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Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Link Building

Looking for creative ways to go beyond "standard" link building practices? Want to figure out which linking strategies your competitors are using? What's the proper balance between link acquisition and link baiting activities? How can you get links from high-authority sites? Need to build up some external links quickly for a new or redesigned website?

Discover all of this and more in these blog posts and articles, some of the best so far in 2008 on link building strategies and tactics.

Building Links with Big Brand Websites, Part 2 by Find Resolution

Search marketer Dave McAnally explains five link-building tactics useful for big brand websites, though some of these—integrating SEO with PR efforts and leveraging all of your digital assets, for example—are smart moves for any size company.


Analyzing Your Competitor’s Backlinking Strategies by Search Engine Journal

The brilliant Ann Smarty shows how to evaluate your competition's niche link-building strategy, their deep linking strategy, and their targeted anchor text.


Link Building Fundamentals: A Primer by Audette Media

Internet marketing strategist Adam Audette provides just what the title states: a detailed, step-by-step guide to determining where your site should be linked for maximum SEO value, then obtaining links. Different tactics are likely to work better, and be more appealing, for different types of sites. As Adam writes, "There are many different ways to build links. There’s no `right way' and no “best practices,” there’s only creativity, intelligence, and labor."


List of Free Directory Submission by Everyday SEO

Here's a list of almost 2,000 directories that allow you to submit sites for link building. Most are free; some of the sites charge for links, some require a reciprocal link, and many are spammy and have suspiciously similar submission forms. Is this a tremendous resource, or just a colossal waste of time?


Baiting and Beseeching — Obtaining the right mix of chasing links and getting them to chase you by Hamlet Batista

Writing that "a mixed approach of link acquisition and link baiting is best," Hamlet Batista presents the tactics, pros and cons to each approach in this thoughtful and detailed post.


Link Request Strategies for Blogs, Edu’s & .Gov’s: Respect My Authoritah! by Search Engine People

SEO link guruess Melanie Nathan offers carefully crafted advice on how to obtain links from high-authority sites such as government websites and blogs. Her recomendations range from utililitarian (how to write an email requesting a government site link) to social (comment on blogs and establish a relationship before asking for a link) to provocative ("This is a bit cheeky but it helps to pay special attention to the type of site you’re emailing in regards to your name. For instance, if I am emailing a blog that is run by a 25 year old male, I am more likely to use something like ‘heidi(at)mycoolsite.com’ or ‘naomi(at)mycoolsite.com’").


Link Building Tips by Traffic Travis

This article details 15 strategies for generating links. Most are obvious, but it's a helpfully comprehensive list to keep handy. The strategies vary from creative (finding local link opportunities) to ubiquitous (directory submissions) to questionable ("Wikipedia - very good if you can get links from here" - Wikipedia of course uses insidious nofollow tags and its priesthood is notoriously hostile to anything that remotely resembles commercial content).


6 Ways to Get Nearly Instant Links to your Web Site by Bill Hartzer

A helpful list of tactics for generating links quickly, such as using directories, social bookmarking sites and blog comments.


Using Logic to Prove that Directory Links are NOT Worthless by Big Oak SEO Blog

Will Paoletto contends that directory links are still valuable for SEO, and that "Google only punishes directories that sell links to a.) create the public perception that buying directory links isn’t effective anymore and b.) rob directories of power in the only way it can–through manual penalties."


5 experts demystify SEO link building by iMedia Connection

iMedia Connection deputy editor Michael Estrin gets to the heart of link building, asking five SEO experts—Conductor CEO Seth Besmertnik, SEOMoz CEO Rand Fishkin, Stuntdubl.com founder Todd D. Malicoat, Eric Ward and Alliance-Link founder Debra Mastaler—questions regarding the value of internal links, when linking out is helpful for SEO, the role of proper hyperlink text and more.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Website Design, Part 1

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Comments

jack2304 said…
Hi,
this is Jack. Link building is one of the important aspect in present day market. As it could well develop in future days.
------------
Jack
for information on link building....
Link Building
Marie Christine said…
Link building is one of the toughest jobs in SEO because you not only need to use the right techniques but in the right time to get the maximum benefits. I recently found a website linknotifier.com which helps in checking the broken links if any. If you want to grow your website fast then LinkNotifier will be best for you. It will help you in checking your broken links so that you can build those links again and start getting prominence from Google.
VinnCorp said…
You have provided valuable data for us. It is great and informative for everyone. Keep posting always about link builder job description. I am very thankful to you.

All Time Greats

Getting More Out of Each Click with "Post-Click Marketing"

With the economy now officially in a recession (as if we didn't know that), marketers are under increasing pressure to do more with less. On the interactive marketing side, few marketers will get budget increases enabling them to drive more clicks. The challenge, then, is to maximize marketing productivity—to get more leads out of the same number of clicks. This is the first of two posts that will look at how to improve conversion rates to get more value from each click. One answer to this challenge is provided by "post-click marketing," a.k.a. lead automation management vendors. While the specifics of each service vary, all of them essentially: automate the process of extracting visitor IP information from your log files; match the IP address to an organization; filter out ISPs; and map the company name to one or more external databases to provide additional information (company size, industry, key contacts etc.). The better services also use geo-location filte...

Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEM

Search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the fastest-growing categories in all of advertising, because it is both measurable and logical: present your ads when people are searching for what you're selling. A well-crafted search marketing program can provide not only broad brand exposure at a very reasonable cost (with CPMs of $10 or less), but also high-ROI lead generation. As with any other type of advertising, however, a poorly-designed campaign will be a disappointing waste of money. In addition to best practices in search engine marketing , the following articles and blog posts were among the best of 2007 at providing helpful guidance for creating and managing effective search marketing programs. Five Common Paid Search Mistakes That Can Sink Your Campaign by Search Engine Guide Blogger Jennifer Laycock explains how common mistakes such as "ego bidding," writing a single ad for all keywords, and directing all of your traffic to a single landing page can limit the res...

Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 2

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Social Media Marketing on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foertsch Kate Morris TopRank Online Marketing Blog Jessica Cameron-Ruud Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch CircleUp Traffic Travis del.icio.us tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foertsch Kate Morris TopRank Online Marketing Blog Jessica Cameron-Ruud Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch CircleUp Traffic Travis icerocket tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foe...

The 8 Layers of a B2B Web Marketing Plan

One way to think about designing a B2B technology web marketing plan is as a series of layers, like an onion. At the core is SEO—simply making your website "findable" through organic search to buyers who are looking for what you offer. Working out from the center are concentric layers of additional investment and sophistication. Small companies and start-ups with modest budgets will focus most of their efforts on the inner layers or rings, which are primarily designed for lead generation. As the company and its marketing budget grow, efforts can be expanded to the outer layers, which are aimed more at branding but support lead generation efforts. Ideally, a company eventually reaches the outer layer where pure branding activities (such as print advertising) help to maximize the effectiveness of lead generation programs (such as SEM) near the center of the circle. This diagram shows how different types of web marketing programs can be prioritized in order to maximize the retur...

Marketing Automation: Bringing a Gun to a Knife Fight

This content has been moved to Marketing Automation: Like Bringing a Gun to a Knife Fight on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: b2b marketing lead nurturing marketing-automation software demand-generation software Steve Woods Eloqua hosted-email-services email-service-providers ESP Constant Contact VerticalResponse ExactTarget shorten sales cycles del.icio.us tags: b2b marketing lead nurturing marketing-automation software demand-generation software Steve Woods Eloqua hosted-email-services email-service-providers ESP Constant Contact VerticalResponse ExactTarget shorten sales cycles icerocket tags: b2b marketing lead nurturing marketing-automation software demand-generation software Steve Woods Eloqua hosted-email-services email-service-providers ESP Constant Contact VerticalResponse ExactTarget shorten sales cycles Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Marketo Releases Marketo Lead Management 3.0

Marketing automation software vendor Marketo today announced the launch of its Marketo Lead Management 3.0 software suite. With more than 200 new features, the release is the most significant since the product's initial launch in early 2008. Promising deeper support for a "conversational model of marketing," the new release provides 75 user interface enhancements as well as new features including: More fine-grained control over segmentation, targeting, and triggering; "Progressive profiling" on forms (i.e. additional profile is requested as a prospect moves through an interactive process); Native integration with Salesforce.com ; Web visitor profiling; and Automated duplicate lead removal. Pricing starts at $1,500 per month and the company now has more than 150 midmarket and enterprise customers. Marketo competes with products such as Eloqua , Silverpop Engage B2B (formerly Vtrenz), and Manticore in the marketing automation / demand generation sp...

SEO Link Building of 2008

Unless you are optimizing only for some extremely niche keywords, off-page optimization—building links from other websites to yours—is a critical and significant factor for SEO success. The blog posts cited here, some of the best of 2008 on the topic of link building, provide guidance on how and where to obtain valuable external links. They also offer advice on ineffective tactics and "bad neighborhoods" to avoid. Local Search Ranking Presentation - SMX LoMo 2008 by Website Promotion Is Not Voodoo Will Scott , president of Search Influence, shares his presentation from the San Francisco for SMX Local Mobile event. His deck actually covers the organic search marketinging basics—keywords, content and links. But his section on "where to get links" is particularly helpful for anyone seeking to optimize local search results. 8 Directory Submission Red Flags by Small Business Search Marketing Matt McGee offers advice on what to avoid when obtaining links throu...

The Best Web Marketing of 2008

Which types of online advertising provide the highest ROI? Who's really clicking on your PPC ads? Why do PPC costs keep rising? How can you convert more clickers into buyers? Are Web 2.0 technologies now mainstream? Learn these answers and more from this collection of blog posts and articles, some of the best reporting on online research topics so far this year. Online Marketers See High ROI from SEO by Marketing Pilgrim Blogger, SEO expert and PR pro Janet Meiners reports on an MarketingSherpa study detailing the growth in paid search and organic search engine optimization. Read her post to discover which types of online advertising get a thumbs up—and which are losing favor with interactive marketers. Who's really clicking? by iMedia Connection Sandeep Krishnamurthy , Professor of Marketing and E-Commerce at the University of Washington, paints a bleak picture of the future of PPC advertising—then gets blasted for it in the Comments by some fairly high-profile...