31 Link Building Tactics Discovered From Competitive Analysis. On the Moz blog there's always been a large discussion around competitive analysis.
From how to conduct competitive analysis using Google docs to in depth articles about competitive link analysis using Excel, or even just the fact that Moz has Open Site Explorer, one of the ultimate analysis tools for competitive backlink analysis. The fact of the matter is competitive analysis can be a very worthwhile exercise to help you determine the best strategy for your online efforts. This is especially true with link building. Over the years, I've seen hundreds of thousands of backlinks while analyzing for opportunities (as well as looking for bad links to disavow or prune). Most recently, my analyses have inspired me to write this post, because common opportunities continue to reveal themselves, and they're worth sharing. Contests. Post-Penguin Directory Submission Happiness.
The Google+ Local launch came out while I was working on this piece so it merits a brief mention.
While Google+ Local will be a big deal, at the moment for most local businesses, it is not a huge deal. Thus far, there does not appear to be much change in Google’s main local rankings algorithm besides the fact that Google+ Local pages will be indexed versus the old Places pages which were pseudo-indexed. It seems as if this update is mostly about getting us ready for changes coming down the road, where social activity gets even more ingrained in Google’s algo. If you’re interested in the subject, you can read some more thoughts on why Google+Local may be a ghost town and some prognostication from about a year ago that I think is still pretty much on the money.
Of course, the local searcharati has plenty to say on the matter. 99 Ways to Build Links by Giving Stuff Away (and Improve Your Brand Too) In my last post I explained why free stuff is link building gold, and in this update I'm giving you 99 actionable ways to gain links by giving stuff away.
By the end you'll have a ton of link building ideas, some of which I hope will be new to you. This is a springboard for new ideas, so I hope this 99 can become many more, so please leave your comments and help grow this list. These ideas come from methods I've seen customers use to get free stuff in researching the Free Stuff Everyday book, and also ideas we've used for clients at Koozai. In short there's nothing below that can't be sourced to the real world, so please give every idea a chance. These ideas focus on getting increased chatter about your brand online, with the logic that when people are talking about your brand they are likely linking to it as well. I've tried to make the list suit all styles, so you can either look at the nine titles and take it from there. Product Giveaways 1. 2. 3. 4.
32 White Hat Ways to Build Inbound Links. This is a guest post by Corey Northcutt, who manages a Chicago-based SEO and content marketing agency called Northcutt.
Follow him on Google+ or Twitter at @northcuttSEO, and read his SEO blog. There’s no question that building great inbound links to your site is hard work. While many site owners resort to spamming blog comment sections to get their backlinks, that’s neither necessary, nor effective for your SEO efforts. But it's probably just a last ditch effort since, although there's much talk about generating inbound links, the nitty gritty ways to actually do that are rarely discussed. But link building doesn’t need to be as tough as most people make it.
Get Your Blog On 1) Maintain a steady blog. 2) Set up an RSS feed for your blog. 3) Link to other blogs on your blog. 4) Write guest blog posts. 5) Create resource lists. 6) Do some newsjacking. Create Content Beyond Your Blog. Reclaim Links, Traffic, Conversions You Lost Year Over Year. Do you know who stopped sending your site referral traffic, valuable natural links, or referral conversions year over year?
How do you make sure you’re not losing any that were actually driving big sales, downloads, signups or other conversions? Do you have 10 minutes? Below are steps to compare referral website traffic over a similar time period. An automated sheet will do the rest for you & it’s linked below. Quick shout out to Ethan Lyon for checking up the spreadsheet for me as well as Annie C. 1. You’ll want to hack the URL because Google only provides the 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500 options. Switch that 500 number with 2566 or whatever your numbers are for yearly referrers. 2. Link Building Strategies - The Complete List. Remember how people say, "it's not about what you know, it's about who you know"?
The same goes for the Web. Those relationships will turn into links, both in the short-term & the long-term. Just like with getting people to see you content, I realized a lot of the tactical ways to build relationships aren’t direct ways to get links, I decided to delete that section in this guide, and list all of them here instead. So here they are. Random acts of kindness - Whenever you can, be nice to people. Give a crap - Actually care about people. Participate - If someone is conducting a survey or testing something, get involved and participate. Utilizing Second Tier Link Building For Massive ROI. An “advanced” link building tactic frequently discussed is the concept of second tier link building – that is, building links to pages that link to you.
These concepts are generally used in spammier instances – such as “link wheels” or other less than favorable examples where links can easily be pushed at authoritative domains – with the hope that the benefit passed back to our site is superior to what will have been gained if the link had been pointed direct. Or, in the case of many websites, this “second tier” phantom link building is used as a coverup to leverage spammy tools for benefit without truly putting sites at risk. All of these factors combine for an idea, that when put into practice, is mostly done with malicious intent. This does not always have to be the case – actually, the power of second tier link building to drive traffic, conversions and further links can be an extremely strong one.