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.

Link Building Tool Review: SEOmoz PRO

Sep 13, 2011 at 5:02pm ET by Debra Mastaler

Second in our review series are the link building tools from SEOmoz Pro; I was excited to review this tool set since it's not one I use. Let's start with a quick overview of what's in the program and then focus on the link building tools. SEOmoz PRO SEOmoz PRO is a set of "software, tools and resources to maximize your search engine optimization." Buying a membership to SEOmoz PRO gets you "campaign-based web apps, dozens of SEO tools, webinars and full access to Open SiteExplorer". There's a free 30 day trial and three paid packages to pick from: PRO, PRO Plus and PRO Elite [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Why Canonicalization Matters From A Linking Perspective

Sep 6, 2011 at 12:14pm ET by Rick DeJarnette

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be like any other technical field of study. It is filled with specialized jargon that, to a newbie, can be more than intimidating. I recall that feeling was especially strong when I first encountered the term canonicalization. It is a 14-letter, seven-syllable monster of a term. I first heard it spoken, and had to ask the person who said it to repeat it. It didn’t help. (It had been a long day!) The truth of the matter is that canonicalization is not all that complicated to understand if the explanation is lucid. So let’s try to explain what it me [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Linking Oddities That Ripley Would Like

Aug 30, 2011 at 11:51am ET by Eric Ward

Ahhh, the strangeness that is links. This week's column will hopefully spark some questions, answer a few others, and also point out some weird linking related phenomena, beginning with two examples: If this search is correct, Google indexes a little over (Use Dr. Evil voice) 1 billion pages from the Yahoo.com family of domains. But, if this search is correct, Yahoo only indexes 521 million of its own pages. Can it be true that Google indexes more of Yahoo's content than Yahoo! does, and if so, why and WTF? On the flipside, Google indexes 4.1 billion pages of Google.com based co [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

A Guide To Inclusive Link Building For The Visually Impaired

Aug 23, 2011 at 8:52am ET by Julie Joyce

I've been interested in assistive technology for years, dating back to when I was (briefly) a social worker and I saw how differently abled users navigated the Internet. As an SEO and a link builder, I'm tasked with making sure that search engines and users can find and interpret content, but as you can imagine, what works for one group doesn't necessarily work for another. With this in mind, I decided to take a couple of my link builders and go visit a few folks at our local Industries of the Blind (which I've toured before thanks to my friend and neighbor, Director of Operations Richar [...]

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

How To Create Your Digital Footprint With Links

Aug 16, 2011 at 12:43pm ET by Rick DeJarnette

At the SMX Advanced Conference in Seattle last June, Google announced it was supporting the HTML5 "rel" attribute in anchor tags for the "author" and "me" variables. To me, this was very interesting news. I have been in the business of content development for a long time (stretching back deep into the 1990s), and Google’s announcement meant they were interested in tracking who was authoring what content. This makes sense, as Year 2011 for Google has been all about their multiple Panda algorithm updates, which favor higher quality content as a page ranking factor. If Google can identify au [...]

Link Building Tool Review: Link Research Tool Set By CEMPER

Aug 9, 2011 at 2:09pm ET by Debra Mastaler

Beginning today, my Link Week column will be devoted to link building tool reviews. Each review will focus on how the tool works and provide tips on how you can use the results to build links. If you're on the fence about buying a tool, hopefully my reviews will help with your decision making process. The review is not an endorsement by Search Engine Land or myself, it's simply an outline to help you understand how the tool can be used. The test sites I'm using are all willing participants, I have permission from their owners to review and publish what I find in their back links. Each t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

5 Metrics To Quickly Assess Site Quality When Link Building

Aug 2, 2011 at 1:08pm ET by Julie Joyce

As site quality becomes more of a factor in how Google values sites, it's going to become critical for link builders to be able to figure out what identifies a quality site. However, link builders aren't miracle workers. Two years ago, we could make sites rank for just about anything by grabbing up links like crazy. Now, while that can still happen, the stickiness of those rankings just isn't there. Link quality is more important. If a site's quality is determined to be low, a link from that site may not pass the desired link juice to your site for rankings improvements, and it may not r [...]

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

A Google Plus Primer On Links & Rank

Jul 26, 2011 at 9:34am ET by Eric Ward

There are a lot of questions bouncing around about Google+ links and their impact and effect on rank. I will share what I feel confident about and also give you a road map of must read articles that once read, will really help you to feel more comfortable with what we do and don't know about Google Plus, link building and sharing, and search rank. Stream First, for the link builder, the obvious. You post a URL in the "Share What's New" box, below and share it with "Public", or with one or more of your Circles. [caption id="attachment_86362" align="aligncenter" width="493" caption="The Goo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Intervention & Rehab Time: How To Break The Paid Link Habit

Jul 19, 2011 at 11:45am ET by Eric Enge

So you have finally made the decision to get off of the paid links crack and go straight. Do you go cold turkey? Do you take this in stages? There are great questions and the ones I will take on in today's post. There are two major reasons why you should make this switch, one of which is more obvious than the other: 1. The search engines are gunning for you. The paid link does not add value to their algorithm. Links are not useful as a ranking factor if they aren't freely given as true endorsements. They just aren't. So they want to discount them. The impact of this is that once yo [...]

How CDBaby Built 20,000 Citations With One E-Mail

Jul 12, 2011 at 4:31pm ET by Ross Hudgens

CDBaby* is an online distributor of independent music. Founded by well-known entrepreneur Derek Sivers, the service became a huge hit with independent musicians because it offered the first easy way for artists to distribute and sell their music online. Sivers, a professional musician, took CDBaby on a unique path that differentiates it from many other businesses - in that he didn't ever want to run the company at all. He started CDBaby in 1997 because his friends asked him to post their songs online as he had his own. One favor led to another, and eventually Sivers built his company to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Creative Tips For Link Building On A Shoestring Budget

Jul 5, 2011 at 9:00am ET by Julie Joyce

Since "how much would it take me to get started?" is a common question that potential clients ask me, I thought I'd expand a bit on my original answer to Debra Mastaler's forum questions. I love the idea of only having $100 to get started because many times, having less money means you have to get more creative. So, since I've spent my theoretical $100 already (in the post above), everything else I'd advise is free. So far we've set up social media accounts, used a few free tools in order to find more Twitter followers, analyze our Twitter work, and keep abreast of all of our online ment [...]

How To Help Clients Understand Social Link Outcomes

Jun 28, 2011 at 1:23pm ET by Eric Ward

My previous column, Key Problems With Current Social Link Graph Signals hit a nerve with a few people who felt I was too harsh in my critique of social signals as content quality indicators. See this post from bigmouthmedia for one of the more in-depth responses. It's not that I don't feel social signals have merit. They do. I used a wart removal/Yanni example as a way of making a point and elicit a laugh or two. I'll stand by my assessment of social signals impacting search results, which is that they are not ready for prime time, but there's a more pressing matter I think all of us li [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

3 Common Link Building Questions Answered By 4 Experts

Jun 21, 2011 at 12:17pm ET by Debra Mastaler

I'm a forum rat, I visit several on a daily basis as a way to keep up with what's going on. If there's an update, cool new tool or SEO controversy brewing, chances are I'll read about it on one of the forums before anywhere else. Conversely, if I have a question or want to bounce a theory off someone, I'll head to one of the forums and ask. They're a tremendous informational resource and social outlet for people passionate about SEO. Once you spend time on the different forums, you'll notice topic trends and similar questions pop up regularly. I thought it might be fun to pull thre [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

How To Find The Websites Likely To Link To You

Jun 14, 2011 at 8:32am ET by Ross Hudgens

In my column two months ago for Link Week, I described ways we can use what we know about pages that rarely link to us to our advantage when link building. Certain page-level characteristics are immediately identifiable as being a standard characteristic of sites that won't link to us. This is most frequently big businesses, and sometimes .edu's and .gov's when our content isn't strong enough. By eliminating these immediately identifiable non-linkers when prospecting, we improve our efficiency and therefore, increase the number of links we can obtain per hour and scale our campaigns more [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Key Problems With Current Social Link Graph Signals

Jun 7, 2011 at 10:30am ET by Eric Ward

With the roll out of Google +1 Buttons For Websites, almost all the key players in the on-page social button space are ready for the fight to truly be joined. Facebook, Twitter, Google, and old stallwarts Sharethis and Add-This all provide content creators with the ability to embed shareability, and signals which can be studied (Note to Bing: it's not that hard. Make a little b! codelit and we will figure out what to do with it for you). As a linking strategist, I totally dig social buttons. Making it easier for people to rate, share, save and bookmark URLs is Nirvana for me. See my [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

What The Link Value Economy Hath Wrought

May 31, 2011 at 3:14pm ET by Julie Joyce

It's often said that paid links have created a false economy. As someone who has admittedly purchased links and contributed to that, I would definitely have to agree. I've caught loads of heck for buying links and there have been recent high-profile slaps for sites caught buying links, but what isn't often discussed is the role of the greedy webmaster in all of this. If webmasters didn't ask for money, we wouldn't buy links. If no one offered money though, webmasters wouldn't ask for it. It's the chicken or the egg, all over again. The recent Harvard porn links outing is just one of many [...]

A Campaign Prep Checklist For Link Builders

May 24, 2011 at 1:22pm ET by Debra Mastaler

This is the fourth and final installment of our Link Building Blueprint series, as a refresher here are the first three posts: Part 1 - A Link Building Blueprint: The Foundation Part 2 - Utility Linking Part 3 - Proven Ways to Use Content to Attract Links Our blueprint has, up to this point, outlined multiple tactics, provided how-to examples and source sites to draw links from. It's a solid starting point for building links, so what are you waiting for? If you answer "the time" - I feel your pain. Link building is the most time intensive part of the SEO process and one that neve [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Link Building For Life: Determining Lifetime Link Value

May 17, 2011 at 8:40am ET by Ross Hudgens

The ideal goal for some SEOs is to minimize maintenance and effort for a given website. Get to number one for all desirable keywords, sit back, and then move on to the next website while the previous domain rakes in the cash. This dream scenario is unfortunately rarely the case, because there are other competitors that make number one an increasing difficult mark to hit – and, also, most notably – the link graph has a rapid rate of attrition. Losing Value – Losing Links Every website succumbs to the reductionist nature of the web. Although the number of pages increase, the link graph a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

How To Use Free Alerts For Link Discovery

May 10, 2011 at 8:53am ET by Julie Joyce

Although my agency does use a variety of paid and free tools for various purposes, by and large, we do most of our discovery through manually searching the web. If you've done it, you will know that while it's fun and interesting at times, it's also a serious pain. It's inefficient, it's tedious, and you're likely to keep running into the same sites over and over. Sometimes it's nice to sit back and let the link potentials come to you using a variety of free alert tools. Alerts are a great way to stay informed about what's being said. You can use alerts just to monitor your brand or a ke [...]

Contrarian Perspectives On Link Building

May 3, 2011 at 12:52pm ET by Eric Ward

Today's column is not easy for me to write. I've resisted writing it because I don't want to come across as a preaching. smug, I-told-you-so-LinkMoses. Then again, plenty of people already think that, so what the heck. Here goes. The overwhelming majority of websites have no business whatsoever being on the web at all. Which sites? Any site with a business model predicated on search engines being their primary driver of traffic. If your business plan sounds something like this "We will launch a site about XYZ, buy a bunch of links, put out a bunch of press releases, outsource our link bu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Week

Get Our News, Everywhere!

Follow @sengineland

Got a tip? Tell us here!

Most Likes
Most Tweets
Comments

Our Stories Being Liked on Facebook

Search Engine Land Sponsors

Advertise With Us

Free Daily Search News Recap!

SearchCap is a once-per-day newsletter update - sign up below and get the news delivered to you!

Click to watch SMX conference video

Join us at an upcoming SMX event:

North America

SMX East - Oct. 1-3, 2013
SMX Social Media Marketing - Nov. 20-21, 2013
SMX West - March 11-13, 2014
SMX Advanced - June 2014

EMEA

SMX Stockholm - Oct. 14-15, 2013
SMX Milan - Nov. 7-8, 2013
SMX Israel - Jan. 2014
SMX Munich - March 25-26, 2014
SMX London - May 2014
SMX Paris - June 2014

APAC

SMX Sydney - April 2014

Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.