Sun 19 Jul 2009
How To Get Quality Back Links The Top Competition Has
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)Here’s a quick strategy to get quality links anyone can do – it’s white hat and gets you pagerank, trust, authority and rankings. Depending on the type of niche you’re in, you may have to go slightly off-topic in your linkbuilding efforts, but these are real quality links – the type SEO talk about but many don’t actually explain where to get them.
I build links through content of course:
- Identify the top ranking sites in the vertical you’re observing
- Identify the top ranking sites top linked-to articles, and the highest Toolbar PR pages on their site using a tool like Yahoo Site Explorer (which does a pretty good job of listing pages by the amount of links they have) – consider running it through LinkDiagnosis too for PR values
- In turn, pick out the sites that link to those sites – chances are you’ll find these pages have a lot of PR and are trusted by Google.
- Where relevant create similar but original, perhaps more up to date content on your site
- Contact the sites that link to competing sites, and send them a link to your page, asking politely if it might be relevant to their visitors too.
You only need a couple to come off and you have a few links on high PR pages (I’ve done this with pages PR0-PR9 before) and more importantly Google will trust your site more.
The steps are easy, but can be a drawn out process. worthwhile though every now and again to get.
It’s not a get quality links fast game, it’s just a get quality links game.
Part of linkbuilding month for beginners At Hobo!
Did you know when you link to a Hobo SEO post we have search engine friendly links back to your site if approved? Our comments are also search engine friendly you know (once you've commented on a few posts)! Do you need any more encouragement to get involved in the conversation ;)
Thanks for the tips!
I have a recent pet project at http://www.settingupyourbusiness.co.uk/ – I approached about 15 not-for-profit sites (such as universities, small business organisations, and inward investment agencies near where I live) and asked for a link from their ‘useful resources’ (or equivalent) pages.
I stressed that the site was ad-free, played up where I lived for the regional ones, and pointed to a couple of links I already had to show that the site was genuine.
Out of 15 requests, I got …. one link!
My favourite rejection was the one who said they would love to but the site was managed by an agency for them, and it would cost them money they didn’t have to make a change!
Great advice for beginners. I have just started learning SEO and this advice will come in pretty handy. I have never done something like this. Looks like it’s time to start!
Oh thanks for this link building strategy. It’s a really big help to an SEO beginner like me!
Nice technique and it’s realistic about what SEO is.
It takes time, effort and knowledge to create content that’s useful and that attract natural links. But it’s the sort of SEO that Google would like us all to do and is beneficial to the Internet and to your own site.
Not as easy as paying an Indian company $100 for 10,000 directory links but a million times more valuable!
I like this idea, its a good one. I’ve followed one of my competitors links for a few months and they have some great links. So i think time for research
I have a question though, how big an effect does the link have. Say a PR9 page links to a PR1 page, will the PR1 suddenly become a PR8?
On that basis I’m assuming that a PR4 linking to a PR4 won’t make an increase in the PR of the page.
I really like this blog, only problem is now i have a very long reading list and an even longer list of things to do
Tom – this table is nothing to do with me, and its simplifications and assumptions must be so huge as to render it unusable practically, but I guess it gives you an idea of the difference:
http://www.kenkai.com/google-pagerank-table.htm
in the past it USED to work something like this. It certainly does not these days. However, it really all depends on the strength of the PR *. You can be a weak PR5 or a strong PR5 (Looking at Toolbar).