Your Link Building Strategy...Am I Being Short Sighted?

My experience is link diversity is the key to winning a top rank on the search engines so I do it all. I want article links, bookmarks, rss feeds, blog postings, ads and more. I think the key is to not build links too fast or too many of one kind too fast. So I do most of my link building in small sets. Half dozen articles... plus bookmarks to the articles. Wait a couple weeks. Add a 3 way link exchange and send more articles. Wait a couple weeks... add some blog post distribution and a couple web 2.0 sites.

So, over TIME, you are building a huge network of incoming links.

Another way less risky is to build a LINK WHEEL of web 2.0 properties that all link to your site. Then promote these web 2.0 properties as hot and heavy as you can since most of them will be hosted on authority sites that are highly unlikely to get penalized in any way. So in this case you are putting a buffer between aggressive marketing and your site.

Diversify. Get into lots of different types of backlinks: social bookmarks, profile links, blog comments, directories, web 2.0 links, etc. As long as Google forces us to play this game by their silly link rules, you need a diversity of backlinks pointing to your site.

Of course, it depends on the keywords you target, as always. At its root, it's a question of choosing numbers or focusing on a few tough keywords. If your strength is in building web pages quickly, go for lower competition keywords and put up a ton of pages. You won't have to spend much time at all on link building. If you're a slower page/content creator, focus on higher competition keywords and do a lot of link building with your time.

John

You're being VERY short-sighted.

Use every weapon at your disposal.

linkinstrategy

And... Do this for each keyword. 2 at the most.
Then, promote the promoters.

As the guys above said, diversify your link profile.

If you're paranoid, then set up some sites on another host and point the links to those sites, then link those sites to your main site(s). Also, use free 3rd party resources such as Blogger and Squidoo and build links to those...You can also build links to your articles hosted on other sites.

One suggestion is to build your own linking properties. Build web 2.0 properties in your niche or free blogs and have them point to your site. Or build links to your articles to boost them further. As they rise, they'll pass link juice to your site, too.

Personally, my favorite link building strategy is to use Squidoo sites. I build a handful of them in my niche and link them together and have them point to my site. I've had a lot of success getting Google Page Rank relatively quickly on my lenses - PR3-PR5. I also create lenses just for fun.

As I create a new site, I can use any or all of my lenses to get backlinks by putting a hyperlink in my profile that automatically shows at the bottom of each lens. I do, however, put a lot of thought and work into my lenses. No slap-em-up-and-run junk. Maybe that's helped with the page ranks.

I've realized I've focused too much on Squidoo and now am branching out by building content on other platforms and on my own blogs so I can have links from multiple domains as needed.

Copy that strategy by building your own content in a number of places and you build your own linking properties you can use whenever you want.

It's certainly not the only way to do this, but it works for me. I like knowing I can use those properties as I want when I want and that as they grow over time, so does the PR of my links.

I think diverse links are a must. And many sites bombarded with mass submission articles are hard to get indexed, get deleted and have low PR.

You might find more value out of a diverse range of link building techniques and spend less time doing it.

You will not get slapped from incoming links . Out going .. different story

Is it a good long term practice to mass submit to thousands of low quality directories ?

What happens when 75% of those directories are not in business a year from now ?

I suggest diversifying your links from several different sources . I would rather have a link from a completely irrelevant location as a link from a relevant one thta is on it's way out .

Bookmark sites that have been around for a while work well.

Links from certain long standing forums (relevant or not )

Blogs that are in it for the long haul.

web 2.0

Links from articles are great ... counting one them solely could be devastating for the long term .

Wow, lots of great information here guys. Thanks a million, helps big time. Gonna try to not be so limited with my link building and start branching out a bit more. Keep the ideas comin' !!

-Sean