Page 4 - Link Building 101

Excellent Article. I didn't know that there are so many ways to get linkbacks. Thanks Mate!

Wow... and here I am believing I'm on the right track on link building... (shame on me tsk... tsk... tsk...) hehehe! Thanks for imparting your knowledge Gary. Posting these tips of yours has made a lot of contributions to many as it has also brought us into realization that SEO is all about hard work.

Sorry it took so long to answer this. I still don't know how I found it. I use dozens of bought software, in-house developed software, around 25 people and another 12-15 outsourced, along with many, many, many other things.

Sorry, no short easy answer.

GaryTheScuabGuy

Great thread - thanks! I've been in this game for a while and there's still loads in your article that I didn't know

Great Post, that is the best article i have read

What a fantastic article. Being new to SEO myself, this article has certainly opened my eyes. Garythescubaguy must be congratulated wholeheartedly. Well done mate!

Great post Gary!your post may help other to understand the real meaning of Link Building and it's importance.

Great useful post...as a newbie I really appreciate it... now can you write an article on social bookmarking?

Already did;

THE SECRET WEAPON - Social Bookmarking
Wikipedia defines it this way:
In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are either accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords, and the relation of keywords to one another.
GaryTheScubaGuy defines it this way:
One of the best free ways to get increased ranking, back links and traffic, for very little time commitment other than setup.
This very moment most search engine algorithms are placing a ton of weight on end-user ‘bookmarking’, ‘tagging’ or one of various types of end-user generated highlighting.
Before doing any of this run a rank report to track your progress. I have tested this on terms showing on page one, on terms ranked 11th through 12th and others buried around pages 5-10. It works on them all in different time frames, and they last for different periods of time. This you will need to test yourself.
Be careful because you don’t want to be identified as a spammer. Be sure to use genuine content that provides a benefit to the user.
Here is how I recommend doing this.
1. Download this; Roboform. (It says it will limit you but I’ve had as many as 30+ passwords created and stored in the trial version) This will allow you to quickly fill out signup forms and store passwords for the 10 Bookmark sites that I am going to be sending you to.
2. Within Roboform go to the custom area and put a username and password in, as well as your other information that sites usually ask for to register. This way when you are using these different bookmarks it’s a 1-click login in and becomes a relatively quick and painless procedure.
3. Establish accounts with these Social Bookmark Sites;
a. Digg
b. Technorati
c. Del.icio.us
d. NowPublic
e. StumbleUpon
f. BlinkList
g. Spurl
h. Furl
i. Slashdot
j. Simpy
k. Google Toolbar (w/Google Bookmarking)

4. Internet Explorer, Firefox and most other browsers have an “add a tab” option, but I use Firefox because I can bookmark the login pages in one file, then “open all tabs” in one click. From here I click on each tab and in most cases, if you set it up right, Roboform will have already logged you in. Otherwise you’re on the login page and by clicking on the Roboform button everything is prefilled, all you need to do is click submit. (some of the bookmark sites will allow you to add their button into your browser bar, or you can get an extension from Firefox like the Digg Add-on to make things quicker)
5. Lastly, Install the Google Toolbar. It has a bookmark function as well, and you can import all your bookmarks from Firefox directly into it. Google looks at many different things when assigning rank and trust. For instance, when you search for something and go into a website, Google will remember how long you stayed, how deep you went, and if you came back out into the search to select another site, which means you didn’t find what you were looking for. This is all part of the Privacy Issues that have been in the news.
Here’s what Google actually says! "The Google Toolbar automatically sends only standard, limited information to Google, which may be retained in Google's server logs. It does not send any information about the web pages you visit (e.g., the URL), unless you use Toolbar's advanced features.”
They practically spell it out for you. Use their bookmark feature just like you were doing the social bookmarking I outlined above. This is just one more click.

Some of the elements that Google looks at when grading a website are;
How much time did the average visitor spend on the site?
What is the bounce rate on the landing page?
How many end-users bookmarked the page?
How many users returned to the search query and then on to a different site?
Each time you publish an article put a Google Alert on a unique phrase. Each time Google sends you an alert, bookmark it on every bookmark site. This will take some getting used to, but will eventually become second-nature. Remember what I said in the beginning; “One of the best free ways to get links and traffic, for very little time commitment other than setup”.
When you start seeing traffic coming in and your SERPs getting better you will use the heck out of this. I’m waiting for someone to come out with software that will automate this process completely, but by the time that hits nofollows may come into play. But for the time being it works and it works well.
(Update: Found one) Bookmark Demon and Blog Comment Demon. It automates the process.
Since I am sure someone is going to refute this claim based on the fact that if the site has a no-follow on it, the results will be nonexistent, I’ll just add that - yes it does still get indexed, and it does still help.
One more thing regarding posting to blogs and forums. When I create an account I sign up and use a very unique member name (eg. GaryTheScubaGuy). This is because many blogs and forums have a no-follow, which means the link in your signature or on your member name won’t show up. So I also sign, or add my member name to the bottom of my post, then add a Google Alert on my signature so that when Google finds the post, it will alert me, and I will then start bookmarking the forum page.

And there are results HERE

GaryTheScubaGuy

Each time you publish an article put a Google Alert on a unique phrase. Each time Google sends you an alert, bookmark it on every bookmark site. This will take some getting used to, but will eventually become second-nature.

Gary, could you elaborate on this a bit. Here is how I understand what you are saying.
1. Publish an article to a blog or forum
2. Put a Google Alert on a unique phrase such as your Signature.
3. When you get the alert notification from Google, bookmark the article on every SBM site listed.

Why not just bookmark it immediately after publishing it? Is this because you want to wait until Google indexes it, which is indicated by the Alert you get. Or is this because the article may appear other places on the web that you don't know about? I don't 100% understand.

Both.

More importantly, start using commentsniper in the same way. You end getting a link, or two, on an existing page that already has page rank and isn't moderated.

When the alert comes through, bookmark it. Also send it to technorati to ping as this will reduce the time that it takes for google to crawl it.

GaryTheScubaGuy

"These get Dugg all the time" - is Dugg a person's name?

"bleeds .4352 PR" - what is "bleeds"?

"would create a back link that used “debt consolidation” (actually I would use “Get Debt Consolidation” because you need a ‘buffer’ word before your keywords in ANY circumstance when doing optimization to avoid obvious SEO red flags)"

What's this about buffer words?

Stapes

Dugg means, gets a vote by people at digg.com or other social bookmarking sites like reddit, sphinn.. and more to name..

Bleeds means leaks out, or passes out .4352 units of the PR jucie to the linked out site in context.

Buffer words actually refer to very general words which are generally not Keywords and are only used to make the anchors look more natural and realistic.

Lets say, if you have website on Personal Loans and you probably want to rank it up for that keyword only, having half knowledge about SEO, aany one would do that obvious thing - Build alll or most of the backlinks with that keyword.

It would do nothing but to raise a red flag, due to Anchor Over Optimization, which google or SE's see as a case of manipulation of SERPS using hardcore linking methods particularly link exchanges. which under any circumstances has to be avoided to bring on a natural look to your SEO campaign.

Ideally every backlink should have a unique anchor, however a few are okay, I prefer not to have more then 5-6 links max with one anchor, though figure remains down to 3 usually...

Thats called Anchor Rotation

Hope that helps