How Not To Build Links – From Eric Ward On Search Engine Land
November 5th, 2007 by hbond{{chris}} Eric Ward is by far one of the greatest link builders on the Internet today, and he brings to us some fantastic tips on how not to build links.
Here are the five ways link builders can hurt themselves. For the complete background on each point, check out the story on Search Engine Land.
- Being a link seeking snob – get links from sites with great content. Don’t worry about how nice the site looks, or the PR.
- Over relying on social media.
- Outsourcing to idiots.
- Obsessively focusing on PageRank.
- Seeking only links you can control
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I agree with much of this post. Of course you still have the problem that needs to be addressed of how to get back links in the first place. One trick that helps me on some of my sites is to write politically incorrect articles, or articles that have a new idea that has not been previously thought of. This helps me to get people to link back to me. Both the people who agree and disagree with me will often give me back links.
Good point – writing something controversial will certainly draw some attention. John C. Dvorak is an expert at baiting the Apple Fan Boy crowd!
Controversy definitely draws attention. The first site to “say” digital was better than film on the internet went from being mildly popular to famous overnight. A lot of people will think you’re an idiot if you take that route, though … that’s the nature of controversy.
Link “baiting” is most definitely better than outsourcing to idiots ( #3 above ). A person should never outsource link building, because no one else will care about your site like you do. But then you can write pages that are interesting and let people naturally link to them … that’s not exactly the same as outsourcing, but you’ll get better results.
You’re absolutely right! I second your commments on outsourcing link development. It can be done, but boy it sure helps if you doing it yourself!
Very true. I have one site that is PR3 and it provides around 10 visitors per day. SEO is really not about page rank.