Hello all, Been an SEO for over 3 years, but this time I am working on a site unlike the ones I've worked before. This is a new and big business directory/review site with over 60k pages. There are about 1500 categories and plenty of listings in each. The goal here is to rank the site for all of its categories. Normally, when working on a site about a product or service, there are just a few keywords to target and only a few pages, so it's pretty simple. I make links for these few keywords/URLs. But how do you approach a huge site like this. Where do you link to and most importantly, what kind of links do you make? Think of Expedia. It ranks at the top for "hotels in New York". I find it hard to believe that their linkbuilding team used spammy methods such as profile links, directory submissions and the sort. I even find it hard to believe that they created linkwheels or that they commented on relevant blogs with this keyword and the respective URL. I personally believe that they wouldn't build any links that could "embarrass" them. So how DO you do it? How can you make a quality linkbuilding campaign for a big site like Expedia? Now, an obvious answer would be to spend a few million dollars buying links from relevant sites, but I obviously don't have the budget to afford that, so ANY ideas would be much appreciated! Also, would you try to make links primarily for the homepage and let Google do the rest or would you instead make links to the deeper and more specific pages? Thanks in advance!
When tackling such a huge project like this, I think it's wise to accept from the start that you will have to complete the campaign in stages. For a website of that size it's simply impossible to start optimizing for every page at the same time ~ perhaps focus on 20 pages/keywords over each 2 month period. In terms of your SEO strategy, as usual diversifying your link sources is key. Perhaps consider blog networks like the service we offer, but be sure to utilize social bookmarking, high PR one way links, and other traditional link building methods too for greater effect. Finally, providing the website in question has an excellent interlinking structure, I would focus a large proportion of my efforts on the homepage (Not your entire efforts, remember we want to link build to look completely natural, so links to inner pages are still required!) and rely on Google to do the work and let the PR flow through your inner pages. Reviewing the sites link structure may take some time, but for a project of this size to be successful you need to ensure the inner page linking is up to a good standard. The main key to your success here will be patience. As I said above, it's not going to be a project you take on and rank for all it's terms overnight. Take on board the advice above and add it to your knowledge though, and it should get you off to a good start.
Thank you very much for the detailed reply. The interlinking structure is very good - if not perfect - since the site was built with SEO in mind. Through a quick research, I see that Google has already started ranking the appropriate pages, so I am confident that we are ok from that perspective. None of the pages are ranking high - but the fact that Google chose to rank the correct pages is definitely good. I agree with what you are saying - and have already done some social bookmarking and joined in the big Social Networks. A next step would probably be joining some forums. I am thinking that I would set up "official" profiles (with the site name) on relevant forums and try to answer some questions and maybe adding links where appropriate. But I doubt that forums will do much for this. Your service sounds amazing - however - I am concerned about the quality of your blog network. Other comparable services which would definitely help, would be too expensive (at $10-$50 per post), so I could not consider them at the moment. Send me a PM with a couple of samples of blogs from your network, and I will get back to you with my thoughts. Any other ideas? You mentioned one-way high PR links - that's of course ideal, but I am not sure as to how I would do that without a big budget.
In regards to one-way high PR related links, it really does depend on what your consider a big budget. You can purchase links from your niche here at DigitalPoint as I'm sure you're aware, however you should be cautious when reviewing their quality. Try to avoid buying from websites which have very few backlinks themselves, and if you're going for homepage/sitewide links then I would not be buying from sites which already have more than 10 outbound links. WebDev Solutions
Segmenting the link building campaign is the key here and WebDev Solutions has rightly pointed it out. You should also try private blog networks, which are well-known in the IM world. These may include BuildMyRank, LinkVana, Oneway Backlinks, etc. Social Bookmarking and Forum profiles essentially would not affect the rankings, but these will help you in diversifying your link sources. Don't over do these to save your website. You should focus 50% of backlinks to the Home Page and other 50% to the Categories. However, take one category or sub-category at a time. Once it is ranking well, move with other categories. I would have pointed you to my BMR submission service, but I am currently not allowed to do so. Yo can find several services at DP and other similar forums.
Thank you both. I got to say that I am a little bit concerned about BMR, Linkvana and the sort. I have a feeling that networks like these will soon be penalized from G, and any links from them will be devalued or worse... Any other ideas?