Link Building
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on February 18, 2010
I just noticed ActiveRain.com added the nofollow attribute to outbound links on free profiles. I’m not really sure when this happened, but I estimate it was within the last month or so.
Well that’s another great “free” link-building resource down the drain. For $19.99/mo you can pay for dofollow links by signing up for their Outside Blog subscription. That membership will allow you to show your ActiveRain blog posts publicly as well as dofollowing your outbound links.
When social networking communities build a subscription based service with the only real benefit being dofollow links, should they be penalized for selling links?
Should they be encouraged to dofollow or nofollow across the board?
I don’t know what the right answer is.
What do you think?
Side note: Usually when a new social networking community launches without implementing nofollow on free profiles, they are only doing it in order to draw in the herds of members who understand what a dofollow link means. Then, once they have enough members to show the venture capitalists or whomever, they quickly add nofollow and force you to pay if you want to continue receiving link-juice from them. Unless you have unlimited funding and marketing dollars, you kinda have to dofollow links in the beginning..
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on January 21, 2010
Bye, Bye, backpage.com. I just noticed backpage has recently implemented rel=”nofollow” on all outbound ad links. I’m not sure when this went into place, but I couldn’t find any other resources acknowledging it yet.
While I do believe this will help the quality of their free classifieds, I don’t know of anyone other than myself that has actually ever used their website to buy something or find a service provider. Unfortunately, the majority of value was in their ad links. With that said, it is quite possible Google manually stopped allowing them to pass outbound link-juice a long time ago anyway. Tough to tell though, any link-juice that might have been passed before was minimal already.
You have to wonder if they were given the infamous Google ultimatum.
Now that backpage no longer helps with link-building for SEO, I’ll be interested to see what happens with their traffic over the next few months.
Does anyone know on what day they actually implemented the nofollow tag on user-generated outbound links?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on January 5, 2010
I just received an email because of my partnership with the Best of the Web directory, which notified me of their a New Year promotion. If you enter promo code: “NEWYR” during the sign up process at BOTW you will instantly save 20% on all Best of the Web products and services. This promo code may be used multiple times for multiple products and services through January 31st. If you haven’t already submitted to BOTW.org directory, you may want to take advantage of this offer. Remember, Best of the Web is on my list of quality web directories. Don’t forget your code: “NEWYR”!
Also, if you sign up for their affiliate account you can get an additional 25% off submissions, as well as any submission through your affiliate links. That’s what I did.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on December 17, 2009
HotFrog.com is a free US business directory. This is an easy way to get a free one-way link back to your website, which helps with SEO. You just need to create a business profile and add your link.
You can get more than one link by creating news articles under your business profile too. The more information you add to your profile the higher up in each category your business will show. You can read their optimization tips here.
Even though I consider this a lower quality directory, I do believe there is some link-building benefit to adding your website there. This is because whenever I add a businesses website, the newly created HotFrog business profile is usually indexed and ranking in Google search within a couple of hours to a couple of days.
However, If you don’t take the time to submit a thorough, well-optimized listing, then I don’t recommend submitting at all. You’ll just be wasting your time.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on December 3, 2009
Many people ask me whether submitting their site to the Best Of The Web (BOTW.org) Internet directory is worth the money. Well that answer depends on a number of factors. However, if you want to know whether getting listed there has a positive impact on your search engine rankings, then yes, from my experience it does seem to positively affect a website’s search engine rankings.
BOTW is one of the Internet’s oldest and most respected web directories. It is a human-edited directory which Google appears to recognize as a source for helping identify good websites. Most sub-directories show PageRank in the Google toolbar, their links are followed, and they use realistic anchor text rules.
It is unlikely you will get very many visitors from this directory, or any other directory for that matter. So if that is your only goal, then paying to have your website listed there may not be as worthwhile. However it is one Internet’s best general directories.
How much will getting a BOTW.org listing help my search engine ranking? Well that depends on several factors. If you are a small website with minimal competitors currently sitting on page 6 of Google for your primary search terms, then getting listed here could potentially take you up a few pages in the search engine results.
However, if you are in a very competitive industry trying to move up from position 5 on the first page of Google, then getting listed here alone will likely have little affect. But, I’d still consider it still depending on your overall SEO and link-building strategy.
If you plan on submitting any listings to BOTW, then you might want to sign up for their affiliate program so you can get a 25% recurring commission for any listing you submit or listings submitted through your links. That’s what I have done. This is especially helpful since they just increased their annual pricing by $50; now $149.95/yr.
You can submit your blog to their blog directory for $75/yr. Up until recently they allowed you to do so for free too, and you only paid for an expedited, guaranteed review. I submitted this blog awhile back, but never expected they would list it without paying, but I thought it was worth a try anyway.
They also now have a free local directory, but you’ll have to pay $29.95/mo if you want your listing to include a link back to your website.
Lastly, if you want to test them out, currently you can sponsor a relevant category for free for 60 days. It is simple to sign up, so if you’re thinking about paying for a listing, maybe you’ll want to first give it a try.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on November 23, 2009
As you probably know by now, there are a few directories I recommend you get your business and/or website listed in.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could submit multiple websites to them without feeling like a spammer?
Well three of the directories I recommend most frequently allow you to do just that by becoming a volunteer directory editor. Those three are JoeAnt, BOTW, and DMOZ.
Becoming an editor doesn’t necessarily give you a free pass on submitting crappy websites, however it does get you a little more involved in the approval process and has other benefits like understanding what goes on behind the scenes, networking, and possibly getting multiple websites listed in JoeAnt for free.
Both BOTW.org and DMOZ.org already allow for free submissions without having to become an editor; however, BOTW only allows free “blog” submissions.
Beyond that there isn’t any real financial benefit to becoming an editor, however the insights learned by becoming one can go a long way. Especially because these three directories are 3 of only a very few general directories Google hasn’t come down with the hammer on. Volunteer for your favorite category, and you likely be introduced to quite a few great websites you hadn’t known prior to.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on November 10, 2009
Regardless of what some high-profile SEO bloggers might say regarding manual link-building and paid links, I still think they have their place. It is careless to inculcate a one-size fits all when it comes to link-building.
While manual link-building is becoming less and less relevant, it is still one of the the most cost-effective ways for small, location specific businesses to rank well in the search engines. And I think that is exactly the way it should always be.
It is ridiculous to force small-town shops, dentists, chiropractors and similar industries to spend months if not years publishing articles and social networking until they finally get some of their work redistributed and linked to. Great content alone rarely equals links; it’s years of online networking and reputation building or an expensive marketing campaign that drives “natural” links. Regardless of what some of some these bloggers might say. All these bloggers have to do is sneeze and they get linked to and retweeted. They have simply forgotten what life is like for the majority of small business owners. Especially ones who don’t have a need to do actual business over the Internet. But just because they might not do business over the Internet, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a need to be found there. Google is today’s Yellow pages.
Unlike high-profile SEO bloggers, most small-businesses don’t have thousands or even a just few online networking buddies, so getting articles and blog posts redistributed and linked to isn’t nearly as easy as 1 2 3.
My advice is this: If you’re a small business, or doing SEO for a very small-business, it is okay to find some local directories and manually request some links. Also, there are a few general, paid directories like Yahoo!, BOTW, and Business.com, which Google appears to treat as authorities. If you’re competition is minimal, having a well-optimized website and a handful of high-quality manual links could, and IMO should, earn you a spot on the first page of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
The more Google discriminates against manual links, the more expensive it will get for small businesses to get found on the Internet. And quite honestly, the more necessary they will be making paid links….one way or another, almost all links are paid links.
BTW: Business.com and BOTW.org are affiliate links. However, my valuation of their worthiness is in no way influenced by that.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on November 6, 2009
While free directory listings typically don’t carry much link value, many of them do offer ways for you to optimize your ranking within them. Higher rankings usually means more visitors and less hops from the home page; theoretically equaling more link-juice, 99% of the time.
Unfortunately, most link-building companies still tout quantity of links being more important than quality of link source i.e., linking page. In my opinion, this is because it is a lot easier to convince a client that you have been hard at work building links for them when you can show hundreds of low-quality links attained, rather than just 5 high-quality ones. I mean lets face it, the client usually can’t tell the difference. To them 500 looks better than 5. Link profiles are instantaneous, and provide instant gratification; whereas ranking increases and proof of ROI take time.
Many of the websites I have worked on link-building for have thousands of less links than their competitors, and yet still rank higher.
So when you’re building links be sure to always make the most out of the links you acquire, free or not. Be sure to check for ways to optimize your rankings and increase your position on the website’s categories and lists. When your listing shows up on the first page of category “SEO” on site X for example, the weight of that link pointing back to your website will likely be a lot greater than showing up on page 54 of site X for “SEO”.
Not only for link-building, but improving your listing also helps maintain higher quality web directories.
HotFrog.com and AboutUs.org are two example web directories worth optimizing in.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on October 15, 2009
I always take notice of the individuals who participate on this blog by leaving comments to my posts (that is why you should leave comments on all the blogs you read). And one thing I noticed was many of your business websites don’t have your links followed on AboutUs.org. That is having them remove rel=”nofollow” on the links from aboutus.org to your website.
So I thought I’d let you know of a great way to get free, anchor-text friendly links from a great resource.
If you don’t already have your website listed on AboutUs then DO IT NOW. But also don’t just add your website, do it thoroughly. Once you have your listing complete and looking good, then you can ask them to remove rel=”nofollow”. Check out this discussion on how to get your links profollowed on AboutUs.
What I usually do is create a complete business listing there, then go to their chat room and ask someone to profollow my listing. They usually reply fairly quickly, but if not you can send them an email too.
Be sure to do a good job with your business listing before making the request. This is a great free resource for small businesses to build quality links and get some additional web presence. Not only that, the better you do with your listing the higher up you will show in their category lists. For example, my business website and my SEO blog come up #2 and #3 respectively for SEO. http://www.aboutus.org/list/seo. I’ll go into optimizing your aboutus.org listing in another post.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on October 8, 2009
If you haven’t heard, there is a lot of concern on the Internet today regarding paid links. And that’s a whole other blog post altogether. In the meantime, Aaron Wall does a great job explaining the good, the bad, & the ugly.
Just be sure to use common sense when submitting your website to directories; not all directories seem to be on Google’s “naughty” list. In fact, there are a few directories which appear to be well respected by Google – at least for the moment anyway.
Here are five general web directories to consider for link-building:
The Open Directory Project, or ODP, is one of Internet’s largest, free, human-edited web directories. It can take days to several weeks to be listed here, and don’t count on your website getting listed. Each category has it’s own volunteer editor; some editors do a good job, while others don’t seem to follow the guidelines very ethically. I’ve seen great websites get ignored, while some of the worst websites get listed in just a few days. Regardless, if you can score a listing here it will likely help your website’s search rankings.
The Best of the Web Directory, or BOTW, is one of the Internet’s oldest web directories. They offer a $299 lifetime listing or a $99/yr (nonrefundable) listing. If you sign up for a reseller account you can get 25% off your own listings as well as a 25% recurring commission for the life of any listings purchased through your affiliate links.
This is a good place to get a reasonably priced permanent listing which Google seems to “approve” of. Don’t count on getting good anchor text though. Just like DMOZ, these editors are volunteers, so editors put whatever makes the most sense to them, even if it isn’t complete or right. Because of that, their fee makes some sense here.
This business directory is also $299/yr. They also offer decent PPC and banner advertising.
For most website the standard Yahoo! Directory Submit service costs $299 (nonrefundable) for each listing submitted. They will approve or deny you website within 7 business days. The $299 fee is recurring for each subsequent year. However I have seen many listings stay in the directory long after they were canceled.
I know, If you add up these numbers you can quickly pay over a thousand bucks. I’m not necessarily suggesting you submit to all of these directories. What I am saying is they are worth considering for any link-building campaign. Whether you submit to one or all five of them should depend on your budget, your industry, and how well your link-building is going overall. I recommend using them in this order:
1)DMOZ – Because it’s free of course!
2)BOTW – Either $99/yr, or $299 lifetime
3)JoeAnt – $39 lifetime
4)Business.com – $299/yr
5)Yahoo! Directory – $299/yr
Don’t expect to receive much direct traffic from these or any other directories for that matter. However, these particular ones appear to be on Google’s “approved” list, and Google follows their links aggressively. That alone makes makes them worth considering when doing your search marketing.
DISCLAIMER 
There is always risk when buying links, so be sure you understand Google’s guidelines regarding paid links.
While Google certainly frowns upon paid links, for larger companies you can bet 99% of your top competitors are in at least one if not several of the above directories.
