Don’t Make this Crucial Link Building Mistake
November 7th, 2009 | 32 comments
With all of the different Internet Marketing business models out there and all of the different variations therein, it’s nearly impossible for me to provide tips that are going to help EVERY person who reads my advice. What one person is doing will be at least slightly different than another and completely different than another and all three could very well be working on a profitable model.
There are many ways to make money online. That’s just how it is and once you get through the information overload and develop the knowledge that allows you to understand and separate each model, you start to realize that’s actually a good thing.
However, with all of that considered, there is ONE thing that almost all online business models require and that is TRAFFIC! And where do we find one of the biggest traffic sources online? Yep, search engines, primarily Google. And what is the primary thing that they look at in order rank a page? Yep, links.
Link Building is one of the first things many of us learn about when we start working online because we want as much of that free search engine traffic as possible.
So we find services that do it for us. We submit to link directories. We comment on blog posts. We submit to bookmarking sites etc. etc. and we start to see links coming in. But doing all of this over and over, day after day gets to be pretty time consuming and we get tired of it pretty quickly. So over time we reduce our link building to a few sources, then eventually down to only one or two.
THAT is the mistake! I just read a blog post on this exact topic from someone in this business who I have alot of respect for, Lynn Terry. The post is titled Effective Link Building: One Major Ingredient and I highly recommend you give it a good read. It explains why it’s so important to diversify your link building and offers a good example of how you could promote a good piece of content in order to set it up for success.
Of course this is one of the many things I go over in “The Ultimate Link Building Report” as well. So if you are one of the few who haven’t picked up a copy of that I urge you to do so now (special price through that link.)
img credit: Zach Klein
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7th November, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I’m starting to create more and more sites and just yesterday was starting to re-think my link building strategies…so thank you for this timely post!
7th November, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I am focusing on link building strategies right now and I have to admit that it is extremely time consuming. I hate this part of marketing; however I know that it has to be done. Do you know of any automated software that can help someone out how has several sites?
7th November, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Josh, this couldn’t have come at a better time. I just yesterday started rethinking my link building strategies. Your post just reinforces what I had already decided had to be done. Thanks.
7th November, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Nice Post.
I agree. The problem many bloggers face is taht once they are satisfied they just stop building links and stop prmoting their blog.
I think marketing is a continues process.
7th November, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Yup! this happened to me in the past. Now I am outsourcing, and I link building is done on autopilot for all my sites. It’s much better than doing it myself, and I never find the time to do this anyway.
Franck Silvestre
Internet Business Coach
7th November, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Josh,
I couldn’t agree with more. Link building and keeping high rankings takes a lot of work (consistently) and that is where most people hoping to make money online get lazy. If you want to traffic you need to build up your backlinks. No easy way to do it.
Mike
7th November, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Hi Josh,
Thanks for the reference, very well laid out explanation in Lynn’s article to keep from falling into Google’s blackhole.
Cheers
7th November, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Absolutely.
Frank just mentioned outsourcing as a backlink strategy, smart move on his part, a bit pricey as not many of us can afford about 350$ to pay to asian company to do the work. But i’m told for that amount they do an amazing job.
Good luck to all of us.
7th November, 2009 at 8:11 pm
At the beginning, such hard work is absolutely required. Later, when you create more desirable content for your readers who read it and comment on it and because of that subscribe to your feed, email, etc and link to your great content, will you need to do the same?
8th November, 2009 at 12:07 am
Thanks for the link & mention, Josh!
To Panic Attacks (above): You don’t want to use automated solutions or software for your link building. Better to do it yourself, or outsource the task to a trusted assistant.
8th November, 2009 at 12:25 am
Nice post Josh.
Link building is yet another simple task that has been made incredibly complicated and purposely shrouded in mystery by people who are out to make a buck from free information.
Yaro Starak mentioned something a while back which went something like “if it’s easy to do then it has no value because everybody is doing it. Increase the degree of effort involved and it becomes more valuable because few people will do it”.
This exactly applies to link building when you consider all the auto submitters, (easy to do), and Googles rapidly changing attitude toward social bookmarking and social media sites, (becoming less effective), because the links are created by those gaming the system.
In effect we are cheating, (hey, I do it myself!), but we have to understand what is valuable, what is going to last and what is really just a short term fix for a few bucks which may end up hurting our website rather than helping.
Your comment on link building being boring and we let it dwindle to just a few sources is spot on. I feel that effective link building is something that has to be outsourced to stop your mind exploding and should be regarded as an essential business expense.
Ade
8th November, 2009 at 12:46 am
Josh – Great advice to reference Lynn Terry’s excellent Click Newz blog that always has amazing content. Solid content on a critical aspect of creating success online.
Best wishes with your report… I will look into this as well.
Thank you!
James
8th November, 2009 at 6:21 am
Hello Josh,
I am happy to report to you that after just a couple of months following your suggestions on your 5 Dollar Formula, I’ve had quite a few blog pages and articles that have appeared on Page 1 of Google Search Engine, including one particular blog post that has been on number 7 out of 90million search results. I expect traffic to my relatively “newbie” site to increase with these little “victories”. Thanks.
Jaime
8th November, 2009 at 11:53 am
[...] Don´t Make this Crucial Link Building Mistake With all of the different Internet Marketing business models out there and all of the different variations therein, it’s nearly impossible for me to provide tips that are going to help EVERY person who reads my advice. … I am focusing on link building strategies right now and I have to admit that it is extremely time consuming. I hate this part of marketing; however I know that it has to be done. Do you know of any automated software that can help someone out how has … [...]
8th November, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Great advice as always from you Josh.
It’s important when link building to ensure consistency; if you’re submitting an article each day, make sure you continue to submit an article per day!
If you comment on a dozen blogs every day, make sure you today it every day!
Search engines may consider a sudden increase in inbound links to a domain as spam – so be careful!
Cheers Josh
All the best
Simon
9th November, 2009 at 1:08 am
I absolutely love the task of link building. My real problem is looking for different reputable ways to build links. Some methods just don’t make the cut with the almighty Google
9th November, 2009 at 3:22 am
I agree that most folks don’t diversify their link profile. I think the best way is to own a vast network of hundreds of sites and use them as your primary link structure. This way you are in total control.
Of course, there are a couple problems inherent with this strategy.
1) most people lack the drive to buy, build and sustain 10 websites, let alone 1,000.
2) even those with the ability lack the knowledge it takes to keep the network a secret and not leave easy to find strings.
JMHO
AL
9th November, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I’ve always believed that it’s better to build one good site rather than 10 ordinary ones. The extra effort could be spent on building links through various methods.
I personally build links for my site by article marketing and press release marketing combined with SEO. The results are satisfactory given the time and effort invested on them.
As it’s not easy, not everyone can do the same as it takes patience and hard work. Once you get a high ranking for your competitive keywords, you will strongly be established on that SERP and almost dominate your niche.
9th November, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Good points raised as usual, Josh. Getting back-links from disparate sources using a variety of anchor texts makes a page look natural and authoritative to Google, as does including the odd well chosen outgoing link, as with your link link to Lynn Terry.
9th November, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Great advice from you Josh. You have some very good point here, I personally build links for my site by article marketing and press release marketing combined with SEO. The results are satisfactory given the time and effort invested on them
10th November, 2009 at 9:16 pm
To stay focused I thinks its important to write down a specific link building strategy and then follow it religiously. My personal strategy is one day for commenting, one day for forums, one day for articles, etc.
11th November, 2009 at 3:42 pm
[...] back to your page than your competition. As Josh Spaulding points out, you should avoid the common link building mistake of getting links from just a few places. You want links from lots of sources. (For a great free [...]
13th November, 2009 at 10:55 pm
I can vouch for what your saying because I was making that mistake for 1.5 years. I recently started to diversify and Google’s been sending three times the traffic as before.
15th November, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I didnt know that. I thought that linking from the same sources would make it more natural and reliable. Thanks for the advice. that explains a lot of things now
18th November, 2009 at 3:19 am
I did those kind of things early on. I used to make mistakes that would make people laugh. Thanks for teaching people these useful link building tips.
18th November, 2009 at 12:03 pm
The trouble is, when it comes to link building, where does it stop?
I mean, if left unchecked, it can take the entire day up just with link building – there are other things such as creating great content that people should concentrate on.
My advice – outsource link building or schedule a certain amount of time to it per day.
19th November, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Great post! You hit the nail right on the head with this one. If there is one thing I learned with my last site, was that if I got tired of doing the backlinking, I could at least outsource it to dependable people who made sure their were several different ways in which they were being obtained. This made a BIG difference in my rankings.
21st November, 2009 at 3:05 am
I am still learning this link building stuff but fortunately I work in relatively new markets where there is not a ton of competition so it is the perfect place to test and work on my link building/SEO skills since I see almost immediate results when something actually works.
23rd December, 2009 at 12:03 am
I have done this myself, and it is easy to forget older sites, especially when you start to build more and more of them and have a lot in your arsenal. I use post-it notes and stick them on my computer monitor to remember.
It’s also bad when you have huge empty gaps ion link building and then suddenly have a surge, looks suspicious to the SE’s.
5th January, 2010 at 12:08 pm
A common mistake that bloggers and webmasters make when promoting their content is to stick to one type of link-building only. Some do mainly article marketing, others prefer social bookmarking, some blog commenting.
18th February, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Having read this piece and another piece @ Blogger Illustrated, I’ve decide to start link building again but with a different strategy that will hopefully see me increasing my page rank and search engine traffic fast!
29th June, 2010 at 9:41 pm
I can vouch for what your saying because I was making that mistake for 1.5 years. I recently started to diversify and Google’s been sending three times the traffic as before.