Link building for non competitive keywords
You still need some links, not only to be more relevant than the bit of competition you have but also links act as “gateways” into your website. From the previous article on “Link Building Explained” there is the following analogy:
- ……Imagine there is a 5 mile long wall with one small gate – only a few people will be able to find that gate and if they have never heard of what is through the gate then why go though it?
- Now imagine there are 200 gates all along the wall with signs beside the gate saying where it leads.
What happens = more people go through the now many gates, as they don’t have to walk as far to get through and they also now know what is on the other side, enticing them in……..”
Get on the free open major directories that are indexed well by search engines, e.g. – http://www.dmoz.org/. Get a few links on free listing sites that have categories that bare relation to your site – www.freeindex.co.uk. Post on some relevant blog sites and articles – the best ones have your keyword numerous time on the page and they have a mid to high page rank with low external links.
Link building for competitive keywords
The fun with SEO has only just started. A successful link building campaign from an SEO link building company (that will do a good job and get lots of high quality and content related quantity links) usually takes between 6 and 12 months.
Once you have the results you want then staying on top is another issue. Your competitors will be doing exactly what you’re doing – trying to get ranked higher by the search engines for your keywords. This, ladies and gentleman, is why SEO is a continuous project. Leave it alone for a few months and you may find your website bumped off that first page of Google (where the majority of users will go to sites on the first page or try a different search term, but not go to page 2 or beyond of the SERP).
STEP 1 – Research
- The first thing you need to do (and should have already done from your On-Site optimisation) is analyse your competitors. You should already know your keywords (if not see the keyword research and implementation section ) so type the keyword into Google (remember are you using google.com or .co.uk or .co.au, etc – they do yield different results as the search engines will want to show you the most relevant pages).
- Look at the first page results for the keyword (search term) you have entered – this is your competition (in terms of SEO). You want to be ranked higher than all these sites – some may be information sites, some may be sales pages or social media sites. If they can get onto Page 1 of a search engine results page, then so can you.
- Note the URL’s (web address) of the sites you want to beat, i.e. the top one, and then use a free backlink analyser to see the number of links they have. We have a free backlink analyser here. WARNING – this can be scary sometimes as some sites can have hundreds of thousands of links going to it.
- Now you know what you’re up against, you have to decide whether to try and beat those top people or if it looks abit too much (e.g. hundreds of thousands of links) then maybe think about changing your keywords to localise the results or target them in a different way, e.g. instead of “PC Repair” have “PC Repair Southampton”.
If you’re happy with the challenge then on to step 2…..
STEP 2 – Who does the link building?
- The second thing you need to decide is if you are going to pay someone to link build for you (via an external company, in-house link building via your normal staff or actually employing someone to solely manage your SEO in-house). In-house link building guidelines say to try and get around 50 links a month (quite ambitious). External companies with always manage more as they have teams of people dedicated to link building. You could always give all your staff a brief of the type of sites you want linking to you, some quick how-to guidelines (like these) and try and get everyone to request 1 link per week…..
- The problem you have is working out what your ROI (return on investment) may be and how much to invest before you can achieve your projected return. A link building campaign typically takes 6-12 months for real results to be seen for competitive keywords.
If you’re happy with the challenge of link building yourself then on to step 3…..(if not then go to step 5)
STEP 3 – Find the sites you want to link to and add them to your link building software or in a spreadsheet
- Using the free seo tools, do a back link search on your competitor sites and note down all the sites you want to try and get a link from. You can purchase link building software that will auto check things like no-follow links, when links become dead and when sites stop linking to you. If you cannot afford software like this then use Excel. It is very important to keep track of the links you make and sites you request a link from.
- Remember – try to find pages that are relevant to your sites content. Search engines will prefer this and obviously users will too (as they already have an interest in the subject since they are on that page with relevant content).
- Using excel should only really be done for the really important links to yourself. If, for example, you have 1000 links then excel is not practical as you would have to spend alot of time checking the links are still active. Note all the sites down in an excel spreadsheet with useful column fields of “Webpage URL”, Contact”, “Date of Link Active”, “Date of last check”, etc. Also maybe you could have a separate tab for potential links, e.g. “date of last link request”. There is no point requesting a link from someone and them saying no, then you requesting it again the next week because this will just annoy them – BUT maybe in a few months they might change their opinion, especially if your sites content has changed.
STEP 4 – Requesting Links
- When requesting links contact the webmaster of the site direct if you can. Try your hardest not to look like spam – make personal emails to the webmaster and maybe comment on some of the features of their site saying your likes and even dislikes. Make it look like your not an automated email and you will have a much higher chance of success! Even post a few comments on their site and forum so that you get to know the webmaster.
- When requesting a link make it easy for the webmaster to put the link on their site. People generally will not spend loads of time adding links on their sites to others if it is an effort. Give them the exact html code that will have the correct url, the correct link text (remember your keywords), the correct link alt text (related to the page the link is going to) and that there is a do-follow tag (if this tag is not there the search engines will still follow the link – just make sure there is not a “no-follow” tag).
- You may find webmasters wanting a reciprocal link back to them. Reciprocal links carry less weight these days with search engines as they seem like a obvious link strategy. A few reciprocal links will still help, especially if the website is similar content that is keyword rich and rated high by search engines. Also they act as gateways into your site (which is always a good thing). There are no set rules but generally you should try and keep the reciprocal links down and the one-way links up.
- Once you have a confirmed link note it down on your link building software or excel spreadsheet. Also check the link has the criteria you asked for – the correct url link, the link text being what you wanted, the alt text being what you wanted and also that there is not a no-follow tag on it.
STEP 5 – Checking the links are still active
- All links tend to have a link life-span. You may only keep a link active for a few months or it may stay active for years. As sites mature and evolve they often lose links or decide not to have them anymore. Keep track of the links and check them regularly to make sure they are still there. When you have lots and lots of links it only becomes practical to use a link building software to auto check for you.
- If you change the url of one of you pages that a link is going to make sure you put a re-direct on the old url so that it goes to the new one. Don’t lose out on traffic by having dead links!
STEP 6 – Keep at it
- Link building is an on-going process that you need to keep working on. For competitive keywords your competition will keep building their links, therefore so should you or you may fall behind – and your search engine rankings may suffer.
