Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog

CEO Post: Types of Link Building w/pros and cons

ok…I know… kinda cheap for me to make post #2 a CEO post with a pitch at the end of it….but it’s what my writing ended up with.. (when I started writing I didn’t know where it would end up…that’s how I write… for those who aren’t familiar with my writing, I tend to write as a stream of consciousness…with lots of 3 dots while I’m thinking…

I’ll tell ya what, since you’re here, I’ll start with a little off topic fun quiz for you. The homepage of Google has 28 links on it. 1 of those links goes to another site… can you name the other site?
(for the answer, click on the “more” drop down that has the hidden links in it).

Ok..where were we..the CEO Post…The types of link building with pros and cons… and of course, the last choice is the We Build Pages choice 😉 …..

For most websites that we work with, the vast majority of the traffic to their sites comes from 1 source – Google… heck, for the non-blogging world in the USA, I’m guessing Google referral of traffic is the biggest source of traffic for 95% of all websites. (*jim’s guess).

So if one is seeking to increase traffic, one can look at other methods (beyond search engines) of bringing traffic to the site (branding, social media, tools, widgets, etc).

Or they can seek to increase their positions, or add additional keyword positions to that source of the biggest existing traffic generator (Google).

Often, our clients have decided that the best ROI (based on relevant traffic), comes from increasing the existing traffic from Google.

So if you’re biggest goal for traffic is Google, then you need to decide where to put your focus to increase your rankings in Google.

Since Backlinks are still the most important aspect analyzed by Googlee in regards to rankings, then increasing backlinks should be the biggest priority when seeking to increase your Google rankings.

Ok… so if you know you need backlinks. and that’s your priority, here are some choices you may be faced with….

Popular Choice #1 – Buy links.

Pro’s, nothing can compete with focused link text going to specific targeted pages. This method rules to this very day.

Con’s, Google can penalize you for buying links if your caught.

Popular Choice #2 – Have the inhouse guy get them. They’ll comment on blogs and link the name to your site… they may get some wiki pages, and/or get some profile pages, they’re participate in forums for links, they’ll submit to directories, and maybe even some type of trading or 3 ways, etc…

Pro’s I do think that often about 10% of this does work…and if you do tons of this, on a continual basis, and don’t map too many known networks, it can achieve some great rankings on and off depending on google’s algorthym at any given time (higher flux rate from what what I’ve observed).

Con’s – 90% of these don’t pass trust value. Google can detect pages where “outsiders” can add a link (blog comments, forums, wiki’s, profile pages, etc…and I believe that they tend not to pass full trust value on these types of pages.)

Popular Choice #3 – Social Media for the purpose of links
I’ll say right off the start, doing social media for the purpose of building backlinks is something that’s almost always doomed to fail right from the start. Social media can deliver usually just a a few links of value, but more often than not, the value in social media is in more in “branding” rather than “link building”. If you’re purpose is link building for higher search engine rankings, don’t make the mistake of thinking that social media is an end to the means of getting quality backlinks.

Choice #4 – We Build Pages Link Building Services

We have a tool that helps to tell us what specific content that we can write for our clients, that has a high probability of obtaining backlinks. We write the content, and then we contact those we feel could benefit by linking to this content. Our links are non-paid, human reviewed, and permanent. The sites we contact are of the highest trusted value in our eyes. We don’t contact bloggers, we contact old trusted websites to get links like edu’s, k12’s, and all schools, .org’s, .gov’s and sites like these.

Pro’s – non-paid, human reviewed, permanent, greatly increases a site’s trust value.

Con – the only con is that it’s often not a link going to the targeted page with the targeted text, their links going to related resource pages…. but then again, the only arternatives to guarantee exact link text to exact pages tends to ge by paying someone to do that…which again, runs the risk of a penalty.

What types of links are we getting?
We’ll here’s some analysis:
28% are edu’s and/or colleges
22% are .org’s
8% are k12’s
1% are gov’s

What these links do:

They increase the trust in your site, that in-turn seems to be moving everything up as far as rankings go… but the movement is easier to see on the longer tail phrases.

What these links probably won’t do:

Move you from #2 to #1 for “competitive phrases” where there are lots of link buyers buying links with that exact phrase as anchor text. But again, Link buying carries a bigger risk.

Are the links like what we’re getting the kind of links you wish you were getting?

Fill out this form, and Chuck will contact you about how we can work with you.

What type of link building do you do, and how does it work for you in targeting the short tail and the long tail?

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7 Responses

  1. “(for the answer, click on the “more” drop down that has the hidden links in it).”

    I wonder how many people are going to stop right there, open a new web page, and click on “more”

    Choice 4 – seems like a no-brainer 🙂

  2. From all the above choices you offer through your post, I think 4th choice is good to implement as it some where benefit us with something…..and also the choice 3 will serve better to the sites….

  3. Its the true balance of risk vs. reward…pay for sketchy links? or spend the time to build some “rat resistant” links 🙂

    BTW: This is a great deal for your services!

  4. a K12 is similar to a .edu site. K12 stands for Kindergarten through 12th grade and the domain is used by schools in the US.

    Example: the Fresno Unified School District has the domain: http://www.fresno.k12.ca.us/

  5. TrustRank is becoming more important all the time. With more companies haveing SEO work on there sites, edu’s, .gov’s and .orgs definatly create the edge of even very high PR sites. Sites with these links also climb the rankings much faster than sites that dont have these types of links.

  6. Hey Jim,

    Great post….honest and informative. Just a quick note that in the Con for Choice #4 you have two typos “but then again, the only arternatives to guarantee exact link text to exact pages tends to ge by paying someone to do that..” It does not offend me but you know how unforgiving people can be. 🙂

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