SEO Link Building

[Prof.stan]

Himansu all are the org sites can you show me some of the examples from small corporate website they are doing good on google with their targeted keywords.

[gazzahk]

Actually there is no niche which is fundamentally boring or intellectually primitive. It's all about your perception. Thing which may look boring to you, might be of great interest for someone

Continuing on from the great points made by himanshu160…. A site is only ever competing against other sites. If you are truly in an industry that struggles to get links your competitors are also in the same situation.

If you are in an industry where getting .edu links is easy then all your competitors have .edu links too. Your not competiting against the same sites.

Also bait does not need to be completely relevant. Theme relevance that can get highly trusted links will help your whole site heaps.

ie If for example you own the plumbing business you can have a section on your site about marine molluscs (you introduce it is your hobby and an area you love). If this is the best on the web and you get a few links from top university professors pages watch your sight climb in the SERPs. Theme relevance ie water, pipes, location, technology, environment, house building, marine life, small business, staffing, bird baths, bathroom humor etc

[lewisdb]

Thanks, that would be great! And let me know if you have any criticisms. I will spend a few hours sometime soon improving the text based on all the feedback.

Great read and great discussion.

Perhaps your post has highlighted one very important rule when trying to gain natural one way links. Build quality on your own site and not others.

You just gained at least 1 link for SEO chat!

(great read btw)

[Prof.stan]

Perhaps your post has highlighted one very important rule when trying to gain natural one way links. Build quality on your own site and not others.

But only quality content will not enough for gaining links for any new website my concern is that how you do popular your quality content, I guess first you need to get ranking on your industries related keywords for that you need back links with your targeted anchor tag for that there are many aspects and also mentioned this thread now days I am following the bloggers and create a strategy for getting links from blogger with our desired anchor tag,
Create a quality content and publish it SB sites like reddit, stumble upon, digg, linked your article or blog pages from home page, add on it rate this page, book mark this page, commenting option, add SB buttons, use rss feed.

[himanshu160]

Several great contributions since this threads inception, and each one broadens my conception of things. Thanks to all, keep am coming.

Himanshu, with your permission I want to quote your response and the plumbing example substantially in the original posts, with proper attribution.

Yes. Go ahead

[himanshu160]

Himansu all are the org sites can you show me some of the examples from small corporate website they are doing good on google with their targeted keywords.

I didnt get you stan. R u talking about something like:

http://www.plumbingworld.com/index.html


I am not into the plumbing industry. Just used it as an example to prove my point.

[PhilipSEO]

I am to rework my original posts here with the help of all the feedback I've got. But first, can we have it out on the value link relevance? It's a will-of-the-wisp subject here, comes up peripherally in a lot of threads but never gets resolved.

When I wrote that link relevance is valuable, Channel5 disagreed, Fathom agreed that it matters "ABSOLUTELY," and gazzahk wrote a nuanced statement:

I agree with you. Many miss understand relevance as related. What a SE sees as relevant is not the same as what a person sees as relevant. All links are to some degree are relevant by the very fact they link to a site makes them so. IMO a link brings the same thing to a site as the value is calculated when it leaves a site and not recalculated when it enters the new site. The benefit a site gets from a link depends on the site not the link itself.

These things are most noticeable once you have established site strength. A strong site can grab new markets quite easily with no directly relevant links. ie if Microsoft wanted your market they would only need to put a page of relevant text and they would take it off you.

On rereading, I don't understand most of this statement, though I think I understand the part about Microsoft. The statement has the form: "What a SE sees as relevant is not X" -- but I am not sure it says what what a SE sees as relevant [is]is[/i].

But we know what Google relevance is, right? When we type something into Google, results come up that are relevant to the search. I am sure that when it comes to links, it's the exact same relevance (whether or not it contributes to link power) and not some different kind of relevance.

It would be great if people further shared their opinions and also their reasons for holding them. BTW, this subject came up on the SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday blog yesterday (relevant and worth reading for its own sake), but if you'd care to go through the comments below the post, there is some pretty interesting discussion there.

My take on the thing is that relevance has to count for something because it is the core Google value. I can't prove my speculations (can you prove yours?) but here is my thinking.

Google is all about relevance. The very phrase "authority site" seems to have originated with Google, so far as I remember. The end product of the Google's algorithm is ranking according to relevance. Relevance calculated with respect to a search keyword. The thematic relationship of the linking page to a target page is a meaningful and computable signal. "This link is not just a vote but a vote from someone established in the same industry / field / subject." Shouldn't that count for something? Why would Google ignore it? If you were Google, why would you ignore it? Relevance is thematic.

Hypothetically, all this is somehow affected by the computation of trust (the level of confidence that the site is genuine and spam free) and authority (the site's quality with respect to the search keyword). For purposes of an SEO discussion, though, we should think of trust and authority as intuitive ideas, not necessarily as separate or definite parts of the algo (there is no direct evidence that I know of that they are). The counterargument one hears is that link bombs from irrelevant sites work just fine. Disney ranks first for "click here" because of link anchor text and because of some relevance to "click here." OK, fair enough, but then, I am free to imagine that if there were an authority site on "click here" with a comparable number and quality of links, but largely from relevant sites, it would rank higher.

I have no strong evidence that link relevance matters, but I suspect it does. Do you that it doesn't? Not even SEOmoz has performed any experimental study of its impact..

But if you were Google, wouldn't you make it matter? If not, why not?

[fathom]

Long posts tend to getting confusing and difficult to comment on because there isn't normally any single point.

IF you wish me to comment on something specific I;m more than happy to... but I hate reading and detest typing (go figure why I'm still here).

[PhilipSEO]

IF you wish me to comment on something specific I;m more than happy to... but I hate reading and detest typing (go figure why I'm still here).

You and I believe that link relevance matters; SEOmoz influentially disagrees. No one is on record as having tested it. What's your evidence, if any?

(How is that for brevity?)

[jsteele823]

lol - nice executive summary hehe

I personally take the stance of what I feel as trustworthy outside of the internet realm. I trust my friend. He is a plumber. If I ask him to recommend a good electrician, then I can trust him to do so.

On the other hand, if he doesn't know anybody, I'll turn to someone that works as an electrician, and ask him if he knows anyone that can do the job.

Is either opinion more important than the other? One comes from a friend that I really trust (but he's not relevant in the electrician field), while the other comes from a really relevant source (although I don't trust him as much).

Same goes for websites and links - where could one ever draw the line as to which is more important?

Trust vs. relevance. They both matter. One does not outweigh the other.


To add my own kicker, I'll go for a trusted/authority link over a relevant link if it is not from a trusted source. Doing so adds to my own trust/authority, and thereby makes my own word more important (and more weight given to my internal linking/site structure).

[SEO_AM]

You and I believe that link relevance matters; SEOmoz influentially disagrees. No one is on record as having tested it. What's your evidence, if any?

(How is that for brevity?)

Rand Fishkin is a good guy. He learned a lot of what he preaches today right here at SEO Chat. It is a shame we did not teach him more about link relevance... Matt Cutts, in one interview alluded to the fact that link relevance affects link juice:

'Eric Enge: I think a big component of that of course is how much greater the issue of relevance has become in evaluating link juice, right? We are far beyond the original definition of PageRank.
Matt Cutts: Maybe it was Danny that said “If a link is good, do the link out; don’t worry about the Linkjuice.

Eric Enge: Right, yeah. Well, I know on our own sites and the people we talk to, we encourage outbound linking without return links for a number of reasons. Without worrying about the algorithmic underpinnings, the reality is it should establish relevance if you link to authority sites.

Matt Cutts: Exactly. And, if the user is happy, they are more likely to come back or bookmark your site or tell their friends about it. And so, if you try to hoard those users, they often somehow subconsciously sense it, and they are less likely to come back or tell their friends about it.'

The primary separators from plain PR and link value has to be link relevance and link trust. Without it a link is just a link... Meaning... we should all just worry about PR?

You can read the full interview here:

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-061608.shtml

For the record, I have always been a proponent of link relevance increasing the juice from that link in the eyes of Google.

[PhilipSEO]

To add my own kicker, I'll go for a trusted/authority link over a relevant link if it is not from a trusted source.

"Trust/authority," with a slash, is SEOmoz language. But the two are different! Authority is with respect to a keyword, implies relevance. Can't be an authority on everything.

[fathom]

No one is on record as having tested it. What's your evidence, if any?

(How is that for brevity?)

You'll have to start paying me to actually "see evidence".

But answer this... why when you link develop for 1 targeted phrase do you rank for others - "RELATED" longtail phrases?

...you didn't target them specifically... and yet they happen.

If "relevance" wasn't important - that wouldn't happen.

[PhilipSEO]

[QUOTE=SEO_AM]Matt Cutts, in one interview alluded to the fact that link relevance affects link juice:

'Eric Enge: I think a big component of that of course is how much greater the issue of relevance has become in evaluating link juice, right? We are far beyond the original definition of PageRank.
Matt Cutts: Maybe it was Danny that said “If a link is good, do the link out; don’t worry about the Linkjuice.

Eric Enge: Right, yeah. Well, I know on our own sites and the people we talk to, we encourage outbound linking without return links for a number of reasons. Without worrying about the algorithmic underpinnings, the reality is it should establish relevance if you link to authority sites.

Matt Cutts: Exactly. And, if the user is happy, they are more likely to come back or bookmark your site or tell their friends about it. And so, if you try to hoard those users, they often somehow subconsciously sense it, and they are less likely to come back or tell their friends about it.'[quote]

I am not quote sure what to make Cutts's response. It's almost as if he evades by changing the subject to outbound links.

In my translation:
Q: So does relevance improve link juice?
A: Don't worry about linking out (and hence losing PR) if it's relevant and good for your users. By linking to relevant sites you increase value for your users, so they'll like it and link to you. You will thereby be compensated for the PR lost by linking out.

Hmmm.

[fathom]

SEOmoz

No disrespect intended but SEOMoz is about this: "sell the sizzle not the steak!"

In the past I've seen great stuff from SEOMoz... now they shovel ****! ...because it sells.