Link Building & Link Baiting [Archive] - Search Engine Roundtable Forums

PDA

View Full Version : Link Building & Link Baiting


semgorilla
10-24-2007, 11:16 AM
Here is an Article I wrote on Link Building and Link Baiting. Hope it helps!

Link building refers to search engine optimization strategies in which one-way back links to a website are created. By generating links from related and authoritative sites back to your own website you not only encourage extra web traffic, you increase your page rankings in search engine results pages. Some of the most successful link building techniques are article marketing, blogging, forum posting and paid advertising on related and high traffic websites.

The importance of one-way links cannot be over emphasized. Reciprocal linking is now seen for what it is a deceptive strategy. Also rapid, artificial development of one way links is suspect so it is far better to create your links gradually as one would expect of natural website and back link development. Organic SEO strategies will not trigger any alarms in the search engines and can be used in a focused and accelerated way to expedite the marketing advantages.

Article marketing is one of the most effective ways to build back links to your website. It is better to use a couple of high traffic article directories than to submit your articles to hundreds or even thousands of directories as this will create an enormous amount of duplicate content which is devalued by the search engine algorithms. It is also a mistake to put articles on your website that you have used for article marketing purposes because this would create duplicate content on your website. While you certainly want the benefit of back links to increase your search engine results page (SERP) rank you need to take into account other factors which can affect your SERP position such as duplicate content.

Blogging, forum posting and paid advertising on relevant websites can also provide excellent one way links to your website. You can write blog articles on your own blog as well as writing comments and articles on other people's blogs that link back to your website. Forums will generally not allow you to directly link to your website in the posting itself, however you can use a link to your site as a signature under your post which can be just as effective as an embedded back link. Placing paid ads on high traffic, related and authoritative sites can also provide one way links back to your website which is likely to both increase the number of visitors as well as your SERP position.

Link baiting is an indirect link building strategy in that you do not directly place the links but encourage others to link back to your site or, more specifically, a particular article or page on your site. Link baiting is achieved by writing interesting, informative, humorous or controversial articles that others are likely to link to from their websites or blogs. Ask yourself what information you can offer that will benefit others and tempt them to link back to the information. Controversy and disagreement are always popular, running an online contest is another link bait technique, so too is writing free how-to reports, providing free access to an online software program, or doing something new on the internet that is interesting or helpful and grabs attention. Writing or editing informational articles for online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia can also be an effective link bait technique.

Link building and link baiting are both effective search engine optimization strategies as well as traffic building techniques. If you strategically link one way from relevant websites back to your own, you will gradually improve your SERP rank as well as increase the number of visitors to your site and therefore your profitability. You cannot optimize your website effectively and ignore the importance of back links. It is becoming increasingly difficult to manipulate Google and other search engines by using artificial strategies so it is very important to create natural links in order to gain lasting benefits in terms of search engine results rank. Link building and link baiting are helpful and beneficial SEO strategies. If you use them wisely, they can significantly increase the positioning of your website on the search engines and consequently the ability of your site to be profitable and successful...

Quantum
10-27-2007, 03:09 PM
I've been running a sort of "contest" on my site where I ask visitors to submit a social bookmark for my site, and I give them something in exchange.

The page where I mentionned the contest had PR 4 and it ranked very well for its keyords. About 2 weeks ago it started to drop in Google rankings and now it doesn't even show up for keywords that ranked me #1 for a long time. My PR went from 4 to 2 yesterday. I still rank the same in MSN and Yahoo.

Did I get a Google penalty? Did somebody report my site to Google? Most of my competition buys and sells text links. Should I report them to Google?

Thanks for your help.

semgorilla
10-27-2007, 03:23 PM
Hey,

I'm not sure what could have happened to you. What are you offering in exchange for the social bookmark? What is on the page that you are running the contest? Can you send me a link to it? I am just wondering why you are worried that someone reported you? If you don't know what has happened, what would be your grounds for reporting to google?

I look forward to hearing from you..

Randy Zlobec

I've been running a sort of "contest" on my site where I ask visitors to submit a social bookmark for my site, and I give them something in exchange.

The page where I mentionned the contest had PR 4 and it ranked very well for its keyords. About 2 weeks ago it started to drop in Google rankings and now it doesn't even show up for keywords that ranked me #1 for a long time. My PR went from 4 to 2 yesterday. I still rank the same in MSN and Yahoo.

Did I get a Google penalty? Did somebody report my site to Google? Most of my competition buys and sells text links. Should I report them to Google?

Thanks for your help.

Quantum
10-27-2007, 03:35 PM
Actually I don't really like the idea of reporting to Google. I'm just not sure why I'm the only one who seems to have dropped from the rankings following the PR changes, although it could definitely be for other reasons than a report. I changed the layout of my site on October 4th, going from tables to CSS.

I am sending you the link.

semgorilla
10-27-2007, 04:04 PM
I am happy to hear you don't like the idea of reporting to google unless someone was doing something that was black hat and causing you to lose money because of it. We all want to be fair at the seo game therefore reporting someone because you think they may have reported you is not the way to go. This raises a flag with Google and that webmaster you reported could have done everything right and followed the rules, yet Google may bump them during an investigation and that would not be fair.

I am sure it was something that happened when you made the switch. Usually if you make a change on your web site and you notice your site fall, it is something that you have done to cause the drop. Maybe you should think about changing the site back to the way it was to try and gain those positions again.

I would suggest really looking into the matter and analyzing it then make your best decision on what to do next. I am going to look at the link you sent now.

Randy Zlobec


Actually I don't really like the idea of reporting to Google. I'm just not sure why I'm the only one who seems to have dropped from the rankings following the PR changes, although it could definitely be for other reasons than a report. I changed the layout of my site on October 4th, going from tables to CSS.

I am sending you the link.

semgorilla
10-27-2007, 04:13 PM
Just to update all on this situation, I had a look at this site and I think the reason for the drop was because the webmaster changed the code of the site & not because of the contest. I explained that based on my experience Google likes Table Less, CSS, & XHTML coded sites more than any other out there.

See, good thing there was no report to Google! We are all in this SEO/SEM game together and the more we can help each other rather than hurt, the better we will all be!

Randy Zlobec