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Archive for the ‘Link Building’ Category

There are numerous link building strategies, and I can claim some success using some of them. However, one method that has been a little less successful for me is article marketing. Perhaps I have really only tested the water using this technique, and applying myself to it in a more concerted manner might yield better results.

Here, I wanted discuss briefly my methods and to present a few results.

There are many article directories, but there seems to be clear divisions in their quality, reach and subsequent traffic prospects.

For my first attempt at article submission, I used an automated tool to submit an article to several hundred article directories. Some of the directories were high-ranking and considered larger players, but many were smaller. I saw a subsequent spike in traffic which plateau’d quickly and several links after a month or so. This was over year ago now and the links seem to have disappeared off the radar now. Although this method offers a quick and easy way to submit to many directories, it does not yield easily measurable results because, among other reasons, it is not easy tell when, or even if, your article is accepted.

Shortly after, I decided to concentrate on two of the larger article directories, namely ezine articles and go articles. In the following 6 months, I wrote and submitted 12 solid articles to ezine. So far, these have received 5195 views leading to 155 URL clicks and 730 profile views.

By using selective text searches in Google, it appears that my articles have been used by others and the links have been left in. However, these articles appear exclusively on rel=nofollow pages, so the benefits in terms of link building are of limited scope.

If I were to scale this operation up 10-fold, the effort would have gotten me ~1500 URL clicks assuming linear scaling. I am unsure if this is worth the effort.

Go Articles seems to operate a little differently in that most of the articles are distributed via email. I wrote and submitted two articles to Go Articles and so far they have received a total 350 views. Using the same method above (selective text searches via Google) I see they too have been used, but again appear on rel=nofollow pages and therefore yield no link building benefit.

Is article marketing of this nature worth the effort?

Submitting to directories has always been an important technique for off site SEO.  However, over the last 18 months several measures seem to have been introduced to prompt renewed awareness when submitting to directories for offsite SEO purposes.

Back in the good old days, as little as 12 months ago, it was possible to compete on mid- to low-high competitive keywords/keyphrases by simply performing a sustained directory submission run of about 1200 directories using your particular keyword/keyphrase as the link anchor.  Within 1-2 weeks you’d be starting to show in the SERPs for your keyword, and usually within a further 2 weeks would see progress in the SERPs.

However, things have changed. Google have wised up to the idea.  It seems the above method still does have an effect, however not the resounding impact it once had, and the effects are temporal. Unless the directory in question has some clout (that is, shows signs of being ‘valued’ by Google by frequently updated cache data etc.) these links soon disappear off the radar.

These days, directory submissions seem to be more about quality than quantity. Gaining a link from a dozen quality directories over the space of 4-6 months seems to be a better time investment than 1200 links from relatively nondescript directories.

If you do wish to perform the former method of bulk submissions, then submitting at a sustained rate over a prolonged period seems to offer up the best results; for example, 50 directories per week for a year rather than 1500 over a two week period.

Although they still have their place in the SEO arsenal, as the paradigm of SE algorithms has shifted from quantity to quality of backlinks, link directories are now less relevant method of increasing SERPs.

There are a good many sites on the internet that can be used to get free links.  However, one group that is often overlooked is the traffic evaluation type sites.

Recently, I made a small survey of blogs in a particular niche to see who is linking back to them.  Although all sites had an array of inbound links from a broad range of sites, there was a common strand among them all.  They were all listed on a series of “site/traffic/worth evaluation sites” – see the list below.

In order to get the links you simply visit the site and type in your domain.

Here is a list of such sites:

http://www.statbrain.com/
http://www.cubestat.com/
http://www.aboutus.org/
http://www.sitedossier.com/
http://www.thepagerank.net/
http://www.siteadvisor.com/analysis/
http://www.websiteoutlook.com/
http://hindi.avadhwebs.com/
http://www.similarsites.com/
http://www.hotaweb.com/
http://www.sitelogr.com/
http://www.talkreviews.com/

If you can add to this list, then please post below.