Link Building Best Practices

Welcome to “Do Follow” Tuesdays.  To read what this is all about, you can check our announcement post. 

In summary, every Tuesday we pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll. This week it is the Real Estate market. We invite all of you out there to post in the comments a specific link building recommendation for the Real Estate market (a good directory, authority website, blog, link search, etc.). If it adds value, we will approve it, give you the credit and a “do follow” link to your site. However, we will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy comments – only truly useful information will be allowed. 

It is little surprise that Real Estate became our top vote getter in short order.  This is a very competitive market and every good lead truly matters.  This week’s suggestion from our staff starts with directing you to another website.  There is a superb list if SEO and link building resources located at International Listings.   There is a list of blogs and forums you could reach out to for linking purposes and for some great content.  (Remember - share the link love with them first, it will eventually come back to you.)  There is also a list of search engines where you might place some of your listings or your website.  And while you are there, take the time to make a useful comment and get a link to your site!

Just like the automotive market, realtors need to think local.  Google local, Yahoo, and MSN/Live. are great places to get local listings.  They are free, so there is no excuse not to create them for all of your physical locations.  Once you do, get some customers to add reviews and maybe even point some links to your local page.  It all helps!

OK, now lets hear from the rest of you.  Place your advice for link building for the real estate market in the comments below. Those that are accepted will get a nice "do follow" link from us.

Make sure you sign up for our email or RSS feed so that you are alerted every time a new vertical market is covered. Even if we are not focusing on your niche, you just might see a pretty creative idea that will trigger an thought for your market. 

Be sure to vote for your market today! VOTE HERE  

Technorati Tags: vertical markets, real estate,  link building, realtors 

Popularity: 4% [?]

Welcome to the first edition of “Do Follow” Tuesdays. To read what this is all about, you can check our announcement post. 

In summary, every Tuesday we pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll.  This week it is the Automotive Dealer market.  We invite all of you out there to post a specific link building recommendation for the Auto Dealer market (a good directory, authority website, blog, link search, etc.) in the comments section below.  If it adds value, we will approve it, give you the credit and a “do follow” link to your site.  However, we will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy comments – only truly useful information will be allowed. 

This week’s suggestion from our staff for the auto dealer market is all about local.  Since most dealers still obtain most of their car sales from their local markets, we think it is critical for them to appear in local search results. 

For example, when conducting a Google search for ‘phoenix toyota dealers’, you get this result.   Notice the local search results dominate the top of the page.  If we were consulting with Earnhardt Toyota, we would recommend they work on their Google local listing as they are completely missing from there, and since they rank 5th in the natural results, they are now pushed below the fold on the screen.  

Other places to be listed for local search results include Yahoo, and MSN/Live.  Many local listings are free, so there is no excuse not to create them for all of your physical locations.  Once you do, get some customers to add reviews and maybe even point some links to your local page.  It all helps!

Make sure you sign up for our email or RSS feed so that you are alerted every time a new vertical market is covered. Even if we are not focusing on your niche, you just might see a pretty creative idea that will trigger a thought for your market. 

Be sure to vote for your market today!  VOTE HERE  

Technorati Tags: vertical markets,  auto dealers, car dealers, local search,  Google local, Yahoo local, MSN local 

Popularity: 16% [?]

• Every Tuesday we will pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market gets at our Vertical Market Poll.
• Link Building Best Practices will put up a post introducing the niche with one of our own suggestions on how to get a good link in that specific vertical market.
• We will then invite all of you out there to post in the comments a specific link building recommendation for that vertical market (a good directory, authority website, blog, article site, ezine, forum, link search, etc.). If it adds value, we will approve it, give you the credit, as well as a “do follow” link to your site.
• However, we will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy comments – only truly useful information will be allowed.
• We will keep doing this for as long as the community participates. So please spread the word!
• Over the course of one year, we should be able to cover a lot of vertical markets

Popularity: 15% [?]

There’s a pretty big debate being waged on websites today between the “no follow” link contingent and the “do follow” advocates. Which side of the camp are you on? Maybe you haven’t decided because you really aren’t sure how each type of link works.

No follow links were first developed by Google as a way to control spam links on blogs and other sites. There was a valid complaint that many legitimate sites were being penalized if they had a large number of links to other sites with little or no value. By adding the no follow tag to any links (rel=“nofollow”), blog publishers and forum owners were provided a tool to prevent spammers from posting endless useless comments simply to get a free link back to a site that you might not want to be associated with.

A “no follow” link gives Google and other major search engines specific instructions. When a “no follow” code is part of a link, the theory goes that Google will NOT follow the link to the other page and it will NOT include the link when calculating Page Rank for your web page.

On the other hand, it’s nice to share some link juice with those who take the time to comment on your blog, sign your guest book or otherwise contribute something of value to your site. After all, wouldn’t you like them to return the favor to you some day?

As a link builder, we often get requests to find only “do follow” links for our clients.  But should they really insist on that?  Should you count the ratio of no follow to do follow links to your site (or from your site) to try and figure out the perfect balance?

Three Good Reasons Not to Care 

In our opinion, you really don’t need to worry too much about ratios or link counts. Here are three good reasons why:

1. The search engines expect to see a balance of “no follow” and “do follow” links to your site. What those exact ratios are can be debated, but it is clear that you should not be trying to get every link to your site as a “do follow”.

2. We haven’t seen any concrete proof that the three major search engines aren’t passing some link juice through “no follows”. In fact, we have seen some pretty good articles indicating that they feel they received some good link love from “no follow” links from authority sites.

3. Focus on getting links for traffic and you won’t have to worry about it at all.  This is often lost with link builders. So much emphasis is place on getting link juice for search engine rankings, that many forget that the best links of all bring real traffic to your site. If you get a link that sends you meaningful traffic, do you really care if it is “no follow” or “do follow”?

It all boils down to common sense – a balance of inbound links will generally do more to help your site when compared to concentrating on one method of link building. When in doubt, if it’s a quality site that wants to link to you, take the link, whether it is “do follow” or “no follow”.

Technorati Tags: no follow, do follow, link building

Popularity: 17% [?]

If you’ve tried getting links naturally and it just isn’t working, it may be because your content offers nothing unique or different to site visitors. After all, the main reason others link to your site or a feature on your site is because they perceive it as adding value to their website visitors. Hey, they know that we’re all judged by the company we keep!

The popularity of our recent post offering ten easy links in 50 minutes is proof positive that plenty of website owners are having trouble generating good links – people flocked to this post to get an easy link. So why aren’t you getting links naturally? My guess is that your content isn’t unique, interesting or fresh. Don’t feel bad – it’s a common problem - one that forces you to buy links. In fact, this post is going to draw yawns from seasoned link builders and SEO’s. Why? Because they have demonstrated over and over that content is king. And it truly is when it comes to generating incoming links.

Our goal here is to reach those of you who have ecommerce sites or maybe sites in the financial sectors where you think “hey I sell shoes, what could I possibly do that is unique.”

Brainstorming For Content Ideas

A lot of owners think the way to create content is by posting a bunch of articles on their site – have you looked at your articles lately? Give them a really honest evaluation – would you take the time to visit another website to read them? If not, it’s time to do some brainstorming.

Don’t look at five other sites and rework the same tired themes. Get your team together and come up with a new angle, a new topic and a fresh approach – create some content that will really grab readers and make them take notice! Try some new approaches such as humorous stories, cartoons, videos, useful tools, historical or little-known facts or surveys. You could even solicit suggestions from your customers for topics or features they would like to see on your website. It’s going to take some time and effort but it will be well worth it in the long run.

After you’ve come up with some unique new content, put it on your site and optimized it – now what? You need to get it noticed!

Getting Your Content Noticed

If you thought creating the content was hard, getting your content discovered can actually be the hardest part. Once it’s up there, how do you get others to find it and link to it?

Promoting your content is just as important as creating it. Traditional methods such as press releases are always good, but make sure you then take the time to do your PR correctly. Usually it’s a good idea to pay for some serious online distribution. And many people forget to send them to local media, niche media and even bloggers. Traditional methods still work great for websites.

Blogging is a great way to get the word out about your content. Visit industry blogs and comment on current topics, working in a reference to your relevant content when it fits the situation. By suggesting an additional source of information that can help readers out, you’re being helpful and generous with your expertise – and you’ll probably gain some great links. You can do the same thing in industry related forums.

Maybe even start a little viral email campaign. Send an email to your friends, family and business associates with a link to your new content. Ask them to spread the word to anyone who may be interested in seeing your killer content.

And don’t forget your own customers – it may seem like you’ve already “won over” your customers, but you shouldn’t ever discount the value of having your current customers visit your website as often as possible. Put a brief blurb about your content on every e-mail, invoice and newsletter you send out so that they will be aware of what you have to offer. You never know when a repeat customer will read one of your “How To” articles and mention it on his “MySpace” page with a link, where it could pick up tons of traffic and additional links!

But the biggest message we want to get across today is to get a group together and brainstorm some ideas for really valuable content for your site. You will be amazed at what you come up with. Go forth and create! (Did you notice we made it through this entire post without saying linkbait?)

Technorati Tags: content, link building, blogging, forums, brainstorm

Popularity: 26% [?]