Back link plan discussion
-
When you have a lot of keywords that you rank for say something like 15,000 or more.
How do you develop a good back link plan?
I was thinking to first look at the highest volume keywords we already rank for but aren't in the top 1-3 spots. To focus on those few words trying to obtain more high quality back links. But I'm not sure if this is the best plan .
What would you do?
What are some good consistent back link plans you can use to work on a keyword or lots of keywords?
Thanks for the discussion,
Chris
-
Appreciate the answer.
That was sort of my game plan to pick out our top 4 keywords that we aren't ranked on Google spots 1-3 but would bring us back the most volume of traffic. I do have four keywords like this that we are are either at the bottom of page 1 or on page 2 & if we obtained a better rank could bring back 11,500 to 30,000 per-keyword.
I just didn't want to focus on only 4 keywords by trying to get anchored text links or high quality links by manually reaching out to sites for only those four keywords if there was another plan to distribute more juice to a wider variety of words.
But you are correct that is the issue with coming up with a plan, that we have so many keywords some that bring back little traffic some that bring back a lot and how do we focus on the many or should we just focus on the four for now and then focus on a new set once a goal is accomplished.
-
Hi Chris,
I'm not sure I fully understand your question:
"The question now is, How with so many ranking keywords do you come up with a solid back link plan."
Do you mean how many keywords you can target with link building?
If so, that's not really the way to think about it because most high-quality link building won't use your keywords as anchor text and may not link directly to your commercial landing pages. The approach should be on getting links into the domain which are high quality which 1) help the domain as a whole and 2) can be filtered to your key pages via good site architecture.
Going back to your first question, if you are going to focus on link building, then you do need to prioritise and focus on key landing pages first. But you have two options for this:
-
Try to get links directly to those pages - this is hard unless those pages are link worthy in some way or you're prepared to pay for links to those pages which I wouldn't advise.
-
Try to get links to your domain/content and then use internal linking to filter link equity to your key pages.
Link building with a focus on improving 15,000+ keywords individually isn't going to happen and probably why you're struggling with this a bit. Focusing on a few at a time by doing the things above or trying to improve the domain as a whole is going to be more helpful I think.
Cheers.
Paddy
-
-
The company is in an odd industry, real estate. So our user base is posting out content in a sense which drives traffic. We don't have many "articles" or "content blogs" ranking for big keywords.
If you'd like to do a review just use MOZ Domain Tool we are www.nystatemls.com
-
Our website is well out of the "early stages" we are ranked for nearly 17,500 keywords bringing in about 200,000 unique visitors a month and 1 million page views. Most of this happened naturally without any focus on Search Engine Optimization.
The question now is, How with so many ranking keywords do you come up with a solid back link plan. I am looking for something consistent, that a team could start doing every week to capitalize on the keywords we are ranked for that have huge traffic potential that are near the top but not in place yet.
Just sounds sort of crazy that the best option is to manually reach out to high PR sites to see if we can get a back link to either our ROOT or an Anchored Text.
Any ideas?
-
"Ultimately, you should be trying to come up with ways to make your website naturally link worthy so that you end up getting links which you didn't ask for."
Paddy is absolutely right.
You say that you have rakings for 15,000 keywords. Let's say that is done by 500 articles. If your content is superb enough for each of those 500 articles that the pull in just one natural link per year for each. That is a nice number of links.
If you spend the next year improving that content enough that each article pulls 2 links per year, that is almost like having a full time person doing link building.
-
Hi Chris,
Link building can be very manual, particularly in the early days of a website and when you're trying to get going. Ultimately, you should be trying to come up with ways to make your website naturally link worthy so that you end up getting links which you didn't ask for.
This can come a few ways:
- Your product or service being genuinely useful to your target audience or within your industry so that people recommend it/reference it etc
- Creating content which genuinely answers questions and solves problems for your target audience
- Creating content which has some kind of an angle which encourages top tier sites or bloggers to links to it such as informative guides or statistics/data related to your industry
You may find it hard to get links to lots of your product or sales pages unless they are link worthy in themselves. So also try to focus on getting links to your content and then distributing the link equity from these pages to your key pages.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
-
But is the real plan to get back links to reach out to these high powered domains? That seems very manual and time consuming. I understand some may need to be done like this but how do you outsource or come up with a real plan to get back links each day or week from good sources without using spam methods.
-
Let's consider two goals...
First: Try to improve rankings where a modicum ranking improvement in position will best move the needle of your business. Very often these are pages on your site that rank at #4, #5, #6, or so for money keywords at the present time. Getting a ranking boost there will result in a major improvement in your revenue. Improving the content on that page and making other improvements that might facilitate conversions can make big paybacks.
Second: Often, people try to improve the rankings of sales pages, but, it is often easier to improve the rankings of article pages - especially if they are fantastic. So, I would suggest, after picking some pages for your first goal, write comprehensive articles that thoroughly explain that topic. These articles might attract links, they might be better targets when asking for links, these pages might rank better than your sales page. You will link them to your product pages and make every visitor to the article page know that you have the items for sale.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Thousands of duplicate website links at "Who links the most" in Google webmasters. Any risk being duplicate website links pointing to website?
Hi all, As I mentioned some days back here, our duplicate website got indexed a month back. Unfortunately there are links to our original website. I noticed that thousands of links are from our duplicate website at "Links to Your Site". Will this hurts? Now we have blocked the duplicate website getting indexed. What to do to remove these links from "Who links the most"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Should I create a menu link for sitemap?
Hi guys, I am new to SEO and I have a question for you guys. We created a sitemap for our website. I was thinking of creating a sitemap link on our homepage. Do you think it's a good idea? Would this help us in terms of ranking improvements? Or would help with anything at all? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | ahmetkul0 -
Would you "nofollow" links from a column on HuffingtonPost?
Hi all, So, I've read a lot of posts about guest posting being dead, but what about if you have a regular column on a well-regarded site? Stop? Nofollow links? We have a regular column on the Huffington Post and each piece has historically had at least one link (or more) back to our site. Yes, early on (like last year) we did use optimized anchor text in our links, and then calmed down on that a bit. But regardless, the links have always been relevant to the topic covered, and the topic is always in our niche (namely: budget travel in Europe). I saw Matt Cutts' recent video in which he recommends using the "nofollow" tag on guest posts when linking to one's own site, and specifically mentions HuffPo. Thus, I'm prepared to go back to my old posts and "nofollow" those links, but I just wanted a sanity check from the fine folks at SEOMoz. Would you go back and nofollow them? Many thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | TomNYC0 -
How much link juice does a sites homepage pass to inner pages and influence inner page rankings?
Hi, I have a question regarding the power of internal links and how much link juice they pass, and how they influence search engine ranking positions. If we take the example of an ecommerce store that sells kites. Scenario 1 It can be assumed that it is easier for the kite ecommerce store to earn links to its homepage from writing great content on its blog, as any blogger that will link to the content will likely use the site name, and homepage as anchor text. So if we follow this through, then it can be assumed that there will eventually be a large number of high quality backlinks pointing to the sites homepage from various high authority blogs that love the content being posted on the sites blog. The question is how much link juice does this homepage pass to the category pages, and from the category pages then to the product pages, and what influence does this have on rankings? I ask because I have seen strong ecommerce sites with very strong DA or domain PR but with no backlinks to the product page/category page that are being ranked in the top 10 of search results often, for the respective category and product pages. It therefore leads me to assume that internal links must have a strong determiner on search rankings... Could it therefore also be assumed that a site with a PR of 5 and no links to a specific product page, would rank higher than a site with a PR of 1 but with 100 links pointing to the specific product page? Assuming they were both trying to rank for the same product keyword, and all other factors were equal. Ie. neither of them built spammy links or over optimised anchor text? Scenario 2 Does internal linking work both ways? Whereas in my above example I spoke about the homepage carrying link juice downward to the inner category and product pages. Can a powerful inner page carry link juice upward to category pages and then the homepage. For example, say the blogger who liked the kite stores blog content piece linked directly to the blog content piece from his site and the kite store blog content piece was hosted on www.xxxxxxx.com/blog/blogcontentpiece As authority links are being built to this blog content piece page from other bloggers linking to it, will it then pass link juice up to the main blog category page, and then the kite sites main homepage? And if there is a link with relevant anchor text as part of the blog content piece will this cause the link juice flowing upwards to be stronger? I know the above is quite winded, but I couldn't find anywhere that explains the power of internal linking on SERP's... Look forward to your replies on this....
Algorithm Updates | | sanj50500 -
Member's Badge as Link Building to Homepage or Internal Pages?
Providing members and embeddable badge is a well known link building tactic. Is it better to have the badges from hundreds or even thousands of members link back to the homepage of a website, or a lot of different inner pages? The inner pages would the their individual's profile which sits under a category (such as a service and organisation by location). Member's websites would be related to the content of the website generally. What are the advantages of each? 1. Links to homepage make it easier to rank for competitive keywords on the homepage? If the types of websites were to vary a lot, say a carpet cleaning website and a web designer website, if they all linked to the homepage, would it cause some confusion for the link profile?
Algorithm Updates | | designquotes0 -
Difference between Google's link: operator and GWT's links to your sites
I haven't used the Google operator link: for a while, and I noticed that there is a big disparity between the operator "link:" and the GWT's links to your site. I compared these results on a number of websites, my own and competitors, and the difference seem to be the same across the board. Has Google made a recent change with how they display link results via the operator? Could this be an indication that they are clean out backlinks?
Algorithm Updates | | tdawson090 -
So, useless link exchange pages still work?!
After 3 years out of SEO I thought things might have moved on, but apparently not. Bit of back link research and all the top sites in my niche have tons of reciprocal links to barely relevant sites. Do I really have to do this? I mean I thought this was so out of date, it's not much better than keyword stuffing. So, should I just forget my lofty principles asking myself 'is this of any value to my users?' and just take the medicine?
Algorithm Updates | | Cornwall0 -
Redirected old domain to new, how long before seeing the external links under the new domain?
Before contracting SEO services, my client decided to change his established root domain to one more customer-friendly. Since he had no expertise on board, no redirects were set up until 6 months later. I ran stats right before the old domain was redirected and have a report showing that he had roughly 750 external links from 300 root domains. We redirected the old domain to the new domain in mid Jan 2012. Those external links are still not showing in Open Site Explorer for the new domain. I've tested it a dozen times, and the old domain definitely points to the new domain. How long should it take before the new domain picks up those external links? Should I do anything else to help the process along?
Algorithm Updates | | smsinc0