Link building is not only not dead, it is making a big comeback. Of course, most of the comeback is by way of private blog networks, which are growing in popularity. There are pitfalls along the PBN pathway, to be sure. Most of the PBNs I look at are poorly designed and may not have much staying power. But the PBN community is feeling more confident these days than a year ago.
However, let’s take a look at the kinds of links you can place or ask for without violating search engine guidelines. At least, you won’t be building links at scale. When you build links you are not earning them; you are either placing them yourself or asking someone else to place them for you.
Asking for Links is Still Okay
Although Duane Forrester famously frightened frenetic link-based marketers in 2014 by writing: “You want links to surprise you. You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path.” Many people spoke out in disagreement with Duane’s point of view, which nonetheless should be taken as advice from Microsoft’s Bing team. If you want your links to help with your Bing traffic, then you probably want more earned links than placed/requested links. Still, there are times when you’re allowed to ask for a link no matter what the search engine is.
For example, if you find a legitimate (not “made-for-SEO”) niche industry directory that accepts link submissions, that counts as asking for a link. These directories are usually run by businesses or NGOs, they have editors on staff, and your links usually have to conform to specific criteria. Eric Ward has shared many of these kinds of directories in his Link Moses Private newsletter. Although Eric does not publish a newsletter every week, I stop what I am doing and read it whenever a new issue arrives in my inbox. I am sure many other people give it a priority, too.
Other ways you’re still allowed to ask for links include reaching out to your friends and business partners and asking them to include a link to your site if they provide such links for their visitors. That’s the best criterion to follow: if your business partner does not normally link to sites like yours, don’t ask for the link. If your friend doesn’t really share links to content like yours, don’t ask for the link. But you don’t have to limit yourself to “blogs like mine” or “competitor Websites”. There is room for diversity on the Web, so take advantage of it when appropriate.
A link request is fine when you leave everything up to the person making the link for you: the decision to place the link, what to link to, and how the link is formatted. Make the request about creating a connection with some visibility, not about search engines.
Placing Your Own Links is Still Okay
Yes, you are allowed to link between your Websites. If you have 5 Websites you should be able to find ways to tastefully, helpfully, and informatively place links on each site to your other four sites. If you have 50 sites you don’t need to be interlinking them. If your Websites are related but fulfilling different needs, and there is a legitimate reason to promote an alternative site to your visitors, then you can provide some links.
What you should avoid doing is embedding keyword-rich anchors intended to help with your search rankings. Sure, if you use exact-match domains then linking to the domain name is helpful, but I would probably use a more descriptive anchor text.
You don’t have to use the “rel=’nofollow'” attribute but if you’re feeling paranoid it’s there for you to use. Remember the golden rule of self-placed links: if you would create the link anyway knowing there is no search benefit, it’s probably okay.
And, to be honest, most marketers really don’t have 5 Websites. You may be feeling overwhelmed with just 2 Websites. It’s okay to link between them if you also link out to other Websites. Don’t treat your own sites as something special. Don’t give yourself any special advantages.
Linking in Content You Publish on Other People’s Websites
What got everyone into trouble was the fact that they were publishing guest posts and marketing articles for the sake of giving themselves links. You embedded keyword-rich anchors in your author profiles, throughout your content, and in your bylines. You devised all sorts of excuses and rationalizations for doing this, even though you knew you were only doing it for the sake of influencing search results.
The rule of thumb is that if you want to distribute articles across the Web then you should use “rel=’nofollow'” on your self-placed links. Knowing in advance that your links won’t influence search results should make it easier for you to focus on creating truly useful content. After all, if you create truly useful content people will want to know more about you. They will search for you.
Don’t waste time and resources writing correlation studies and infographics. Web marketers are terrible are creating good content in these formats, and correlation studies are so badly composed that they are usually worthless. If you feel you have found an important correlation in Web analytics data, you’re not qualified to write a correlation study because there are no important correlations in Web analytics data. These correlations do not provide any insight into how search algorithms and social forces work.
Correlations are best used to confirm that something is afoot, not to explain it. If you are trying to explain things with correlations you are writing nonsense. Don’t associate your good name with pseudo-scientific babble. The people most likely to invest resources in correlation studies are selling software and services, and their customers are just as easily fooled by two curves that look the same as they are.
If you want to develop multiple channels for distributing content that proves your expertise, follow these criteria:
- Tailor each article to speak to a niche audience in its own idiom and metaphor
- Use examples that are relevant and meaningful to the specific audience you are targeting
- Demonstrate how your niche audience should use your information in their avocation
- Solve specific problems that confound small audiences
If you’re going to publish 20 articles about buying blouses, then at least write articles for twenty different types of toe nail painters (competitive dancers, teenagers, cosplayers, office workers, college students, etc.). You should have something unique and different to say to each audience so that the overlap in usefulness and information in your articles is minimized.
The links you place in this kind of content should be helpful and informative, not self-promotional. Leave the self-promotion for the author bio and use “rel=’nofollow'” to ensure you don’t get into trouble with search engines.
Most importantly, cultivate a relationship with the Websites that accept your content. Publish multiple articles on each site; link your articles to each other to help them appear in site search queries. And remember that even on a link using “rel=’nofollow'” the anchor text still counts as text on the page that can be indexed and used by all search engines to select your article as a relevant result for any number of queries.
Link Building Does Not Have to Violate Search Engine Guidelines.
If you’re looking for competitive, aggressive linking advice, don’t browse public-facing blogs for that kind of information. The search engines will be able to find all those great linking resources.
If you just want to be able to drive more traffic to your site through strategically placed links, then learn how to do it with confidence and care for search engine guidelines. Randy Ray and I teach our clients to make good choices in their link building, as well as to understand the risks and potential consequences if they really want to pursue aggressive linking strategies.
Think about how long you want your Website to perform well in Web search, not about how quickly you can get it to rank. You’ll seek very different kinds of links depending on what your objective is.
Read More about Search Engine Optimization
How Long Does It Take SEO To Work?
Guest Post Link Building: Why It Hurts the Web
Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness for Non-expert Websites
On-Page Optimization SEO Checklist
SEO Metrics Online: Which Measurements Should You Use?
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