I'm getting ready to launch a new site and am getting reading to start the link building. My goal is to get in the top 10 of Yahoo/MSN as quickly as possible (using only white hat techniques). I have identified one of my competitor's site that was launched last year (ranked #5 in Yahoo for the same keyword I'm going for). I've designed my site to almost duplicate the on-page SEO techniques and am planning on doing the same with the off-page optimization. I've studied the site's backlinks and would like to get some opinions if there are any flaws in the way I'm approaching my off-page optimization strategy before I engage the services of my link builder. Basically, in terms of the competiting site - 1. Types of links - the competing site's links are 95% one-way with the rest being reciprocal. The PRs of the links are between 0 to 5 with the majority being in the 1 to 4 range. 2. As far as deep linking goes, the site has a deep link ratio of about 20%. So, would it be wise to follow the above as a starting point for the off-page optimization? Meaning, have the link builder build links with the majority being one-way links with roughly the same total page rank value and deep link ratio as the competing site? The only other question I have is how quickly to build the links. Is there any harm done (strictly in terms of Yahoo) with dumping about 200 links during the first 30 to 60 days of site going live? Any comments/opinions would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, this seems to be a reasonable approach. But just getting the same amount of links may not duplicate their results, since the links need to be from sites of similar quality and trustworthiness.
I am all in favor of this approach and it normally works for me on Google. So I can't see why it would not on Yahoo.
It's a good strategy. You should be concerned with too many links at once in terms of Yahoo (MSN does not seem to mind as much). 200 in about 60 days is about 3-4 per day which should be okay. I read somewhere that Yahoo also considers the ratio of new links to current links. So as you gain links you can build links faster and not get penalized. For example, if you only have say 100 current links and add 1 per day that's a 1:100 ratio. If you have 1000 links you could add 10 per day an maintain the same ratio. I have not tested this - anyone know if it's true? -Ramprof
How would that apply to newish sites though, Say I have 0 back links, for the first 2 months whilst building a site. Then at marketing push, I get a few site-wides and others and get over 1000 links.. Why would I be penalised? Also, is there any proof of getting penalised, cos its something that can be easily done to an compeitior site. Say u were number 4 on the first page for a good keyword. Doing things like this to penealise the top 1-4 sites would be beneficial. Dunno, penalising just doesnt sound likely for me, then again, you never know.
Yes you can be penalized. I've had a site go from about 1,400 links to 3,400 links in one day after being at over 1,000 links for a couple months. The site's been up for about 4-5 months now and it went from ranking fairly poorly in a highly competive niche to being blown into Google's supplemental results overnight. I'm sure it will bounce back eventually, but for now it's pretty much worthless. The site also has died on Yahoo as well, so beware of massive link building techniques. If you are going to do a huge marketing push, you're best bet is to market right away when your site launches. That way you build up a bigger link profile to start with. Then, you can grow quicker and it appears to be more normal growth than if you start with 100 links and try to jump to 2,000 overnight. Ironically, I blogged about this about a week ago. Small world eh?
I think what Blackbeard said is interesting. So, when you launch, get as much link as possible, to give indication that you are a big player and deserve to have the large amount of links. This way, sites launched by the likes of microsoft or google won't be punished for getting a huge amount of inbound link in a short time. Anyone can confirm this?