the Practical Practice of Link Building

[theIMgeek]

I've recognized link building as the "weakest link" in my web strategy.

Making websites is no problem, and my understanding of SEO is pretty solid, but I am severely under-educated on link-building. I want to focus on it now until I'm up to speed.

I have some preliminary questions to get pointed in the right direction...

What's a good balance of quality over quantity? Getting 1000 backlinks sounds like a nice ego stroke, but is there any value in "junk" links?

Is it best to outsource it? I'm not to keen on the "500 backlinks for $5" offers (or should I be?) but do you find it more practical to outsource your link building to a quality service provider? Or do you find it requires your personal knowledge of the market to seek out and find the quality link opportunities?

What is a quality resource for learning link-building? Again, focusing on "slow and steady" quality building. I don't respond well to hyped offers.

I appreciate your time and guidance.

-Ryan

[KenJ]

Originally Posted by RJP

I've recognized link building as the "weakest link" in my web strategy.

Making websites is no problem, and my understanding of SEO is pretty solid, but I am severely under-educated on link-building. I want to focus on it now until I'm up to speed.

I have some preliminary questions to get pointed in the right direction...

What's a good balance of quality over quantity? Getting 1000 backlinks sounds like a nice ego stroke, but is there any value in "junk" links?

Is it best to outsource it? I'm not to keen on the "500 backlinks for $5" offers (or should I be?) but do you find it more practical to outsource your link building to a quality service provider? Or do you find it requires your personal knowledge of the market to seek out and find the quality link opportunities?

What is a quality resource for learning link-building? Again, focusing on "slow and steady" quality building. I don't respond well to hyped offers.

I appreciate your time and guidance.

-Ryan

At the risk of being Flamed

Quality far out weighs quantity - no comparison - not even close.
Do not outsource - do not use link "packets"
Do not believe the people who are going to give you 1500 "high Quality links"
Do not buy into linking services.

Why don't you build 3 links a day for the next 365 days. that's more than a thousand. Choose where the links are from and make sure they are relevant and on topic.

As for a resource. Mine is 3 months away from being ready. I've bought many here and they are poor for REAL backlinking for REAL products and businesses

Good Luck

kenj

[tommen]

Blog commenting is a popular way of doing link building.For best results you should stick to related .edu blogs because these have often high page rank.Visit Technorati to see the top 100 blogs in your niche and start commenting on them.You can also do track backs, Youtube has a few great "how to" videos.

[hushy]

Well so far there seems to be a massive discrepency between quality and quantity. I am just getting into backlinks. I have been buying them aswell as getting my own.

Also depends onhow many domains you need to back link for. If you have several I would suggest out sourcing for most of those. If you have 1 you want to keenin on, Then I would build my own backlinks.

[usearchme2]

Hi

link building is so hit and miss that the problem, ive had some people do link building for me and its been fantasic, sometimes its been a complete waste of money !

quality is defo better than quantity, but quality is always hard to find !

Woc

[ARVolund]

Always keep your goal in mind when building links.

While your ultimate goal of course is a top ranking what you are really trying to accomplish is fooling the search engines into thinking you are an authority site for whatever keyword you are working on. This means that you want to mimic a natural assortment of links to your site.

While links from high ranking pages have more power, you have to ask yourself how natural it would look to google if every link going towards your site came from a high pr page. The same with the nofollow links, while they are not as valuable from a pr standpoint google does see them and they add to the variety of your links. The same goes for anchor text and all the other aspects such as type etc. Mix it up so that it looks as natural as possible, the closer you mimic the natural assortment and progression a site would have without any tricks or forced links then the better your long term ranking prospects should be.

Always remember just because google can not figure out something now does not mean that they will not be able to do it in the future. There are many examples of tactics that used to work that no longer do. The more natural your link profile the harder it will be for google to find any problems and discount your links in the future.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by RJP

What's a good balance of quality over quantity? Getting 1000 backlinks sounds like a nice ego stroke, but is there any value in "junk" links?

"Junk" links are good for getting a site indexed and ranking for long tail terms where there is little or no competition. As long as they're counted by Google they're great to have.

If you want to rank for more competitive terms and not be subject to bouncing around from page #1 to page #34 you'll need higher quality links. The higher quality links will insure more position stability and the ability to rank for competitive terms.

Originally Posted by RJP

Is it best to outsource it? I'm not to keen on the "500 backlinks for $5" offers (or should I be?) but do you find it more practical to outsource your link building to a quality service provider? Or do you find it requires your personal knowledge of the market to seek out and find the quality link opportunities?

I've done some outsourcing but I mostly do it myself to insure the best results.

[tjcocker]

The thread title reminded me Practical Magic, I hated that movie.

I'm in the same boat as you mate. Great at everything but the backlinking. My only advice is schedule time to do it, and then do it. Schedule time to research backlinks, and just do it. Then have a beer and all is well. I keep thinking about outsourcing, but I'm too practical. I can't pay for something I can do much better myself.

Does anyone have good results from backlink outsourcing? I'm not talking about buying link packets. I can find all the links I'll ever need, but I'm too lazy/unmotivated to spend hours doing them myself.