Link Building

In nature, there is no such thing as opposite. The night is not the opposite of the day, as the light is not the opposite of dark. There are just different phenomena that exists in different shapes. Allow me to extrapolate this to links. When asked: “What is a natural link?”, the correct answer is: A natural/organic link is not necessarily “the opposite of the unnatural link”. It is much more than that. And although unnatural links are in fashion, maybe its time to put the spotligh [...]

On April 2, Victoria Edwards wrote a popular piece for SearchEngineWatch titled “Screw Link Building, It’s Called Relationship Building!” In the piece, she discusses case studies from Jo Turnbull and Erin Everhart that ruminate on the concept of link building and how the practice is more modern, acceptable and profitable when it includes, or is converted entirely to, relationship building.     Edwards writes, “What do you want out of a personal relationship? Loyalt [...]

Important Update! We released the automatic unnatural link classification tool to help you in your unnatural link recovery, after this post was published. We recommend you check it for unnatural link analysis! With the latest chit chat that Google is going to release the next version of Google Penguin soon, I think it is a good time to remember how you can easily detect unnatural links in your sites’ profile. This detection technique can to be used for any site, even if [...]

Want to capitalize on the trend of using infographics as link bait? Then you'll want to do a little research on the types of infographics that get the most links. Find Infographics in Competitor's Top Linked Pages If you know your competitors are using infographics for link bait, then your best bet is to start by doing a little digging into their backlink profile to see which infographics make a dent. You can start with the inBound Link Analysis tool's list of top linked pages to see if infogr [...]

It has been almost two years since the first Google Panda update went live. The biggest hits from that update were dealt to sites Google designated as content farms. Some well-known websites from the article marketing world suffered the greatest loss of visibility and keywords in search. These included article directories used heavily by online marketers and SEO's such as EzineArticles with a 90% visibility loss and Hubpages with a 87% visibility loss. In this post, we're going to look at how [...]

Even in a post-Penguin world, a well-rounded link building campaign generally includes links from web directories. The key is to make sure you are submitting your websites to quality directories. Quality Directory Checklist Here are some ways to test a directory to see if it is a good fit for your link building strategy. Domain Authority First off, you will want to make sure that the directories you choose for building links to your website have a good domain authority, Google PageRank, [...]

After the last few days when every SEO pro, and his dog, wrote about the Interflora penalty, I decided to take a look into the case. What I found out is that, in my opinion, Google seems to enforce another old guideline. That is: "Advertorials" Google Advertorial Update Mockup I ran an indepth analysis on cognitiveSEO for Interflora and some of its top competitors, that are still ranking.Here are some of my findings. 1. The Interflora backlink profile does not look more unnatural, that a [...]

If you have a local business, or a business with some local aspect, then you can incorporate local link building opportunities into your SEO strategy. This can help you gain more variety in your backlinks as well as get exposure with your geo-targeted audience. The following are various local link building opportunities you can pursue for your business website and have a higher chance to increase your local rankings. Local Review Sites If you're not interested in the reputation management bene [...]

Link building isn't always about discovering new opportunities. Sometimes it can simply involve taking advantage of opportunities that already exist but haven't been tapped into yet. The following are five strategies you can use to claim links that you rightfully deserve. Photo Credit: dcJohn on Flickr Google Alerts for Brand Mentions If someone mentions your name, your business name, or your website online, then you'll likely want them to link to you to. Google Alerts makes it easy to [...]

When it comes to link building, the link request can make or break the deal. Webmasters can be immediately turned off by a request just from the introduction. This is because many have been overwhelmed by irrelevant, impersonalized link requests in the past. This is where using a link building persona can come in handy. It takes a little evaluation of the site you are targeting and the person (webmaster) you are going to email to decide what persona to go with, but if you choose the right one [...]