Best place to start link building
-
I am new to SEO and want to start doing some link building using SEO moz to help. I am looking for pointers on where to start. Our business is www.hairbowcenter.com and we sell ribbon and hairbow supplies. We are lacking a lot of good links and I wanted to start focusing getting more. What tools should I use and where do I begin. I noticed our Pagerank is only 1 for our site and I want to get that up as well.
-
Are directories still a relevant way to start with link building after the latest google changes?
-
I usually don't use shortcuts when I research Mommy Blogs. The quality ones get a ton of requests for reviews and giveaways. You have to find a way to stick out from the bunch. I usually read a handful of posts and the "About Me" page before sending an email. That way I can personalize it, and possibly even find a good pitch (ie - if they do a product of the week, etc). Most good Mommy Blogs have a page devoted to PR or you can just use their contact form.
I haven't used them so I can't vouch personally, but http://momsparkmedia.com/ might be a good option for you. Looks like they act as a liaison between bloggers and companies.
I hope that helps!
-
Can you recommend some sites that you contract mommy bloggers from? It seems like from sites like this http://goo.gl/tJFSG, you cant easily find the contact info to ask for a review, and also seems inefficient to keep asking one by one.
Is there something like payperpost.com, specifically more for mommy bloggers, that has good quality blogs?
Thanks for your help
-
As mentioned above spreadsheets are the way forward or a simple word processor page. Adding all the information such as email contacts etc
Another good one is to check out whois information on sites and be like "a dog with a bone" be persistent day in day out and make sure you get in touch with the webmasters. Skype is a good tool to initiate conversations also.
-
I agree with the Twitter follow suggestion, but don't consider it even "a little grey hat."
My team and I have been able to get about one in five people we follow to follow us back. And we've seen more than a few convert into valued customers.
The best strategy is to be both selective and transparent. Don't go on a blitz where you follow hundreds of people from a few sources on a single day. Be very targeted. Follow people slowly and incrementally, after first providing something of value on your own Twitter feed....and jumping into discussions where you can provide expertise.
Too many people go on fishing expeditions in which they randomly follow people from targeted Twitter feeds. The targets may click over to your Twitter feed out of curiosity, but be turned off by one marketing message after another, but no real content. Or they may follow you -- and then have nothing more to do with you ever again.
-
As has been mentioned - links pointing to you need to be relevant and related. The place to start is look in depth at your competitors. Ascertain who they are - and see who links to them. If you can gain links from the same places that are relevant and regarded as authorities, and leave out their spammy links it will give you a good start.
Once you have found your competitors - read this post on using googles custom search engine for potential link mining here on SEOmoz, and delve into the world of search parameters to get your search for potential links on target.
When you are seeking links - avoid specifically going for just links to your home page - link diversity is key. If you are approaching an authority site about a specific product and you have a guide on how to use it or positive reviews on it, ask for a link to the deep page to ensure the relevancy is there.
-
You've received some good advice above and there's only one suggestion I would make. Although, I'm not a huge social networking fan I do think that Twitter can be a very useful tool. Although a little grey hat, the strategy is to follow users who you would like to follow you. A fair percentage will follow back. Then, mention them in your tweets, which they usually appreciate, followed by any other means of building a relationship. Once you have some sort of rapport opportunities can arise for back links.
-
I have a feeling you would do well with Mommy bloggers. Offer a giveaway to their readers or send them product for review. It's an excellent way to get exposure and links back.
Not sure where to start? I suggest finding those sites that rank well for the keywords you want and see who links to them. You may find a lot of great opportunities there.
-
Before you even start on trying to get links for the website, just ask yourself why others would link to you. You are an e-commerce website and it makes it even more difficult to get quality natural links - so being creative is important here - think of different strategies you can pursue so it makes your content more "linkable".
Could you provide any free tools or widgets that your readers might find useful? For a real estate guy, a free mortgage calculator might work well.
You could run a contest targeted towards women audience - have viral impact by social sharing - this usually ends up with several links from "mom blogs" and other portals.
As James suggested, go for Directories - those are easy links - but make sure they are thematic and relevant. There are very few general directories of value.
-
A good way to go about this is to create a spreadsheet, find niche related resources that you could possibly get a link on. Directories, Blogs, Related Websites, Guest Post Areas, etc. Organize them, than once you have a good list built, go after the links using common practices, calling, emails, social areas like Facebook and Twitter.
Once you've gone through the list you've created, target a new area in your link building campaign, and start the process over. Just keeps things a bit more organized
-
Dont worry about PageRank is is not a solid measurement of ranking anymore. In the first place you need to do up a plan of what you want to rank for as though you say you are looking for good links you are not clear as to what exact keywords you want to rank for. Look in the SEOMoz training under keyword research for some good tools on how to do this. Then I would as James suggest below start some organic and slow link building building over time.
Along with the tools here the simplest of tools is an excel spreadsheet where you build up a list of those keywords (start with the long tail ones mentioned on the page). Then go out an research what sites are speaking about this blogs, business sites. Build real relationships, work your social media strategy and over time you will get links - not lots of links but good links -
Your aim should be to be the authority in this area but in the first place work on above and even read the rest of this training page.
-
Hi,
Here are some ideas to get you started
1. Look for related directories online where you can submit your business.
2. Type in your related business keywords, then look at which competitors are ranking for these terms then go to OSE and research the links the competitors have built, you can pull a report.
3. Possibly start a blog and get fresh content related to the business on the blog each week, then syndicate the content via social media.
4. If you have social media channels for the business, start link building via them you can build links via Twitter, Stumble upon, Delicious and a host of other social website.
5. Think to yourself do you have any suppliers who you currently use, ask if they want to link to you or want to add a badge to their website which is for your business for example a partner of your website.
For further ideas here is a fantastic post:
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is your process for finding the best keywords for which to optimize and track?
(I searched but didn't find anything similar here) When you start a campaign, what is your method for finding the best keywords to optimize on your site and to track? Please share methodologies and tools on Moz that you use. I of course use Keyword explorer, and choose the higher volume keywords, but I am not sure I am looking in the most effective places. Any discussion on this would be greatly appreciated.
Moz Pro | | bizmarquee1 -
What are the best practices for improving follower count on twitter?
Keen to improve our follow count on Twitter but its not all about the numbers we are also interested in getting the right followers, followers that fit our customer persona... Any tips or articles to read would be hugely appreciated!
Moz Pro | | MarkPerera0 -
SEOmoz Not Picking Up Links
I'm finding that SEOmoz often doesn't pick up on many of the links my client's websites are attaining. The links do appear in search engine and often have a high domain authority (often PR links, which I why I follow up to see if they've been picked up). I do tend to see many of the links appear in webmaster tools, so it's a little frustrating that they don't appear, even after months of pages being live. Thoughts?
Moz Pro | | SebastianDyer0 -
Open Site Explorer Link Metrics
I'm new to SEOMOZ. I have a Pro account and have been messing with the tools available. I ran a report in Open Site Explorer on one of my prospects. I also entered in several of their competitors to see how they rank. I would like to show the report to my prospective client but couldn't figure out how to download the information. Is that info available for download? Does anyone have a recommendation for showing prospects how they rank against their competitors. Any help appreciated.
Moz Pro | | MedGroupMedia1 -
TLD Link Distribution and Words per page location
I was wondering where the bar chart is located for the TLD Link Distribution? Te one that shows my site and my competitors that i included. Looks like the chart is called "Distribution % of Total Links" I am also looking for the "words per page" bar chart?
Moz Pro | | jginteractive0 -
How do you track new inbound links?
Hello Fellow SEOs, I've been charged with managing and tracking my company's linkbuilding efforts. I'd love to hear from others experienced in this area: -is there a way in OSE to sort links by date? -if this isn't possible, how can you tell what new links come in every month? Is this a manual process of downloading and comparing inbound links every week? This seems pretty tedious and I would love to hear what you all do and if there is a better way. I do have a Google Alert out for my company name, but that doesn't necessarily give me what I need. Thank you!
Moz Pro | | Jenny8675309
Jenny0 -
Competitive Link finder tool
I tried to use competitive link finder tool. it says that it will identify 10 most important links that my competitor get that I do not. The results that I get are inconsistent with linkscape tool. For example my competitor has a link on www lawyer-links dot info Google rank of that site is 1. Is that really one of their most important links?
Moz Pro | | SirMax0 -
Broken Links and Duplicate Content Errors?
Hello everybody, I’m new to SEOmoz and I have a few quick questions regarding my error reports: In the past, I have used IIS as a tool to uncover broken links and it has revealed a large amount of varying types of "broken links" on our sites. For example, some of them were links on my site that went to external sites that were no longer available, others were missing images in my CSS and JS files. According to my campaign in SEOmoz, however, my site has zero broken links (4XX). Can anyone tell me why the IIS errors don’t show up in my SEOmoz report, and which of these two reports I should really be concerned about (for SEO purposes)? 2. Also in the "errors" section, I have many duplicate page titles and duplicate page content errors. Many of these "duplicate" content reports are actually showing the same page more than once. For example, the report says that "http://www.cylc.org/" has the same content as "http://www.cylc.org/index.cfm" and that, of course, is because they are the same page. What is the best practice for handling these duplicate errors--can anyone recommend an easy fix for this?
Moz Pro | | EnvisionEMI0