Couple questions: backlink bartering and getting backlinks in less developed markets.
-
How do you guys go about getting sustainable links from high authority sites? In some markets, like say SEO, it can be as easy as writing great content and "people will share it" because there are a ton of SEO websites on the internet and all of them are talking about SEO and want to share with you great SEO content. But as you guys know there are markets that aren't as well developed online - where do you look for backlinks for these markets?
I'm working on a project and I'm trying to put together a good backlinking strategy. Part of it will be chasing backlinks from University websites (relevant to my market). What I'm wondering here is if its OK by Google to barter for links. Say you have an online store and you give the University a "student's discount" in exchange for a link (I don't know if this would be appealing enough but is it fair game as far as Google is concerned)?
-
Thanks Moosa. Great read.
-
Hi Mack,
For less developed markets, acquiring links would really cost you some money either in developing a content asset that is targeted to tangent industries (not just to the specific industry where the website belongs) or in setting up scholarship programs that aims to provide value to community user in that niche.
In fact, you don't need to tell the webmaster to link to you from their pages, if you know that student discounts is what the .edu/.gov site is interested about, then it won't be difficult for you to get links from them.
You may want to check out this post for more link building tips for boring/difficult industries: http://digitalphilippines.net/link-building
Cheers!
-
Hello Mack,
Definitely a good move and I applaud your ingenuity in your link-building processes. It can be hard to retain the excitement and drive to go out and get those authority links, so I support you for thinking outside the box.
I would add that you are fine as far as Google is concerned as long are you are not making it a "tit-for-tat" trade/bargain/sale. If at any point, your marketing technique includes a phrase such as "I'll do ____ if you do _____.", it is a non-starter. However, if you are doing it from a "goodwill" perspective, and universities just "happen" to link to you as a result of your pleasant attitude/amazing deals, etc., then that would be fine.
For example, you might consider reading the following article, which has some great tips for a project such as what you are describing:
http://moz.com/blog/filthy-linking-rich-how-to-passively-attract-valuable-links
Somewhat related - How to know when to approach a potential influencer/link:
http://skyrocketseo.com/the-moment/
I still use these as resources for passive link-building. Depending on the circumstances, this can more effective than actively pursuing links - it is also much more rewarding when it works, because you have to invest less energy.
Cheers and happy link-building!
Rob
-
Interesting outcome, Keri.
-
I think this is different:
offering customers discounts for adding links to their site to Overstock.com.
That is straight forward link buying. "I'll give you X if you link to me" isn't the same as "I see you have a page about X. We do that!". It's a good example of what to be cautious of though.
-
Actually, Overstock tried this. Worked great until Google slapped them. See what happened in 2011 at https://www.seroundtable.com/overstock-google-penalty-13004.html
-
I think it is perfectly acceptable to do so but I have a caveat.
If you say this discount only applies if you give us a follow link on your site/page whatever then you are effectively buying that link. If you make it attractive for them to give you the link but make no demands on follow / no follow or the link at all then you have done nothing even close to wrong. The key would be to really make them want to get the information to their students (hopefully via a link and social media).
I used to do this when I ran a few sites for online games. When a new game would come out, I would immediately contact the fansites and offer them exclusive discounts. They always wanted their users to know about the discounts and make a link to our site(s) and sometimes even offered me free ad-space promoting the discount.
A+ for creativity
-
Offering student discounts is a great thing to do. From experience I can say that many of them come with nice links attached .
This is definitely one of those "open to interpretation" areas. A few years ago I would have said that Google wouldn't expect links on a discounts page to be no-followed. It's harder to tell these days though. On the flip side I don't that they would be too impressed by student discounts being used as a way to game links. Student discounts bring referrals, raise profile and bring business. Do it for those reasons and enjoy any nice authoritative followed links that come with it. (no harm in targeting those with the best links first though!)
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
-
Bad Backlinks to my website. Rankings Dropped
Hi guys, My name is Flavius and I work for a website named LaserPRocessing.ro from Romania. In april this year the site was infected with a virus and got around 1k bad backlinks. I found those backlinks on Moz Backlinks Tools. I added them on GSC disawow file. What next steps do you recommend to tell Google to block those links? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nojaflaviusalex0 -
Hostage Taking by My Wordpress Developer
Since 2013 a Wordpress developer has coded my real estate website. Their hourly rate is $24 but the programmers take too long to perform tasks and the service has become prohibitively expensive. Examples of unreasonable time estimates below: | | 1. Change theme settings so posts/pages do not display a date. -> 7 hrs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
2.Google search results are displaying the breadcrumb on the top of each page rather than the URL. Please correct so this does not display. -> 3 hrs
3. Install SSL certificate to www.metro-manhattan.com domain -> 8 hrs | | The above does not include 5-6 hours for testing. I am considering changing vendors. Potential programmers have asked how the site was developed and to what extent is it is customized. Ends up several plugins were built from scratch. My question is whether a new developer is going to be able to pick up a custom coded site. That without understanding how the site was built, any change will break the site. My concern is that current developer has made themselves indispensable, and created a situation where there is no alternative to using them and they can therefore charge any price they want.Any thoughts? Also below are questions I asked my developer about how the site was built and their answers: | 1. Was everything coded using a child theme?
No, is a custom theme. 2. Did you use any ready made theme or just plugins
We used the theme and and we've used plugins. Third party plugins and plugins builded from scratch 3. Can Wordpress and every one of the plugin be updated?
Wordpress can be updated, core files was never modified. If after an update something start to work wrong is due to some radical wordpress change or similar Can't be updated: FireStorm Professional Real Estate Plugin Created at xxx: Form Submissions Report Miscellaneous Hooks and Filters NYC Check memory usage NYC SEO listings NYC Slider Sitemap Updater 4. Were any of the plugins customized and if so, which ones?
Yes, this plugin "FireStorm Professional Real Estate Plugin" |0 -
Spammy backlinks - i have some spammy backlinks in site
Hi please help i have some spammy sites backlinks i think its hurting my site can some body help me out how to fix this. my site is www.bassilimousine.com. can some body review and help me how to improve my ranking. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GarySahota1 -
Canonical questions
Hi, We are working on a site that sells lots of variations of a certain type of product. (Car accessories) So lets say there are 5 products but each product will need a page for each car model so we will potentially have a lot of variations/pages. As there are a lot of car models, these pages will have pretty much the same content, apart from the heading and model details. So the structure will be something like this; Product 1 (landing page) Audi (model selection page)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidmaxwell
---Audi A1 (Model detail page)
---Audi A2 (Model detail page)
---Audi A3 (Model detail page) BMW (model selection page)
---BMW 1 Series (Model detail page)
---BMW 3 Series (Model detail page) Product 2 (landing page) Audi (model selection page)
---Audi A1 (Model detail page)
---Audi A2 (Model detail page)
---Audi A3 (Model detail page) BMW (model selection page)
etc
etc The structure is like this as we will be targeting each landing page for AdWords campaigns. As all of these pages could look very similar to search engines, will simply setting up each with a canonical be enough? Is there anything else we should do to ensure Google doesn't penalise for duplicate page content? Any thoughts or suggestions most welcome.
Thanks!0 -
Content Cannibalism Question with example
Hi, Since I love writing and I write a lot I always find myself worried about ruining for my self with Content Cannibalism. Yesterday, while looking to learn about diamonds I encountered a highly ranked website that has two pages ranking high on the first page simultaneously (4th and 5th) - I never noticed it before with Google. The term I googled was "vvs diamonds" and the two pages were: http://bit.ly/1N51HpQ and http://bit.ly/1JefWYS Two questions: 1. Does that happen often with Google (presenting two lines from the same site on first page)? 2. Would it be better practice for the writer to combine them? - creating a one more powerful page... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1 -
How do I get my Golf Tee Times pages to index?
I understand that Google does not want to index other search results pages, but we have a large amount of discount tee times that you can search for and they are displayed as helpful listing pages, not search results. Here is an example: http://www.activegolf.com/search-northern-california-tee-times?Date=8%2F21%2F2013&datePicker=8%2F21%2F2013&loc=San+Diego%2C+CA&coupon=&zipCode=&search= These pages are updated daily with the newest tee times. We don't exactly want every URL with every parameter indexed, but at least http://www.activegolf.com/search-northern-california-tee-times. It's weird because all of the tee times are viewable in the HTML and are not javascript. An example of similar pages would be Yelp, for example this page is indexed just fine - http://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=dogwalkers&find_loc=Lancaster%2C+MA I know ActiveGolf.com is not as powerful as Yelp but it's still strange that none of our tee times search pages are being indexed. Would appreciate any ideas out there!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CAndrew14.0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Currently, we manage a site that generates content from a database based on user search criteria such as location or type of business. ..Although we currently rank well -- we created the website based on providing value to the visitor with options for viewing the content - we are concerned about duplicate content issues and if they would apply. For example, the listing that is pulled up for the user upon one search could have the same content as another search but in a different order. Similar to hotels who offer room booking by room type or by rate. Would this dynamically generated content count as duplicate content? The site has done well, but don't want to risk a any future Google penalties caused by duplicate content. Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CompucastWeb1 -
Canonical Related question
I have a site where we have search and result pages, google webmaster tool was giving me duplicate content error for page 1 / 2 / 3 etc etc so i have added canonical on these pages like http://www.business2sell.com/businesses/california/ Is this is correct way of using canonical ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | manish_khanna0