That’s right, folks: today we’re going to chat about internal linking.

Cue the communal groan.

It’s okay! I’m not going to talk about anchor text. Instead, we’ll dive into how to set up a logical internal linking strategy, as well as some of the more technical aspects to keep in mind when it comes to your internal linking.

Why An Internal Linking Strategy Important

SEO is a multifaceted endeavor comprised of many different parts of varying levels of importance. I’m not saying internal linking is the most important part, but it is up there.

Internal linking helps lay the foundation of your SEO efforts. It allows you to indicate to search engines which pages of content are the highest priority, as well as which pages are thematically related to one another. Such signals are incredibly helpful to search engines in ascribing value and meaning to your pages, and if you don’t take the time to manage these signals via strategic internal linking, you’ll be at the mercy of the search engines’ judgment call.

In the limited time that Google spends on my site, the last thing I want is for it to be confused about where I want to be ranked and which pages are high priorities.

Thinking Logically About Internal Linking

Most people see internal linking as something like this:

I know — I’m not a designer.

In this case, “The Hulk” is the most important page — the one they want Google to index and rank — so they link to that page from every other page on their site, regardless of whether or not it makes logical or contextual sense to do so.

The result is one hot mess. When internal linking is set up like this, it sends confusing signals to both search engines and your visitors, especially if you scale to hundreds or thousands of pages.

Instead — and I preach this on every aspect of SEO and link building — think more about how your users navigate websites, and consider which information they would find valuable based on their current location. Is the information on Page A related to Page B? Would someone reading Page A also want to read Page B?

In general, e-commerce sites do this really well. Let’s look at a ModCloth product page as an example. (No affiliation other than a deep love for their dresses.)

This page contains internal links pointing to similarly styled dresses, the site’s most popular dresses, and return/buying information. Customers also have the option to look at other products in the same fabric or category via tags. The one thing missing is a set of links to complementary accessories: matching shoes, jewelry, purses, etc.

As you can see, ModCloth’s internal linking strategy is designed to provide value to users rather than to game search engine results pages. The result is an internal linking structure that is intuitive to users and that naturally prioritizes the most important pages for the most relevant keywords.

As another example, we’re currently redesigning our website, and one of our goals is to better showcase our service offerings. To do this effectively, we started with a simple question: “If I’m a visitor, and I land on the service page for User Experience Design, what else would I want to see?” This question generated a number of great ideas for valuable, logical internal links, including:

• Our Portfolio: Here, visitors can easily view samples of  our User Experience Design work
• Case Studies: Visitors can discover the value of our work by reading recent client results
• Staff: Visitors can see experts on User Experience Design
• Related Blog Posts: In-depth pieces and industry news about User Experience Design is readily available for those who want to learn more
• Related Services: The page provides a list of accompanying/related services that visitors may want to consider

Not only do we get a clear idea of how our service pages relate to other sections of our website, but we now have a blueprint for the information we want on these pages, making our designers’ jobs much easier.

Once again, by considering what information users might find valuable rather than which pages we want search engines to rank, we can develop an internal linking strategy that accomplishes our SEO goals without being spammy.

Thinking Technically About Internal Linking

Many consider “technical SEO” to be a specific set of tasks done in isolation; but, the truth is a full internal linking strategy has to include many technical aspects, especially where potential duplicate content is concerned. In cases of duplicate content, it’s important to ensure that there’s consistency among the version of a page you’re linking to from other pages, the version you’re canonicalizing, the version in your sitemap, and the version that Google is indexing.

To illustrate this point, we experienced a canonicalization problem with our home page specifically — www.352media.com was the desired version of our home page, so we set up permanent 301 redirects from other versions of this page (352media.com, /default, /default.aspx, /Default, etc.) to eliminate any duplicate content.

After implementing the redirects, we assumed that we were fine — that is, until we noticed that these other versions were still appearing in search results. We discovered that this was the result of some funky canonical tags:

• “www.352media.com” to “www.352media.com/default.aspx”
• “www.352media.com/default.aspx” to “www.352media.com/Default”

The problem here was that we were giving Google mixed signals. We were pointing Google from various versions of our home page to www.352media.com — but once they got there, we were telling them  that the content was actually better read on the URL they just came from.

We had a similar problem on our blog that came to light when we noticed a discrepancy in our submitted/indexed ratio in Google Webmaster Tools. We noticed many instances where the indexed URL for a blog post was not the one we expected:

• Preferred URL:  http://www.352media.com/blog/Summing-Up-SEO-September.aspx
• Indexed URL: http://www.352media.com/blog/post.aspx?id=3d843bb3-76b9-41c3-91b9-c80f92ac75af

Upon further investigation, we discovered that, once again, we were sending Google mixed signals. Although we were using the preferred version of our URL in all of our internal and external linking, we were telling Google that the second URL was the canonical version — so that’s the one it indexed. Thus, no matter how well thought out your internal linking plan is, it won’t succeed if you fail to incorporate technical SEO into your strategy.

Conclusion

A solid internal linking strategy goes beyond simply linking to your most important pages often with keyword-rich anchor text. By considering the user’s needs and ensuring consistency from the technical side of things, you can create an internal linking strategy that is natural, intuitive and aligned with conversion goals.

Storytelling is an integral part of marketing. Great stories bring great links.

Storytelling, like marketing, is both an art and a science. There are pieces that are inherently in you — copywriting and creativity — that can be fostered and sharpened, but not necessarily taught. That art is lost without scientific planning and executing.

That’s what all journalists are first taught, and some of journalism’s finest — Ted Spiker, Mike Foley, Norm Lewis, Betty Cortina, Bill McKeen and many more — taught me how to tell great stories. Hopefully, you’ll find their and others’ advice as beneficial as I did.

For my Florida friends, University of Florida is also hosting Digital Storytelling Workshop this summer if you feel like you need to brush up on your storytelling skills.

Focus On The Character

It’s ultimately the character that makes the story. You may be marketing or link building for a product or service, but you’ll find it incredibly difficult connecting with your audience if you’re telling the story of a payday loan.

“We connect to seeing people in a real three-dimensional way,” said Ted Spiker, co-author of YOU: The Owner’s Manual, Blog Guy Blogger for Runner’s World and former editor at Men’s Health. “Good storytellers establish a strong sense of character that you must follow on his or her journey.”

SEOmoz does this brilliantly with Roger. No matter how amazing their tools — and don’t get me wrong, they are quite amazing — they would not nearly have the hold over our hearts if it weren’t for that loveable little robot. Have you ever tried relating to an online scraping tool? Now how about relating to this guy?

That’s what I thought.

Another example: We’re working with YouCaring, a free online fundraising website, and instead of focusing on the service they’re providing, we’re highlighting the people the fundraisers help.

“Nothing engages an audience in a more powerful, compelling way than sharing with them a human story,” said Betty Cortina-Weiss, consulting senior producer for NBCLatino.com. “One of struggle or overwhelming success, one of happiness of frustrating despair: it doesn’t matter. Through the stories of people you can bring to life virtually anything.”

Taps Into Basic Human Need

There’s a reason reality television sucks you in: You are dying to know how it all turns out. Bad example, yes, but it’s doing something right.

“A great story taps into our basic human need to ‘know what comes next,’ as writer Tom French says,” said Mike Foley, master lecturer for University of Florida’s Department of Journalism. “Oh, yeah: It also has to be well-written.”

Great stories have an intriguing beginning to hook you; a middle that moves it forward and keeps you wanting more; and a conclusion that leaves you satisfied, and wanting to tell everyone about it.

Great marketing and great link building should do just that. They should leave wanting to know more.

Bonnaroo does a great job at this with RooClues. The music festival’s lineup is kept on lockdown more than Coke’s secret formula, but about 6 weeks before it’s announced, they release clues to some of the musicians.

Tame Impala will be making an appearance at Bonnaroo 2013.

People were dying to know what they mean, so they came back, put in their own guesses, and shared with their friends.

Packed With Emotion

Whatever the medium — a story you’re telling to a friend, a book or article you’re reading, a movie you’re watching, or a marketing message you’re absorbing — the elements of a good storytelling are the same.

“Drama. Love, happiness, sadness, shock, trepidation, anticipation. Conflict. Obstacles overcome. Humor. Surprise. Something that teaches, gives insights, deepens your understanding of other people, places, ideas, happenings,” said John Schlander, senior editor of online operations at Tampa Bay Times. “It’s up to us to capture it.”

Case and point:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don’t Forget Utility

Those emotional, knee-jerk reactions are what we strive for, but we can’t sacrifice the purpose of why we’re doing something just for the sake of a reaction.

“I look for something that has emotion as well as utility,” said Norman Lewis, Assistant professor of journalism at University of Florida. “It describes how it benefits you and offers an emotional pull.”

Lewis brought up Subway’s Jared. It’s practical and inspiring. We watch him because we have an emotional connection to him — we hope he keeps the weight off. It’s a continuing saga we’re tied to, even if we don’t particularly like Subway’s product.

Another amazing example. (I didn’t intend to do all Super Bowl commercials; I promise.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

If that doesn’t emotionally tie you to farmers, you have no soul.

So, what’s your business’s story?

It’s like Matthew McConaughey’s abs. Do you really believe that he only goes to the gym for a two-month stint to maintain those perfect pectorals?

Doubtful.

Why do people think that SEO, and in particular link building, is the same way?

Let Me Tell You A Story

We knew a guy. This guy had a company, a company where 3/10^th of their new business comes in during January. Needless to say, January is an important month.

For years, this company was doing all the right stuff. Content was flowing, tweets were tweeting, posts were posting, links were linking: You get the picture.

Then, things changed.

They stopped posting to their blog. They post to Facebook, but never with links back to their website. Tweets became automatically syndicated from the non-updated blog. They stopped their (highly successfully) email marketing campaign. They quit making videos. They stopped getting links.

That’s when this happened.

It won’t be abrupt. Your organic traffic may just coast for a few months, but sure enough, that crossover will happen.

Ouch.

(Thanks to Brian Russell for sharing the story and the stats.)

So, What Do We Do About It?

First, resist the urge to say “I told you so.”

Second, spot the signs of what makes a long-term SEO and link building strategy and what makes a dry Christmas tree fire link building strategy.

Third, remember your 5 W’s.

Who Do You Want To Target?

It baffles me that people start link building without really knowing who they’re link building for. We’re not link building for directories, non-relevant resource lists or syndicated articles. We’re not even building links for search engines.

We’re building links for users.

So, it’s high time you learned a thing or two about who those users are as the first step in your link building campaign.

Yes, it’s good to know the basic demographics of your target audience, but this goes further. What do they like? Where do they already hang out online? What types of content do they like? What are their pain points?

What Resources Do I Have?

You know that good link building is hard. Well, at least you should. And the hard things take a lot of time and effort but can bring you some of the best rewards — links, traffic, customers, oh my! — you’ve ever seen.

But only if you have the resources to do it right.

Before you get started, know what you’re going to need from the big three:

• People: Developers, writers, strategizers, promoters, etc
• Time : When does this need to launch?
• Money: How much is this going to cost me?

Where Do I Want This To Go?

There are tons of great, successful strategies built around the “I want a link from XXX” concept. I’ve done them before, but I feel more comfortable when I have a handful of possible targets in my arsenal.

Do this by thinking about the types of sources who may be interested in your idea. Pull a list together. Reach out to them to bounce your idea off of them. People are much more likely to respond when they’re asked for their expert opinion rather than a like, share or tweet.

This also helps validate that you’ll have interested people to help you promote before you start executing.

When Do I Want To Attract People?

There are four stages to any conversion:

With any campaign, you have to know where is your target audience in the conversion process. It’s not going to help if your campaign is directing people to “buy now” pages when they’re still trying to figure out who the hell you are, what it is you do, and why they should pick you over other options.

Why Am I Doing This?

This is the least-asked question in our industry. That needs to change immediately.

A client asked us to build them a Wikipedia page. OK, we can do it, but why? Why do you want it? This simple question allows you to dig into the purpose and helps you establish some credibility with your clients. It tells them you’re not just going to be their order taker.

And if the answer is…

• For the link
• For the link juice
• For the anchor text
• Because everyone else is doing it

… then you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

And you will die.

No, I’m kidding, but that’s how you’ll be feeling when the next algorithm update comes out.

1.  UberSuggest

I love UberSuggest. I love it in a box. I love it with a fox. Most love it as a keyword research tool — can you blame them? But, it also has some amazing link building capabilities for content ideas.

Be as specific as possible when you’re putting in queries. Long-tail keywords work great because they’ll generate better content ideas that easily translate into a blog post or article.

If Google is suggesting it, it’s going directly into my editorial calendar.

Wil Reynolds also suggested adding “Why does,” “How to” and “How often” to the start of your query to find the questions that people are actually asking about industry. Brilliant.

2.  Wikipedia

You can use Wikipedia to Search for the most general keyword that you have — if your main keyword is [all natural dog food], just search for [dog food]. On the main Dog Food page, the Contents section can give you some content ideas, but the References will be your real source of potential link prospects.

[Dog Food Reviews: Dog Food’s Finest Hour] caught my eye first. Looks like PetFoodTalk.com reviews different brands of dog food. Bingo.

Bonus: check to see if there are any broken links or links to a 404 page in the References section. The [Making homemade dog food recipes] goes to a 404; so, I’d create a piece of content about that,  and update the content in the Wikipedia page to point to a new page instead of the 404. If approved, the link will be nofollowed, but can still provide traffic.

Double Bonus: the other pages that show up under your general term are also worth a perusal.

3.  StumbleUpon

You mean there’s an entire website dedicated to bringing me directly to websites based off my interests? Hello, source gold.

Don’t search for your keywords on StumbleUpon; search instead for the general category (Interest) that they fit into.

For example, if I was doing SEO for a limo company or flower shop, one of my interests would be [wedding]. On the StumbleUpon wedding page, you’ve got oodles of potential sources.

You can also use the Expert tab so find the people who are Stumbling and liking the most wedding-related content. These people aren’t necessarily influencers, but they could be a part of your target audience, so finding patterns of what they share is extremely beneficial.

4.  Followerwonk

When something like Followerwonk allows you to “find, analyze and optimize for social growth,” your link-building radar should immediately be going off.

Search Twitter bios with your keywords [storage virtualization] or industry [technology]. A strong social presence likely indicates a strong website presence. Again, source gold.

Influencers are great, but you also want the writers from your industry.  You can do this two ways:

• By including things like writer, blogger, or journalist in your queries when analyzing Twitter bios
• Analyzing who’s currently following you (the marketer),  your client’s business, or your client’s competitors.

5.  Google Analytics

I love conversion-oriented link building tactics. It makes sense: you don’t build links for the sake of building links; you build links for the sake of getting customers.

In Google Analytics, find the location where you most of your customers are coming from.

Then, target getting links from location-specific websites. Think about promotion ideas you can do for that location. If possible, gear content around that location or that would be useful for those people coming from that location. You’re building link juice, but you’re also building customers.

Hat tip to Jason Acidre for coming up with that gem.

You can find more than just where your customers are coming from in Google Analytics. Find the browser, mobile device, or operating system with the highest conversion rate and create content around those topics.

For example, a lot of our mobile visitors who convert use Samsung devices. Knowing that — and our target audience being marketing executives — I may want to create content on how marketers can better use their Samsung, like “Best Android Apps for the Busy CMO.”

What are some other non-link building tools that you use to help streamline link building?

The best links come from the best relationships, and the best relationships take the most effort to create, foster and maintain.

If you want to get success and sustain it, stop thinking about building links and start thinking about building relationships. Here’s how to do it.

Search For People, Not Sources

Websites don’t give you links: the people who run the websites do. Instead of finding the source first then backing into a relationship, find the people first.

LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest are some of my favorite ways to do just that. Search for your keyword on any of the networks to find people with that query in their bio or profile.

On LinkedIn, you can even filter out by location if you’re looking for geographic influencers; on Pinterest, I stick with searching for boards or pins to find the most relevant people; and on Twitter, there’s a host of tools that can help you find users based off your query, including:

• Listorious
• Follerwonk
• LocaFollow
• Twitter Advanced Search

First Talk, Then Link

First impressions are critical when you’re building relationships. You would never ask someone outright to marry you, so why do you ask someone outright to link to you?

If you’re starting the relationship on Twitter, follow them first. Then, tweet to them, but don’t ask for a link. Ask them a question about something they recently blogged or tweeted about it:

“Hey Sarah. Erin here. Found your blog & love it! Great post on why turkey bacon rocks. Do you have a favorite brand?”

Get the conversation going, and then when you have something that fits with their niche, they’re more inclined to listen and maybe even link because they know you.

News flash, people: nothing we do online is actually talking to people. If you really want to put yourself out there, pick up the phone and call someone. Chances are you’ll surprise them so much into linking to you.

Do Real Things…

Wil Reynolds calls this real company stuff, and it’s both the smartest and simplest advice I’ve ever heard. If you want to make real relationships, get real links, and see real results, do things that real companies do. Real brands don’t submit their site to 5,000 directories for one-way backlinks. Real brands don’t write 500-word spam articles.

Real brands create relationships. Real brands engage their audience. Real brands do this. And this. And this.

…With Real Budgets

OK, that’s great, but few of us are actually working with Coca-Cola-sized budgets. That’s fine. You don’t need a big brand budget to do real things. These are things you can do just by acting like a real person:

Ask People Stuff: People love talking about themselves, so ask them about themselves. When we decided to disavow more than just links, we asked people what they would disavow. People responded. We re-blogged it, and then they linked.

Give People Things: If you do things without really asking for anything in return, you’re more likely to get a link. And these rarely cost you anything more than time:

• Free knowledge, whether it’s in blogs, articles, or even one-on-one
• Interviews for local papers; bonus if it’s for a student journalist
• Help student organizations; find a student organization in your niche, go speak to one of their meetings, and the university will tweet it out
• Sponsor local events, but not just to get the link on the sponsors, go to the actual event to talk to people

Just like any relationship you have offline, doing these things won’t result in immediate results. You will have to give it time to marinate, and you have to work on maintaining it.

The biggest problem with disavowing your links is that at first glance, it looks like the easy way out. Instead of taking the effort to remove your unnatural inbound links by hand, there will be people who assume this tool will do it for them. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Matt Cutts warned about using the disavow links tool with caution, and if it were me, I take any warning from him to the heart.

So before you go and throw up the Hail Mary, think carefully if you really should deny your link building past to get to your ranking future.

You May Be Shooting Yourself

People who were penalized by Penguin will be the biggest users of the disavow links tool, but because it’s so user-friendly, people may be too quick to jump on the disavowing bandwagon.

If you haven’t actually been penalized and you start disavowing your links, you’re essentially outing yourself to Google that you manipulated the system. Make sure that you equivocally know you were penalized and it’s not just some random fluctuation in rankings, a sitemap or indexing problem, or an accidentally no-indexed page.

It Could Do You Way More Harm

With the disavow links tool, you’re telling Google what you think are the spammy links that you have in profile, but there is no way to actually know if a link is hurting you or not.

Even if you’ve done every link assessment known to man, all you have is an educated guess, and it’s very possible — read, pretty much guaranteed — that you could be discounting some links that are actually helping you. If you do, it’s unlikely that you will ever get that good link back to count for something.

It Might Not Actually Work

Putting together your XLS of the links you’d like removed will be the quickest thing about disavowing your links. Like with anything with Google, it could take weeks, if not months, for them to credit what you disavow. That is, if they even disavow them in the first place because it’s ultimately left to Google’s discretion.

Furthermore, even if it does go into effect, your rankings aren’t going to suddenly skyrocket just because those bad links don’t exist anymore, which means…

Have A Good Link Building Plan In Place

The biggest complaint on link building the right way is that it takes too long, but think about how many good links you could get in the months that it could take for Google to disavow your bad links. The more good links you have in your profile, the less the bad ones matter, especially if they’re several years old.

Before you use the link disavow tool, make sure you have a sold link building strategy in place that will both account for removed links and give a natural boost to your website.

Start building up content on your own website for your customers. Lists and crowd-sourcing are a great way to do this. Ask your customers or industry influences a question and put their answers directly in your post. People are more inclined to link, share or tweet something they’re mentioned in.

That’s just one example. There are literally hundreds of great link building strategies you could use.

You’re Giving Google (Even More) Power

Google uses the data from the disavow links tool to discredit any of the links to your website in said spreadsheet. For now. There is no telling what else they could do with that data. Would they use it as a ranking factor to discredit a site that comes up frequently in disavow submissions? Sure, those sites probably deserve to get docked if that happens, but go further.

What happens if someone disavows a link from your website for whatever reason? Will your website get flagged as spam?

Google has enough leverage over us anyway. Do you want them to have even more?

You’re Not Just Disavowing Your Links

Call me a Disney princess, but I like to assume the good in everyone. I know there are oodles of shady SEOS out there — I’m probably even friends with some of them — but what I’ve grown to love about the SEO industry is that we’re not malicious people, and we don’t just tattle-tale to Google about some less-than-ethical tactics some people may be using. That’s just what the disavow links tool does, though:  You’re calling out everyone else who has links on those pages, too.

Link building is, and will continue to become, a vastly different industry, but I can’t imagine SEO where links don’t matter. I always see them as being one of the most important factors in search engine rankings. You just need to learn to change your end goal from “I want this link” to “I want to help people.” Here are some ways to do it.

Pay It Forward

Whatever happened to doing good, old-fashioned favors for people? Nowadays, it seems the only reason people will do anything for anyone else is because they either a) want them as a client, or b) they want to get a link from them.

If I learned one thing from being a born and bred Southern belle, it’s that we should do things for people without expecting anything in return. Give away some free knowledge on your blog, grant an interview to a starving journalist through HARO, help someone just getting started in the industry, or offer to do a free chat to college students through our local university.

How do you think SEOmoz has garnered all the links they have? Because they’ve focused more on giving away good, free advice than how their anchor text looks.

Talk To People

News flash: email isn’t talking to people.

If link building is about building relationships, the only real way to do that is in person. Network and meet with people in your space. Don’t just run up to them and demand a link: actually get to know them. When you do, and when you’ve built that relationship, you set yourself up to ask them for not just one link/tweet/share but multiple.

Agencies, stick with me: this is a little harder because you can’t exactly go to a conference on lawn care. Instead, focus on client education. Hopefully, your client base is filled with people who truly understand the importance of relationships in business and SEO.

It’s your job to educate the importance of it and stay up to date on what they’re doing. We hold progress meetings each month with our clients to discuss goals and what they have going on internally so we can plan our SEO strategy around them. If they’re holding an event or going to a conference, we make sure they drop keywords in their elevator speech and grab business cards of everyone they meet.

Anything Political

This is certainly more seasonal, but if you can tie anything back to the impending election, it’s bound to get people talking.  Maker’s Mark took that exact approach with its Cocktail Party approach.

Focus On You

I swear on Roger mozBot’s health, the next person that talks about guest blogging as a link building strategy is getting a swift kick in the shins.

I love guest blogging. It works wonders but it’s not a link building strategy. It’s a tactic. If you really want a long term link building strategy, you shouldn’t focus on improving the quality of other people’s websites. You should focus on you.

Instead of farming out your content somewhere else, put it on a site you have control over − yours. Then, focus on effectively marketing that piece of content.  Bring people passively to your site instead of actively pushing them to your site with a link. Do great work. Links will come.

Offline Still Exists

It’s easy to get obsessed with online marketing, but remember, people, we don’t live in a vacuum. We still spend a majority of our time offline, so you shouldn’t ignore those traditional marketing efforts that will also garner you links. People talk about these campaigns. Where do they talk about them? On their Facebook page, on Twitter, and on their blogs.

Google has sent out oodles of the above messages over the past couple of months, and it has caused a lot of people to question if and how they should remove links in the first place.

I’m a strong believer in focusing on building good links rather than dwelling on the past, but sometimes, the past is so egregious that trying to remove your bad links is the only course of action. Here’s how to do it.

Start By Getting Your Data

First, pull an inventory of all of your backlinks. Use Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO to pull this data to Excel. These are my columns:

• Link Type
• Website Name
• Domain Name
• Domain Authority
• Anchor Text
• Linked Page
• Ease of Removal (1-5, 5 being very easy)
• Harm (1-5, 5 being very harmful)
• Priority (Ease X Harm)

That’s the easy part.

Analyze What You Have

Now, you have to manually vet out each of the sites to determine just how egregious the links are. Use URLOpener.com to open a handful of them at once.

Sadly, there isn’t a science or formula to determine how terrible a link actually is, which makes this process a little harder and a lot more tedious. Still, here are my big red flags:

• Unreadable content: Read 1-2 sentences and you can easily tell if the content was written by a bot.
• Duplicate content: Copy and paste the first sentence into Google to see if it shows up across 100s of other sites.
• No contact information.
• Other links to random sites outside your industry, like oversees drugs, casinos, or adult sites.
• Your link randomly inserted into the content with no context.
• Your link is with others under a section called Friends, Partners, or Sponsors. That’s a clear sign to Google that it was paid.

Factoring in those, I’ll then put in my numbers for Ease of Removal and Harm, which will multiply it out to give me a priority of what I need to tackle first. Sort by high to low, and you’ve got your first targets.

Remove Only What You Need To

You may be tempted to do a mass exodus of every shady link. Don’t. Google is vague to tell you what specific links they noted as unnatural, so removing hundreds of links at once could end up causing you more harm than good.

Instead, start small. I’ll target the top 5-10 links (based off priority) each month to try to remove. Doing it in small chunks also allows you to not get consumed with the task because remove links can sometimes be even harder than getting one in the first place.

How To Remove The Links

How you go about removing them will largely depend on how you got a link placed in the first place. If you bought it from a link wheel or paid network, that’s easy: Just stop paying for it.

If you’re emailing webmaster directly, save yourself some time by creating a template email explaining who you are, the link you want removed, and where it lives on their site. Just link building, make it easy on the webmaster. If you don’t hear from them, follow up every 4 days or so. Boomerang makes this easy to keep track of.

Once you’ve had some success, communicate with Google. Keep detailed reports of your progress, and submit a reconsideration request. Then the only thing left to do is wait.

You’re probably tired of hearing about Panda and Penguin. I don’t blame you. Articles seem to pop up daily about how it affects your site and what you can do to recover from the algorithm updates heard ‘round the world. Hell, there are even YouTube videos about them.

You could say this is just one of those articles. And you may be right, but I’ve successfully recovered from Panda and lived to tell the tale of Penguin. Just look at our own analytics: The first line was Panda 2.5, the second Penguin.

Our post-Panda lowest days (weekends) equal our pre-Panda peak days (Tuesdays – Thursdays). And I want to tell you how we did it, all by just adjusting our link building strategy.

Build A Bridge & Get Over It

I used to buy links. There I said it. Granted, it’s been a long time since I’ve bought a link, and it’s not something I’m proud of, but it happened, and I’ll wager a lot of you have done it, too.

You can’t change the past so rub some dirt on it, and walk it off. Move on. I spent far too many hours trying to get rid of our cruddy links (not all from buying and not all from me) before realizing the attempt was fruitless.

Put your focus on building good quality links rather than trying to fix all of your crappy ones. Eventually, you’ll have a higher ratio, and you’ll get rewarded.

No Link Left Behind

I’ve never met a link I didn’t like. Scratch that: I never met a link from a quality website I didn’t like.

We used to only go after one-way links in the footer or side-bar of a website. It killed us because it so obviously was manipulated. Your job as an SEO is to make it look like you don’t exist.

Strive to get a sampling of all types of links: Content links (within the actual content and in bios for guest blogs), footer links, resource links, image links, social media links, and yes, even no-followed links. That’s the only way it’ll look like there’s not someone trying to game the system.

An Anchor Text Melting Pot

Just like you need to diversify the types of links you get, it is vitally important to have a conglomerate of anchor texts among your entire link profile. Everyone does not describe your business the exact same way, so of course everyone isn’t going to link to you in the same way.

Ensure you have brand links (ie, 352 Media Group), exact-match keyword links (ie, web design company), partial-match keyword links (ie, web design and development agency), non-descriptive links (ie, click here). We had way to many exact-match links so for 3 solid months, every time I linked, I used our brand name.

Some people go by a ratio of 7:3 branded to non-branded keywords. I don’t because there is no formula for SEO. Do what’s natural and trust your gut. If it feels shady, it probably is.

Patience, Grasshopper

“SEO is an investment; it has to incubate before you see any results.” It’s my go-to line for all of my clients. No one ever listens.

I’ve been working on cleaning up our link profile for more than two years and finally (finally!) I see the fruits of my labor with a 20+ jump to a Page 1 ranking for our top keyword. You can’t expect results immediately. Implementing the above changes today means you’ll see the effect 4, 5, 6, 12 months from now, pending on your keywords and how bad things were from the start.

Our link profile isn’t perfect. There are still too many exact-matches for my liking and not enough brand mentions, but we’ve come a long way since we’ve made this our objective and I’m happy to report Google has taken notice.

It will get frustrating. You will doubt yourself. You will curse Matt Cutts’ name. You may even get in slap flights with your computer screen. (All true stories.) But have faith in the white-hat system because it works. Google’s goal isn’t to penalize every single site; they just want to make the Web a better place. Make sure that your website is part of that better place.

Who knows what future algorithm updates holds for link building, but I can tell you one thing: Watch out zebras: You’re next.

If something is scalable, its size can be changed, like fonts. How long you have to link build for to get results will never change. It will always be one of the most time-consuming and arguably hardest things you do. If it isn’t, you’re doing it wrong.

Still, there are a lot of things you can do to improve your efficiency and productivity. Below are just some of my favorite, but fair warning: They’re not going to free up all of your time. They’ll just allow you do to more in the time you have.

Gmail Tools

Because marketers are getting a bad rap when it comes to guest blogging, I solely use Gmail when pitching guest blog posts. In fact, we’ve found that Gmail addresses have a 60% better response rate for tactics like broken link building, too, so if you’re not using it, you need to be.

Gmail also has some of the best plug-ins that will help you save time in the hundreds of emails you send in link building. My favorites:

Boomerang

Allows you to automatically set up reminders to follow up with people if you haven’t heard back from them. It also lets you send emails at a designated time.

Canned Responses

Allows you to save email templates based off your contacting tactic. I have them set up for broken link building, guest blog pitching when through a blog community, and guest blog pitching on a source I found my own. Highlight what you need to change each time to make it easy.

Rapportive

Holy contact information, Batman. This will show you everything you need to know about someone when you put in their email address, from their contact information to their social profiles. You can create more personalized email or contact them through Twitter first to avoid email overload.

Organization Tips

One of the biggest reasons why link building takes so long is because people are just downright unorganized. When you’re dealing with dozens of Excel spreadsheets that each contain hundreds of prospects with rows of valuing information, you’ve got to stay on top of it. My tips:

Prioritizing

You know every link carries a different value. And you know every link has a different approach tactic. So prioritize what you work on. I have a link prospecting sheet that has a Value (Scale 1-5, 5 being high) and Ease (Scale 1-5, 5 being difficult). Multiply them, then sort by highest to lowest to see what you need to tackle first.

Color Coding

I’m sure you already use Excel. It’s great, but if you have a lot of data to go through, it’s hard to keep things straight. I color code everything so I know where I’m at in the process: Green means link is up, Yellow means waiting on a response, Red means no way will you ever get a link. When I open a speadsheet, I can easily see where I’m at.

Tabs

Browsers give you the ability to open multiple tabs for a reason. Use them. My open tabs are my To Do list. They let me know what’s left to look at before I can call it a day. Once I’ve valued the site or contacted them, I close it out. I also use Ontolo’s URL Reviewer to open all the URLs I’ve copied over from an XLS at once.

Bookmarks

If I know I’m not going to be able to get to a prospect immediately, I’ll save it to my bookmarks. I organize both by client and by site type because one prospect may be suitable for more than one client. I’ll then set up a time on my calendar for 2-3 days later to remind myself to go back through those bookmarks.

Contacting People

Immediately after I’ve valued a site and have determined that I do want a link from them, I contact them. Why? Because their site is fresh in my mind. It’s much easier to craft a personal email when you just finished checking a site out.

If you wait until you valued a handful of prospects to then reach out and contact them, you’re either going to have very template-sounding emails or you’ll have to go back through the site to figure out what you want to say.

What are some other things you can do to increase your link building efficiency?