Link Vault & Advanced Link Building Tips

I’ve had a few discussions on PM lately about Link Vault (see the link in the footer of this post) as I’ve had a lot of success using it. So thought I may as well post some pointers for people.

Consider the make up of links you currently have to your site.

1. What % to your homepage use the same anchor text? (a good variety is best)
2. What % are to your homepage v. deep links? (at least 10% or more should be deep-links)
3. What % are reciprocal v. non-reciprocal? (majority non-reciprocal is best)

4. What % are from sites in your own search results? (the more the better)
5. What % are from somewhere other than a page footer? (also need links from body copy)
6. What % are site-wide links v. less than a handful from the same site? (vast majority should not be site-wide)

7. What % are from pages with different PR scores: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6 etc (a variety is natural)
8. What % are from directories? (other sources of links are needed too)
9. What % are cross-linked from sites you control? (as few as possible is best)

10. What % are permanent (static links) v. coop type ads? (don’t depend on the coop entirely)
11. What % are from links type pages that have many other outbound links on them? (links from content pages are needed too)
12. How many links did you accumulate in the past week compared to your competitors? (if your competitors are plodding along with 1 new link per day and you are getting 50 new links per day – you link building may be considered abnormal and frowned upon by search engines)

13. What % of sites linking to yours use completely unique anchor text? (the wider the variety of anchor text to your site the more you can afford to push the envelope with links using your primary keyword phrase)
14. What % of anchor text does not use optimized keywords? (search Google for: ‘click here’ or ‘here’ you’ll see some of the most linked to domains online ranking in those results)
15. Do you have links from sites with .gov and .edu back links? (they add to the credibility of sites)

Link Vault only helps you solve some of these problems and should not be relied on as your only source of new links.

The main problem I discovered my sites had were:
1. Not enough variety in the anchor text to the homepage, and
2. Not enough deep-links

So I’m working on rectifying that with links from Link Vault and getting great results. This is where LV has been the greatest help.

But I also need more links from the body copy of pages (not the footer), which link vault can’t provide yet so I’m building them elsewhere.

And I also need more links from sites in the search results I’m targeting and Link Vault can’t provide more than a couple of them so I’m continuing to pursue them.

Also, I’m accumulating links gradually with LV, not a ton at a time – it is tempting to just add crap loads of links but gradual / natural link building works best so don’t go crazy.

Lastly…. Something to set your mind boggling…

How many pages that link to your site have back links themselves that use your keyword phrase in the anchor text?
(sit on a mountain top and ponder this one, if you get it go for it, if you don’t – ponder some more)​

.
.
.

 

nice post

i might actually check it out

 

Man you should of formatted this better. I almost fell a sleep reading the lists that provided "Consider the make up of links you currently have to your site."

 

Is that better Princess? (City2) lol

 

PS - if you link to our www.homeless.org.au site PM me and I'll let you down off the mountain if you can't work it out.

 

When you have a large site with heaps of PR on each page, you get very tempted to go crazy adding links with the Link Vault. In my case it burned a whole site. Fortunately for only about a month, then the rankings came back even better than before.

So I totally support Dominics statement of:

Before you can use the Link Vault to its best extent, you need to have a well spidered high PR site. Then you can get thousands of vaults and use it to be the top of anything that you want (within reason). I have even used it to get my Time2Dine Link Vault page to the top 20 for "Text Links" - a reasonably contested search term.

So follow Dominics strategy for link building with the Link Vault, and other links and you will certainly get your pages to the top of your search terms.

 

Hi,

what is this safe_mode hack?

Thanks, Matt

 

That's awesome about the 'text links' ranking well done and thanks for your comments.

 

i tried this with link vault
How many pages that link to your site have back links themselves that use your keyword phrase in the anchor text?

the denied all my ads.. saying they were unrelated
darn....

 

Sorry, I missed your post.
I've only done a handful so far and haven't had a problem with it. Try a few more.

 

I'm having a hell of a job thinking of anchor text variations. Going back to the search results for some ideas. Anyone got some tips on how to come up with a list?

 

The overture tool and the competitors are the 2 sources I can think of.

 

Thanks, you mean wordtracker? I've used Shawn's side by side tool before, good reminder to go back and dig around. Cheers.

 

I have been using your ideas recently Dominic. With the link vault and the dp suggestion tool, I have been coming up with lots of text variations, and getting nice and high for each for particular pages.

The hard part has been actually using all those text variations in paragraphs on the page, and still sounding good sales text - the link text has to be relevant.

The other hard part has been having patience to get only one link a day for the competitive phrase that I am 20th for but have enough links, and getting links for other phrases. I don't want Google penalties for too many links.

Creating new pages for myself rather than optimizing others pages:
- do I create a new page for that new phrase, or add it to the existing?
- what new pages should I create, and what series of phrases apply for those pages
- I want an indented result, so which page do I want as indented, what link text do I target for that page.

Can be quite challenging.

 

Been working on plurals, and order of phrases:

• blue widgets
• blue widget
• blues widget
• blues widgets
• top blue widgets
• top blues widgets
• top blue widget
• best widget
• ...
• widget blue - not the order that I would use when searching, but many do search with this order
• widgets blue
• widgets blues
• ...

Now in the case of using the word "blues", that particular word is nonsensical, but works with some phrases.

The good part is that Google highlights the singular when searching for the plural, and vice versa. But specific link text helps get that particular page found for the singular and plural. And helps get some variety for the link text.

And with the Link Vault and elsewhere, there can be no question that each of the above is relevant to that one page.

 

Above tips are useful, I'd like to add mine:

check your referrer log and see how people get to your site right now from search engines. people enter crazy stuff at google.com, but some might be useful and could be an anchor text for you.

 

Another great suggestion, I haven't done this in a while either.