Link Building Victories and Failures

Wil ReynoldsSEER Interactive

@wilreynolds

Link Building

Successes

&

Failures

Failures First

Build Good Content

Get Authority Links

Rank Well

Does this sound like solid SEO advice to you?

Well it is…kinda

Fallacy of Authority Links

Client who has links from

These are my ex’s

What did we do w/ such great links in place?

Tweaked anchor textPressed for outbound links

Social promotion of these pieces

What did we get for all that hard work?

FLAT rankings

Large Press Mentions FailedBecause…

#1Anchor text was hard to get,

when we did get it…

#2Authority sites archive

HORRIBLY, thus burying our links, but at least we had a link…

#3These sites want page views so

they do this…

Pagination!=

Link juice zapper

Link Misers!=

No soup for you

No ad=

No “linky links”

HomepageCategory 1

Category 2

Category 3

Category 4

Category 5

Sub Category Page

Article

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

How Link Juice Gets Lost

Can I get a link please?

Big Publisher

I’ll send you my media kit

Just broke 1st page 2 months ago, after 8 months

So how did we do it?

We shifted strategy BIG TIME

Deep dive on competitors (coming up soon)

Second FailureLonely Fall

Lack of Pre-reciprocation

Don’t wait until you need social promotion of your work to

promote others work

Build up your Karma Bank

So someone lends you a helping hand

Search.twitter.comRSS

+ Greasemonkey script

How to help people…today

How to help people…today

Or…this sneaky idea

Or…this sneaky idea

Competitor name +

• Frustrated• Down• Broken• Offline• :(• Sucks• *&$#!@&*

How to help people…today be sneaky

How to help people…today be sneaky

Before you need RT’s, links, social pushes on your content…

Try helping others!

@GarrettFrench

ontolo.com/link-building-book

AFFSUMMIT20

Don’t beg for RT’s and promotion

Make real relationships!

Now lets talk about the wins!

Do you know what kind of links you need to win?

Anchor Text

High Authority

Guest Posts

Sitewides

Homepage

Articles Forums

Directories

Press Releases Reciprocals

Do you do all of them and pray something works?

Success #1

Analyzing the ranking factors of the top 10

Majestic SEO

Not showing value of links, remember that!

•% anchor text•Exact anchor text•Phrase anchor text•Domain age•Delicious tags•Avg Domain Auth•# of links with PR over 6

The hard way

My tool of choice

OPEN SITE EXPLORER (free)

% Anchor text vs Brand Links

Are you trending out your % of targeted anchor text

Vs

The top 10?

Client who is at 29% the average of the top 10 is 2.5%

Un – Natural Link Profile

Still worked…

How do I know what’s un-natural?

• Pull the data into excel• Run a phrase match on your targeted keyword• Calculate the % of overall links• Compare your site vs. the top 10• Compare your site vs. the top 10 (avg)

• Anchor text, # of links, root domains / links etc.

Tips on how to get your anchor text

• Build a microsite named w/ your target anchor text

• Build a widget

• Buy a domain with the exact anchor text and move your site

Too advanced?

Start here…

How are you getting beat?

Review metrics for the top 10

Get ideas, execute on them

Link SMART!

Giving away a spreadsheet that calculates this for you

Link coming

Success #2

Finding broken link magnets

Google “Termite Resources”

There’s no better time to ask for a link than at the same time

you are letting a webmaster know about broken links on

their site

Google for .edus only – gives even more valuable links

Link to the tool:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/532

There are a TON of these link opps out there!

Find an old resource with a bunch of broken links to it

Rebuild the resource

And then go tell everyone the old resource is broken, but you’ve got

a new one…

Delicious is tool of choice

Broken link fishing

Your subject +

•Calculator•Lifehack•Tip•Resource•List

Run a broken link checker here

Sloppy Competitors

Success #3

Sloppy Competitors

Go to pg 10+ on Google results and put them into OSE

(these are often the people who gave up on optimization)

Sloppy Competitors

Use OSE (FREE)

•Find 404’s•Look at backlinks•Contact webmasters•Remind them about your service•Or rebuild the resource

Resource Lists / Directories

DMOZ (download)

Yahoo Directory

On topic Directories

Resource Lists / Directories

After you find broken links, find all the sites linking to that site / asset.

Let them know they are linking to a broken resource.

Success #4

Find opportunity with suggest

Look at existing results

Find opportunity with suggest as a way to build content

• #1 result - Adsense Site

• Low value content

• STILL received links from some decent sites

• Re-do the asset

• Culinary school scholarships

Building a Link Plan

Action Steps

• Stop Building Links• Sign up for OSE• Sign up for Majestic SEO• Get a book on Excel• Aggregate your competitors top metrics• Create graphs / conditional formats to alert you to trends

• Start finding industry sites that have broken links

• Look for un-natural link building patterns

• Review your competitors top best link magnets, can you do it one better?

• Who’s linking to competitor 404 pages?• Use Google Suggest to find content opportunities

• Install twitter / Google results• Subscribe to twitter feeds to find opportunities to help people

• Subscribe to my blog / follow me on twitter

Wil ReynoldsSEER Interactive

@wilreynolds

Pickwilsbrain.com (1200 categorized SEO resources)

Youtube.com/wilreynolds

Wil ReynoldsSEER Interactive

@wilreynolds

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