TagACloud Instructions

Getting things ready for your links campaign

It’s true about the aggressive link building campaign. What you really need is persistence and hard work. Firstly, add a links directory to your site / link pages, whatever you are comfortable with. These should be in place so you don’t have to go make new pages again and again whenever a new link request comes. You should spend some time looking around web directories and link pages to see the categories and sub-categories that you are planning to use in your links directory. A link submission form should also be added. Adding a links directory should be a few hours work, and a days’ work if you’re a little lazy.

Finding Good Link Partner Sites

When this is in place and functional, you can start finding good link partners. To find good link partners, you should see sites linking to other competitor sites, those that are ranking high on Search engines, those that accept links and have a links form on their site. Find websites that are already doing well on search engines for keywords like “your keyword + directory submission”, “your keyword + link exchange”, “your keyword + submit URL”, using several other variations and also using the allintitle, allinurl commands on Google. If you are having difficulty in finding good link partners, spend a few hours searching for websites that give you useful tips and tricks on finding good sites to exchange links with.

Other than these, you will be much better off if you contact a lot of low PR, industry related sites. These are sites that don’t even make to the top ranking positions, but actually exist with PR 4 or 3 or lower. You can easily find such sites through some directory, like the Yahoo! directory, or DMOZ, by browsing to the relevant category/sub-category, or using some other search engine like MSN and Yahoo. Most of these low ranking websites will be willing to give a link without you linking to them!

Your plan for finding and contacting webmasters

Try to add and review at least 100 - 200 sites every day. You should be working full time only on finding good websites to exchange links with. 200 websites a day makes 25 links/websites every hour if you work 8 hours per day. Once you have a list of 800 or 1000 link partners, start contacting them. You (or some resource) should be working on it full-time and contact as many partners for link exchange as you can. It will be a good idea if you use some tool like Arelis, by Axandra, to manage your links campaign. Now time yourself, and you should be sending 20 - 30 emails every hour to link partners. If you have a links manager tool, you should be able to send more requests per hour. This way you’ll have contacted the 800 or 1000 sites you collected in just 2 or 3 days. The more emails you send, the more likely you’ll get a response.

So, you should be spending 4 to 5 days on finding good link partners and then contacting them in the next 4 to 5 days. A few points that you should consider are that you shouldn’t be spending too much time on reviewing websites. You should be able to figure out in 1 or 2 minutes if you will be willing to exchange links with a website or not.

Plan and time yourself

This is the trick I’ve been using to get links. Just plan and time yourself in everything you do. You should start getting replies from link partners in a day or two, once you start sending those emails. You should be making 4 - 5 links or more on average per day easily if you use this approach. Some link partners are slow in responding. Others don’t inform you at all if they link back. But you will be able to find out the other sites linking to you once you start seeing referrals in your website statistics.

Avoid Search Engine Penalties

Repeat the process again for the next few weeks. Keep a target and achieve it. Say, 60 links every month. Make sure you rotate the link texts and descriptions often to avoid Search Engine penalties of getting lots of links quickly in a short period of time.

The good thing about this campaign is that most of the sites will link back without even asking for a link from your site. These will be free incoming links to your site and will have more weight as they will be non-reciprocal links.

Web Directory and Article Submissions

Apart from this, write articles and submit them to as many article directories as possible. A well written article should get you more than 300 - 500 links alone. And don’t forget to do directory submissions. They can help you boost your link popularity and help you get a lot of keyword rich text links.

Directory submissions used to be a very big part of most search marketers traffic and link building efforts. That’s changed a great deal in the past few years or so but some directories are still important and have been consistent in their quality guidelines and ability to offer link/traffic benefit.

Imagination Candy: Technorati Stuff
nycgraphix.com photography studio

I found this article and find it to be very helpful for link building web development. From Seomoz.org

This is competitive intelligence - the kind that SEO firms shouldn't be sharing because it reveals a considerable portion of the value they (we) provides to clients. Thus, it's the perfect topic for an SEOmoz post.

The best way to do this is by example. I've picked one lucky website - EvoGear.com (based here in Seattle) and one of their primary keyword phrases "snowboard equipment" (which they should really put in their title tag) to illustrate how you should perform searches that will result in high quality link acquisition targets.

A Few Basic Rules:

1. You should perform all of these searches at each of the major engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask - yes, even Ask, as they often link to some very valuable and achievable link sources). I'm illustrating using Google for simplicity and brevity.


2. At Google and others, it often helps to show 100 results per page and have the maximum "grouping" of results from the same site. That way, you can find all of the most relevant pages on a particular domain with ease.


3. This process is only half the battle - the other half is identifying the sites inside the SERPs that would make good targets; I'll try to cover that next week.
   

The Obvious

Basically, we're seeking every possible permutation of the term/phrase - links from any of the top ranking sites (#1-100, depending on competitiveness) will provide high value. As you go down the list, you can also use these modified terms/phrases to get extra results from the other sources.

• snowboard equipment


• "snowboard equipment"


• snow board equipment
  


• "snow board equipment"


• snowboard


• "snow board"


• snowboards
  


• "snow boards"
  

Advanced Operators

Then use the engines' advanced query parameters with the basic phrase. As we refine in this manner, the number of pages that still provide value shrinks - I'd probably look at the top 30-50 results maximum.

• allintitle:snowboard equipment


• allinanchor:snowboard equipment
  


• allinurl:snowboard equipment
  


• allintext:snowboard equipment
  

Alternative Search Sources

The main index sites are great ways to define value, but adding in some alternate sources for link searches can help to diversify. The engines might not always consider these sources as important (which is why I'd stick to only the highest profile sites/pages in these results), but they can often be great sources for traffic.

• Google News - snowboard equipment
  


• Google News Archive - snowboard equipment
  


• Yahoo! News - snowboard equipment


• Technorati - snowboard equipment (sort by authority, too)
  


• Del.icio.us - snowboard equipment + del.icio.us/tag/snowboard and del.icio.us/tag/snowboarding, too


• Ask.com Blog Search - snowboard equipment
  


• Google Blog Search - snowboard equipment


• Wikipedia Search - snowboard equipment


• DMOZ Search - snowboard equipment (check the categories, the sites and the sites listed in the relevant categories)
  

Directory Search Terms

Appending the word "directory" and other similar terms can help to dig up valuable hubs where you can submit your site for inclusion. Note that many of these use advanced operators and will generally have a short list (top 10-25) of valuable targets.

• snowboard equipment directory


• intitle:directory "snowboard equipment"


• inurl:directory "snowboard equipment"
  


• snowboard directory


• snowboard * directory


• directory * snowboard


• snowboard catalog (this term ranges in value and may not have much here)
  


• snowboard equipment catalog


• "list of snowboarding sites"


• "list * snowboard"


• "list * snowboard * sites"


• snowboard websites
  


• snowboard sites


• "snowboard sites"


• "snowboard websites"


• "recommended links" snowboard equipment
  


• "recommended sites" snowboard equipment
  


• "favorite links" snowboard equipment


• "favorite sites" snowboard equipment
  

The goal here is to find places you can participate. You don't want to spam, but a quick link drop to highly relevant content once you're already an accepted member is perfectly reasonable. Having a presence in the UGC sphere also means you can quickly step in and manage reputation, save face or recognize trends to leverage.

• snowboard forum


• snowboarding forum


• "snowboarding forum"


• intitle:forum snowboarding


• inurl:forum snowboarding
  


• snowboarding blog


• intitle:blog snowboarding


• inurl:blog snowboarding


• "add comment" snowboarding


• "post comment" snowboarding
  


• snowboarding members


• snowboarding join


• snowboarding tag


• intitle:tag snowboarding


• intitle:post snowboarding
  


• snowboarding group
  


• intitle:group snowboarding
  

Submit-Type Searches

These are often the most valuable searches (thus I've saved them for last). The idea is to search for sites/pages that are accepting submissions or additions. I tend to run pretty far down these SERPs just because it can be so easy to obtain the links.

• snowboard equipment "add url"
  


• snowboard equipment "add site"
  


• snowboard equipment "add website"


• snowboard equipment "add your site"


• snowboard equipment "add a url"
  


• snowboard equipment "add * url"


• snowboard equipment "add * site"
  


• snowboard equipment "add * website"


• snowboard equipment "submit url"
  


• snowboard equipment "submit site"


• snowboard equipment "submit website"


• snowboard equipment "submit your site"
  


• snowboard equipment "submit a url"
  


• snowboard equipment "submit * url"


• snowboard equipment "submit * site"


• snowboard equipment "submit * website"


• snowboard equipment "suggest url"
  


• snowboard equipment "suggest site"
  


• snowboard equipment "suggest website"


• snowboard equipment "suggest your site"


• snowboard equipment "suggest a url"


• snowboard equipment "suggest * url"


• snowboard equipment "suggest * site"
  


• snowboard equipment "suggest * website"
  

And now, I hope to get your secrets - if you've got more to add, please don't be shy. You can use my example or create your own.