Link Building Pet Peeves That Drive Me Bananas

As someone who is an avid link builder and search engine marketer, I spend half my day completely annoyed, wanting to pull all my eyelashes out. So many inexperienced link builders, more like spammers (just sayin), don’t know how to properly build links. Let’s go through a few of my link building pet peeves:

Comments

Dropping a link in a comment isn’t anything new, but what I hate most is when someone tries to drop dozens of links in one comment that don’t even apply to the post or site. Likely they’re comments placed by bots, but still. Come on people: linking to free porn videos on an eco-friendly blog 32 times is not going to do much for you. You really think you’re fooling anyone, especially a company worth billions like Google?

ESL Link Requests

“Dear Sirs, your site I find good. I like to procure link on site. Pay you for link. Thank you.” Wow, original right? Many are opposed to actually sending out link requests or paying for links, although they likely do it themselves. Whichever way you fall, it’s important to sound real and like you actually speak English when contacting sites and letting them know about a link you’d like to obtain on their site. Or heck, not even asking: just telling them about a great resource you found and letting them see for themselves whether or not it’s a great resource.

Outrageous Link Request Responses

“Why thank you for the link request. It’s people like you who degrade the internet and make it a hotbed for spammers. Go to hell you ***%#*@* *#$%^*&.” OR “Great resource you sent us. While we would like to link to your great content on our PR1 domain with 300 subscribers, it will cost you $1,000 a month. Our advertisers like our packages and we only place links on our site if you pay for them [up the nose].” There are always people on both ends of the spectrum, as is the case with link building. Those that hate link requests and proceed to tell you that you are the scum of the earth, or others who are trying to profit from something without actually understanding the value.

Hidden Anything

I wish I had a penny for every time I came across a site with hidden links, text or heading tags, or heck a hidden site! What were they thinking? Hiding anything from a visitor is just plain silly. Search engines can see it, so why on earth would you hide it from view? I know there are some components to a site that you want to hide, but text? Links? Headings? So annoying!

Link and Keyword Stuffing

Nothing grinds my gears more than seeing a page that is stuffed fuller than a turkey at Thanksgiving with juicy, delightful….links and keywords. “Keyword, link, keyword, filler text, keyword, link”. Not user friendly, and it makes my eyes hurt.

Massive Internal Links

Recently, I had a new client approach us to do some onsite SEO work. They literally had over 4,000 internal links to their homepage, many of which were linking using the words ‘click here’. And guess what? They weren’t even an eCommerce site! Ugh, talk about driving you crazy. But wowsas did their rankings increase when we fixed up their onsite issues.

What are some of the link building or SEO tactics you see that just grind your gears?

How to Train a Link Builder

When you’re new to link building it’s easy to get discouraged. Getting links can be challenging work, fraught with failure, rejection, mistakes, and sometimes character assassinations. Just like politics. Someone can learn how to speak in public, fund raise and debate. But you cannot teach charisma, tenacity and integrity. Those qualities are simply instinctive. Well, we may have fewer babies and grandmas to kiss, but there are certain instinctual qualities that help with learning to build links. And over time those skills can be cultivated and honed. Sure, not every link builder will turn out to be a Superstar, but with the right training most people can learn to get quality links on a consistent basis. Here’s how.

Make rules

It’s important to establish some ground rules for link builders. Make sure they know what kind of link building they are doing, and what kind of links they should be getting. Not because the link builder is stupid or a slippery character, but because certain things are just dangerous and a new link builder won’t know any better. You don’t want a new link builder to accidentally email http://www.mattcutts.com offering money or talking about Page Rank and getting links for rankings. Most people who are new to link building just don’t understand the mine field they are walking into and could easily set off a series of explosions which could rattle your entire business. Set boundaries; teach them to pay attention to details and instruct them as to where the really dangerous traps are, BEFORE they fall into one.

The best course of action is probably to provide a full scale education on the ins and outs of SEO and the function and risks of link building as a whole. But if that’s not possible, a specific set of rules is essential. And a little fear of God for breaking them never hurts either.

Set specific goals

Along those lines, link builders also need goals. Clearly the purpose of any link builder’s day is to get links. But what kind of links? What level of quality? I can go out and score 50 directory links a day or 1,000 links across one site or a network of sites. But are those really the links we want? Beware of a goals structure which is purely numbers based. Emphasizing the ends without any attention to the means can (and often will) result in cheating, corner cutting and flat out bad decision making. Define good and bad links, and use measurements which reflect those characteristics.

Teaching link builders to understand links as a part of the “big picture” can help them become more invested in the process. Obtaining a specific number of links is somewhat gratifying, but seeing the positive effect links can have on a web site can be truly exciting. A link builder will find more satisfaction when the emphasis is placed on the larger goal as opposed to the micro-chasm of simply getting a certain number of links. There will be a greater sense of fulfillment and a stronger tendency to make the right choices.

Create a system

If you let a bunch of link builders loose on a stylistic free for all you will get erratic results at best. But by creating a system for getting links, you have a process to follow. And in using a process, you can gauge strengths and weaknesses, both within the system itself and the link builders. Each step of the system should be simple and easy to replicate. It’s also helpful if each part of the process can be examined on its own and tailored to suit each link builder’s individual style.

Templates in general are good, but humanized spam is bad. If your link builder is simply a human version of a robot, then it might be cheaper just to create an automated system to serve the same function. Auto-bots don’t require health care, lunch breaks or whine when the bathroom is out of paper towels. But they inevitably lack the judgment and insight that a humans bring to the process. And everyone who’s ever gotten an automated email knows that SPAM reads like SPAM no matter how may smiley emoticons you put in the message.

Maximize Talents

The other benefit to using human link builders is that they are unique, and will excel in different areas. By watching how a link builder meets their goals and performs various functions of a link building system you can begin to see where their talents lie. Whether the strength is in identifying what will get links, who will give links or even just exceptional hand to keyboard speed, recognizing each link builder’s talents can be a crucial part of the training process. When link builders are allowed to focus on their fortes and use some creativity, managers will usually discover a host of new ideas, new techniques and, of course, their future trainers.

Over time most people can develop a talent for link building. Most link builders will inevitably grow the gut reaction to just know when something is right or wrong, possible or impossible, a good idea or a bad one. Yes, those instincts themselves may be difficult to “train” in someone. But with rules, goals, a system and a focus on utilizing strengths where they naturally occur, you will create a staff that is eager to learn, produce, and excel at the art of getting links.

3 Good Link Bait Tips, 3 Bad Link Bait Tips

This is a guest post by Eric Gesinski who does Tulsa web design, Tulsa SEO, and all sorts of other Tulsa stuff.

Of all methods for doing solid search engine optimization, link bait is one of the most alluring (yet mysterious) methods. Good link bait will grab attention and gather links from various pages across the web, but bad link bait won’t grab much attention and will not have the SEO effects desired. Keep in mind that bad link bait and bad attention are two different things – bad attention is still attention, and for the goal of link baiting, this is still accomplishing the desired result.

photo credit: psyberartist

To get good links and grab solid collections of links, here are 3 link baiting tips to try:

1. Strong research on a popular topic. This is especially functional if you can find a valuable topic that has yet to be covered. This is also more effective if you can be specific. For example, in a market about dog care, doing a study on which species of dog sheds the most (with actual figures, quantitative values) is something that anyone who cares about a canine impact on their home interior would be interested in. And if it’s solid information, they’d be happy to share it with a link.
2. An instructional guide. Showing people how to do something that is not naturally intuitive is a contribution to the web that is appreciated by both humans and the search engines. The more detail that is put into such a guide, the better. This can be done for all sorts of things, from how to operate machinery to how to practice a skill. Again, being tightly specific will help – a guide on how to properly shoot a pool ball (including the proper way to hold the cue stick, with pictures) will likely get more attention and links then a guide on how to play pool.
3. Setting up a contest or a competition. This can be of particular value if it’s set up with some sort of reward, specific to the market. Putting a competition up to find the 5 best horror stories about blind dates would be great on multiple levels. If giving something away of relevant value to each winner (free movie tickets, a free dinner at a nice restaurant), it will get good attention from people wanting to win the prizes as well as getting great reception when you post the results. Who wouldn’t want to read the 5 best stories about horrid blind dates? And as the result can also be solid link bait, you can get a double effect from putting together a good competition on your site.

But not all methods of using link bait that are known are good. Be careful about spending time on things that are not really worth the effort. Here are 3 areas to be careful with, when it comes to link baiting:

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The Most Effective Approach to Contacting Link Partners for Authoritative Links

There are hundreds, if not thousands of different ways you can acquire links. Every link buildling tactic comes with pros and cons. I have found that the most effective way to build links is by taking the time to build relationships with experts in your industry, than to just dropping a link in a directory or forum. I understand this is a time intensive process and it requires a lot more work, but the end result are highly relevant, authoritative links. Below is a step by step process to effectively approach potential link partners.

Follow this 4 step process:

1. Make a Potential Link Partner List

If you read industry blogs, than you probably have a pretty good idea who the major influencers are in the industry. Start by generating a list of potential experts/bloggers you would like to contact. Take note of their blog (if they have one), what sites they contribute to, and any social media sites they engage in.

2. Start Following Them

Before you even begin contacting anyone, start following them. If they are on Twitter, start following them. Pay attention to what they tweet about, who they tweet about, who they are tweeting with, and pay attention to their style/personality.

If they manage or contribute to a blog, sign up for their RSS feed and being reading recent and upcoming posts. Start to understand their style of writing, how often they blog, and what topics they cover.

If they use social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, start following their bookmarks. See what type of sites interest them. Find out if they have other types of passions besides just the industry you are in. You may be able to connect with someone on a deeper level (similar intersts, location, background, experience).

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