Linkbuilding In Real Life

A practical guide to dominating the SERPS

Jaamit Durrani
SEO Director at
@jaamit
4th September 2010
What I’ll be banging on about

• 6 Things I’ve learned

about linkbuilding
• Site reviews and
linkbuilding tips
• Linkbuilding Tools you
can use
1. Linkbuilding can be daunting

Image: krikit
• Break it down and it becomes manageable
• Plan some linkbuilding time each month

Just ask Paddy!

ui l ding
r L inkb
e m b e
Se p t
o:
To D
4
e s p i ns x
l
-Artic posts x 2 5
st x
- Gue omments 3
o g c s x h al f a da y
- b l u b
i r e c tory s specting – bait idea
- d o nk
i g g ing/pr y killer li
-D on m
-w o r k

@paddymoogan
“Slowly slowly, catchy monkey”
2. Quality vs Quantity

“Which is better:

Getting 5 authority
links or 500 ‘low
level’ links?”

It’s not an either/or

situation. You
should plan on
getting both!
3. Stop brownnosing your homepage!

• If you obsess over

building links to
your homepage,
you wont get far
• Deep links kick
arse!
4. Anchor text is your friend
• A link with a keyword in the anchor text is,
90% of the time, far more powerful than one
without
• Even though people don’t
naturally link that way...
• In fact, if I was Goo--
5. “Create great content and the links
will come” is misleading
• Where do the links
come to? Not usually
to your ‘money
pages’ – unless you
engineer it
• You still need a
network of
influencers to get the
word out
6. It’s time to burn our hats
• The whole Black
Hat / White Hat
thing creates a
“no fly zone” and
makes people
scared of testing
• Let’s be honest:
all SEOs are trying
to manipulate the
rankings in some
way
stop ranting Jaamit!
Sites I’ll be looking at
[wall stickers] = 165,000 searches/month – blimey!
Why did we lose our #1?
• you dont need to be an excel ninja – just click around
• the point is not to imitate but to understand what is happening

http://classic.linkdiagnosis.com/

www.opensiteexplorer.org

www.majesticseo.com
Why did we lose our #1?

Competitor 1: “sponsored” PHP-

fusion themes with footer links,
exact anchor text

Competitor 2: dofollow blog

comment links, exact anchor text

Pop quiz, hotshot: what do you do:

(a) “this is outrageous, I’m reporting you to Google!”
(b) “Blimey, that works, I’m off to hire some comment spammers on DP!”
(c) understand that these techniques work only when there’s nothing
better out there – organise a plan of attack from multiple angles, beat them
and laugh all the way to the bank
(d) all of the above 
The multiple angle death grip

• It is very possible to regain the #1 and

dominate the long tail

1.Low level, anchor text deep links at scale

2.Anchor text in-copy links from well trafficked, high PR blogs
3.Links from trusted .ac.uk domains
4.The “rub their face in it” manouvre

5.(bonus: recover and claim onsite link juice)

• Forget article directories, they suck – article spinning is
awesome
• Manual rewrites of each sentence in an article
• Volume – hundreds of variations published
• 3 exact anchor text links per article (spinnable)
• Domain diversity

http://bit.ly/ARanks* http://bit.ly/AMAspinning*
*: Affiliate links – feel free to google them instead!
• Guest blogging - frickin amazing for rankings – Google loves
these links – a fresh page on an established domain, often getting
retweets & comments

http://www.styleture.com/ - PR3 / DA39

• An easy start – then you can move out of your comfort zone –
think laterally about how you can post on other topics
http://bit.ly/SOLOquerytool

PR5/DA44 blog

http://bit.ly/OntoloQueryTool
• Research and make a list of all the
Art & Design schools & colleges in
the area and UK:

• Get on the phone and propose a

joint “designer of the month”
competition, the winner creates a
WallGlamour sticker which is part
of their portfolio
• Link(s) included as part of the
collaboration.
PR6, PA53, dMT:4.96
• Go one better than ‘sponsored’ nasty
PHP themes – team up with WP and
other theme developers and give them
your wall sticker designs to convert into
“website wall glamour” – get links from
theme footer and developers’ sites

• Take it one step further – set up

www.wallglamour.co.uk/website-
glamour/ - build a hub of link authority
on your domain
• Dofollow blog commenting
doesn’t *have* to be
spammed to buggery
(honest!) http://bit.ly/BlogFinder*
• find on-topic, dofollow
threads with some PR
• It’s also great as a general
blog search engine – eg
intitle:”guest post” decor
• Can help you find potential
blogs to work with on other
projects
• Costs $99 if you want it to
be useful – but you can get
50% off before 10/09 with
code “JAD-36C2”

*: Affiliate links – feel free to google them instead!

• Dogtooth.co.uk redirect!

• Try @Yoast’s “redirect with notification” method –

passes link juice and notifies users -
http://bit.ly/YoastRedirect
Identifying a linkbuilding strategy
The Problem:
• No specific ‘power’ landing pages – long tail
traffic model
• Category page keywords are too broad to
try and take on the likes of Engadget,
TechRadar

The Solution:
• Short term: Identify individual posts to
target with linkbuilding (eg article spinning,
guest blogging) – use rankings + Analytics to
find
• Long Term: Work on building further
authority and connections with influential
bloggers
2 Ideas for Building Authority Links
1. The Zath Tech/Gamer Blogger Awards – your strength
is knowledge of your subject and the top bloggers –
use it! Create an award ceremony not for gadgets
(done to death) but for bloggers themselves to
celebrate great writing and coverage in numerous
categories - give people appreciation and build the
connection with them – links will follow.

2. Invite guest bloggers to contribute to Zath - not for

payment but for profile / coverage. Incentivise
participation and create embeddable ‘Zath blogger’
badges
Define yer landing pages &
keywords!

• “What we do” is hidden away on a single

page – open this out into product landing
pages and you have a big set of competitive
keywords and long tails to go after.
[brochures]
[promotional folders]
[posters]
[leaflets]
[display units]
[litho printing]
Play to your strengths

• Use your happy customers! Create a

showcase of each of their companies, talk
about what they do well (not just what you
do for them) – then let them know and
even ask for a link to their profile page
To sum up...
• Don’t be scared of linkbuilding (it wont bite)
• There are techniques you can do that will
guarantee you links each month
• Understand your arena, know your enemy
• Things that take longer will pay off for longer,
and help you achieve domination
• Talk to people at Think Visibility – they’re
awesome (and know more than me)
Thanks for listening!

@j a
amit