Agree it or not, buy-sell link had been one of the major part in SEO jobs. While results are not guanranteed, we SEO often spend quite a fortune in buying links. Money spent, result not guaranteed, and your website might get banned or partially filtered - this had me thinking: Can we do SEO for Google by following purely to Google's webmaster guide lines (aka no link buying, no link exchange, no link building work at all)? I am sure some would then say 'content is king, build good content and the users will come, blah blah blah' - but hey gimme a break, how do the users suppose to find your good content if they don't even know about your website? So let's have that argument aside for a moment and assume that SEO is a must and our websites must have links - how do we do that, by not violating Google's guidelines? As you already would guess - yes, I am tired of spending my money in buying links and in the same time worry about Google's filter day and night. As far as I tried, here're what I think it's efficient and practical for small webmaster can do to build links, but not violating the G dictator's rules. Build free blog themes and share out. Donation to your local charity organisation. Write and submit articles to directories. Comment (not spam) in related blog. Participate in industrial community (forum) and give out links Now I had give out my list, how about yours? Some brainstorming together, perhaps?
In the real world , we have to apply any tactics , mixed and tune for good recipe for " total SEo solution" . No one can depend on good content alone , if you are not authority.
this is exactly what I have in mind..but don't know how to put them in words...what soufulow said makes a lot of sense.... you could easily do good content and stuff when you have a blog or a personal website...but a company website should not contain any junk or any unrelates stuff other than the company and products...therefore there is no way of getting a link other than buying it from directory. Who would do an link exchange for a company or link to a company? it would be too rare to do so.
I think your list is good and I use all but one: writing to directories. I'll add mine: Digg MySpace Facebook Craigslist Delicious and I give out a lot of 'free' advice anywhere I find an audience. I know those links don't get "ranked" because they're no follow, but you do get visitors and usually visitors looking for what you have to offer. I don't buy links, but I don't have a site higher than PR5, but I have good to excellent SERP and that's what matters to me
Guys, thanks a lot for all the input! Keep'em coming~ Here's another idea on 'free advice': Create a viral marketing effects for your website. I'll try to evaluate my idea: Step 1. Make your website be sticky/funny/remarkable (in short, be worth linking to) Step 2. Create something that we can pass along via emails and community websites (like facebook). By doing so you'll increase the visibility of your website and if you'd did your first step well, your website back link should grow exponentially WITHOUT violating Google's rules. Of course again, the concept sounds easy but making it happens need a super-creative mind, a powerful community profile, and some luck. @osdude: Thanks for the list! It would be great if you can evaluate further on how do you utilize those web 2.0 site for link expansion. For example - how to you use MySpace for link building?
Ask Google that question, and I'm sure they will point you to their Adwords signup form. In low to moderately competitive niches, directory submissions, blog comments, bookmarks, articles, etc. can do pretty good. I've worked with some brick and mortar type companies to where it only takes a dozen or two live free directory backlinks to get them in the top 5. But in competitive niches it is a different story. Like it or not, many SEO's purchase links for the purpose of PR. That's why they charge monthly fees to cover the cost of maintaining these links. But these SEO's earn their money by being clever and purchasing links that are hard for Google to identify. It's very time consuming, but I highly recommend submitting to the directories in my free directory list. I have PR 4 sites with backlinks from only free directories. It works, but one must be smart about it. Don't expect links from free directories to rank you for "cars." Do some keyword research (free keyword research tool here) and find some mid to long tailed keywords that are not so competitive. But make sure those keywords have traffic and that they appear on your page as visible text. Now start submitting away. Before long, your rankings will rise for those mid-long tailed keywords. And your PR will improve. For those that say PR does not matter, I can say that once you get around PR 5, it's a lot easier ranking for short tailed keywords. My suggestion is to submit to PR 0 free web directories first. They don't have huge backlogs of free submissions and they don't have a million listings competing with yours. You will get reviewed quickly and less competition means your backlinks will be indexed fast. Within a week of submitting to this free directory list, I see positive movement in the SERPS. I also use social network to help build links and traffic. Use social bookmarking to link to your inner pages which have content, and something other users will want to bookmark as well. There's about 150 social bookmarking sites in my other list, and take advantage of that as well. You can use free press releases to get some exposure. But I prefer paying PRWeb to distribute my press releases because I always seem to end up with better backlinks from authority sites including Yahoo. Link building is boring but needed work to rank well at the search engines. Don't get frustrated, just lay out a plan of action. Try to rank for terms that you can compete for now. And in time you will find it much easier to compete for short tailed keywords. Good luck!
OK, here's what I've done for clients. Write "How to" about their products. "How to" beats the pants off most search terms and can be used by any company. Just because your product is simple doesn't mean people know how to use it. Get in depth and think WAY outside the box. For example, a company that sells concrete in bulk, those big trucks with the turny things on the back. They had never received a customer from their website. Who in the heavens wants to read a site about concrete how to buy 9 yards of concrete? Nobody I know. But lots of people want to know how to pave their driveway, make tables, fix cracks in their driveways, make counter tops and build lawn furniture that will not blow away. Show people how to save money (build the form for the driveway yourself and save $XXX). People love articles about how to get what they want and save money. TO date, no customer has built their own forms and they get a nice bit of extra business from selling cement stains, "custom small batch mix" and concrete tables from left-over pours.
It really comes down to how competitive the keywords are. If the keywords are not highly competitive, the listed approaches will work very well. However, if all things are equal - your competitors are building links like crazy - while your site has no backlinks, it will put your rankings at disadvantage. Link quality is more important than quantity. You can get a few good links and that can be the deal breaker.
There are a few things we use for MySpace: Anyone who is a myspace "friend" with us in their "top friends" gets 20% off their first order and free shipping on any purchase afterward regardless of the order total. I know it's cheesy, but damn it works. We also have a few templates that you can use. There's one image that has a link to our site and has the latest info: "product X now 15% Off". You only change one image on your server and you're reaching a lot of people with your new message. Granted it's easy to remove that image, but most people don't. I thought they would and fought against this method, but I was proven wrong. The IMG is a powerful tag This doesn't really build links. but it brings customers/visitors and that's the real goal anyway?
How you define black, how you define white? Is there a written rules on this? As a matter of fact when we start our SEO work at the first place we are already attempting to game with SEO algorithm. @OSDude: Thanks for the input. Now I know one more way in marketing without search engine. Great~ @snowbird: Free directory link submission? It feels so much like I am reading this in year 2001. However, as a matter of fact, I know your suggestion is a good suggestion. It's something that works. Just like I knew buying links work - especially for those competative market. What bothers me (and should bother everyone of us here) is that the worry about site filter and penalty all day long by using that approach. Which explains why this thread is started.
Blackhat: spoofed pages, hidden links, link bombing, etc Whitehat: on-site optimzation, cross your fingers and hope someone will link to your site. How ever we can't put aside "content is king" if yesterday you had loads of money to spend on links, today you can spend even less of those money and buy banner spots (even nofollow) to drive traffic to your site instead of serps. Now if your content is king, then people will bait on your content and link to it (yay, linkbait). Does it make sense?
white hat is not just cross your fingers thats just sad! you have to link to a site at some point or you will never get indexed and therefore never seen. White hat has to include legitimate link building plan of some sort or you are missing out big time!
Here is what comes into my mind right away: good content (will always attract natural links), linkbait (could be a bit tricky).
I've never bought a link. It's never crossed my mind to buy a link. Reciprocal linking, yes. I've been in the business too long not to have reciprocal links. Writing content, yes. Some of the things I've written about has been slightly controversial or very useful, and I get forum links for these. I also try to stay on top of the news for my niche, so I can write info articles. Took a year and a half off from blogging - RL. My hits went down, but my links grew without me. Cross linking my own sites. Yes, but not excessively. And no site has ever been built to support another site. I'll put up a banner ad on one site for another. Or a column of text links. After all, these are my companies and I should be able to promote them openly. Yahoo answers, but not spam. Getting a best answer is great. Even better is when someone else gives my link as an answer. Directory submissions, article submissions, and social bookmarking. Yes, yes, and trying. But just flat out buying a link for PR - not going to happen.