What are your top link building Strategy in 2018?

[baldwinjackson]

Hello folks as PBN and web 2.0 are getting penalized from Google I was wondering that how other people in community building links for newly created website. I haven't test this out but I have read it several time that re purpose your content as much as possible.

 

[ORLOVA]

From last few years ( may be be 2 or 3 years ), don,t even think link building has a value, better to be focus on content of the website & rest do the on page. As I think website would not be for promotion, it,s all about only for providing right information to the users.

 

[paul1129]

paul1129

These strategies will get you to nothing.

 

[baldwinjackson]

baldwinjackson

Well then what you recommend should I adopt ? As far as SEO experts are everyone is looking forward towards optimization for AI bots with some real tactics.

 

[itarachiu]

Tools, bots will get you nowhere, I always say the same make great content, if you have great content people will love it and will share with others and this is how you get backlinks, it's actually what google wants from you as a webmaster, you can promote your site by yourself of course posting some links on social media, reddit, google plus and so on but nothing more... stop looking for sites or list where you can drop your link because is a waste of time. You can start targeting long tail keywords for start because in some cases they get higher ranks without any backlink if you have good content! Google is a multi billionaire company which has AI bots programmed by maybe the most intelligent people on earth and they can detect if your content has value or not SO again... content! and long tail keywords!

 

[paul1129]

paul1129

Customized PBN's don't get penalized by google unless you tell everybody that you are doing it.

 

[ORLOVA]

ORLOVA

But what makes a site to be ranked in top, as I saw many website which don,t have any single back link still they rank higher, it,s simply means they have good content and also seo friendly web design.

 

[paul1129]

paul1129

If you just focus on content then it will take years to get your site ranked.

 

[SEOPub]

Hello folks as PBN and web 2.0 are getting penalized from Google I was wondering that how other people in community building links for newly created website. I haven't test this out but I have read it several time that re purpose your content as much as possible.

Good networks are not being penalized by Google. Only the awful networks are.

Beg, buy, build. Those are the ways to get links. You either beg for them. You buy them. Or you build them on relevant sites or build your own relevant sites to link off of.

Nothing changed in 2018.

From last few years ( may be be 2 or 3 years ), don,t even think link building has a value, better to be focus on content of the website & rest do the on page. As I think website would not be for promotion, it,s all about only for providing right information to the users.

That is just flat out wrong. Links are the #1 ranking factor by a wide margin. It's not even close. You can have the best content in the world, but without links, it is not going to rank for anything even remotely competitive. And people are not going to magically link to you just because you have good content. Unless you have a great social media campaign or are paying for ads, nobody will even know you exist.

 

[itarachiu]

Competitive keywords I'm agree you can't rank them even with the best content in the world but long tail keywords with low competition yes, people tend to target already established old domains which have great position and because of that they already have a lot of backlinks and believe it or not most of them are made in a natural way and then people are like how I'm gonna beat that... well you can't unless you have like 100 private blog network with 50 articles on each one but let's stop dreaming now long tail keywords with great content you always get results and what people also do not understand is being patient is also important, you can just build a website and expect great positions for 100 keywords just like that.

 

[Knightmedia]

Knightmedia

Pub is right, although there are many ways to build a link here and there on sites. For example some very highly ranked big name sites will allow a link in a profile you created that happens to be do-follow. But also no follow links are starting to count more now too. Atleast from what I read. But don't count out content. Google is making content increasingly important.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

No. Nofollow links do not count.

 

[daikaads]

daikaads

I agree with you but without quality content the link building what we do won't gain any ranking.

 

[Nemanja]

Nemanja

I read a post of @SEOPub on the forum and he ever said, it is possible to rank a page with quality backlinks only without needing content for it, even it can be a blank page.

 

[daikaads]

daikaads

Come on! It's only possible if your page has very obscure and non-competitive word. After all, It's all about the content that would be read by your website visitors.

 

[fastreplies]

fastreplies

Then why G. wants us to stay away from backlinks, make them no-follow,
in some cases penalize sites or simply ignores backlinks all together?

And how come no backlinks, keywords stuffed sites are floating in top 50
in G., whereas sites with thousands legitimate links nowhere to be found?



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[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Show me an example of a site with no backlinks that is ranking highly for a keyword that is the least bit competitive and show me a site with tons of great links that is not ranking.

 

[fastreplies]

fastreplies

"No backlinks" is figure of speech, but sites that shouldn't be there
with very little backlinks in a first place compare to topical sites is
became new norm and specially in over optimized Google.



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[SEOPub]

SEOPub

"No backlinks" is not a figure of speech. If it is, it is one you just made up.

It's not about the number of links. It never has been. It is about the quality and relevance of the links.

I don't see any problem with the "web directories" SERP. I also don't see any reason that your directory should be there over any of the other listings.

 

[fastreplies]

fastreplies

Are you trolling me?

:rolleyes2:

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[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Not at all. I like your directory. I've used your directory (I think).

But honestly, I don't see any reason it should be ranking highly for that term over the pages I'm seeing in the top 20 or so.

 

[fastreplies]

fastreplies

How about it has 108.000 backlinks?




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[SEOPub]

SEOPub

I don't see anywhere near that many links, but it doesn't really matter. Again, like I said before, it has never been about the number of links a page has.

I'm not going to go through all the links, but it is pretty easy to see that a lot of them are very weak and/or very low quality.

 

[SEOPub]

I agree with you but without quality content the link building what we do won't gain any ranking.

That is completely wrong. You can rank terrible content with good links.

Come on! It's only possible if your page has very obscure and non-competitive word. After all, It's all about the content that would be read by your website visitors.

Nope. And the example I used was someone ranked a blank page for "make money online" which is highly competitive.

 

[baldwinjackson]

Honestly mate what I have observed in my niche that there are big brands which write quality content of around 2000 words with properly optimization and rank in Zero snippet position without getting a lot of links.

The core reason why I ask this question was just to see what other SEO community members are doing to gain results.

No doubt there isn't any fix pattern of getting better ranking but links still matter especially if you are new brand or competing in competitive niche.

Anyways thanks a lot.

How many of you are still using social book marketing? Forum commenting ? Blog commenting and similar tactics in their link building strategy?

 

[Knightmedia]

Good networks are not being penalized by Google. Only the awful networks are.

Beg, buy, build. Those are the ways to get links. You either beg for them. You buy them. Or you build them on relevant sites or build your own relevant sites to link off of.

Nothing changed in 2018.



That is just flat out wrong. Links are the #1 ranking factor by a wide margin. It's not even close. You can have the best content in the world, but without links, it is not going to rank for anything even remotely competitive. And people are not going to magically link to you just because you have good content. Unless you have a great social media campaign or are paying for ads, nobody will even know you exist.

You have no idea what your talking about... Links are NOT the #1 factor by miles, neither is content. Google even stated links are not the #1 factor. I could give your page 100,000 good links all from referring domains, it would put you in number 1 spot for keywords, BUT if you searchers start selecting other results than your page, and pages below you are getting higher CTR than you are, they WILL outrank you. Google is a business of customer service, so the results searchers are selecting most is the result google is gonna serve the most, not the sight linked too the most... Don't Believe me? go look at really high end search results with tons and tons of traffic and Notice articles with WAY less backlinks and brand trust outranking SUPER highly Linked SUPER brands, how? the article climbed by being click throughed to the most and maintaining low bounce rates.

If you just focus on content then it will take years to get your site ranked.

it takes you years... cause your content isn't commanding high click through, meaning your not serving the result people are looking for. When you serve content that people click through to on a search term, meaning you helped google provide their service with satisfaction, your ranking will go up.

 

[paul1129]

paul1129

But first you have to be on the top of google to get the CTR's.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Links are the #1 ranking factor by a longshot and any decent SEO will tell you that. In fact, Google has stated that the top 2 ranking factors are links and content. All you have to do is a little testing and a little snooping around in the SERPs and you can see that links are far more important than content.

Three things that you are missing in your rant full of BS. First, it's not about the number of links. It is about the quality of links. So yes, you will often see a page with less links outranking a page with more links. You are also missing the strength of internal links. They can help boost a page a great deal, and especially on a site that has a lot of authority to throw around. No link checker gives you any indication of the internal links that are pointing to a page.

Lastly, bounce rate is NOT a ranking factor. Why? Two reasons. First, Google has no clue what the bounce rate is on most pages on the internet. Not everyone is using Google Analytics. In fact, the majority of webpages on the internet are not using Google Analytics. Second, a bounce is not always a bad thing. I don't know why people keep dishing out this crap that a high bounce rate is bad.

If I have a local dentist office, someone searches for a dentist in their area, they land on my site, and they pick up the phone to schedule an appointment but never visit another webpage on my site, that is a bounce, but how is that bad? That was a great visit and they did exactly what I wanted them to do.

You know who probably has a really high bounce rate on most pages on their site? Wikipedia. People find exactly what they are looking for, but generally don't browse around on other pages. Why would Google punish that?

Bounce rate is useful for webmasters only because it may indicate there is a problem with a page, multiple pages, or a particular source of traffic. It is not useful data for search engines, nor is it something that would make sense to include in the ranking algorithm.

As for your CTR comment, there is no credible evidence that CTR impacts rankings. None. There is a lot of speculation, and logically it might make a lot of sense for it to be a small factor. However, it is impossible to test it. In order to test it, you would have to control all 10 results on page one of a SERP so that you would know what the CTR is of each page relevant to one another. That is impossible.

Also, if CTR is a ranking factor, what is a good CTR for a page ranking at #87?

Now pogo-ing might be a factor, and that would make a lot more sense than CTR. Pogo-ing of course is when someone selects a search result, hits the back button in their browser, and then selects another result. That COULD be a sign that they did not find what they were looking for. However, even that could be misleading. If I am shopping for a specific used car, I might go through 4-5 websites looking at prices. Does that mean the first one I clicked on should rank lower? Of course not.

 

[baldwinjackson]

baldwinjackson

Well mate I totally agree with you because so many SEOs consider bounce rate as an negative factor but in real its actually for website owner to see if there are any technical flaws or not..


The actual intent for this threads was just pull some new methods other experts are using like Scholarship approach was one of the most effective. Similarly what else other are using.

 

[theprb]

Show me an example of a site with no backlinks that is ranking highly for a keyword that is the least bit competitive and show me a site with tons of great links that is not ranking.

Search for "rakeback". It is a poker term, basically a rebate service/system for poker players.

For many years (half a decade, perhaps more) result number 1 was rakeback dot com, as you might expect. This website actually provides the service to tens of thousands of players.

Result 2 however was curiously buyinpoker dot com. The second site outranked, at one point in time, literally hundreds of "rakeback websites" who wanted that slot. No one ever managed to wrestle it away from them. This site does not offer the rakeback service. It has one small page that describes what rakeback is.

Fast forward to the present. Some time in the last couple months, buyinpoker site outranks the EMD result holding the number 1 spot. Here is ahrefs:



As you can see, the top result has very little of anything going for it. No backlinks. Low page authority. Not that much DA either. Yet there it sits in position number 1!

Incidentally, I would love to hold the top ranking for this for a website I help manage. Yet I have never been able to figure out the secret sauce to get the top rankings for this keyword. And for the life of me, I can not figure out why buyinpoker dot com ranked number 2 for all those years, much less has overtaken the top spot.

As for your CTR comment, there is no credible evidence that CTR impacts rankings. None. There is a lot of speculation, and logically it might make a lot of sense for it to be a small factor. However, it is impossible to test it. In order to test it, you would have to control all 10 results on page one of a SERP so that you would know what the CTR is of each page relevant to one another. That is impossible.

CTR does affect some terms. I have seen it with my own eyes. Someone did a live Twitter experiment a year or two ago and proved it by getting a large number of random people to click on a particular result for a particular search phrase in real time. Sure enough, it rose up the rankings. Now, it doesn't stick there when CTR comes down. And bot traffic doesn't work either, but there definitely is evidence that CTR affects some terms. Particularly long-tails I believe.

https://twitter.com/randfish/status...does-organic-ctr-impact-seo-rankings-new-data

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

I'm glad you posted a real example to discuss.

Buyinpoker has a lot more going for it then you are seeing there. They are using some private networks. Well, more accurately they look more like public networks.

The link networks are probably blocking all the common link checkers like Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, etc.

Do a search for "buyinpoker" (with the quotes) and go towards the end of the results after all the results from the buyinpoker.com site itself. You will start to see a lot of their links.

This only picks up the links where they used "buyinpoker" in the anchor text. Any links where they used other anchors would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I think they might also be using something like SAPE. Some of the links look like they were sites that were hacked, but have been fixed and the link is no longer there.

Also remember a chart like you are showing there is only showing links to that particular page. They could have a bunch of links pointing at other pages and using internal links to help rank that page. I didn't look any closer, so that may not be the case.

I like the example. I have done some work in the gambling industry. That's one of those terms that most people wouldn't know to go after. Mostly only industry insiders would know. It is probably highly profitable though.

 

[theprb]

Do a search for "buyinpoker" (with the quotes) and go towards the end of the results after all the results from the buyinpoker.com site itself. You will start to see a lot of their links.

This only picks up the links where they used "buyinpoker" in the anchor text. Any links where they used other anchors would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I think they might also be using something like SAPE. Some of the links look like they were sites that were hacked, but have been fixed and the link is no longer there.

Using your search (why didn't I think of that) method I found tons of comment spam dating back to 2008, 2009 era as well as the types of hacked looking links you noted.

So I guess even old blackhat tactics still hold weight. I wonder is there some way to get Google to note all these shitty links and cut the legs out from under this ridiculous buyinpoker website?

Also remember a chart like you are showing there is only showing links to that particular page. They could have a bunch of links pointing at other pages and using internal links to help rank that page. I didn't look any closer, so that may not be the case.

To be clear, you mean like getting a link from CNN to a news story on your own website, and then basically killing off all other internal links on said page and just having one or two money page links?

Or do you mean getting a link from CCN to a news story on your website, then 301'ing that page to a money page?

Or are you alluding to something else entirely?

I like the example. I have done some work in the gambling industry. That's one of those terms that most people wouldn't know to go after. Mostly only industry insiders would know. It is probably highly profitable though.

The term was enormously profitable 10 years ago. 5 years ago still good. 2 years ago, starting to lose its luster. Now, definitely still a KW to go after if this is one's niche, but it is down to hundreds of impressions per month as opposed to the tens of thousands it was a decade ago.

 

[SEOPub]

Using your search (why didn't I think of that) method I found tons of comment spam dating back to 2008, 2009 era as well as the types of hacked looking links you noted.

So I guess even old blackhat tactics still hold weight. I wonder is there some way to get Google to note all these shitty links and cut the legs out from under this ridiculous buyinpoker website?

Well, one kind of douchy way to do it for sites like that is to out the site in public in a major way that almost embarassing Google into acting. For example, I have seen people I know play dumb and start a thread on Google's Webmaster Forums saying something along the lines of "I thought these spammy type of links were not supposed to work anymore, but look at this..." In the past I have seen other tweet the same kind of thing out there to Google staffers or other big names in the SEO industry.

If it gets enough attention, Google almost has to take action or else they look silly.

I'm not condoning the method because I think it is a little underhanded, but it has been done.

Google also has a URL to report spammy sites too, but I'm sure they get tons of those. Who knows how many they actually act on.

To be clear, you mean like getting a link from CNN to a news story on your own website, and then basically killing off all other internal links on said page and just having one or two money page links?

Or do you mean getting a link from CCN to a news story on your website, then 301'ing that page to a money page?

Or are you alluding to something else entirely?

I mean for example there might be tons of links pointing at their home page and then they have a link directly from the home page to that inner page. Or there might be lots of links to other pages of their site that they then stick a link to that internal page from.

For example, buyinpoker.com/someotherpage might have a ton of links pointing at it from other sites. Then in the content, there is a link from buyingpoker.com/someotherpage to the page you are talking about that is ranking.

The term was enormously profitable 10 years ago. 5 years ago still good. 2 years ago, starting to lose its luster. Now, definitely still a KW to go after if this is one's niche, but it is down to hundreds of impressions per month as opposed to the tens of thousands it was a decade ago.

Each industry has some terms like that. For example, I know a few in the life insurance industry that only get searched maybe 100-500 times per month nationally and most people would probably overlook them, but the top ranking sites are pulling in $3000-10,000 per month from those keywords.

 

[fastreplies]

I don't see anywhere near that many links, but it doesn't really matter.

Sure, you can't believe your lying eyes.

Again, like I said before, it has never been about the number of links a page has.

Then way in every post you are pitching backlinks?

I'm not going to go through all the links, but it is pretty easy to see that a lot of them are very weak and/or very low quality.

Again, there is nothing in your posts telling people to get high quality links
and there is nothing else will do... get backlinks, backlinks what you need etc.

And let say you're right, I'm sure if you look, you'll find 108 from 108.000
you'll consider quality links but... can you show me a dozen of sites in top 20
with 10 quality backlinks, never mind 108.000 and tell us what they have to do with directories.



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[SEOPub]

Sure, you can't believe your lying eyes.

Then way in every post you are pitching backlinks?

Again, there is nothing in your posts telling people to get high quality links
and there is nothing else will do... get backlinks, backlinks what you need etc.

You're right. I didn't clarify in the first few posts that link quality is what matters. I also did not say that the number of links is what is important either though.

I also said they are the #1 ranking factor. I did not say they are the only ranking factor. Look at your example. If you really want to dig into it, look at the pages ranking on the first page. They aren't web directories at all. I don't see a single directory on page one. Even Best of the Web, which is widely considered one of the best directories on the internet, is on page 2.

Google has determined that the searcher's intent for a search like "web directories" is someone looking for a list of recommended directories or information about directories. They are not looking for specific directories to be listed when they do that search.

You can call it part of Hummingbird or Rank Brain or whatever other part of the algorithm you want, but Google has decided based on its data that the most relevant results for that search are pages talking about web directories, not web directories themselves.

And let say you're right, I'm sure if you look, you'll find 108 from 108.000
you'll consider quality links but... can you show me a dozen of sites in top 20
with 10 quality backlinks, never mind 108.000 and tell us what they have to do with directories.

Again, you are too focused on numbers. It doesn't matter if you have 108 quality links and the next site has 60. That doesn't mean you will outrank them. Their 60 might be far better than your 108. Not all quality links are equal just because they are quality links.

 

[fastreplies]

If you really want to dig into it, look at the pages ranking on the first page. They aren't web directories at all. I don't see a single directory on page one. Even Best of the Web, which is widely considered one of the best directories on the internet, is on page 2.

Exactly my point... They aren't web directories at all.
10 years ago search for my directory would put it in top 10 and 'best web directories'
in top 5 right behind Yahoo, DMOZ, BOTW, Business directory and only 3 years ago 'free web directories' in third place, that is before G. open war on directories
and now finally find sure way to kill them.

Google has determined that the searcher's intent for a search like "web directories" is someone looking for a list of recommended directories or information about directories. They are not looking for specific directories to be listed when they do that search.

You can call it part of Hummingbird or Rank Brain or whatever other part of the algorithm you want, but Google has decided based on its data that the most relevant results for that search are pages talking about web directories, not web directories themselves.

Again, you are too focused on numbers. It doesn't matter if you have 108 quality links and the next site has 60. That doesn't mean you will outrank them. Their 60 might be far better than your 108. Not all quality links are equal just because they are quality links.

Well, I can't see any factual points except guesses why, what and how
Google came up with algo that decided ignore request for web directories
and instead vomited lists no one was asking for or sites that nearly
had mention 'directories list' without offering one or lists with 10 years old
dead directories, or lists made to promote Indian directories, or directories
that still use PR and I can go forever, but before you make your next post,
check again what G. is offering in top 20 - 50 sites.



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[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Again, you think that the search "web directories" should return specific directories.

Google's data says that the intent of that search is more often to find lists of directories, recommendations of directories, or information about directories. It's part of Google evolving and understanding searcher intent better.

You are too involved in this search term to have a rational conversation about it though. Their change in what they felt was relevant to wha the searchers wanted directly impacted you and your business, so you feel the results are bad.

if your directory showed up #1 or #2, but the rest of the results were exactly the same, you would think differently about it.

Find another example that doesn't involve your own business.

 

[paritosh]

Hello folks as PBN and web 2.0 are getting penalized from Google I was wondering that how other people in community building links for newly created website. I haven't test this out but I have read it several time that re purpose your content as much as possible.

As I know that in 2018 Google will get priority for content than the link building strategy.
I my opinion is to build your content more unique and attractive so that the visitors pay attention to your content and share them through social media, different article submission websites and web 2.0 submissions.
A proper on-page optimization also helps you to get ranked in 2018 very much.

 

[iseomaster]

any good source to get backlinks will be consider in top way to build backlinks