Link Building For Newbies

I can admit that link building used to be a big mystery to me so I created this bub to help people understand it and how to do it safely and properly.

Why bother getting backlinks (link building) to a site, or sites?

Getting backlinks helps increase your visibility in the eyes of the search engines, since each backlink is considered a "vote" for your site. the more natural, quality backlinks your site receives, the better it will do in the SERPs, A.K.A. rankings.

You don't necessarily receive more website traffic from the sites that link to you, not usually, but the links you get can increase your search engine visibility and that leads to more organic traffic from the search engines when your keywords are search for and your site appears high up enough in the SERPs to get someone to notice your site url, then click on the listing, then come to your site.

Is link building safe?

If you practice proper link building etiquette and strategies, then Yes, link building is safe. Proper link building strategies include the link velocity, which means how fast-and-furious your link acquisition rate is.

Aside from link velocity, links source sis also an important concern, because you want the sources of the backlinks to your sites to be reputable and hopefully, theme-related sites (sites that are similar in theme and topic to yours).

How and where to get backlinks for link building?

• Forums (if they allow for signature files in forum profiles)
• Social bookmarking
• Other related sites
• Article marketing
• Reciprocal links
• 3 way links
• RSS feed submissions
• and a whole lot more...

What's the best way for a link building newbie to get started with minimal link building?

Article marketing is labor-intensive, but produces the best results for your time and effort. With article marketing, you write articles, then submit them for publication to article directories.

Since the top article directories are all top quality, trusted, authority sites, the links obtained form your articles will not only send direct traffic your way, but will also result in a quality backlink on a per article basis.

If you're feeling like you want to take article marketing to an advanced level, then you want to check out some article syndication services to syndicate your unique articles to a lot of sites at once..

To understand link building you need to understand that there are some attributes assigned to backlinks, and these are broekn down into 2 type sof attributes; DoFollow and NoFollow.

Do Follow link attributes tell the search engines to Follow wherever a link on a site points to, thereby giving credit to the destination url in the link for whatever link juice and anchor text might get passed along with that link.

NoFollow link attributes tell the search engines that see your links to apply less link juice and "SEO weight" to the links, thereby sending less value link-wise ot the site or url being linked to.

If you have an affiliate marketing website for instance, you want to apply NoFollow link attributes to outgoing links to the vendor sites to lessen the negative effect of linking outbound which lessens the overall link juice of your site.However, you want to use DoFollow link attributes for internal link building, when you reference another url on your site.

What is link juice?

You've probably read about link juice ealrie rin this article and are wondering wha tit means exactly...

The dumbed-down definition would be that link juice is the amount of power, seo-wise to the links generated to and from sites. If your websites has a lot of quality inbound links, and doesn't link outwards, out outbound too often, then your site will have a decent amount of link juice.

But link juice also applies to the links you're getting too. If you're getting quality inbound links but they're all Nofollow, then you're not getting a lot of link juice from the Nofollow links.

There's a lot of myths out there about link building so I'm going to dispel some of the link building myths in short order to keep you on the right track.

Myth #1 - Write good content and people will link to your content naturally.

This unrealistic, and doesn't happen in the real world unless you have a dominant authority site that has a lot of people watching your content, reading it, and using your super-high-value content site as a resource.

Myth #2 - Getting links from bad neighborhoods will affect your rankings.

Again, not true otherwise your competitors could knock you out of the SERPs by sending these "bad links" your way.  If it was at all possible, you'd need to get 1000s of spammy links in a very short amount of time, and all that would happen would be your site would drop out of the SERPs for a while, then bounce back, maybe even higher-ranked than ever.

I don't know of any forum spam linkers who would risk sending thousands of links from bad neighborhoods to their competitors' sites, knowing that some of those links could stick.

Myth #3 - You don't need backlinks if you use LSI and great content that gets linked to

LSI in a nutshell means using related thematic words in your content.  If you site is about roses then you need to use all of the words that naturally come to mind when talking or writing about roses.  That's how the search engines use LSI to rank sites better, but publishing well-LSI-ed content still isn't good to get you top-ranked witohut baklinks, but it sure would make things easier.

You see, no site can exist or fluorish as an island, meaning that no site can be deemed a quality site without someone or something noticing it and giving it a "vote", ie, a backlink.

While using and writing LSI style can help your sites rank easier, you still need some backlinks in order to rank at the top,

The goal of link wheeling is to create link juice for your money sites.

Link juice comes from having some links pointing towards the properties that are linking to other properties.

Link juice is also reliant upon the trust an authority of the site tha tis hosting oyur content, like Squidoo, Hubs, wetpaint, weebly etc....

The way link wheeling is supposed ot work is you start with the easily obtained backlinks like social bookmarking and pliggs.

Since these links are so easily obtained, it stands to reason they possess less value, but their strength is in numbers,; you can get a lot of thme easily enough and you use them to build em to build backlinks towards better quality sites tha tin turn provide better backlinking power..

So what do you use pliggs and social bookmarking to get backlinks to, what "properties"?

Remember to always keep in mind that link wheels are for the purpose of developing powerful links to your end destination sites without directly linking to them except for the last step in the wheel.

You use the lower quality liks sources to get backlinks to better quality link source,s ie, web 2.0 properties you don't own and control.

A lot of newbies to link building have heard about something called profiles link building, which is the practice of creating profiles at high Page Rank sites.

When you create a profile with these sites, you're allowed to flesh out your member profile area, and this is where you get to add your links to whatever site you want.  This is called profiles link building or profiles linking.

Does Profiles Link Building Work and is it Spam linking?

There are membership sites that offer a low-cost service that discovers new sources for places to build profiles links on and these links packets are then released to many people.  Since a lot of people are using these packets, there is a swarm of people going to these places at the beginning of every month and building their spammy profiles.

The site owners are catching on to this and threatening legal action and banning some people from their sites, but these sites owners are few and far between and their threats are empty threats.

The fact remains that joining sites for the sole purpose of putting backlinks in your profile to your desired urls is spammy since it provides no value and memberships were created fo rno other reason than that.  However, this is not a big deal, it's harmless, doesn't hurt anyone so it's not worth having any moral palpitations over.

To make these profiles work best for you:

Avoid automated solutions that create profiles and post your links to them.

Do these profiles creations manually.

Customize your profiles, add some new articles, interact with the communities you just joined so you seem like a legitimate new member and to ensure your profiles stay active and don't get deleted.

Make your profile on theme and relevant to your destination sites being linked to, by writing some text that has some of your sites' main keywords in there and some biographical stuff too.

The more you customize these profiles, the better your results will be

I remember about a year and a half ago, I had a marketing coach tell me that I had to learn about traffic generation, seo, link building, social media etc...

1. And I was admittedly confused about how it all worked.
2. Then I started to "see the light" and grasp the concepts behind SEO, Link Building, exposure versus rankings etc....
3. Then I started implementing what I'd learned along the way
4. And it got tough, laborious, frustrating, you name it...because some link building services don't work well and are just hyped up guru launches, while finding the really effective services was like finding a needle in a haystack.

Anyways, I've come across something new (at the time of this writing) that makes link building quite easy to do and its very effective, too.

Before I tell you what it is, let me just say that you'll see extreme leverage here if you promote the program a little bit, but you'll still experience great SEO leverage when you use this system.

The system/service is called EZArticleLink and it works well.They even have a free option and you can read all about it on the Hub I linked to above.

Now, the other service I mentioned that newbies to traffic generation and SEO will love does something entirely different.

It doesn't rely on SEO or link building at all, but it does have some powerful leveraging concepts behind it.

If you've ever heard of ViralURL you know how powerful that service still is to this day. Well, the new service I am talking about is very much like that but its 100% FREE.

A commenter on this hub (Jody) asked about buying links and it seems like he/she might have had bad experiences with them in the past.

MOST places that publicly advertise that they're selling links are delivering spammy-type links and their link networks are usually discovered rather easily.  So in most instances you don't want to buy or rent links from webmasters or link networks.

However, as a link building expert I can tell you that there are some ways in which you can buy text links that are of good quality, unique and end up being very effective, too. These types of links are usually delivered by link masters who build up a network of high PageRank sites that have a lot of link juice (inbound links versus outbound links).

Another way to look at "renting" links is buying paid advertising spots on high traffic blogs and while this isn't really an SEO method that's long lasting, it is still immedaite increasedexpsoure which is what SEO doe sin the long run.

I generally recommend against buying links of any kind and encourage people to just learn for themselves how they can create high quality sites and links of their own

Here are some more basics of building links for the beginners and experts.

Generally, a website is better off with more links. But, there is more importance given to high quality backlinks. A few effective backlinks are better than many ineffective links.

What kind of links are there?
In general, links come in two forms. Naked Links appear like an URL and anchor text link converts words into links that could be clicked on.

How do these backlinks drive traffic to your site?
More backlinks could raise your rankings for certain effective keyword phrases. When you gain backlinks, you bring in organic traffic, which is defined as free traffic derived from search engines because the site or page has been ranked for a specific keyword.

Naked links added to articles can also drive traffic. When people click on these links, they can visit your site. Article marketing achieves direct traffic of this sort when they add naked links to their articles or use the phrase “Click Here”.

Is backlinks the only thing that gains high rankings and free traffic
Link building alone would not achieve these aims for you. You need to optimize the website itself. These changes would show effects in search result pages quickly.

SEO needs an effective blend of on and off-page optimization techniques. Send some quality backlinks to optimized websites for good rankings.

Here are some means to gaining backlinks

Comment on blogs and articles
1.Leave valuable comments on blogs that cater to your niche and leave backlinks to your site.
2.It is good to leave comment on articles written at ezinearticle.com, which has a high Page Rank.
3.News sites are another option, but they might be too stringent.

Forums
1.Some forums allow signature files with links to follow all forum posts.
2.You can request for others to review your site at these forums.
3.Personal blogs are permitted on some blogs and they act like a Squidoo Lens or Hubpage post.

Squidoo and Hubpages
These are two popular sites that enable one to create mini-sites and link back to their website. One could link to other pages or create connections between RSS feeds. These are a good source of backlinks but some efforts are need to make them effective.

Social Bookmarking
Another range of websites with Web 2.0 incorporated are social networking websites like Digg and StumbleUpon. They allow one to submit websites and obtain backlinks.

Article Marketing
This involves writing related articles to gain traffic and backlinks. Syndication services like Unique Article Wizard and My Article Network could make it more effective.

Press release
Sites like PRLOG.org are a good source of backlinks as they tend to syndicate your links across the Internet.

Other Ways To Build Links
1.Aim to obtain a different range of backlinks to look natural
2.Use a variety of keyword phrases as anchor text across your promotional submissions.
3.Do not rely too much on one link building method.
4.Use tools and services that to reduce your workload.
5.Automate the process with mechanisms like Link Wheel.

Here's another tip I thought I'd drop in here to this link building tips hub...

Reverse engineering the inbound links profile of your competitors, also know simply as, "getting backlinks from same places your competitors", is a good idea but has some pitfalls.

But first, how to get the inbound links profile of your comeptitors, what are the steps here?

Well first off, you need to focus on what keyword you are concerned about, what is it you want to rank for?  Figur eout what you want to rank for, and have good reasons for this, then do the backlinks analysis.

When doing the backlinks, do so with THAT particular keyword, or set of keywords and phrases in mind.  Then do an anlaysis of your competitors profile, and look for the dofollow and nofollow anchor texted link sthey got for those keywords and phrases.

Your competitors are ranking for certain things based on their sites' authority, age, search engine trust, and inbound link juice, and while those are important ranking factors, if you're trying to compete with a site that doesn't have any or all of those things, then  the best you can do is to emulate their anchor text link sources.

So focus on the sources that they got links form for those keywords and phrases, but add in some other criteria, too

To do this more efficiently (compete with multiple higher ranked sites), look for commonalities with link sources, which basically means... look for instances where 2 competitors got links form similar or same sites, could be same domains or exact same urls.

Here's the thing... if you try to emulate several inbound link profiles for multiple competitors, then you are taking on a huge workload here, and you don't really know if one unique backlink source for competitor A is going to help you, really, and you don't know if a different backlink source for competitor B is passing great value, but if you dumb things down to commonalities and ascertain where they these competitors BOTH have links from, then it's safe bet here that the commonality you find is worth going after for a backlinks.

In some niches, if not all niches... there's backlink sources known as hubs, not to be confused with hubpages.com :) and these hubs are known as optimal link targets,

One thing we see a lot of in the SEO landscape is link building service providers offering hordes of links for cheap prices, but the fact is, these links are easy to come by therefore most likely of low quality.

If you're building backlinks yourself, and you've experiencing issues getting these links indexed so they provide a boost in your site's rankings, then you're probably building low quality links, and these links will require more and more of your efforts if you're going to produce stable rankings for your money sites.

The "game" of low quality link building is a numbers game, and if you're up against, competing with other site owners trying to rank via similar methods, then it becomes a battle of the SEO budgets to see who can generate massive backlinks volume, and usually the biggest budget will win, but please keep in mind that with these kinds of backlinks you will end up doing an endless chore to keep your sites ranked.

Low quality links have their place, but it's always best if you diversify your link acquisition quality and not just focus on massive link generation.

Some SEO gurus proclaim that backlinking to your site with more than 1 anchor text leads to a "relevancy dilution", meaning that multiple varying anchor text links pointing to your site will result is search engines confusion as to what to rank your site for, anchor text 1, 2,3,4 or 5.

But the fact is... this isn't natural and since link building is still an attempt to game the search engines into ranking your sites higher, you still have to appear natural with your backlink anchor text selection.

You need to throw in some "naked links" which are just the full urls of the sites, but without any anchor text involved.

You should also know what the long tail money keywords are for your chosen keyword/keyphrase and url you want to rank, with the reason being that... if it's easier to rank your site or page for a less competitive, but more lucrative term via specific anchor text selection, then it helps you make more money with your websites even though you're ranking for "easier" terms (the long tails). 

NOTE: Sometimes when you go after a money keyword you will run up against some real tough competition because others in this same niche has already researched what the money keywords and phrases are, and are practicing effective SEO, which is the practice of ranking for easier terms that produce a higher ROI.

And the final reason for using multiple anchor texts when backlinking to your site:

It might take forever and a day to rank that competitive generic keyword you chose, but if you vary your anchor text to include long tail keywords that get traffic, then you end up with a top listing for a traffic generating term, and this makes it easier to rank that same page/domain/url etc.... for the more generic terms because that top-listed, top-ranked url has gained trust, and gains more trust form the search engines the longer it remains highly ranked.

A lot of people disregard the fact that linking from your own site, to other pages on the same site can pass a lot of value to the destination URL.

Before we get into this, there's some things that you need to be aware of before you delv einto dissecting your onsite cross linking interlinking methods.

#1- User experiences should not suffer when reading your site, therefore you shouldn't splatter your pages with tons of hyperlinks that make it hard for readers to continue through the content they're currently reading.    If I'm on a website trying to read an article and I see tons of distracting hyperlinks on every page I'm trying to read, I will end up with information overload, especially if a lot of the links are linking back to the home page of the site for a keyword or phrase this particular site owner wants to rank for.   So be careful and judicious when doing cross linking on same site.

#2- Have a reason for doing the cross linking.  Are you trying to direct readers towards a landing page, or money page?  Is the linked-to url (Article B) really of interest to the reader who is reading article A?  If not, then why would you sacrifice user experience just to throw an anchor text link towards Article B url? You only receive minimal  ranking boosts when you cross link form same sites in DoFollow manner so please be careful when doing this.

OK, so how can an on-site, same-site link be deemed worthless by the search egnines?

Simple, if Article A url links to Article B url twice in same article, the second hyperlink is not ocunted, not valued by the search engines.  They only "credit" the first link to the same destination url per link source.

If you MUST link to the destination URL, Article B url more than once from Article A url, then use some SEO copy writing skills and link to Article B url in such a way that it gets a good CTR, click through rate.  After all, you should have a reason why you're linking to Article B url in the first place, and since the second link from Article A url is worthless, you should Nofollow it, and employ some copy writing skills to ensure that the reader goes where you want them to go on your site.   Instead of anchor text keyword rich anchor text in this second link, use words that aren't keyword rich since there's no value being passed here, but instead use compelling blurbs to get the readers to go read that linked-to article

I have bene doing a month's long test after the recent Panda and Farmer Google algorithm updates to see if the power of domain names with keywords in them are truly devalued, and also to see if good content on a site will really, truly, rank your site on the merits of content alone.

I paid a writer 300/month for the last 2 1/2 months to merely write well researched, long articles are this particular niche, and the writer was instructed to do ZERO off-page SEO work like link building for this site.

However, to make the site appear as natural as possible there WERE some outbound links on this site to true authority sites in this niche on the basic precept that bad sites hardly ever link out to good ones...  So there was some SEO work done but it was more of a philosophical attitude towards how this site was to be built, and organized.

The site is currently #2, page 1 for what I know for a fact is a huge money keyword.

None of the inner pages of the site are ranking for stuff even if it's long tail.

Will the inner pages need backlinks in order to rank higher?  Perhaps yes, perhaps no, that will take a lot longer to see for sure, but the fact remains that for this ONE particular niche site, the EMD ranked on its own, without backlinks... for a big money keyword, merely by having great content, a keyword-optimized EMD, and some natural outbound link sot trusted authority site.

Moral of the story?  With EMDs, you can rank for the keywords in the domain if you're patient enough, therefore more effort should be invested in the content on these sites, and less time on link building.   Please keep in mind that this case study EMD ranked purely on the basis of good content PLUS a keyword rich domain, and that inner pages will probably require some link building to be done,