Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Link Building
Log in to post

Category: Link Building

Chat through link building best practices and outreach techniques.

  • cmaddison


    In your opinion, is it worth paying for sponsored links in directories like http://www.dmegs.com, rather than the standard free links? I'm also curious about sponsored posts on Blogs (such as http://www.lovemydress.net/blog/sponsors/) where links are dofollowed, but clearly marked as sponsored. Will Google penalise me for purchasing these links? Are the links de-valued in any way?

    | cmaddison
    1
  • BobGW


    Hi, Does anyone have a list of high ranking free or almost free directories that have high search engine rankings and have an opportunity for a link or links for a personal development site in the USA? The directories should have the following qualities: Old Site Age A lot of unique content (or as much as a directory can have) A clean site Plenty of Backlinks going to it Facebook followers (if possible, though this might be stretching it) high search engine rankings I think you get the general idea. I'm looking for directories that are high ranking and in for the long haul. They don't have to be free, but it's best if it's inexpensive. Thanks!

    | BobGW
    0
  • comercialroldao


    I have a competitor that apeears first place in Google with a certain keyword, i explore their site, and they have a lots of forums poiting to their page. What they do is, just go to a random forum, comment some threat and they put the anchor in sig, with that keyword, linking to their page. Well, from what i read in SEOmoz articles, Google its no supose to penalyze this pages? Because thoose are pages (forums) that dont have nothing to do -subject- with the page that apears in first place? Its a good practise? Should i do the same (x2) to get the first place in google? (Sorry for my English) Thank you.

    | comercialroldao
    0
  • GAZ09


    Hi there, I have asked you guys this question already, but nobody has got back to me.. Can you tell me please how to best use your tools to build links to help with SEO? You seem to have a few tools for links, but which one is the best and how do i best use them..?? Can you alos provide me with some link building tips??? Please can you help and repsond,  I would be very gratful.. Thanks Gareth

    | GAZ09
    0
  • seomasterbrasil


    I was reading a post by Eric Enge, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/role-of-directories-in-link-building and nobody talked about in the comments, so I want to see what you think: Considering that get some bad links from punished directories is bad for your site, it's worth to use site submissions softwares, like SubmitEaze, that promisses a 1,000 submits?
    Do you use it, what you think about it? [title edited by staff for clarity]

    | seomasterbrasil
    0
  • EvolveDigitalLabs


    I have a client who's competition is in the BBB, yahoo directory, best of the web sort of the standard ones. My client is empathetic about being in more places than their competition so a i am hoping for some help. I wasnt sure if the seomoz content of this is really relevant, seems a little dated on this specific topic.

    | EvolveDigitalLabs
    0
  • DanDeceuster


    I want to get into some good paid directories, but every list I have found out there is either just a top ten and repeats the same ones or is a list of 500 where I know most are worthless. Has anyone submitted to paid directories that has a list of good ones that are actually worth submitting to?

    | DanDeceuster
    0
  • agolomb


    When reviewing our competitors links in Open Site Explorer I noticed that many of them have directory links.  We are an online retailer of gourmet food gifts. So should we focus some of our link building efforts on directory submissions?

    | agolomb
    0
  • seanmccauley


    Hi All I am a newbie to SEO and have a quick Q. Assuming that appropriate steps would be to; a) Ensure all onsite matters are are correct, title tags, meta descriptions, redirects, canonical issues. b) Submit to Directories c) Build Links I am approaching step b) Which Directories are worth submitting to? For those which require payment, how can I decide which are value for money or should I just use SEOMOZ list of links and assume that theyre worth the $50 - $100 if my higher ranking competitors have links from these directories. Also, can this be looked opon as grey/black hat 'buying of links'? Thank you Sean www.pretavoir.co.uk

    | seanmccauley
    0
  • iSenseWebSolutions


    I feel a lot of my link building might be a bit heavy on the directory links side. Should I limit the percentage amount of links as a part of my overall link profile? If yes what percentage of links is ok to be directory links?

    | iSenseWebSolutions
    0
  • JohnW-UK


    I am trying to concentrate on high quality directory link building as part of my search for quality one way followed links. My usual criteria is: Domain rank of at 70+ Page ranks of 20-30+ on the actual link pages. Human edited I have been finding them using loads of different resources and have occasionally used Directory Critic. (Obviously I have used the SeoMoz directory list but as we are all aware this is past it’s prime..) Any resources or techniques other people use?

    | JohnW-UK
    0
  • CalgaryRealtor39


    I am not an SEO expert by any means, just trying to improve the ranking of my own personal real estate site. Are directory links good for backlinks, or are they a waster of time?

    | CalgaryRealtor39
    0
  • mmaes


    I was using open site explorer and one of our local competitors and in the top 5 of the SERP has a link in http://directory.askbee.net/submit-site-to-directory.html They want either a $1, $5 or a 3 way link to get your link in the directory. Do any of these help or would this directory be a waste of time. Thanks

    | mmaes
    0
  • davidtube


    I’ve been link building for a small online store. Before I took over their SEO, they hired a company who got them lots of spammy links over a 12 month contract. The spammy links didn't seem to improve or hurt rankings on their main keywords but general search traffic has almost doubled. Now I’m doing whitehat SEO for them and getting links through emailing bloggers and giving them reasons to link to us. Over 2 months (amongst over things) I’ve obtained links from around 35 websites, mostly PR 3 – 4 with a few up to PR 7. On my own website, a couple of links like this would produce a noticeable effect in the rankings, but I can’t seem to budge the ranks for this website. I’m concerned that they might just want to go back to their old SEO firm for more spam links. Am I doing the right thing? Am I getting links quick enough and how can I argue the case for whitehat if they’re getting more noticeable results from blackhat?

    | davidtube
    0
  • myloseo


    I have 2 websites to pay monthly to gain links from, number 1 is on the homepage of a directory, it has a PA of 90 and DA of 88.
    the link will be on the right hand side along with 55 other featured sites.
    these links are there throughout the whole site. number 2 is from a website with 20 max sponsored links on a page and will be one of the sub pages on the site with a PA of 74. How valuable if any would these links be? My current pa on the site i wish to send the links to is 26 Can i expect my PA to go up by much? Also i currently have 317 links from 7 root domains on my site will this effect the rank of the paid links? Thanks in advance

    | myloseo
    0
  • IPIM


    I have carried out some minor link building for my new site (site A) and have some links back from several directories and 1 from ezine and one from squidoo as well as a few partner sites and such. I also have another site (site B) which was linking to site A several times from a footer link, this has now been amended to just one link. The problem is that SEOmoz still only shows 3 linking domains to site A (there are at least 12 if you perform a manual search) and it is still showing many links from site B even though there is now only one. All these changes where made at least 3 weeks ago, how long before Seomoz picks them up.

    | IPIM
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, I'm doing link buidling for a small ecommerce niche. There's no resource content in the niche (looking at OSE Top Content) that has attracted backlinks (on any sites) How should this effect what resource content I should create. Thanks!

    | BobGW
    0
  • Svetoslav


    I have some pretty strong links from relevant sources linking to the homepage of a site I deal with. The links are usually from a PR3-5 pages and display specific result about the linking site. Sometimes they come from badges. We offer several services, so sometimes the page is about one service and next time about the other. Currently all of my pages link to the homepage. Would it not be better to link to the specific product page related to the page I have? Also I can do a canonical to the service pages? Which would be best?

    | Svetoslav
    0
  • increation


    Hi, Whats the quickest way to find pages with a high authority using SEOMoz? Cheers Mik

    | increation
    0
  • websiteready


    Few things I can't figure out My campaign shows I have 62 back links and 62 followed links. Majority of these links are from completelt different Websites (e.g. Blogger, Wordpress.com, etc.) But my analysis shows I only have 7 linking root domains Further, from one of your videos I learned that linking C-blocks are
    important for rankings. Is there a way to tell if sites are on the same C-Block so I can get more C-Block links?* Thanks, Derek

    | websiteready
    0
  • MarieHaynes


    I've got an idea for a widget and I'd like to give webmasters in my niche the option to embed it on their sites using javascript. I know I can get a link back by including a link that displays after the widget such as "Provided by www.example.com".  However, many webmasters don't want to link back for a number of possible reasons.  I can see that some webmasters would be ok with using the widget as long as there is no obvious advertising or links to draw users off of their site. So, if someone embeds a widget which calls on javascript code that is hosted on my site, do I get any seo benefit from this?

    | MarieHaynes
    1
  • salmann


    Hi, I know that pagerank is not of that much importance but still I got few question regarding pagerank that I wish to be answered by senior seomoz staff! I heard that the pagerank is used in determination of original content by different ways i.e higher pagerank site get indexed faster and have low chance of easily penalized Higher pagerank website entitles you to get your newly written content indexed/ranked well without any backlinks just based on internal links. I would like to know in detail about above two statements, and lastly I would appreciate if I can get help regarding dmoz listing or any other listing that worth it in terms of pagerank optimization. Most high pagerank websites are quite strict in linking to other sites, and those who sells link on the site doesn't seems worthfull! Detailed insight is appreciated on each and every point. Thanks in advance

    | salmann
    0
  • partnerworks


    Hi, has anyone used this firm for their link placement and content syndication services? Thanks!

    | partnerworks
    0
  • PeterM22


    I dont think they count. What do you guys think?

    | PeterM22
    0
  • adriandg


    It seems like a lot of our competators are getting lots of link juice from fake/spammy looking articles on squido.  Is it worth the effort to make these articles and add links to them, or is google smarter than that? Example here: http://www.squidoo.com/selfstoragesmyrnatn links to: www.migsonstorage.com who seems to be doing pretty good according to OSE with a PA of 63 and a DA of 56

    | adriandg
    0
  • Smith-Digital


    I'm somewhat new to SEO, but from what I understand, slow link growth can provide better results than highly aggressive link building campaigns. A site of mine was recently featured on a 90+ DA (55 PA) blog directory, and was featured for the entire state, therefore I received almost 20,000 inbound links from the site (from every company/listing in the state). The links have been mostly recorded (17,000) in Google webmaster tools (Yahoo Site Explorer claims around 23,000). However the site dropped 2 pages in rankings for numerous SEO related keywords since webmaster tools listed the links. Many of them are PA 50+, though a majority of the linking pages are PA 1. A few other inbound links were created from other root domains, roughly 8-10 or so in the past month. The question is, would a large amount of links like this all of a sudden trigger some kind of "penalty" from search engines (Google, especially)? And, do the PA 1 pages take away from the quality of the 55 PA links?

    | Smith-Digital
    0
  • AlanMosley


    I have a competitor
    that has shot up lately taking number one spot for various keywords when I look
    at his links in Open Site Explorer I find many links that are links to downloadable
    objects, not web pages. A few
    examples, if you click on them, do not open who knows what they are. But what
    the story, how are these links to his site, anyone know anything about this. Thanks http://wolfet.co.uk/etmain/mitchelldown.pk3 http://www2.dupont.com/Tyvek_Weatherization/en_US/assets/downloads/cad_fluidapplied/FA-S-201.dwg?Action=livre_or&start=24750&forum=alainfrancois http://mobile.earthcam.com/download/EarthCam%20Mobile%20v4.0.msi?faq&page=3956

    | AlanMosley
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, The strongest site in our industry (according to domain authority and excluding wikipedia) said that they would put a sitewide link to us in their footer. We're good friends with them. It would be right next to the copyright. Our site is nlpca (dot) com The partner site is nlpu (dot) com The link will say something like "More NLP Training" with the "NLP" as the link. We're targeting the keyword "NLP" How much will this move us up for the keyword "NLP"? Right now we're on the 3rd page for that term. I also want to make sure that it's a white hat move. Thanks!

    | BobGW
    0
  • leaseman


    I'm familiar with creating widgets for link building and relationship building but I'm not savvy on implementing a strategy. I'm in the commercial truck financing business and, although I have some ideas I do need help with the creation of widgets, how to market them, etc. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

    | leaseman
    0
  • DerekP


    It seems that a lot of the focus of SEOs, especially whitehat SEOs like SEOMoz and Distilled has shifted a lot more towards improving page metrics (bounce, return rate, etc) and social metrics. I'm curious - And of course, I'm just asking for guesses - But what percent of ranking do you think is page metrics, social metrics and other non-link based metrics and what percent do you think are link based metrics?

    | DerekP
    0
  • UCDK


    I have a magento webshop and some of products have more than one link. E.g. wolverine apprentice it has these two links http://www.urbanclothing.dk/maerker-1/wolverine/wolverine-apprentice-6-tan-mens.html and http://www.urbanclothing.dk/wolverine-apprentice-6-tan-mens.html Is that going to ruin my chances on ranking high on Google? If yes what should I do about it ? And was does Linking Root Domains and Page Authority mean? I fount it under the keyword ranking section.

    | UCDK
    0
  • HaymarketMediaGroupLtd


    So lately I have seen alot of link building articles which link to their target URL and also within the site they link to Wikipedia. Anyone know why? Thanks

    | HaymarketMediaGroupLtd
    0
  • TEFLScot


    Hi all, When I first started at my current job, most of the link building (aside from submitting to free directories left, right and centre) was replying to every spammy reciprocal email and adding them to our links page! Now we're all a bit wiser about such matters (thanks SEOMoz!), I want to get our links page turned into something actually useful.  My plan was to get it neatly categorised, with recommendations, cut out unrelated links that would be useless to visitors and call it something like "Our Friends" I thought this might be useful for future link building efforts, but in its current state, it's a complete mess. However, I am worried about cutting out a lot of links if they have been reciprocal ones.  Are the sort of sites that would be sending typical spammy link exchange emails for window installation in NY likely to notice our UK education site taking away their link six months later and take away ours?  If they do, will losing links from these sites harm us?  Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place? Look forward to hearing from y'all!

    | TEFLScot
    0
  • SEO-Team


    We are looking at providing our customers with the best experience when performing a site search for a product. Would it be bad SEO practice to have our internal search results show results for all 4 Brands linking to different domains? This would mean multiple outgoing links to other owned sites from the same IP.  Is it a best practice to block internal search results using robots.txt?

    | SEO-Team
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, Here's my revised link building plan for nlpca.com Let me know if I'm off or missing anything. 1)Identify a list of competitors that are strong enough to have good backlinks (probably about 15 in our industry Look at top content for top competitors and see what type of content is being linked to. build infographics for each area we want to target based on top content Using OSE, analyze competitor backlinks and decide which sites might link to the infographics and which sites might just link to us if we asked them (our site is already an authority). In this step we would also expand the backlink analysis to include sites on pages 4-8 Only choose link aquisition for sites based on the following criteria: Age A lot of unique content A clean site Backlinks going to that site Facebook followers Which of course means high search engine rankings Publish infographics and do outreach

    | BobGW
    0
  • DerekP


    With all the new emphasis on on-page metrics and social metrics, would it be possible to rank well without putting much emphasis on backlinking if your content is significantly better than the rest of the ranking pages? Say #1 to #5 are pages of 500 word generic content. We come in with 2,000 word specific, high-quality content. Can we get by without spending as much time/energy on backlinking? Would the on-page factors make up for it, or has the game not changed that much?

    | DerekP
    1
  • JMacSupply


    What are some good tips, articles, posts, etc. specifically on e-commerce sites that want to target the manufacturers they sell as keywords. For example: Footlocker.com wants to target "Nike" The products we sell are obviously much less competitive than Nike.

    | JMacSupply
    0
  • DSG


    A few months ago I updated some old posts of my site (Wordpress), to improve old content, with new pictures (better quality), better content, new info about product, and links to our review of this product (newer posts). Most part of the content is this old posts were new, so I "deleted" the old text but replaced the new one with another of better quality. I suppose it will help new post to improve rank, but I los thousands of daily visits, because old posts ranks worse since the change. What do you think? What happened here? Maybe I shouldn't update the whole text, only add a link to new content? Thank you!

    | DSG
    0
  • johnshearer


    Hello Mozcommunity, I would like opinions regarding potential spammy inbound links from others . In theory you would want excellent useful content on your site that other web properties would link to in a natural way..link bait. But what if links were pointing to your site with malicious intent. For example a competitor bombs yours site with spammy/black hat links. This is clearly a dilemma for search engines since anyone can link to your site...even though you can block incoming with .access I don't believe many smaller in-house seo teams (or do it yourself small business owners) use Google analytics to routinely monitor referring sources.

    | johnshearer
    0
  • GardenBeet


    The amount of requests I get for links is mind numbing. Yet few respond to my request for blog submissions. What is going on?? People want links yet they dont want to write - its not that hard! Rather than ignore all these requests for links i have decided to write the articles for anyone who now requests a link on my website (providing I like the site and its related to my niche area). I charge £9.99 to cover my admin (It will need to go up). I do not want any links back I just want inspiration to write and unique content for my website. So these are my questions to link builders - what do you think? Would you be interested now all the hard work has gone? SEO experts - is this risking my overall site strength?

    | GardenBeet
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    If you could choose between a tweet from an influencer or a post from a Facebook fan "influencer"? Which would you choose?

    | nicole.healthline
    0
  • PaulFraserCollectibles


    Hello I work for a company that deals in Collectibles and runs a collectibles news service. In the UK our site ranks on the first page for the keyword "collectibles". We wish to strengthen this position and increase our rank on the US Google. I'm going to be working on Keyword Optimisation for the site, to hopefully make many of our pages more relevant and improve the rank. However I feel we may be held back by our Domain Authority score. Our Google PageRank and MozRank are both low due to the fact we don't have a huge amount of external links to the site. Is this something that will potentially hold us back? Should I be working on improving this as before the site optimisation? We are well set up for a content based strategy due to "News" nature of the site. My ownly concern with link building is i've heard that it could potentially negatively effect us. Or is the risk of link building only really associated with black hat methods? One last thing. I've been using the Google keyword Tool to judge competition for specific search terms. Is this useful for organic search? Or is it only relevant for PPC? Sorry to be a pain with all these question! Thanks

    | PaulFraserCollectibles
    1
  • lawrenceyu1113


    Hey guys, My question is this. Let's say I have an article, "How To Golf". I post this article onto my blog. Then I write a complementary article to the first article called "Introduction To Golf". My plan is to submit this new article to various directories to build backlinks for the article on my blog. So here lies my question. Say I am allowed two links from my new article to the one on my blog. The anchor text I am using is "golf". Is there a point to including two links with the same anchor text (golf) in the new article pointing back to my blog article? When Google spiders the complementary article will it consider the links two separate links with the anchor text "golf" or will it just count the two links as one link. After all, the two links have the same anchor text and are both pointing to the same page.

    | lawrenceyu1113
    0
  • barnst


    I own a domain that can provide links to my website, but it seems to have picked up a lot of spammy links - 2000+ linking domains. SeoMoz toolbar still gives it a domain authority of 66. Should I use the domain to link to my site? Or will it have a negative impact?

    | barnst
    0
  • harrykabadaian


    Currently working on a new project, website isn't finished yet but i'm planning out the anchor texts. www.diamondengagement.com/new/ - you can view the site here but here are a few anchor texts that I was thinking to start with... Diamond Engagement DiamondEngagement.com Diamond Engagement Rings Engagement Rings Diamond Rings Anniversary Rings Diamonds Loose Diamonds Certified Diamonds Diamond Earrings Diamond Jewelry Fine Jewelry Here's what I need help with, how would I make partial match anchor texts using these 12 exact match examples? Also what's the maximum amount of anchor texts variations can I use per page? Here are a few top competitor sites www.jamesallen.com
    www.bluenile.com
    www.adiamor.com Thanks, harry

    | harrykabadaian
    0
  • greg36


    We are building a report for a customer and want to do an independent analysis of the domain to see if it is sketchy.  Where sketchy is defined by artificial content, link building activity, etc?

    | greg36
    0
  • diogenes


    I was looking at a blog site and the owner is claiming a very high number of hits per day, I forget maybe it was 200,000 a month or something like that. His site is about "self improvement" so it is a general interest site, so I understand traffic is high for this type of site. The interesting thing is that he claims that he gets only 1.5% of his traffic from Google. The rest is mostly referred traffic that he gets from other blogs and sites where they have posted his link and people actually click on it. NOw while a lawyer site is unlikely to ever be popular like that, ithe idea of having an internet marketing strategy that is not subject to the vagaries of Google , the Panda and other algorithm changes, etc is quite interesting. This guy said that he has totally emphasized having great content and not SEO tactics or marketing tactics. Would this concept make sense on a lawyer site? Does anyone have any thoughts? thx Paul

    | diogenes
    0
  • Greenman


    Hi experts, I created a new worth guide about food. Its purpose it to improve backlink by adding website's URL on PDF's footer (spider crawls that one, is it true?). I want send my guide to trusted blogs so users can download new pdf guide on the web. Is it the best way to gain popularity and let my backlinks grow? I've seen that seomoz published is guide such as html pages.
    Could it be the worth way for me? Thanks a bunch in advance! G.

    | Greenman
    0
  • cinternicola


    Lets say there are 50 businesses who have their website on the same server and are on the same c-block but the owners of the individual sites are different (i.e. they are all completely different sites not relevant to each other). Each of those sites are linking to each other due to a feature on the sites. This obviously increases the number of total links to each site but does it also increase the number of linking root domains? Or does this just show up as one linking root domain due to all of them being on the same server and the sharing the same c-block?

    | cinternicola
    0
  • TRICORSystems


    Is it important to "cover your tracks" when searching for links? For example, would be it be a better idea to search for valuable links off of my companies network? If so, what are your strategies for stealth searching?

    | TRICORSystems
    0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


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!

  • Support

    Connect on product support and feature requests.

Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.