How Can Link Builders Keep Learning?
Feeling stagnant? Columnist Julie Joyce discusses why it's so critical for link builders (and SEOs) to always keep learning on the job.
Julie Joyce owns the link development firm Link Fish Media and is one of the founding members of the SEO Chicks blog. Julie began working in search marketing in 2002 and soon became head of search for a small IT firm. Eventually, she started Link Fish Media, where she now serves as Director Of Operations, focusing on working with clients in ultra-competitive niches all over the world.
How To Learn From Your Competitors Without Copying Them
Link Week Columnist Julie Joyce gives insights into five ways to use competitive analysis to help build out a new link profile -- without blindly copying it.
Why I Never Mine Competitors’ Backlinks
Columnist Julie Joyce explains why copying your competitors' link profile might do more harm than good.
A Surefire Recipe To Getting The Links You Deserve
Columnist Julie Joyce explains how one site takes advantage of users' search behavior and explains how you can do the same.
Naturally Generated Links? Hey, Google Might Still Hate Them!
Let’s say you have a manual penalty… not a nice way to open a post, I know, but it’s the reality for many site owners. What if Google shows you an example of one of your problematic links, and it’s one that sends you some really great converting traffic? What if, upon conducting a link […]
5 Pieces Of Content: 25 Link Ideas
Trying to come up with ideas for getting links from other sites? Link Week columnist Julie Joyce shows us her brainstorming process with several example articles.
Tool Overview: LinkRisk — Not Just For Detoxing Anymore
Link Week columnist Julie Joyce reviews the LinkRisk tool suite, which has added some useful capabilities you may not be aware of.
To Create Useful Links, Think Like A User, Not A Content Producer
Are you letting your users down by focusing too much on attracting links? Columnist Julie Joyce suggests a mode of thinking to help you link more naturally.
The Real Reason No One Wants To Link To You
Wondering why no one is linking to you? Julie Joyce gives you the lowdown on why your site isn't as linkworthy as it could be.
4 Tools (And 1 E-Book) I’m Loving For Content Creation And Link Development
As a content creator and link builder, you're likely always looking for fresh ideas and inspiration. Columnist Julie Joyce shares some new tools for ideation that have caught her eye.
Learning From Lost Link Opportunities
Instead of getting upset about rejection, take a few steps back and look at why you aren't getting the links you want.
How To Put The Brakes On Overzealous Link Junkies
If links are good, does that mean more links are better? Not always. Sometimes you need to push back.
It’s Not Just Links: Why Nothing Is Safe In Online Marketing
Links have been under fire for years. And while I’m someone who provides link development services, I’ve never thought that links are all you need. In fact, if all of my clients would let me become more involved in other aspects of their marketing, I’d be absolutely gleeful. Links, while important, aren’t the alpha and […]
The 10 Worst Link Building Assumptions
Over the past few years, one of the biggest problems I’ve faced is educating clients about search marketing — about what’s reasonable to expect and what isn’t in the world of link building. It can be difficult, especially in the winning-the-business stage, to admit that you can’t turn lead into gold, but being honest and […]
After Suffering Link Trouble, Should You Second-Guess Your SEO?
If you’ve just received an unnatural links warning or have been hit with a link-related penalty (or totally shafted by the latest algorithm update), should you expand the scope of your attempted fix beyond links? Absolutely, and here’s why: I’ve Never Seen A Link-Penalized Site That Had Nothing Else Wrong Even if it’s something small, […]
How To Amp Up Your User Engagement (And Get More Links)
People like to link to content that shows signs of life. If you have an active community, people are more likely to return often — and that increases the chances that when they need to link to something, it might be to you. In this era where we’re all terrified about who’s linking to us, […]
Adopt A Contingency Search Marketing Plan Before You Get Dinged
What if you were penalized or deindexed in Google? What if you accidentally blocked everything in your robots.txt file? What if you didn’t know you had done something wrong, and you were hit with an algorithmic update that crushed you? For every one of you who sees it coming, there are a ton that don’t. […]
Creating Content For Your Users That Will Also Get You Links
When you’re crafting content, you obviously want to create something that your users want to see; but, that’s not always as easy as it sounds. How can you tell what they want? How do you know what they need? Perhaps just as important is this question: how can you craft something that appeals specifically to […]
The Link Builder’s Brick Wall, And How To Vault It
After having more of a management role in my company for the last few years, I’d almost forgotten how easy it is to burn out when it comes to link building. But lately, I’ve been in the trenches myself, and I’ve approached that brick wall that we all hit at some point. Luckily, I’ve learned a few […]
14 Link Resolutions for 2014
If 2013’s link building industry could be summed up in one word, that word would be “interesting.” There were some big shakeups that other people have covered in various locations on the web, so I won’t go into that here; but, what I will discuss is what your 14 resolutions for 2014 could be. 1. […]
How Do You Differentiate Yourself From Your Competitors?
I recently acquired a new client that is a competitor of a site to which I’m personally loyal. At a neighborhood party, I overheard someone mention this new client, so I asked if he’d ever been to the other site (the one I’m so personally loyal to), and he had never heard of them. Conflicted, […]
Down With Toolbar PageRank And Up With… What?
I’ve never been a big fan of Google’s Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) because, as you may know, it’s a metric that isn’t updated very often. It’s also been thrown around too much as a metric that gauges quality — and I’ve been doing this long enough to know that many lower-TBPR sites/pages (and new sites with […]
Why The YouTube Keyword Tool Is So Amazing For Link Building
Debra Mastaler mentioned the YouTube keyword tool again recently, and I don’t think I’ve been this excited about keywords in, well… ever. I confess to only now realizing how much of a help it can be. Never mind the awesome fact that you can get keywords and easily import them into Google AdWords for your […]
When Looking For Links, How Can You Predict A Site’s Future?
I was recently asked how to make sure that each link you build (however you do it) remains a safe one — and I have to say that I truly had no idea how to answer that. A few years back, my answer would have been different than it is today. Remember when we all said […]
50+ More Things Every Link Builder Should Know
A year ago, I wrote a post about 50+ things that every link builder should know. Over the past year, link building has definitely gotten a lot tougher — it’s been renamed several times, become more vilified than ever, and generally taken a beating. However, it still holds up as a viable way to market […]
To Build Better Links, Stop Focusing On The Bad Ones
Over the past year, I confess that I’ve spent way more time digging into bad links than good links. I’ve conducted audits with the specific goal of finding problems — not finding links to emulate or identifying awesome links that the client should go to great lengths to keep. I’ve written more about problem links […]
The Problem With Identifying Problem Links
Since the last Penguin update, there has been a lot of chatter about examining your link profile in order to identify bad links. Whether you’ve been hit by that update or your site remains unscathed (for now), the potential danger of “unnatural” links is top of mind. Many people who’ve never given a second thought […]
Are You Taking Advantage Of Content Byproducts?
In my last column, I discussed how to create linkbait by writing about other people. Shari Thurow made a comment that fits in perfectly with an idea I had about finding ways to expand existing content and better market the byproducts of your business: “Instead of linking to the link-bait article, I’ll write my own POV […]
How To Get Links By Writing About Other People
People usually love talking about themselves, and most people are naturally interested in the intricacies of others, whether it’s business or personal. When you do an interview or put together a crowdsourced piece (and yes, I know many of you hate that term!) you’re linking to the people involved. At first, this may seem counter-intuitive […]
How To Create A Sustainable Link Plan
I’ve recently spoken with three business owners who have approached me in a fairly atypical way: instead of asking me for a proposal, they’ve given me theirs. It’s been a fascinating glimpse into the dangers of thinking that just because you read a lot about link building (and by and large, most people who tell […]
20 Resources To Add To Your Link Tool Arsenal Right Now
I love reading articles about which tools different people use for link buildng purposes. In trying to put together a recommended list of tools for a client who wants to do part of his own link building in-house, I realized that this might be a helpful way for someone to easily build a nice little […]
3 Quick & Easy Link Fixes Many Websites Still Overlook
While I hesitate to define anything link-related as being easy, there are definitely a few things that can be easily fixed, things that can make a sometimes small and sometimes major difference in how your site performs online. Link builders are certainly not miracle workers, but much of the time, links are still seen as […]
3 Areas That Get Overlooked When Building Links In A Bubble
One of the most frustrating things about doing a link campaign is that usually, we’re doing it because no one else wants to, or no one else has the time to. Link building is one of the most outsourced parts of SEM and much of the time, we’re one of a handful of agencies working […]
Will 2013 Bring A Paid Link Resurgence?
With Google rolling out frequent changes, the last couple of years have been alternately amazingly fun and freakishly terrifying for anyone who builds links or has links built. It should be clear by now that your site can be harmed by poor quality links, whether you bought them or got them for free, or heck, […]
Link Building Tool Review: Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a suite of tools that contains “the largest index of live links.” There is a free version and a premium version, an API, and an affiliate program. They have their own index, putting them into the same arena as SEO Moz and Majestic, and they post some useful stuff on their internal blog […]
Link Building Tool Review: Serpi.co
There’s a new player on the links tool market – Serpi.co. Using Majestic SEO‘s data, they allow you to view link data of up to ten competitors at once, let you track keyword rankings over time, set up automatic alerts, and provide you with historic data that goes back to 2007. They also offer a link […]
How To Conduct A Link Audit
In the comments section of my last column, someone asked me about link audits, and after looking around to see if I could find a good resource to point her to, I didn’t find anything that was exactly what I was looking for. I found loads of great pieces on SEO audits but not that […]
50+ Things Every Link Builder Needs To Know
Like it or not, link building has been and still is big, big business. Doing it well takes a lot of time and resources, which means that many webmasters/site owners can’t or don’t want to do it themselves. Many agencies that handle other aspects of search engine marketing want to outsource it simply because of […]
Time & Value Of Link Cleanups: Should You Even Bother?
Link cleanups are all the rage right now, rightly so if you can judge by the number of webmasters who received Google warnings or had their sites tank. Strategies for effective cleanup have been outlined, tools to help you find contacts for cleanup have been unveiled, but there isn’t much information out there about the […]
The Domino Effect Of Links & Relationships
Link building can, and should, be a domino effect. A good solid link should lead to more good, solid links, but do we always pursue links with this in mind? I confess that I don’t always. Sometimes a link is just a link, and that’s where it ends, but moving forward in the wake of […]