Link Building Project, how would my time best be used? Options

[JakeG]

I’m currently working on a price comparison type site that has started making pretty good revenue. The on-page SEO and internal link structure couldn’t really be any better (well it could always be a little better!), and we are ranking for lots of the keywords we are targeting.

We don’t have any competitors doing the same as us and the general impression we get is that people are very surprised by this since it is a good idea. People generally like the site and say it is original and useful etc , plus we’ve been given good reviews in a few blogs.

The link building side of the project hasn’t gone as well as we hoped though, sending out press releases and emailing relevant sites only got us a few links. We are currently getting around 1200 visitors a day, but we only have around 50 external links – and many of them are from pretty useless sites (e.g. press release aggregator sites etc). I’m thinking that with a few decent links the traffic could go up dramatically, so I have decided to devote all my time on this project to trying to get more links.

I don’t want to resort to anything dodgy like too much paid linking etc. (well maybe a few advertorials on respected sites- but paying is pretty much the only way to get on some of these). What I really want to do is simply spread the word about the site in a way that will encourage people to link to it. The positive feedback suggested so far makes me think the site is fairly “link-worthy”. I’m still happy to think about adding more content – I just don’t want to waste time adding content for the sake of it in the hope it will get links.

I was hoping that people would be able to advise me on the best use of my time for this. If you had 2 days a week to devote to link-building for a site that you genuinely believed to be link-worthy then how would you use the time? I also have a budget of around $2000 a month but like I said I would rather avoid paid links.

Suggestions would be much appreciated!

[Michael Martinez]

If the site owner is willing to host some articles on their site, you could write some linkbait articles and use those to attract links from helpful sites.

There are two ways to do this. One way, in my opinion, is unethical. The other way, in my opinion, is absolutely golden.

The unethical method is to create a PageRank trap. This is a page that uses the same template as the rest of the site and therefore it has the site's navigation embedded in it. It's a great looking article. It is tailored to a very specific type of audience. The unethical link builder then contacts Web sites matching that audience, simply tells them about the great article at the URL, and then let's nature take its course. Some of those Webmasters will link to the article prominently.

Of course, there are no internal links on the site pointing to the PageRank trap, so it's completely hidden from the site's visitors. I hate these kinds of tricks. I absolutely hate them.

So what is the golden way to do this?

The site hosting the article (for which you are building links) has to link to all its link bait articles prominently so that its own visitors can find them. i.e., don't just create content for links, create it for the site visitors.

This method works fine, in my opinion, as long as you can get the client to agree to host interesting articles on their sites.

I would not, under any circumstances, support the creation or use of PageRank traps. If I had a client who wanted to try that, I would not not try to get any links for the articles.

[Bompa]

I don’t want to resort to anything dodgy like too much paid linking etc. (well maybe a few advertorials on respected sites- but paying is pretty much the only way to get on some of these).

LOL. So if there's no other way, then dodgy is ok? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

What I really want to do is simply spread the word about the site in a way that will encourage people to link to it...

As Michael suggests, link baiting is good, but if you have to contact other webmasters hoping they will link to the linkbait,
that could be time consuming and some might call it spam or be offended by it.

How many to contact? 100? 10,000? Manually? Yipes!

What you need is link bait that is so delicious that once the news is "leaked", word of it spreads like wildfire.

Not easy, but if your job were easy, anyone could do it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif)

There are a ton of link bait ideas in Google.

Or you could hire someone like Lyndon Antcliff for $2,000/hour, (i think).

I would do it for less, but I'm booked solid atm. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Bompa

[JakeG]

Thanks Michael, I'll try out some articles. I agree with you about not using a "pagerank trap", it would make sense to link to the articles from the site anyway since the more people who see them the better. Would there be any disadvantage to hosting the articles on a sub domain where the navigation links back to the main domain? I'm asking because the site has a blog on a seperate sub-domain so this could be a good place to add articles.

Yep Bomba if there is no other way then it is ok to do something dodgy (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) Well maybe not all the time but a lot of the sites I would like to feature us are owned by some big media networks who will very rarely run a story that hasn't been paid for by somebody. Yes contacting webmasters is can be very time consuming, I'll have to make sure that the link bait is so interesting that people will not be offended and see it as spam. Time to hire a writer I think!

[Michael Martinez]

Thanks Michael, I'll try out some articles. I agree with you about not using a "pagerank trap", it would make sense to link to the articles from the site anyway since the more people who see them the better. Would there be any disadvantage to hosting the articles on a sub domain where the navigation links back to the main domain? I'm asking because the site has a blog on a seperate sub-domain so this could be a good place to add articles.

I believe in giving value for value. If visitors to the main domain can easily find and reach the subdomain, that would be perfectly fine with me.

It's still a PageRank trap if you put the articles on a subdomain and don't have the main domain link to the subdomain. However, if the subdomain itself has its own navigation system, where its articles link to each other and the subdomain constitutes its own free-standing Web site -- that would be okay with me.

I'm just saying if you make people feel like they are linking to Domain Alpha but in fact they are linking to Domain Beta and Domain Beta is just feeding PageRank to Domain Alpha through its navigation -- that's sneaky and deceptive.

I don't mind linking to an article that is benefitting from a site's internal navigation.