Just thought I would share a little information what has recently worked for me. You everybody knows what niche their website belongs to, but building links in that niche can be hard as you don't want to exchange with anybody who takes your business. Think outside your niche! I work with a company who sell designer watches, But who do approach to build links? other watch websites? The watch niche is very competitive as it is. I couldn't think of anything worst then exchanging with another watch website. So my advice is target people who have something related too your niche for example the past month I have been pushing helix watches the watches are professional divers watches, so my target was diving blogs, diving forums and anything related to diving. This can relate to anything if I was promoting lets say a graphic design website I would approach a marketing website as this has a relationship. My first example with the watches worked well I approached ten websites all dive related and gained 10 backlinks. When approaching websites always offer something for free. I offered to write a guest post on the brand this way the website get free quality content and often a keyword link within the post nothing is move valuable. That's just my 2 pence worth!
I agree with your strategy about targeting complementary markets. Each niche is somehow related to dozens of other niches. So it makes sense to try to get links from those sites instead of your direct competition. A lot of the time, your competition won't want to link to you either.
Great advice to "think outside the niche"! Also, your advice to "offer something free" is a great idea. Hopefully a lot of light bulbs went off for the people in this forum who ask questions like "I sent out offers for link exchanges with 25 sites and no one replied back". Well why should they, what's in it for them? Most of us our bombarded with link offers. It may sound harsh, but I'm very, very busy, and why should I help someone out if there's nothing in it for me? Just offering a link doesn't count for much when I've already got more exchange requests than I can count. Now if you can offer something that is MUTUALLY beneficial, then I'm ready to listen.
Makes you wonder how Google search is supposed to know what topic is related to which other topic, when as you point out there are so many possibilities. My own view is that it doesn't, it's just another strategy they use to try and control linking, by making everyone think they need to get related links which as you have rightly pointed are a lot more difficult (unlikely) to get from a competitor. Food for thought. J
I agree with your strategy, but I disagree with those who won't trade links with direct competitors. I'm a believer that you should NOT see these sites as competitors, at least insofar as link exchanges go. The better and more relevant your link exchanges are, the higher you'll rank for your most important keywords. The internet is a BIG place. There are customers lurking around every corner. Most of them will shop around anyway, and are likely going to end up on both yours AND your competitor's sites. At that point it'll be price, product, and service that matter - not your position on a search page. By refusing a link exchange that's solidly related to your nich, you and your competitor(s) are only keeping each other down. I'd much rather my competitor and I both boost each other onto a piece of flotsam, rather than drag each other under in the giant sea of internet competition. But hey, that's me.
good post + rep added. I think that you can build links or unrelated sites as long as you make the link relevant. Also a watch website that links to another watch website will have its link weighted more heavily than a track and field shoe store, but that dosnt mean that they dont need stop watches as well. Google is advanced enough to separate the real from the spam and as long as you are playing by the rules you will advance upwards in the serps.
I agree that linking with a competitor is a good idea. I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when a competitor that I respect a great deal asked for a link exchange. Hasn't happened in nine years and I agreed. Also I was beating my little brain over how to find relevent links until I thought it through. Relevent means exactly what martyn.b is suggesting. Every niche has complementary sites and I didn't see the forest for the trees! In my case lingerie is my niche: I scoured the net looking for lingerie sites and it was tough getting links. Since we sell shoes, hosiery, costumes......... it finally dawned on me the complementary sites numbered in the hundreds easily. "Think outside the niche" I like that a lot. As far as google knowing what topic relates to what other topic, I think it is as simple as keywords: After looking at "millions", no billions of sites the relationship becomes fairly clear. Fashion sites use words like apparel, shoes, clothing, designers and lingerie sites use terms like clothing, apparel, lingerie and so on. Just my two cents! Thanks martyn.b - good post!
thanks for the advice I'm a noob at link building and have been building links at the same niches as mine.
Good advice. It's hard to find sites just like my Glitching Website, so I usually get links from General Gaming websites.
Yes, I too do agree with you. This is really quite tough to approach and get link back from same niche business website. This is good idea to try for the websites that deal with respective business to an extent.Your strategy is meaningful and worthy..Thanks