Link Building Made Easy - Too Easy?
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A post by Wendy Piersall (coolest eMom!) titled “Is The DoFollow Movement Getting Exploited” really got me wondering if link building was getting maybe a little too easy, especially after I checked my spam filter and found out I got around 5000 spam comments in less than 3 weeks (yes! 5 thousand!), and found out that some URLs in older comments were redirecting to questionable websites.
Feel free to add to the discussion, I welcome every comment, positive or negative! Let’s talk about it, I’d like to know what you think.
Meme / Memetag
A “meme“, as defined by wikipedia is some sort of tag game, where a blogger will decide on a topic, write a post about it, and “tag” other bloggers and invite them to write a post on their own blog about that same topic, and then “tag” more people, always linking back to the original blog, the one that started the meme. This can result in a lot of links back to your blog. Just have to carefully choose which memes you write about. On a personal blog I’d say everything goes, but for a niche blog, try to only accept memes that are on topic. Too many meme posts will probably make your readers go “umm, where’s the real content?“.
DoFollow and the I-Follow Movement
I really think DoFollow is an awesome way to reward the people that take the time to write a comment by linking back to them without the “rel=nofollow” added to their URL. Links are the currency of the blogosphere, and if people take some precious time to write a comment, let’s reward them! I strongly believe that adding value to the post and actually contributing and getting involved in the community is what it’s all about. “Nice post…” comments are ok, as far as I’m concerned, although I prefer comments that add value. It’s all about the conversations, isn’t it?
Lists Sharing
I love to share some link love with people I know, or blogs I read, but it has to be relevant! I have no problem linking to 20-30 blogs in one single post to spread some link love (we all love links, don’t we?), if those blogs participated in a charity or fundraising event, a group writing project, or something similar. My blog is on so many lists that people are copying and reposting on their own blog(s) that I have no idea what my real technorati rank is! The D-List (Dofollow List) is one of those lists, though I’m happy to be on that list, because I do reward people that leave comments..
Link Trains
If you’re a regular visitor, or RSS subscriber of SmartWealthyRich, maybe you read my “Pillar Content vs Link Trains” posts. If so, you already know what my opinion is. If not, I encourage you to read it. ;)
Pillar Articles/Content
The best way (yes, it’s still the best!) to get more blogs to link to your blog is to write pillar articles! This is simple! It sure takes some time, but it’s definitely worth it! Take a look at DoshDosh, Entrepreneurs Journey or Chris Garrett (Chris also wrote an ebook “Killer flagship content” which is really worth reading). Those blogs have a lot of RSS subscribers, get a lot of traffic, and… yes, they wrote many pillar articles, and they keep on writing pillar content! That’s the way! Attracting “natural” links. Write timeless content, articles “worth linking to” and people will link to you.
Link exchanges
Easy and fast way to get links. Send e-mails to blog owners, ask them to link to your blog and link to them from your blogroll or directory page. It works, it’s proven and tested. Keep in mind that a blogroll that’s a mile long won’t do any good for your page rank.
Blog Reviews
My blog got reviewed by some bloggers, and I wrote a couple of reviews before. The first one I did was for John Chow, and it helped my blog (4 months ago when I started this blog), but since then I came to realize that writing blog reviews, while being fun, wasn’t useful really. The one that usually benefits from the reviews is the one that’s not writing them. Another way is to order a review from sites like reviewme or sponsoredreviews. Let’s just say half of me thinks reviews are fine, and the other half thinks reviews are bad. Up to you to decide.
Kinda Useless
While all the link building techniques above are fine with me, some are a lot better than others, some will get you a couple of links back, and some will get you TONS of links back (pillar articles)! But one link building technique reaps the Award! The Viralink! Honestly, I think this is useless, although I have a lot of respect for Andy Coates, cause it would be a boring world if no one tried anything different, and I respect him a lot for experimenting. It is always good to experiment! But since SEO is really important for blogs, why would someone want to have a * (star) as the anchor text? While this can definitely increase your technorati rank, I cannot find any benefits apart from that. I agree with Andy Beard on a lot of the points he wrote in his Linking Mistakes post.
Your Turn To Talk, The Mic Is Yours
Of course, you could also buy ad spots on other blogs (either directly or through services like text-link-ads), or write an ebook (that falls in the “pillar content” category) or get involved in social networking sites.
So, how do you do it? How do you get links back to your blog? I’d be really interested in hearing (reading) what you have to say on the topic, please share your own tips and tricks, and tell us what you think. ;)
Take care!
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50 Responses to “Link Building Made Easy - Too Easy?”
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You could point people towards this article as well. There are some inaccuracies pointed out in the comments, but the important picture is the one in the middle.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/06/05/google-pagerank-what-do-we-really-know-about-it/
The logarithmic calculations can work for you or against you.
I guaranteee the one link I received from Shoemoney (in fact there were 2 on the page), in a single post without any links to other sites, was worth more for search engine ranking than links from a grid of stars on 100 blogs.
With ranking, it is much easier to be pulled up by a few links, than pushed up from below by a pyramid of links.
Pillar content allows you to be pulled up the slope quickly.
Techniques such as article marketing are a great way for a niche site in an uncompetitive niche to pull up the rankings, especially for deep links, but ultimately it is only good for specific landing pages once you get to a certain hight up that PR slope.
Hi Andy, Thanx for taking the time to reply to my post, really appreciate it!
That article on smashingmagazine is a really good read (I especially liked the part on nofollow, and also the part where they explain that each PR level is progressively harder to reach).
Article marketing is indeed a good way to get links, I got some “ok” results with that.
With 71 million blogs out there, it is more and more important to write pillar articles, and interesting content (and Andy you’re doing a really good job with that!)
You’ve said what I’ve been thinking for a while now. I think it’s easy to get caught up in all the mad crazy schemes for links. And I’ve joined in on some, but now I’m trying to focus on my writing. I’d rather develop true sticky readers than the ever-chasing of a few more unrelevant links and readers who really aren’t a good match for your site.
If you look at the cream of the blogosphere, they are focused on writing good articles and honing the brand of their site. They’re not playing the MBL game or the site-reviewing game etc.
So I want to follow their lead more.
The caveat is that I think some of these techniques are good when you are just starting out, just to get the word out about your blog. You have to start somewhere, so I think there is a place for it (linkbuilding strategies), but once you have some momentum you should focus on your brand and your writing.
Exactly! Though I’m “guilty” of participating in some review-me-and-get-a-link-back, I’m somewhat happy with the results, but it was rarely worth it.
I love group writing project and interesting memes, but you still need content to make people wanna subscribe to your feed or bookmark (and of course, comment) and come back again to read more.
You said it - “I’d rather develop true sticky readers”
;)
I was reading up on the viralink thing, too. I checked on Andy Coates’ page to find that he’s not linking back to people on his stars.
hum, interesting! I’m sure it’s not easy to keep track of everyone that has the viralink on their blog(s), sure everybody is getting a fair deal of links back, so Andy is probably doing his best. That’s the thing with stuff like this, many people join in and don’t link back to the original meme starter, so it has even less value (my opinion).
Well, one more reason why I did not jump in.
Jonathan,
As these systems/schemes keep coming up for instantly or quickly getting a lot of links, I am constantly reminded of the old adage that says that nothing good comes easy.
Even if participating in something temporarily improves a website’s visibility (via PR or otherwise), only good content and proper linking strategies will win out over the long-term.
Google is getting more and more adept at figuring out what people are actually looking for when they search the web, so once again, proper link strategies and great content are the best long-term growth strategy.
Believe me, if I could “magically” make my website the most popular site on personal development by pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I’d be up to my….uh…ears in rabbits! :)
Aaron,
Same here, if I could “magically” make SWR a PR8 tomorrow, believe me I would, hehe, but if all there is on my blog is reviewme reviews, and link baiting posts, I would probably not be satisfied, I like insightful stuff and possts that adds value or contribute in some way to helping others.
Well, they say most blogs won’t last more than 3-4 months, so in the end, people will probably turn to bloggers that write pillar content (like your blog!) ;)
I’m so glad to read this, Jonathan. :-)
My thoughts are pretty much agreeable with AgentSully (was nodding to myself constantly while reading his comment).
Initially when I first started blogging consistently about a month ago it was exciting to find out about the many ways to build links quickly. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that I don’t want to link up with everybody.
It just seemed useless to me in many cases. It misses the point of building communities based upon common interests. Blogging is another form of networking and gradually building relationships with others.
I would rather be me and attract links to my blog which will eventually evolve into some new relationships that will enhance not only my online life, but possibly my offline life as well.
I’m finding that when I research subjects for my blog I’m discovering more and more like-minded people to whom I can relate and I desire to link to them. I’m not really concerned whether they link back to me or not. Why? Give and it shall be given unto you.
The link blessings will come soon enough and at just the right time. :-)
Angela, I think we’re on the same wave length!
“enhance not only my online life, but possibly my offline life as well”
I so agree with you, I met so many nice people blogging, people that not only helped me in my online activities but also in the offline world.
Building a community of like-minded people takes time, and of course, some of those like-minded people will become business partners or friends. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to have a technorati rank in the top 1000 if no one ever cared to leave a comment.
Jonathan…
Here’s my strategy. I try to write thought provoking, insightful and relevant posts that people find interesting and/or useful. I visit blogs that I enjoy (like this one) and leave a comment if I’ve got something to say.
Ultimately I think it’s all about adding value. If you are not adding value you are just adding noise. :grin:
Dave,
“Thought provoking, insightful and relevant posts” - Well, trust me, you are adding value, and you give a lot of stuff to think about.
I love it when I read a blog post, and I have to think about it for some time (even days sometimes) before replying, and it happens all the time with your posts hehe
To me, this is “adding value” ;)
I think dofollow is a great way for people to discover new blogs, that they wouldn’t normally look at. Virallinks on the other hand are very obvious attempts at gaming the system. I think google will slap virallinks, viraltags, etc down very hard.
Hi Chris, welcome to SWR, make yoursefl at home!
I don’t know what Google or other search engines will do with all this, but one thing I’m sure of is that it’s always better to not game the system, and keep writing relevant stuff. It’s all about relevancy. In my opinion as a reader anyway
I try to remember that my blog started as a conversation with myself. If I keep writing things that I would be interested in reading (or about interesting things that I have read) then I’ll keep writing. Is a list of 87 blogs something I want to read? Nah.
legbamel, welcome to SWR!
Good point, you definitely have to be interested in your own blogs content to keep writing, At some point it’s easy to run out of ideas and stuff to write about. If you are happy with the things you write, chances are others will like it too.
I’ve been following the discussion about this topic with interest these past few weeks.
The removal of “nofollow” on my own site is an action I’m perfectly happy with. There are spammers, but they don’t hang around for long, and I moderate all new comments anyway.
It’s all about the discussion, and if people take the time to write their thoughts on my blog then I’m all for at least giving them one little link back to their site (with anchor text of their choice too).
I think Andy’s comment about one (or two) links from within an article pulling you up, as opposed to 100s of worthless links pushing you up, is a great one.
Focus on the content and conversation.
Nice post, Jonathan.
David,
Same here, I still think I made the right choice when I installed DoFollow, you’re right spammers usually don’t hang around for real long, just have to check old comments from time to time to make sure it’s still leading to a blog and not an adult site or MFA. It’s a little more work, but it’s fine with me.
I just don’t get it why someone who was genuinely interested in the posts, wrote really valuable comments and had interesting stuff to say, was getting involved a lot, suddenly has his url redirecting to some “questionable” website…
Andy’s right on the money, 1 link from problogger, copyblogger, shoemoney or other high authority blogs can give your blog a nice PR boost ;)
In some ways I agree with you - if your target is raising your Technorati rank for example, it isn’t too hard to get involved in the link trains.
Maybe we should all forget about writing quality content, and write an article every day with a new link train.
Ah, being sarcastic there by the way!
When bloggers spend more time jumping on link trains than they do in publishing decent content, I get worried for the future of the blogosphere.
- Martin Reed
Martin,
lol, quality content? what’s that?
Well, honestly I don’t mind people writing link trains posts and all, in the end that means more room for you and me! There is a lot of people writing quality posts, and stuff worth linking to.
I’m writing my “smart posts worth reading” post right now, and guess what… I will link to posts that are actually worth reading, definitely not to link train posts ;)
Links? What are links?
Link? hum… don’t know… I’m just aiming for the top 100 fave’d blogs on technorati so I will be able to sell links on my blog for more (kidding)
Hi Jonathan, thanks for the shout. You hit the nail on the head, with Viralink, it is an experiment, I have a very inquisitive mind and love to experiment and I’m not happy until I have tried it myself,lol.
Roberta, as for not linking on viralink, when people were discovering viralink from a friend, instead of copying from their friend they were copying from the source grid (mine) which was defeating the object of the viral effect. I stopped linking for a week to see of people would copy from their friends grids instead of coming to the source all of the time.
I’m sorry if i have upset any SEO masters but if my site becomes the first to get a negative PR it will be a good lesson in how not to do things! LOL
All the best
Andy
Hey Andy! I respect your initiative a lot, it’s always nice to experiment. Thanx for replying and clarifying things ;)
I’d be really interested in knowing the results of the Viralink, what effect it has on your PR, and overall rankings.
This is great info, well done. I’ve been able to improve my ranking and I’m not even sure how I did it. Hopefully with your info I should be able to really improve. Thanx
I’ll definately keep you updated, I’m quite excited for the next PR sweep! Love the blog btw!
Andy
Thanx a lot Andy!
nice blog (checking through all the nofollow blog community).
Hi shaz, thanx for stopping by! Make yourself at home!
I attacked the “meme movement” in my article titled, “Death to the Meme Movement” a somewhat lighthearted or tongue-in-cheek whack at this fad. Personally, I do not want to be tagged to write a meme. Ever! Let me write what I want to write and when I want to write it.
Hey Matt, welcome to SWR! great article you wrote on your blog, radical but necessary if you’re being tagged all the time. Some tag games are ok with me, and i enjoy reading others posts, but some a just plain useless. my 2 cents
Jonathan,
Great stuff. I always hear “write great content” and “content is king”, but unfortunately the reality of ranking in Google is quite the contrary. These days if you don’t spend money on links, posts, and reviews you will be crushed by the competition. I would say you have to try a good bit of everything, but not too much of one thing.
Buxr, I do agree with you when you say “gotta try a little bit of everything”, on the other hand too much memes and tag games will make readers leave (unless you’re John Chow hehe), I wanna stay as far away as I can from Google supplemental reaults :)
Jonathan,
I am at the put it out there and hope for the best stage of my blogging. I would love for this to grow into a replacement revenue source so I can quit my job and work at home for myself. I have joined mybloglog to try to take adnvatage of and glean information from that social media and will be joing blogcatalog as soon as I am done her with you today. I have claimed my blog at Technorati as well.
My question is(I apologize in advance), when I see a post that I am interested in but there isn’t a “link to this post” link how do I link to that post. And is linking to a post the same as linking to a blog?
I run a website(believe it or not) and I underdstand the reciprocal linking process. And the links go on a seperate .html page accessible from the home page. I guess what is confusing to me is where are the links to and from my blog visible at.
I appreciate your time reading this, and if you would please take a moment to help me understatnd this whole blog linking thing.
OMG Thanks.
Hi Debo, good questions, I’ll try to answer the best I can. ;)
When you find a post you like and would like to link to it from your own blog, you can do this in a post (which is the usual way), you chose the right anchor text, and link that text to the url of the post. On the other hand, if you want to link to the homepage of the blog (which you can do either in a blogroll or on a separate page, like I did) you can link to the homepage of the blog and use the title of the blog as the anchor text, that is common practice.
Linking to a post is almost the same as linking to a blog, both means that blog will have a link back. But it depends where you want your readers to end up. If you’re quoting a particular post from another blog in your post, it is common practice to link to the blog post. On the other hand if you talk about a blog (not a post in particular) you can link to the homepage.
Hope it helps and clarifies a little ;)
Hi
some good points raised here. I’m new to blogging and I too was going to do a review for john chow.. Then I thought no! I will make my own review program on my blog instead!
This is my first read of your blog and I will come back soon to read some more! :)
Hi Marc, welcome to SWR!
Reviewing John Chow helped me quite a bit when I started. But soon after I realized there was a lot more benefits doing your own thing. Reviewing other websites is cool, but it’s usually the one that starts the thing that gets the most benefits.
Only thing to keep in mind is to not follow other blogs too closely, it’s a good thing to study them, and try to reproduce what they do, but coming up with new and innovative ideas will always work better ;)
One technique that I really hate is the viralink technique. It is getting easier in a way to get links but there is nothing like the thrill of getting a good quality link because someone appreciates you work, not because they want a link back.
Hi Carlie, totally agree with you, when I find my blog linked from another blog because the person really enjoyed my post, that really maakes my day ;)
I just recently did one of those tag things. However, I placed it after a couple of book reviews, and I made the list my own.
I really try to stay away from viral linking of any kind, however.
Hi Morriconei, thanx for stopping by, welcome to SWR!
Yeah, I try to stay away from that too. I wanna stay as far away as i can from Google’s supplemental index anyway.
When I think about what types efforts will get me the most links, I tend to think about what types of pages/sites I give link to myself. I definitely link to pillar articles more the other things discussed above.
Hi Steven, exact same thing for me. I don’t really see any value in the viral linking stuff. When one of my articles gets linked to from another blog, that makes my day! So I try to do the same when I link to other blogs. :)
[…] ask himself (and others) the question: Is link building too easy these days? He talks about meme’s, link trains, do follow movement and […]
I’ve done a couple of link trains or whatever they are called. I have been tagged for far more than I have opted to actually do. I feel overwhemled with them sometimes.
I’ve found MOST of my traffic is coming from search engines and I’m getting natural inbound links! Maybe I am not being aggressive enough, but I’ll take that to task in the next PR update.
Hi Angie, exactly the same here, I don’t get much traffic from link trains. The bulk of my traffic comes from “a-listers”, stumble upon, del.icio.us, reddit, netscape, and search engines.
Now I carefully choose which meme or tag thing I join.
Hey Jon- Wow this is a great article you put together here. I just found this blog (well about an hour or so ago now.. lol) and I have went through and read a ton of your posts now & really enjoy your quality content.
As for the link building techniques, I do agree with basically quality over quantity which may take a little more “work” on the writers part but in the long-term it will all pay off. The one thing that does help with some of the easier linking methods (even if they are worthless) is that it gives a new blogger/site owner a little motivation and a visual to actually see that they accomplished. The key is to not get too caught up in it and never leave the “new blogger” phase. I utilize “bum” or article marketing on a lot of my blogs especially when they are new to help get the word out about my blog and gain readers. While it may not be a long-term solution in itself article marketing does open the door for opportunities for long-term success when readers to find your blog as a result of an article & you then get some links to your blog from them reading it. And possibly gain some quality links from those that pick up articles from ezines to utilize in their newsletter, site etc, which gives your blog a TON of exposure and traffic & that is a beautiful thing when it happens the right way, which will lead to the long-term success if you’re writing quality content both on & off your blogs/sites…
Hi Shawn, thanx a bunch! really apppreciate it! :)
I totally agree on many of the points you mentionned, article marketing is definitely a great way to gain more exposure. I do write articles from time to time and submit them to articles directories, and so far the results have been good (not great, but good). I found that one of the best way (at least to me) was to simply get involved on other blogs, write good comments, and network with other bloggers. That definitely helped me a lot :)
I think you’re right regarding the “visual motivation”, for as long as the bloggers, after some time, moves on, or if the bloggers writes extremely nice content, then the impact the linkbaiting posts and viralink stuff will have will be less.
:)
[…] Link Building made Too Easy […]
Thanks for the info. I have been trying to do the Dofollow method but have only been having minimal success. Also a recent search engine update just devalued many of my backlinks plunging my rankings so I am not sure if the Dofollow method still works.