Google used to say:
Have other relevant sites link to yours.
Now it’s guidelines recommend:
Tell the world about your site. Google
It’s clear. Google does not want you asking specifically for links because this is a clear attempt to manipulate their listings and this is as far as I think they go at the moment. It’s a bit poor advice when the key to ranking in Google is having other relevant sites link to your site!
Links are what the web is about though and it is why Google is the number 1 search engine. Links were about before Google. There’s nothing wrong with getting other sites to link to you as long as it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb you’re looking for Pagerank or improved rankings for particlar terms.
Private discussions with people you know are another thing, but when I ask for links (which I don’t do very often), I never ask for specific keyword anchor text. If I send out an email, I’ll point someone in the direction of the page, and I’ll point out that linking to it might have some benefit to thier visitors. On some occasions in the past, I’ve offered to reciprocate the link IF it is of benefit to the readers of the other page. I never specify any attribute of the link either ie wether or not it is search engine friendly.
I would not go on record these days sending an email out saying:
Link to me using the following keyword text on a page with pagerank of minimum 2….
… and neither should you. You never know who will end up reading that and it makes it clear you don’t have a clue what you are on about and will take links from and link back to anybody.
If you want people to link to you in a particular way, make sure the title of the page your wanting links to has the keywords you want to rank for and generally speaking, a lot of folks will use those words to link to you. If, of course, the page is useful in some way!
And don’t send out spam email requests.
I get hundreds of bottom feeder link requests and don’t answer any of them. A waste of time.
There is many ways to skin a cat of course, but this is how my seo company does it – and I’ve said before, we’re a content focused seo agency. We don’t build links to crap (not even s!&t links). :)
PS – How do you tell the world about your site? Twitter. Stumbleupon. Press Ads. Articles. etc etc
Link building can also be done through posting on blogs, directories, article submissions, etc. This will help to increase the number of in-links to the website.
Shaun, good notes on Google’s contrarian advice–here is how you get popular, but don’t do it! Sometimes, to help folks link in on your keywords, you can provide them with the link and the HTML code so they can just copy/paste them in. That increases your chances of getting what you want.
Link building is not about asking for links, it’s about making relationships with people who will then want to link to you. Example 1: if you regurly do a good quality comment at a blog. The blog owner/writer will start to remember you and check your blog. Maybe (s)he likes what you write (or realize he doesn’t speak Dutch LOL ;)) and creates a link in a new blogpost or he/she will ask you to write a guestpost. Example 2: When you have a discussion on twitter with someone, you realize it is worth a blogpost and you write one. The other person might still disagree or might agree but have his/her own perspective on it and writes a follow up post with a link to your article. So how to tell the world about your site? Get in discussion with the major players in your field. They will have the exposure you need.
Exactly I mention that in yesterdays stop building s£$t links :)
! Great comment :)
This is nice story, but SEO is sort of science or technology, so for more precize results you need to have more precize techniques. Strictly speaking, from my experience, if you’ve got more than 75% links with your keywords – you target page will be penalized and lowered in search results. So you need to have at least 25% links with anchor text not related to your keywords. For example “here” “see” or even url. Also the text (about 80 symbold) before reference make some impact on your positions in google.
@ Steve – Not exactly QUALITY links though, while they do work in some cases. @LUX – I have never done SEO like that. I’m more interested in opportunistic links than working out % for anything.
What about this scenario? I have a GoDaddy account which allows me to host a lot of websites for one monthly fee. Since I am the “IT Guy” for all my friends, family and friends of friends/family, I get all the people asking me to help them out. Since I have the hosting account, why should they pay more money for the site, since they are just beginning. If they get too much traffic, then I would ask them to move. So now the ? If I ask them to put a link to my site from their sites, which are hosted at the same place, does that have a negative effect on my personal site in Google. Since I am getting links from myself, sort of, but not really.. Make sense?
Is this Google’s version of don’t ask don’t tell?
There are still “top” SEO companies doing some sort of reciprocal links. Got one request from a page one SEO company today. I still do quite a lot of link request emails, but generally only when the target is non-commercial content. As so long as you select relevant targets, you get good turn around.
Someone asked me to sell a text link today and I said sure, but it would be nofollowed. All of a sudden that’s not good enough :)
@Jim Gaudet in the past I have successfully interlinked a few sites on the same server. Each site i created was a REAL site though. If you have real sites, you can interlink them if relevent for benefit. Heck, Google does this with it’s own sites. In my opinion, it all comes down to the sites you are interlinking ad how you are doing it. For instance, it would be stupid to use the same anchor text, or for instance, to have them all sitelinks. And in my experience it depends on the INTENT. If you have 5 crappy sites and you are interlinking your probably going to have a crappy benefit – ie little. Google’s much less likely to just ignore the links or give little benefit than to penalise you badly for this. Do the same with a LOT of sites, then you’re in real stormy water I think. 2c of course! :)
@Shaun (Hobo) Cool, this is what I thought but it is nice to have someone say it too. All my other sites, well my friends sites, are actual sites or blogs. So I should be good. Most of my links are just my name in the footer, not much but I am in a battle with Jim Gaudet the musician for the number one spot of Google for our name, even though he doesn’t know it :) Normally it is something like Web Design by Jim Gaudet with my name as the link. Seems to work because I get GOOG searches for web design in costa rica.. Thanks for the 2c