When it comes to link building, there are multiple ways to do it, and I do them all. Some I still do because they work, and others I gave up on because I didn't see any results. Let me tell you a little about what is working right now. I like to call it distributed link building.
Consider your money site, the site you want to rank #1, how difficult is it to get relevant links to that site? For me, it's almost always very difficult because my sites are in small competitive niches. That means link buying is hard to do because I have 11 major competitors and they're not going to sell me links. Most other websites listed in the top 100 results are corporate comparison sites, wikipedia listings, and a lot of other junk not worth the money. So I'm left with a few options, here is where the distributed link building comes in.
Distributed link building is simply a process to gain links from across a wide variety of sites, but not directly linked to your money site. These links that you're building should not go directly to your money site, firstly because they're not relevant, and secondly they aren't good links, they're just any links you can find. So where do the links point? To your "Level 1" sites.
Level 1 Sites
Imagine a pyramid with your money site at the very top. Level 1 sites are sites and properties that you own or control.
Level 1 sites only link directly to your money site and authority sites (Wikipedia, Government sites, About.com, CNN, MSN, etc). Level one sites don't have ads and don't sell products, they only pass link power to your money site. Level 1 sites should be related by a single keyword, but not competitors.
If you're money site is about Madera Website Design then your level one sites will be related, but not competitors. Your Level 1 sites would be "Madera Interior Designs", "Free Madera Websites", "Website Design Tips", etc. You want to keep the keywords related so when you link to your money site, you're linking from related sites.
Depending on the size of your niche, and the profitability of the keywords you're targeting, these sites can be your own domains, HubPages, free blog hosts, WPMU sites, etc. If you can afford it and the keywords are very profitable, build out 5 or 10 of your own sites that link to your money site.
Level 1 sites need some decent links. I like to start with a few good directories like Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ (might never get approved, but it's worth a few minutes of hassle) and Ezilon Regional Web Directory (Especially good for local sites).
Level 2 Sites
Level 2 sites take on the role of Best Supporting Actor in your production. I generally have 50-200 of these sites for each of my Level 1 sites. It sounds like a lot, and if you're doing it manually, it will take you years. I suggest automating (not outsourcing) as much of this process as you can afford.
These Level 2 sites link up to Level 1 sites and also link to each other. Level 2 sites don't ever link to the money site, they're only supporting Level 1. These sites aren't designed to ever get traffic, rank for anything or make any money so don't waste time with design, layout, content, monetization, etc.
Level 3 Sites
If you don't have the means to automate and aren't in an ultra-competitive niche, you can stop at Level 2. I generally stop with Level 3 sites. These sites are just junk sites that have a single page of content and a link to a Level 2 site. You can rip article directories for the content, spin it and use it. It doesn't matter if the content makes any sense, nobody but search engine spiders will ever see it.
Instead of building Level 3 sites, you can substitute with automated link building. Use your imagination and think about ways to get a lot of useless links. You want Level 3 sites to get indexed, once they're indexed, that's good enough.
Tips and Future Ideas
1. After a first round of building Level 1-3 sites, you can further increase linking power by creating additional Level 1 sites. That seems to be the best way to add additional distributed linking power.
2. Automation is absolutely key. Depending on your level of experience, willingness to spend money, knowledge of a programming language and resourcefulness, there are a lot of ways you can automate everything in Level 2 and 3.
3. Junk links to Level 2 and Level 3 sites can be literally anything. No Follow, Referral links, bookmarks, comments, bulk purchased links, literally anything, you want a spider to stumble across your site.
If you have any questions, please post a comment and I'll do my best to answer it!
Brandon Hopkins can be found talking link building on Twitter and loves talking links and automation.
Very nice but I have few questions:
1) The chances your link farm gets busted are quite high. This worked before but now… Different C class IPs, different whois, different DNS, different link paterns – nearly impossible to maintain for 200 sites. I don’t really believe you do this with your sites.
2) Your junk links would cause nice penalties of your level 2 and level 3 sites that you can them pass on to your level 1 site also. Again I cannot believe you actually practice this.
I look on this more like a post what’s possible and not like what’s really working.
.-= Martokus recently posted: martokus: That would be my next ringtone http://bit.ly/4LQRfT 😀 =-.
Well Brandon,
Martokus already gave a smart comment.
I can’t believe that this semi black hat strategies are still working today. I don’t think this practice add much to your credibility and authority. I advice you to read the link development topics and comments on the Webmasterworld site for more high quality ideas and creativity.
Vic
I’d have to agree with Martokus and Vic. I understand the point of having level 1 and level 2 sites for a good link distribution. However, I would not recommend the usage of automated processes to gather links on a lot of link farms. If Google finds out (and they will!) it will only harm your rankings more than the potential benefit you can get out of it. By doing this manual (and in some countries this is easier than in others) you prevent yourself from getting blacklisted and thereby decreasing your positioning in Google.
If you’re not sure how to do this, google for natural linkbuilding blogs. They will tell you the trick, and maybe I will write a blog about it soon if you like. Furthermore, I agree with the link distribution, only not on having the process automated.
Stijn