MY TAKE on outsourcing, and automating off-page SEO - IMO

[Adam Roy]

I see a lot of people in this forum asking about automating and/or outsourcing off-page seo (backlinking) lately.

The first thing you should understand is, the difference between QUALITY backlinks, and CRAPPY backlinks.


QUALITY backlinks

• Backlinks that serve a purpose.
• A backlink that follows a relevant article.
• A contextual backlinks within a relevant article
• A banner or text link ad on a relevant website.
• blog comments on relevant blogs - comments that add value
• high page rank directories
• quality RSS feeds
• Quality social bookmarking sites (not using the same exact text at each one) **A unique bookmark of your site at each bookmarking location.
• relevant trackbacks from relevant sites
• Original articles posted on web 2.0 properties, with contextual links back to your site.
• A signature in a relevant forum in a relevant conversation. When your link "should" be there. Warrior forum is a perfect example of QUALITY signature links to IM related websites.

CRAPPY backlinks

• Backlinks that are irrelevant, non helpful
• Backlinks that arrive in erraticly, or in bulk patterns **bots, spinners, blackhat submitters
• irrelevant blog comments usually done with software
• low page rank, abused Pligg site backlinks
• low quality, "for seo" directory submissions
• backlinks from mass article submissions **Backlinks have more effect when built naturally. drip feed your articles to the directories, rather than all at once.
• forum profile links from forums. These links do not add value, they are typically a number of clicks away from the home page, Google's not STUPID it's a multi billion dollar company, links created this way may have value...But not nearly as much as you might think.

For automation, I recommend Incansoft Software. To automate ...

submission to directories *Most require approval so these are mostly quality directories
submission to social bookmarking sites *Allows you to spin your submission description for each site, so your bookmarks are unique at each one.
submission to the major rss feed sites *Do this early in the game, because most rss feed directories will update their list of feeds regularly and your new content will automatically be added to the feed.

For outsourcing, I recommend...

Original articles posted on web 2.0 properties, with contextual links back to your site. Or have cheap articles written FOR you, and post them yourself with contextual links back.

Have articles written, and submit them (drip feed) yourself to the various article directories.

Or give your outsourcee ...
list of article directories to submit to,
the article(s) you want submitted
an account profile they can use to submit these articles
instructions on how to drip feed your articles to the directories, **one per day, two per day, one every other day, etc.

Then give them the go ahead, build a relationship with the person so he/she can continue to do this for you.

I don't usually outsource anything regarding off-page SEO without very CLEAR instructions. You know off page SEO, you know what quality backlinks are, tell your outsourcee exactly what you want then work out a deal.

That's just my quick 2 cents. Feel free to discuss.