toward the keyword density for your site!

Andy

Posted by: Say it Green - Organic, Fair Trade Shirts and Apparel on March 5, 2009

Update your website on a regular basis and also summit your website to search engines on a regular basis, about every three months.

Posted by: Pash on March 8, 2009

If i develop a site I make sure that content is good and then submit links to link submission sites to build up links for companies to get more people to visit them and hopefully help on their search engine ranking. The more links going to a companies site will benefit them because they will possibly gain more business from people finding them on other websites.

Posted by: Oliver Blake on March 19, 2009

Imagine starting a traditional store. You stock it with the best ski equipment at the best prices and provide the best service in town. Anyone who comes into your store will buy your products and recommend it to their friends. But if they never hear of your store then how will they know to come it? How will they recommend it?

Any startup website must beg for links, submit to directories and use PPC to drive traffic into their site. Once people start coming to your site the quality of the content will develop the reputation needed for organic growth.

Article submission is a great start for link building - my favorite low cost tool. Targeted directory submission is another good one. Link campaigns should be very targeted. In this case I think that targeting Ski Resorts to link to his site would be an excellent idea and well worth the effort. These would be links would be from websites that are on topic and of use the the viewers of all sites.

Posted by: Procellous on March 25, 2009

Useful comments - however, things are a little trickier in the B2B marketplace. I work for a Telemarketing/Telesales company and most of the 'related' web sites are competitors. I have got us listed in some relevant directories, but many of these use do-not-follow links, so are not terribly helpful in driving links.

For business to business web sites, you still have to budget for a considerable expenditure on paid advertising to drive traffic to to a web site.

Posted by: Jonathan on March 30, 2009

On the practical side... if and when you undertake a content driven campaign should you use a built-in mechanism like addthis? It will drive links from social sites but according to your readers here those are discounted. So, should you avoid addthis?

Posted by: Craig Scott on April 5, 2009

Attracting links from social media sites helps drive traffic to your site using the links. No one knows whether search engines treat these links the same way as other links or not. Whether they do or not, that shouldn't be the driving force behind what you do. Instead of trying to do things that make search engines happy, make your customers happy and chances are the search engines will like you , too.

Posted by: Mike Moran on April 9, 2009

Writing and publishing a good quality articles is the best way to get quality links for your site.

Posted by: Mary Ann on April 16, 2009

You are right Mr.Mike,Writing good content would be effective & would help to bring good organic traffic to a site.Content is considered as king of a site.But I have seen many of the content writers who have written article having original content but does not attracts much visitors because there competitor have good quality in terms of languages,vocabulary,transperancy, there are some who are not able to think & write as good as to those who are professional.Then the question still arise for them of how to get links to my website????

Posted by: Used Cars on April 20, 2009

Hi Used Cars (may I call you "Used" for short?),

You're right that merely writing content isn't enough. If everyone writes better content than you do,then yours won't rise to the top. I wish there was a shortcut, but in that situation, you really need to improve your writing or get someone to write for you. It's not hard to hire a copy writer and it could prove an essential investment for your business. For all you know, your competitors have already done so, which is why their content is so good.

Posted by: Mike Moran on April 23, 2009

I think this is a very difficult task to improve your site page rank or popularities. But such way make it’s very easy just like Link building, One way or reciprocal exchange, back linking, forum, hub, etc. I have a websites and try to make it popular in top of the Google search. I have used these ways and found a positive result. I would like to suggest you these process to make your site top.

Thanks

Posted by: Jason R. Lawson on May 12, 2009

Appreciate your article been working on links for sometime and you bring a lot of good information to the table. Thank you!!

Posted by: Duralee on May 27, 2009

Many thanks for the ideas, I have bben told that if you up date your page to often GOOGLE etc thinks it is still being built so ignores you. If you do not update your page GOOGLE thinks you have died, so you need to upddate maybe every 2 - 3 weeks.
is this so?

Posted by: Peter Fox on June 2, 2009

Great article! Links for the sake of links is not a good idea. Content is the king....

Posted by: David Robins on July 15, 2009

Your article was helpful. I am a new marketer and make mistakes, but I learn from your posts. Thanks a bunch.

Posted by: Marlene Affeld on July 26, 2009

David Robbins makes a good point. I often see real estate websites fall into the trap of thinking links will be the end-all-be-all of SEO. However, those real estate personnel don't build the content to support what their links point to. Linking is effective, but links will only be as good as the content they point to.

Posted by: Sean Cutright on September 9, 2009

Mobile Marketing Links are hard to come by any suggestions on improving quality of links.

Posted by: Mobile Marketing Solutions on September 22, 2009

I agree content is the way to go. Write good articles and other sites will link to you. How do you think I found this site.

Posted by: Jason on October 2, 2009

great article. looks like content is still king....

Posted by: Dave Dean Hallahan on October 19, 2009

Good points. Once you have great content how can people make it easier for people to link to them? And what are your thoughts on deep-linking to content?

Posted by: Gareth on October 22, 2009

I agree. Content is what led me here to this blog. Links are great, but without a quality site or good content your time is wasted.

Posted by: Sentry on October 24, 2009

Hi Gareth, making it easy for people to link to you is less about what you do than what you don't do.

Don't use URLs that go one for nine miles full of special characters, because people will think that the URL changes every four minutes and will leave them with a 404 on their site. Don't hide your best content behind forced registration pages--people think that it's great to collect people's e-mail addresses but the truth is that few sites will link to those pages.

If you write excellent content and you optimize it and promote it well, you'll attract links, as long as you avoid the pitfalls that stop people from wanting to link to you.

Posted by: Mike Moran on October 25, 2009

I recently enquired to members of my networking group how I could increase traffic to my website and their responces were all to encourage Links to my site.

I thought this was way beyond what I was capable of achieving myself. However, after reading your advice and the comments posted I am motivated and ready to take on this challege. I believe I can write a great blog and publish some quality property related articles! In fact I cant wait....

Must go... Editorials to write and blogs to find!!

Posted by: Sophie Bullock on November 5, 2009