Link Week looks at one of the most fundamental and yet challenging aspects of search marketing: Building and nurturing those all-important inbound links to your website. Columnists offer insights and tips for effective link building and discuss controversial techniques like linkbaiting and buying links.

8 Tips To Increase Your Link Building Efficiency

Jun 12, 2012 at 11:12am ET by Erin Everhart

I’ve seen a lot of posts recently that talk about how to dedicate enough time to link building to see results without it taking over your life. To be blunt, that’s a load of crap. 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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

The Unintended Consequences Of Link Removal

Jun 5, 2012 at 9:34am ET by Eric Ward

It has to be one of the more ironic linking related developments over the past couple decades. Panicked online marketers doing complete 180's and trying to remove links they'd tried for years to get. Even more ironic is paying the same company that sold the idea of going after those (now poison) links to go remove them. We can say "but they weren't poison then", or "we did what we had to do to compete", and that's fine, but we should not miss the absurdity of the situation many websites are in right now, and try to learn from it. Ask yourself if you might have been better off all along u [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

How To Panic-Proof Your Link Campaign

May 29, 2012 at 4:55pm ET by Julie Joyce

All too often, I get a fair amount of frantic emails from people who are seeing a dropoff in rankings and/or traffic after the latest algorithmic update and are looking for help or just a second opinion. Sometimes a keyword that has been number 2 for 8 months in a row moves down a spot to number 3. Sometimes one drops off the first page and isn't in the top 100. Sometimes traffic almost completely dies. In any case, it creates panic. Most people don't think very clearly when they panic. Their immediate response is something drastic, their directives are to take place yesterday, and t [...]

Link Building Tool Review: Link Prospector

May 22, 2012 at 11:20am ET by Debra Mastaler

Our link building tool review series continues today with Link Prospector by Citation Labs. A joint venture between Garrett French and Darren Shaw, Link Prospector is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina and has been online since February 2012. Garrett and Darren continue to add features to the tool, foreign-language support and an API are scheduled to be added in the near future. Let's take an overall look at Link Prospector plus a couple of cool tips I found when using it and finish with a review of pros and cons. General Overview Link Prospector is a link building research tool [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | Link Week

What Tim Tebow Can Teach You About Link Building

May 15, 2012 at 12:02pm ET by Erin Everhart

If I learned one thing during my years as journalist, it was that headlines will make or break you. There’s probably a good number of you reading this solely because of this headline, but stay with me, people: There is a connection to link building. Earlier this month, I went to the Chick-fi-la Leadercast where Tim Tebow was one of the speakers. As he was talking about his football past and how he views leadership, it occurred to me how downright amazing he would be at link building and SEO in general. "Timmy!" I wanted to shout from my seat. "Quit football and come do SEO for [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Can There Really Be 85 Types Of Unnatural Links?

May 8, 2012 at 10:39am ET by Eric Ward

I apologize upfront for the title bait. If it worked, good. What's ironic is I think if every link builder got together in the same room we actually could come up with 85 different types of unnatural links. That is assuming we could all agree on a definition for the term in the first place. But stick with me for a bit here... I don't want to make light of an issue that is impacting livelihoods, but at the same time, there is a certain aspect the this current "unnatural links" meme that is just silly. I think I realized we'd reached the tipping point when a client asked me why the links h [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building | Link Week

Why Link Builders Need To Do More Than Just Build Links

May 1, 2012 at 1:21pm ET by Julie Joyce

In the past few months, link building as we've known it has been totally shaken up by three major events: Google anounced that they were changing how they view links (nicely recapped here:) Pandamonium! Certain large blog networks were devalued and webmasters started to receive warnings about unnatural links. Link building can still work well using ways that I wouldn't personally advise because I don't think that the techniques are sustainable. However, I fully recognize that not every site is destined to have a long-term link campaign that seeks to win the race by being slow and st [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

Six Degrees Of SEO Bacon & B2B Link Building Q&A

Apr 24, 2012 at 3:52pm ET by Debra Mastaler

Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of being part of a Search Marketing Now (SMN) webinar, it was sponsored by Optify and focused on B2B link building tactics. Scott Fasser, Director of Customer Experience at Optify and I shared a number of B2B linking tactics and then hosted a lively Q&A session. We ran out of time and couldn't answer everything submitted, so Scott and I decided to split the remaining questions and answer them here. Q. Is submitting press releases as a method for link building efficient? Will submitting too many press releases hurt your SEO? Scott: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Will Pitching Guest Posts Be The Death of Marketers?

Apr 17, 2012 at 12:40pm ET by Erin Everhart

Nothing kills my link building buzz more than receiving this email after (what I consider) a top-notch pitch: [caption id="attachment_117706" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Burn."][/caption] I don't know the exact moment when marketers started getting this bad reputation, but I'm seeing it a lot. Frankly, if you're getting good content or getting more value for your website, it shouldn't matter if I'm a freelancer writer, a webmaster, an in-house marketer, or an agency. But it does. We live in a world where SEO leaves a bad taste in people's mouths and marketers are seen as [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Signs Of Linking Over-Optimization

Apr 10, 2012 at 9:58am ET by Eric Ward

With all the discussion about the soon to arrive over-optimized website penalty, what about links? Many people think of SEO as an on-site matter, even though SEO is also deeply related to external signals, such as the links that point at your site and they way they point at your site. [caption id="attachment_117205" align="alignright" width="300" caption="How much is too much?"][/caption] As Barry Schwartz recently mentioned in Google Sending Warnings About "Artificial" Or "Unnatural" Links, "Google says this isn't a fresh crackdown on link networks but rather a change from bad links bei [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Using The Brown M&M Technique To Build Links

Apr 3, 2012 at 12:05pm ET by David de Souza

[caption id="attachment_112256" align="alignright" width="233" caption="Find the brown M&Ms"][/caption] Some rock backs such as Van Halen, are these days, almost as famous for their outrageous demands as they are for their music. The most famous is their requirement for a bowl of M&Ms to be in their dressing room; with all the brown ones removed. Failure to comply with this seemingly outrageous request was grounds for immediate cancellation of the concert. However, what may at first seem like a stereotypical rock star demand was actually an inspired strategic test to ensure th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Why A Diverse Link Profile Is More Critical Than Ever

Mar 27, 2012 at 11:37am ET by Julie Joyce

I really hate reading articles where people say "I told you so" or blast someone's techniques, but the recent crackdown and deindexing of blog networks is a great lesson in what can happen if you rely on any one method in link building. I know people who run these types of networks and I know people who use them, and I also really, really hate to see anything bad happen, regardless of what I think about the techniques used. For the record, I don't see networks as being any worse than a lot of other tactics, so I'm writing this to illustrate a point, not to judge in any way. We work with [...]

5 Ways To Get The Best Links For New Websites

Mar 20, 2012 at 10:22am ET by Erin Everhart

Confession: I almost slapped Ryan Jones the other week at SMX West. "I don’t have to build links," he said. "We put out a new product or announcement, and bam: There’s 10,000 links." Unfortunately, he’s right — even if the slap would have been justified. If you do SEO for a big brand, like Ryan, you typically don’t have to put effort into link building. They already have an established following of fans, critics and media just waiting to talk about them. But for the rest of us, us commoners if you will, we don’t get to enjoy such a luxury. When you’re a new website with no [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

4 Reasons The Social Link Graph Will Have To Improve

Mar 13, 2012 at 1:12pm ET by Eric Ward

Those who are responsible for creating awareness of content take great pleasure seeing a shared link riding the waves across Twitter, Facebook, G+, or anywhere else the sharer wants to push it. And rightfully so. It is rewarding to see your efforts succeed and click traffic increase. But from a search results standpoint, there are aspects to the social link graph that make the playing field uneven and out of balance. The search engines have to know this, and hopefully are adapting and accounting for it before rewarding a site with higher search rank due to social signals. There are [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

When The Going Gets Tough, The Links Get Blamed

Mar 6, 2012 at 12:11pm ET by Julie Joyce

Links are usually the first thing that people look at when something happens in the SERPs. Surely, if your rankings fall, you must just have crap links, right? Well look elsewhere too...because I'm here to tell you that immediately blaming the links and not looking for problems elsewhere won't always get those rankings back up. In fact, if you stop a killer link campaign because you're convinced that the links are the problem, and you go from 60 to 0mph, that can potentially hurt you even further. Here's a synopsis of the main 5 non-linky problems that we've encountered and troublesho [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

How To Creatively & Effectively Build Links Using Public Data

Feb 29, 2012 at 2:41pm ET by David de Souza

Governments, non-profit and other organisations are under constant pressure to improve transparency and, as a result, are making vast amounts of data available to the public. The range of data sets available is enormous, with 16 nations currently spear heading open data initiatives, and countless private organisations publishing data online - the US alone has published more than 400,000 data sets. This free data presents an opportunity for anyone with a creative mind to produce something of real interest and, in return, acquire quality inbound links to their website. Furthermore, both th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To | How To: Links | Intermediate | Link Week

How To Find Link Prospects Without Using Google

Feb 21, 2012 at 3:29pm ET by Erin Everhart

I'm obsessed with Google. (I mean, you kind of have to be if you're in this industry.) But sometimes, you need a break from the hand that feeds. There's no denying the power of advanced search queries, but you'd be surprised how many other and different prospects you can find without using the search engine at all. Curated Lists OK, I lied. You do have to use Google for this, but not nearly in the capacity you would with normal searches. With lists, you have less sources to sift through but the value of the sites far outweigh normal SERPs. My favorite searches — thanks to SEOmoz — [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: SEO | How To | How To: Links | Link Week

Understanding Ranking Lag Time For New Links

Feb 14, 2012 at 9:30am ET by Eric Ward

This may seem like a simple subject, but it's a question most link builders hear sooner or later. That question is "How long does it take for new links to help my site's ranking improve?" Like most questions related to links and search rank the truth (and easiest answer) isn't very helpful. That answer is "It depends". Depends on what? Let's dive a little deeper into several factors that can influence the ability of new links to positively affect the search rank of your site. Impulse Links When you tweet a link or share a link on G+ or Facebook, that link nearly instantly appears to y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

9 Free Tools For Link Discovery & Content Creation

Feb 7, 2012 at 10:18am ET by Julie Joyce

Every day it seems that there's a new tool out there to monitor, measure, track, and suggest what we should be doing. Many of these are free or offer free trials, which I love, but finding the time to test out a new tool in order to see if it suits you isn't always easy. My objective in using these tools is, of course, building links, so I'll go over the tools that I use and show you how I'd use them. And hey, they're all free!! For the record, I'm not interested in competitive analysis, analyzing sites, using social media (with one notable exception, and my exclusion here is only becaus [...]

Link Building Tool Review: WordTracker Link Builder

Jan 31, 2012 at 10:58am ET by Debra Mastaler

This week's tool review focuses on the Link Builder toolset from Wordtracker. Wordtracker has been around since 1998 and is most widely known as a keyword research tool. In 2010, they added Link Builder in response to consumer demand and to help their keyword customers with their link building efforts. Based in London, the Wordtracker staff is an international bunch, hailing from England, France, Italy, India, Australia and Ireland. To prove this, CMO Ken McGaffin jokingly pointed out: I'm an Irishman, living in Scotland, working in London for an English company that does most of its [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | Link Week

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