Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I would recommend a content-based approach to link-building, as it has a much better ROI than chasing down one link at a time.

I've written a couple of SEOMoz posts that might be useful to you, the first on creating good content:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

and the second on using infographics to build backlinks:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

I'd also highly recommend you read the post Keri linked to, some great stuff in there, particularly if you're new to link-building.

Hope that's of some use to you! Good luck with your link-building campaign.

Hi Aran,

We can help out with link-building, particularly if you're looking for a high-quality, content based approach. Have a look at the website and give me a call if you're interested - designbysoap.co.uk.

Hi Lawrence,

You're more than welcome - I hope the posts give you some actionable ideas for your campaigns whoever you decide to go with.

Of course! : )

Our website is www.designbysoap.co.uk - you can see our client list at www.designbysoap.co.uk/clients.

The website for SEOGadget is www.seogadget.co.uk

Thanks Lawrence, hope you have a nice weekend

Hi Lawrence,

The SEOMoz list of recommended companies is a good place to start, some excellent companies on there. I would recommend SEOGadget (run by Richard Baxter), they're extremely good at what they do.

If it's purely high quality link-building and content creation that you're after then I can certainly help too, feel free to read my recent SEOMoz blog posts (as Collin suggests, a great way of finding reputable and knowledgeable companies) on content creation and infographic-based link-buidling:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

I don't tend to use the Q&A to plug my own company but from your description it sounds like we may really be able to help.

Thanks Lawrence, good luck with your search and feel free to get in touch any time.

Hi there!

First of all, you should definitely be aiming for branded anchor text links, as well as generic links such as 'click here', etc. so well done for putting yourself on the right track.

To try and answer your questions:

1. I think it's generally on a domain level, but if you have a specific page that has a particularly high volume of direct match keyword anchor text links, then you may struggle to rank that page, so you should aim for deep-linking and well as home page linking during your link acquisition campaign.

2. I would aim for content-based link building, as this is (in my experience) the best way of building lots of links that are natural, rather than using manipulative methods or adding more crap to the online space. Try using infographics, I push them quite heavily in general as it's my agencies speciality but we have had some phenomenal results in terms of link-building using high quality infographics. Here's two of my SEOMoz posts that might help you in this regard:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

3. I always aim for at least 50% of a backlink profile being branded, URL and/or generic links, and I would usually want somewhere closer to 60-65%. That's what we aim for with our clients.

All my own opinion and personal experience of course, but hopefully it helps you : )

Hi there,

Commenting on posts can be a good way of building your name in a particularly community, and even encouraging click-through traffic if the topic and the target website is relevant and of use to readers, but as an SEO technique it's really not worth your time.

For a start, the majority of blog comments are marked with the 'nofollow' attribute, meaning they pass no link value to your site, and even if you do find a blog that allows dofollow comments, it will be packed with links (making any link value passed minimal) and will have almost always been spammed, meaning there will be links to dodgy link neighbourhoods and irrelevant sites, meaning you don't really want a link from that page anyway.

By all means contribute to the community with comments that add something to the discussion or show your appreciation for a particularly well written or informative post, but your link-building efforts are far better placed in other areas.

Here's a couple of excellent posts on link-building that might help get you started:

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

Hope that helps!

Hi Tony,

In my personal opinion, no. The benefit gained from article marketing directories are minimal anyway, and they just put you on potentially dodgy ground for the future. Instead of investing time and effort producing fairly low quality content for these kind of platforms, spend your time producing high quality, unique content and promoting it, and allow that to do the link-building for you.

The content marketing strategy will not only ensure that you have something of real value on your site, but it is a much more viable long-term strategy and far more secured against future algorithm updates.

I understand the temptation to opt for the easier link-building routes, but honestly you're far better served putting in the effort and producing something of real value and quality and using that as a conduit for link acquisition. I would always rather gain one strong, relevant and valuable link than gain a hundred low quality links with questionable relevancy.

If you need a hand getting started with content production, link-building and content promotion, I'd give these posts a read:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

Hope that helps answer your question Tony - of course it's just my opinion, but it's the approach we use for our clients and we consistently see good results, so hopefully you can do the same for your website.

All the above are excellent suggestions - the only one I would add is social media shares, mentions and links of your site and its content. Bing is particularly focused on integrating social media metrics into their ranking algorithm as far as I'm aware, so all of the above plus social media links should help considerably.

Hi Kevin,

Unfortunately I can't give you specifics, as they're all client results, but I can assure you that content marketing works very well for improving rankings, traffic and even conversions.

For one of our clients in a very competitive niche we improved their positions across the board (scores of keywords) and upped traffic by more than 200% with a dedicated content marketing campaign across a 6-8 month period. Most notably using infographics.

Try producing an infographic and following the tactics I outline here:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

And you should start to notice a direct impact on your overall domain authority and traffic, which will in turn affect your rankings, although you need to make sure your site is correctly optimised for your target terms.

Hopefully that helps to reassure you a little on the benefits of content marketing.

Hi Mark,

OSE takes a little while to update - it's updated on average once a month, so it could just be that OSE hasn't updated yet and included the link. Give it a couple of weeks and have another look.

Hope that helps!

Hi again Harry,

personally I wouldn't bother with Ezine articles or any similar article marketing networks - instead, spend that time producing high quality content, either for your own website or for guest blogging. I replied to your other question with a link to Jon Cooper's post (here it is again):

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

There's some great link-building methods in there that are a far better use of your time. Whilst it's tempting to take the easier options such as Ezine Articles, they won't serve you well in the long-run (just look at the de-indexing of Build My Rank as a pertinent example).

Hope that helps Harry

Don't use backlink software - as Modbargains pointed out it's all high volume, low quality links that will do nothing for your backlink profile and more than likely hurt you in the long run.

There is a much better way - high quality content creation and ethical, authoritative link building.

These posts should really help you figure out some alternative strategies, here's Jon Cooper's post on link building strategies (definitely worth reading):

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

and my own SEOMoz post on content creation:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

Hope that helps you!

Hi Jarin,

Firstly, the PR you're referring to is Toolbar Page Rank (TBPR), which is always out of date and not necessarily representative of your true Google Page Rank, just to let you know, so it's not something you should be overly concerned about or really paying much attention to.

However, to cheer you up a bit, I've just checked your PR and it's showing up as 7/10, which is superb : )

SEOMoz uses Domain Authority (which I use far more frequently to judge the power of a website than PR) which is ranked out of 100. Your Domain Authority is 91 and your homepage authority is 93, which is an incredibly strong website and one you should be really proud of!

Plus if your rankings and traffic are strong, you really don't have anything to worry about. Hope that puts your mind at ease a bit! Well done on creating a very strong domain.

SEO is simply the process of improving search engine rankings for keyphrases related to a business - ranking a site well for strong keyphrases will almost certainly increase relevant traffic to a website, but if you're only focused on rankings then you're not necessarily going to improve sales and conversions, which is the ultimate goal.

The real value lies in complete internet marketing campaigns, which encompasses a more holistic approach to growing a business online. If you're only focused on rankings (which far too many SEO companies are), then you're missing the bigger picture, and not only that but if you're focusing all your business solely on referrals from Google, then you can quickly find yourself losing your entire business overnight on the basis of an algorithm update.

The value should come from the combination of lots of internet marketing disciplines, including search engine optimisation, branding, conversion rate optimisation, analytics and insight, usability testing, web design, high quality linkbuilding, social media marketing, online customer services and brand management. A high quality company will look to improve your rankings, increase your referral traffic and improve online brand awareness and consideration amongst online shoppers. Then once the number of people to your website is consistently increasing, the focus will shift to ensuring usability and customer services are of a high quality and utilising CRO (conversion rate optimisation) to improve sales and profit.

Success should be measured ultimately by ROI (return on investment) and sales, but other metrics including traffic, links, domain authority, number of referring sites, bounce rate, conversion rates and search engine rankings will be tracked in order to inform campaign progress and impact, as well as informing future decisions.

Hi Eric,

Don't use spun articles whatever you do - sure it creates a lot of links with relatively minimal effort but the links aren't worth getting (in fact they're likely to hurt you in the long run). It doesn't matter if it's 'high quality', as you can guarantee the articles submitted by other people won't be, which will bring the domains they're being published on down and make your links more dangerous and worthless than they already are.

Instead of high volume, low authority links, aim for the opposite. It's far better for you to gain high quality links and I would always choose one relevant and high quality link over 100 links from spun articles.

Link-building this way isn't easy, but that's part of what makes it valuable - content based link-building is an excellent way to go; produce high quality onsite content and promote it well and you'll encourage natural links, something I refer to as 'link magnetism'. Infographics are excellent for gaining high quality links (assuming they're well designed and well promoted) and guest blogging on high quality sites can be a great way to build some strong dofollow links.

Here's some links that might help you (seem to be sharing these links a lot lately!):

Jon Cooper's superb list of link-building strategies:

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

Michael King's excellent 'Noob Guide To Link Building':

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

and my own in-depth guide to content creation:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

Hope that helps Eric, read those posts and you'll be much better armed for your link-building campaigns : )

I was just about to type that! Beat me to it Keri : )

Michelle - a trackback is essentially a notification of a link to your content from an external source. Hope that helps!

You don't need a 301 redirect for this - unless you've got some really strong links pointed to it. If it's search you're worried about, just do as Mark suggests above and remove the page from your sitemap. If you have a link to that page that's actually sending traffic, then you could 301 it to the most relevant page that does exist.

It's worth putting in the effort to create a customised 404 page with some links to other content, that way if people do end up on your 404 page you've got a much better chance of keeping them on the site.

Hi there!

First of all, you should definitely be aiming for branded anchor text links, as well as generic links such as 'click here', etc. so well done for putting yourself on the right track.

To try and answer your questions:

1. I think it's generally on a domain level, but if you have a specific page that has a particularly high volume of direct match keyword anchor text links, then you may struggle to rank that page, so you should aim for deep-linking and well as home page linking during your link acquisition campaign.

2. I would aim for content-based link building, as this is (in my experience) the best way of building lots of links that are natural, rather than using manipulative methods or adding more crap to the online space. Try using infographics, I push them quite heavily in general as it's my agencies speciality but we have had some phenomenal results in terms of link-building using high quality infographics. Here's two of my SEOMoz posts that might help you in this regard:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

3. I always aim for at least 50% of a backlink profile being branded, URL and/or generic links, and I would usually want somewhere closer to 60-65%. That's what we aim for with our clients.

All my own opinion and personal experience of course, but hopefully it helps you : )

Spot on - Google XML sitemap is the one I was about to recommend before I saw Keith beat me to it : )

There's a few others but the above is certainly the easiest to use. I'd also recommend the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin if you're looking at optimising your WP site.

Yeah absolutely - if you can get people to use them then I don't see anything wrong with them at all. You're not sneaking links into them and people are using them of their own accord, so nothing wrong with having them on the site for people to take and use if they want them.

I think the harder part will be getting people to actually engage with them, unless you're offering a superb platform or service.

Bear in mind any link you get will likely be an image link, so be sure to place your brand name in the alt text, and offer users a html snippet for placing on their site. If you start placing exact match anchor text in the alt text though and they do get heavily picked up, then there will be no variation and you'll likely pick up a penalty, so best to go with your brand name.