Ep10 – Link Building For SEO. Its Not as Sexy as You Might Think

Podcast – SEO Point

Transcription

John: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Works Media Podcast, I’m your host John Romaine and joining me is…

Byron: Byron Trzeciak.

John: This is Episode Number 10 and in today’s podcast we’re talking about link building.

Byron: Link building.

John: Link building.

Byron: Good day John, how are you mate?

John: Good dude, yourself?

Byron: That’s good. Yeah, good, here we are, I think my feedback from last Podcast was that I sounded half asleep so I’m going to sound bright and spritely in today’s Podcast and see if I can get some better marks from you for at the end of this episode.

John: Well, you know, when I talk for ten minutes as I tend to do and you have your two or three word response it’s no wonder…

Byron: Yeah.

John: …that at times I might hear (snores) at the other end of the mic especially when I go off on a tangent.

Byron: Yeah, well, you know, it’s all about you John not me so…

John: No, no, no…

Byron: Got to get involved.

John: Well, you know, when it comes to online marketing and SEO I can talk under wet cement.

Byron: That’s it, you’re a passionate man.

John: I am.

Byron: All right, so I mean last Podcast we spoke about private blog networks and based on some of our discussions we’ve had this week on Flying Solo we thought it might be topical to talk about link building tactics or some strategies around link building and some more white hat kind of techniques for building links rather than gray hat/black hat that PBN’s are.

John: There’s – when it comes to link building, ah man, this is such a taboo subject isn’t it?

Byron: It is.

John: You see as soon as you say building links its like, ah… It reminds me of that show, you remember that show Fraggle Rock?

Byron: Yeah, yeah.

John: With the Muppets and all they ever did was like construction they were just constantly putting up scaffolding.

Byron: Oh yeah.

John: Do you remember?

Byron: Yeah, I do actually.

John: It’s like, what are you doing? We’re building links! We’re building links. It’s just…

Byron: It’s the dark cloud on this industry isn’t it, the whole link building?

John: Yeah.

Byron: I was thinking about it the other day and I thought well maybe in the future we’ll see social metrics playing a bigger part but really, I mean, all that’s going to do is start off-shoring likes and shares and that kind of thing as well and we’re just going to go in the same territory again.

John: You know what’s really interesting when the discussion comes up about how easy it is to manipulate the search engines using social signals.

Byron: Yep.

John: Because, as you just said – and this is a discussion that comes up every now and then why doesn’t Google look at other metrics or other signals like authorship or social signals. I mean, they’re being a little bit more transparent in certain areas but I think for any of the areas that really don’t matter they’re probably likely to do that the whole https thing and – I mean, site speed makes sense but they’re certainly not going to give away any of the ingredients in the secret sauce but when it comes to manipulating the search engine, just getting back to my point, everyone always jumps up and down and says, oh, you can’t use social signals as part of any sort of ranking factor because it’s too easy to manipulate. And I always think to myself, well, isn’t that the case already with links?

Byron: Yeah, I completely agree.

John: I think it’s a little bit different. I mean, let’s face it, it’s harder to get links than it is to just post a Fiverr gig and say, you know, can I have 5000 likes.

Byron: Yep.

John: So, I guess there is a bit of a difference there but it – you know, it’s… When it comes to building links I think if you think about it from a clients perspective, it is just this mysterious dark art that you could just – I mean, clients must just think of SEO professionals just with the one-inch thick Coke bottle bottom glasses and the short-sleeved checkered shirts with the bowtie sitting in dark rooms just hacking away at keyboards building links and I don’t know, they probably have no idea of what’s going on.

Byron: Yeah.

John: So, I mean, as I said before we started this Podcast when it comes to building links it’s not sexy. There’s really nothing sexy about it at all, I mean, in fact it’s quite boring.

Byron: You’ll do it for about five minutes and start investigating a few links and then you realize the kind of repetitive nature that comes into going and getting them.

John: Absolutely, yeah.

Byron: And you’re like, hmmm…

John: Absolutely, yeah. And you know the process involved for getting links, the process that I use is – I mean, I’ve spoken about it before as simply reverse engineer a number of competitor sites to find the links that are worth replicating. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell as well as outreach and foundational link building. If you want to really ramp things up and take a high level of risk you start looking at private blog networks but that comes with a level of risk that I’m just not willing to take on behalf of my clients.

Byron: No, exactly. I think it’s best to stay away from those so, I mean, in regards to your process John, what are some of the steps that you might look at? Obviously there’s the reverse engineering. You mentioned business directories. Are they the quick wins if you’d like to call them that I guess?

John: Yeah, well the foundational stuff is always worth doing to begin with. I mean, it’s just common sense. And we’ve spoken about this before so I won’t spend too much time on it but just making sure that your site is listed in TrueLocal yellow pages and making sure that the information that you’ve got in those listings is correct.

A lot of cases I look at listings that business owners have and I’ve got half a dozen different listings in the one place like they might have half a dozen listings in yellow pages because they’ve shifted around or they’ve had someone work on a site and they’ve got stuff all over the place but that’s always a good place to start.

I’ve always said to business owner’s, make sure that when you go about submitting your site to TrueLocal, StartLocal, Yellow Pages and so forth that you use a single email address so everything is centralized.

Byron: Yeah, exactly.

John: Try and keep it uniform, don’t be using a different email address and password and – just try and keep the one, use the one, email address and if you want to use different passwords, which is probably sensible, keep it all documented in a spreadsheet or something.

Byron: Yep. So I guess when it comes to building links what kind of things are you looking for? I mean, can I just go and build a link on any old Web site or are there links that provide better value to certain businesses?

John: Yeah, well I mean not all links. This is such a cliché. Not all links are created equal. I’m not religious but it’s true. You can’t compare a link from some random site about how to bake cupcakes with a link that might be coming from Cosmopolitan.com.au, you know, or TheKnot or a Fairfax Media driven site. There’s huge differences. And that’s where the power of the link comes into play. The metrics that I use, I mean, if you want to get right into it especially when you start reverse engineering competitors sites, right, so if you take – and this is something that I do with all of my clients I’ll say, give me your top five competitors. Most people know who their competitors are because chances are they’re probably sitting there in Google performing searches saying, these guys keep coming up in the first page for everything.

So that’s a really easy question to ask clients like who are your top five or ten competitors? The more you can get there the better at least from a link building perspective because it gives you more chances to find more opportunities.

Byron: Yep.

John: So I’ll say to clients, give me your top five competitors, once I’ve got those I can then go about using certain software to reverse engineer where they’ve got links. And once I’ve done that, I mean, I might – if I reverse engineer say five sites and each site has 1000 links, there’s 5000 opportunities to look at or at least links or pages to look at. And it says, okay, is this something that’s worthwhile replicating? In most cases it comes down to it not just looking at the metrics but a little bit of common sense as well.

This is Chinese wholesale site selling jaffle makers. This doesn’t have anything to do with barbeques so I’m not going to go anywhere near it plus it’s blog comments, spam or it’s – the site, or the page rather, I shouldn’t say the site, the page looks a bit scrappy although it does go to the site level as well, of course, if you’re looking at a site that looks like spam or it’s crap. So you would just avoid it.

But in most cases you’ll get that listing of sites or with the process that I do anyway, I get that listing of sites and I’ll export that 5000, just getting back to the number that I quoted, if I’ve got 5000 potential links coming from a number of competitors sites I’ll take – I mean, it would take forever and a day to go through them all, right? So you want to eliminate any sort of – you want to expedite the process as much as possible so that you’re not trolling through low quality links.

So what I do is I’ll take that dump and I’ll put it into a spreadsheet and then I’ll grab all of those links and I’ll push them through a bulk DA check which is essentially looking at the domain authority. It’s a (moz) metric that they use to asses the domain authority of that particular site.

Byron: Sure.

John: You can also look at other metrics like PageRank and Page Authority but I mean, if you get right down to it looking at those metrics. You need to be mindful of – especially with Page Authority and PageRank, I mean, if you – there’s a reason I look at domain authority because if you think about it, if there’s an article that’s published on say Huffington Post, right, and there’s a link on that page the domain authority will be huge because it’s coming from Huffington Post, right?

Byron: Yeah.

John: And the domain authority might be 80 (paid) or something out of 100 but the actual page authority, because it’s a brand new page, there’s no page authority and there’s no page rank because it’s a brand new page.

So I look at domain authorities and overall indication of the power of that link. So I’ll use a bulk DA checker and I’ll – there’s a whole bunch of them online you just dump in all of the URL’s and then it spits it out into an Excel spreadsheet and then you can order by domain authority.

Byron: Yep, makes sense.

John: Yeah, so you put all the powerful ones at the top, just order by descending so that you can work towards focusing on replicating links that are worth replicating so that you’re not digging through thousands of links that are worthless.

Byron: So once you’ve got this spreadsheet of links what’s typically the process that follows? I mean, are these links always ones that you can just go and add your link next to it or is there typically some (to-ing and froing) between you and the owner of that Web site to come to some form of agreement there?

John: Yeah, well there’s never any sort of cut – straightforward answer to that. It depends on the nature of the link. Some links might be built on directories where the competitor has built out a business profile page. Others might just be spammy crap that’s obviously part of some low-end SEO agencies efforts or others might be, I guess, posts or it might be a paid option.

Some links you’re able to replicate quite easily others might involve getting in touch with the site owner and asking for a mention or a link that’s similar to the competitors if possible and others you just won’t be able to replicate because they’ve been, they’ve had – it’s a genuine link that’s been published through news media or something. You can’t go emailing big brands and saying, oh can you please, you added this link in here to X, Y, Zed furniture, can you add A, B, C Furniture in as well? It doesn’t work like that.

So you’ve got to use a bit of common sense and say, okay, what’s the nature of this link? Is it – can we replicate it? If we can let’s do it, if not, let’s not waste any time with it.

Byron: Yep.

John: So as I said at the beginning of this Podcast, there’s nothing sexy about building links. To answer your question, the process really involves rolling out the sleeves and trolling through them and trying to get an idea of what your competitors are doing and the real power comes in getting, accumulating, all of the links from all of your competitors or even people that work in the same space that aren’t necessarily direct competitors looking at their link profile as well and gathering up all of those links into one central location if that makes sense?

So it’s like getting – it’s like going through, this is probably a weird analogy, I’m good at these, it’s like going through, is it an apple yard? What do they call it where they grow apples?

Byron: An orchard?

John: Go through – yes! See, this is why I…

Byron: I only know this because I used to work for a company called Orchard.

John: This is why I’ve got you on the Podcast Byron because – see…

Byron: I’m awake, I’m awake, I answered the teacher’s question.

John: You’re a walking almanac you’re full of trivial knowledge and nonsense. It’s like walking through an orchard and shaking each apple tree and just picking out the best apples and then putting them all in the cart at the end of the day you’re going to have the best lot of the bunch. That’s essentially how it works.

So, you know, it’s not sexy, it’s very time consuming but it can help you lead the pathway towards not just replicating the links but also looking for opportunities because I might look at a page where a competitor has a link and think, wow, this is a new space here and it might branch off into something else that will allow me to do some outreach or get a guest blog post entry somewhere else.

Byron: Yeah.

John: So it’s not just a matter of just replicating links but it’s looking for and getting a feel for our link building opportunities. That’s probably a better way of putting it.

Byron: Yeah, sure. So you mentioned guest blogging there. Is guest blogging still a valid approach even though there’s been some sort of out-lash towards blogging or guest blogging these days and whether that’s an effective technique anymore?

John: Yeah, look, this out-lash towards – you go through the last, you know, two years of Matt Cutt’s videos or go through – and everything else that John Muller has said and the guys at Google. They’re clamping down on everything and they’re doing that because these methods are being abused but if you use these methods properly in the way that they were meant to be used they still work. There’s nothing – I mean, I sat in on an interview just recently, a Podcast interview, right, with someone that works in a complimentary space and I did a guest interview and we were talking about search engine optimization and online marketing and everything else. That’s still legitimate and that resulted in me getting a link from his site to mine. There’s nothing manipulative about that at all.

Byron: No, exactly.

John: So when you start going to networks like MyGuestBlog, sorry, MyBlogGuest or whatever it was, any sort of network that’s designed specifically for people to just abuse the system where they’re just in it to get links, that’s where it gets a little bit messy but if I see, as part of my process, if I come across a blog that it relates exactly to my clients industry and it looks like it could be something that would be beneficial by doing a guest blog post well then what’s wrong with that? That makes sense but I wouldn’t just be sitting here going, just look for guest blog posts, just look for guest blog posts, you know, there’s a balance.

Byron: Absolutely. Yeah. The relevance is obviously a key factor there. There’s no point guest blogging on a mechanics Web site if you’re a dentist, for example.

John: Exactly and you know there are a lot of people out there that welcome guest blog posts, contributors.

Byron: Yep.

John: I go, and I mean, we spoke about this just before starting the Podcast, there’s a whole bunch of search query operators that you can use. If you go to Google and type in your niche keyword phrase plus write for us or writer guidelines or guest post or guest contributor or submit an article, you can find plenty of opportunities to perhaps submit a guest post with a Webmaster or a site owner that wants, that is happy to accept that.

Byron: Yep.

John: But, you know, it just comes down to common sense. Just use some common sense.

Byron: Yeah, no, I think it’s a good approach to have and it’s good to see that there isn’t any quick wins really in terms of building links really. I mean, there’s a bit of research and forethought that goes into them and then some engagement to go and get that link in some way shape or form.

So, yeah, it certainly is a big difference to private blog networks which we spoke about in the last Podcast John or some of the spit and churn kind of tools that can also be used in SEO so – and in terms of from a client perspective how much detail do you go into there for your clients John and the types of links that your building for. Is that a common question that you get or something that you provide to them?

John: Yeah, not really but I’d be more than happy to pass over what I’ve done. It’s about as close to white hat as you can get.

Byron: Yeah.

John: Because I’m looking at this stuff manually. I’m not just plugging it in to software and pressing and button or going over to Fiverr and saying, here, use these terms, blast links everywhere or using any other form of low quality processes.

It’s not something – I’m yet to have a client come over and say show me all of the links that you’ve built.

I mean, I don’t see how clients would get any value from looking at them anyway but I’d be more than happy to send them the list because what I do is, like I said, about as close to white hat as possible.

Byron: Yeah.

John: Yeah, I really don’t – you know, if – it’s probably not a bad question for clients to be asking though. Can you at least provide us with some idea of – there has to be a level of transparency there. Can you please provide us with even just a short list of some of the links that you’ve built so that there’s a level of comfort there for the client? When I do guest blog posts on behalf of clients, I’ll send that content to them first for their approval. I don’t just go about blasting a guest article somewhere and putting someone else’s name on it.

Byron: No, exactly.

John: Especially for clients because that’s their reputation at stake. So I always say, listen, this is part of the process that we’ll be following. I want you to know that there may, we may, be doing some guest blog posts here. We’ll send this information over to you so that you can approve it before we submit it that way they’re completely comfortable with what’s being done and there’s no sneakiness going on.

Byron: Yep.

John: And it’s completely transparent.

Byron: Yeah, exactly.

John: And clients appreciate that.

Byron: Yep, no I think that’s a good approach. So I mean, in terms of links, something that’s been quite topical this week is whether they’re necessary or not; whether you can have a client that may not necessarily need to have links. What are your views these days in terms of maybe noncompetitive keywords and industries versus competitive ones and do you see some form of difference there?

John: There’s a huge difference. You cannot compare terms that will just land on the first page of Google simply because there’s’ no competition and probably no search (for them). You can’t compare that with terms like, you know, home loan insurance. You know, links matter. Again, it’s not – there’s nothing sexy about links but I look at thousands and thousands and thousands of links and link profiles everyday and I can say with confidence that sites with the strongest link profiles are usually always the ones at the top or they’re the ones that dominate the space.

Byron: Yep.

John: So, you know, that discussion of links don’t matter and you can hit the first page of Google without links. Man, that’s seriously misleading. It might be the case if you want to rank for elephants in tutu’s riding…

Byron: Crocs and corduroy’s.

John: Yeah.

Byron: I’m ranking strongly on that keyword.

John: Yeah, right, I’m sure you – you know, we keep mentioning that, it’s going to pop up. Someone’s going to type in corduroy underpants and our Podcast is going to be on the first page.

Byron: Oh God, it’s become a running theme.

John: There’s something I want to mention here, right, it’s the time involved with doing all of this work that clients are paying for when they’re coming to me and they’re paying $1000 a month. You know, you’re paying for this work to be done. This doesn’t just happen on it’s own.

Byron: No.

John: And when you’re paying say $200 or $300 a month I mean, you’ve got to ask yourself, like, what, how, could they possibly be doing anything that’s even remotely close to this?

Byron: Yeah. There’s just no way to automate it either is there? Like there’s no way to automate it unless you go into the black hat…

John: Yeah, well you can automate it.

Byron: Yeah.

John: You can automate it if you want your site to tank.

Byron: Exactly, yeah.

John: Everything that I’m doing here is completely safe.

Byron: Yep.

John: I’ll stay right away from anything that looks to be dodgy so, yeah, this is the thing, if a client says we need rankings and we need them fast, hey, you can have them tomorrow but chances are the day after you’ll be gone.

Byron: Yep. Absolutely!

John: So when it comes to building links and automation, that’s just asking for trouble.

Byron: And we’ve certainly heard of some whispers that Google might be updating and stirring the pot in the coming weeks so it will be interesting to see what happens moving forward and see what kind of results get shuffled around if that does roll out.

John: Well, there’s talk of Penguin 3 coming. There’s – you know, I’ve seen so many articles over the last probably six months, ah, Penguin 3 is coming.

Byron: Yeah, it’s a bit like the latest mobile phone isn’t it? There’s always news about it.

John: I think if anyone sitting around worrying about Penguin 3 they’ve probably got reason to.

Byron: Yeah. I completely agree. I think if you’re following the right approach you’ll be able to sit there and go, I just don’t care whatever comes along. But, yeah, if you’re sitting there stressing already from some whisper you’re heard in the news chances are you probably need to take a look at things.

John: Yeah. That’s – it’ll make for an interesting discussion when it’s released. Apparently the engineers at Google have spent over a year trying to get it right and I think their biggest concern will be negative SEO.

Byron: Yep.

John: If they continue down the path that they’re on with previous versions of Penguin then negative SEO will be a huge problem.

Byron: Yep.

John: I think personally that in order for them to make it work they might be looking at exact match anchors and turning the wick down on those because as we all know if anyone is trying to manipulate the search engines chances are they’re probably focusing on exact match anchors or commercial terms.

As to how that approach happens I don’t know. Maybe it won’t happen at all but it’s certainly an area that they’ll need to look at because they already have and… They’ll be looking at historical data. They’ve been giving hints about this in the way that they’ve been announcing it or speaking about it especially with negative SEO. They’ll be looking at – this site all of the sudden has had a huge influx of links that contain commercial terms and they’re coming from low quality sites. Is this a reason to potentially knock this site off or penalize it?

If this is something that’s just happened in the last month but they’ve been online for five years and they’ve got a pretty good history, chances are this might be negative SEO.

Byron: Yep.

John: I think that’s a good way to look at it and I used a funny analogy in one of the SEO communities that I’m a part of, I said it’s like having really good work history and then getting pissed at the Christmas party. You know what I mean?

Byron: Exactly.

John: It’s like this guy got way out of shape the Christmas party and was dancing on tables in his corduroy underpants. But he’s such a good worker and he never steps out of line. He might get a little bit of a slap on the cheek but he’s not going to lose his job over it.

Byron: Yeah.

John: Do you know what I mean?

Byron: It’s a bit like a stolen identity or something as well you might be totally clean cut and then all of the sudden there’s your identity popping up robbing a 7-Eleven or something. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense if you’ve been, you know, a collared young man with a tie for all of your life and then all of the sudden you’ve got a hoodie and you’re robbing the frozen Coke stand.

John: So I think for the next release of Penguins they’ll be looking at historical data because if you – like I said, if your sites been cleaned for five years and then all of the sudden you’ve got all of these links coming in from low quality sources that’s a good indication that it’s probably negative SEO.

Byron: Yeah.

John: As opposed to sites where they’ve got all of these links coming in constantly from, I don’t know, using exact match anchors and there’s a history of it. That’s probably intention to manipulate the search engines. I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud but I could be way off the mark but…

Byron: Well no, I know I’ve seen a Web site in the past that was hacked and that was just receiving heaps of dodgy links from that point afterward in terms of keywords for Viagra and pills and other things and that’s something that the business owner would be completely unsuspecting of, their sites been hacked and they’ve done the right thing and they’ve repaired it but their Web site is still getting smashed by these links.

So I don’t know whether Google will look at the anchor text and go, okay, well there’s no real reason why this person would smash their site with that kind of anchor text. They just don’t relate.

So hopefully they’ve got – otherwise we’re going to have to start getting into antivirus for back links or some sort of signaling to say that something wrong is going on or something’s changed.

John: Yeah, well the biggest concern for them with Penguin is negative SEO.

Byron: Yep.

John: That’s probably one of the biggest concerns for them and, of course, people intentionally manipulating the search results.

Byron: Yep.

John: But we’ve kind of gone off of topic but, yeah, when it comes to Penguin is closely related to links so it’s worth mentioning.

Byron: Yep.

John: But from what I’ve seen lately, and this is probably nothing new, but brand links, naked URL’s, I mean, I may have mentioned this in the past, you know, brand long-tail images, non-related terms, synonyms linking with brand mixed with commercial terms. When you look at a site and it’s really obvious, you look at one sites link profile and you can see that it’s completely natural and look at another one and think, wow, this is obviously the result of someone trying to manipulate the search results.

Byron: Yep.

John: You can see that the anchor terms that they’re using are quite different. So just follow the path of the one that’s got the natural profile.

Byron: Absolutely.

John: And always – the depth of your links. Just pointing links at your homepage is silly. There’s got to be diversity. That’s the key with link building, there’s got to be diversity in the anchors that you’re using, the pages that you’re linking to, you know, it’s a bit ironic isn’t it like make it look natural.

Byron: Yeah. I don’t know whenever there’s a competitive industry there’s people that are trying to find ways to, you know, take advantage in non-legitimate ways. I mean, that’s just the way it works whenever there’s competition that’s what will be happening. So, yeah, I mean, you’ve just got to play the game and do it the right way so that you’re not sitting there worrying about the next update.

John: Yeah, well Google’s got a lot of work to do because I’m – I look through, like I said, a lot of link profiles and sites that are just spamming the hell out of everything performing really well.

Byron: Yeah.

John: There’s definitely some work there for them to do. I don’t know if they’ll ever get it right.

Byron: Yeah, I’m not sure if you can. I think you’ve just got to make do with whatever your situation industry is and as you’ve always said, diversity away from Google and see where you can get traffic and interest from other sources as well. It’s just not the sole provider anymore.

John: Yeah, well that’s right. You’ve got to diversify if you’re dependent upon Google and Google only.

Byron: Yep.

John: If something happens, game over!

Byron: Exactly, yeah. Well thank you very much for your time again John, Podcast Number 10.

John: Podcast Number 10.

Byron: We’ll be back again next week.

John: Next week it is. We went over, we said 30 minutes and we’ve gone over again. I’ve got to learn to shut up. You need a buzzer. Every time I just start talking for – (buzzer noise)…

Byron: I think we see and we go, ah, we can go a little bit longer just because we are such passionate individuals about these topics so…

John: I’ll edit the recording and try and squash it down a bit.

Byron: Just cut out my bad jokes, usually there’s a few of those in there so there’s…

John: Ah, there’s got to be at least 15 minutes saved there.

Byron: No worries John, thanks again man.

John: Let’s get out of here.

Byron: No worries, we’ll speak next week.

John: All right, see you Byron.

Byron: See ya!

John: All right.

The post Ep10 – Link Building For SEO. Its Not as Sexy as You Might Think appeared first on SEO Point.