Just a few noob questions about link building...

So I have a tech news blog/site and I've just started link building. It's about 10 months old.
This is what I've done so far:

30 Manual High PR backlinks and 5 .edu/.gov Links (all pointing to the main page w/ url as anchor)
600 Social Bookmarks, Spread across 20 articles (so 30 social bookmarks per article)
And every article is auto posted to Facebook, Twitter, GPlus (just started that), as well as every other article is submitted to ViralContentBuzz so other people share the articles to their followers/fans/stumble etc.

Now for my questions:
Whats the difference between social bookmarks and web 2.0's?
Since my blog isn't just focused on one thing what would I use as keywords for my main page? For other pages I assume I would use the keywords for the article, right?
What other link building could I do to raise PR for the next update?
Should I be concerned with ranking individual articles or should I focus on ranking my site overall?

Any other advice is also appreciated , Thanks for taking a look at my thread and thanks for any insight you can provide.

 

Hi

A few thoughts:

- Having all of the high PR act links pointing to the homepage looks unnatural. Also, having them all using the URL as anchor text is also unnatural. You need to mix it up a bit. For example have 20% of your links using keywords you want to rank for, and variations of these, as anchor text. Also, make sure you mix up the URL anchor text between the naked url, the http version and the www. version. This is important!

- Posting the exact same article to Facebook, Google plus, et cetera is not really very user friendly. What I do is post certain aspects of my topics to Google, certain other aspects to Facebook, and then post an extract which links back to the blog..

- Choose three or four keywords for your homepage. Have them appear on your homepage and then have that anchor text linking to a category page which summarises all the information about that topic.

- You need to get some backlinks to deeper pages in your blog both from within your blog and also external backlinks. Otherwise it looks very unbalanced and unnatural.

- Our your high PR backlinks from a variety of site types? This is something else that needs randomising somewhat if they are all from the same one, two or three types of source then it will be a footprint which Google will see as being artificial. So you may need to mix as a bit too.

- Concentrate on getting links right through your site, not just your homepage. Try to think what would happen naturally and copy that.

If you need to get additional links think Google "link prospecting" and you will find lots of help as to where to find decent quality backlinks.

Social bookmarks links to your content from a site which lists short snippets about your site. A Web 2.0 site is a site where you can put up posts with substantial content in them and these give you a standalone website – albeit on someone else's domain.

Hope this helps.

Malc

 

Hi Malc,

First off I want to say thanks for such a well thought out reply . It's comforting to know there is still someone out there willing to give a bit of advice. In your case some really good advice!

1. I didn't think about the unnatural part of pointing all the links to the main page. They're all the same format as well http://www.domain.com. I'm not sure if they're all indexed though; I assume not, as they were just done. Hopefully not as that may help dilute the unnatural look... right?

2.With the social posting I do switch it up a bit. On facebook it post a bit of the article with the featured image and the wp short link, on gplus I choose a random bit from the middle of the article, but w/out an image just a link back to the post (the "pretty" link), and on twitter its just the title of the article and the link with tags as hashtags. Is that what you mean by diversifying it?

3. For the homepage keywords should they be different from the categories that they link to or would it be ok to use the actual categories? For example, android reviews being the keyword and linking to the subcategory android reviews or android phone reviews.

4. By deeper links do you mean besides the social bookmarks? Should I also get links to category/subcategory pages?

5. All the high pr links are from different domains like vimeo, last.fm, 43things, delicious, etc. On/in user profiles.

And thanks for clarifying the web 2.0 and social bookmarks thing
You've been VERY helpful!

 

Also thanks for the tip on the "Link Prospecting", definitely finding some good articles on the topic

 

Hi KI - You are welcome and thanks for reading and taking it on board.

1. The fact that some of the back links to your homepage not yet indexed is in your favour; they will continue to trickle out and will give you a chance to add other links with a variety of anchor text in that in the way I described.

2. Yes, that's what I meant by diversifying. From that point of view you seem to have it covered. But just make sure that each channel looks good, and useful, to someone who follows you only on Facebook or only on Google plus et cetera.

3. Initially, they should certainly be the same. So, optimise your homepage for, say, four keyword phrases and then link to 4 category pages with that exact anchor text. Then optimise category page for just that phrase (and maybe one other).

4. When I say deeper links I simply mean pages one or two clicks away from your homepage. These might well be category pages, or just topic pages. And yes - you should get links to any pages which are helping you make money.

Also, make sure you are not losing Page Rank through your links to "About me", "Contact", et cetera not being no follow. In other words, make sure such links are no follow on all your own webpages. This is fairly easy to do but sometimes overlooked.

5. The high PR links you describe are okay, but won't boost your Page Rank much. You will get a better effect doing the link prospecting and finding someone with a genuine Page Rank three, four or five who is prepared to link back to you. That will really pass some link juice. And the links you are describing – which are not generally called "high PR links", they are generally called "web 2.0 links" will support these solid links which you get.

If you want any help with keyword research I've written a post here about how I do it:
http://heymalc.com/best-keyword-research-tool

This might be helpful.

Keep it up and good luck! And if you have any more questions feel free to ask here or on my blog at HeyMalc.

Cheers

Malc

 

a social bookmark is simply a link pointing back but a web 2.0 allows that link to be contextual.

 

If your blog isn't focused on a niche then I wouldn't worry too much about keywords. Just keep blogging daily or frequently and you'll get ranked up.