Initial link building for new website

[timwulf]

Hi all,

I am currently doing link building for our platform which we just recently launched. We have a few pieces of content live and have already built quite a few pages. Do you guys know of any good tactics for initially getting a few high-quality backlinks to get started?

We have already started the "classic" process of building links to our content and I am looking right now for a few low-hanging fruits to boost our efforts.

Thanks a lot in advance for any insights

 

[fisicx]

I am currently doing link building for our platform which we just recently launched.

Why?

You need to be marketing not linkbuilding. There will be almost zero value in most of the linkbuilding you do. Your competitors are investing considerable time, resources and money on SEO so the chances of your efforts achieving anything are slim.

The only low hanging fruit is to spend money on advertising. Sorry to be all doom and gloom but linkbuilding isn't the best way to move the business forwards.

 

[SEOpie]

That’s a pretty defeatist attitude. There is value in link building as well as traditional marketing. They’re not mutually exclusive. Saying there would be “almost zero” value in it makes no sense to me if you’ve no idea of this person, his tactics, his budget, his motivation, the size of his team, his company, etc.

There are a load of tactics that can get you some good links, but it really depends on so many factors as to which are most effective and which will be the easiest to achieve respectable results quickly. You can certainly try to market the content you’ve already produced to site owners that have published content that could be improved by including a link to your content. But that also depends on the quality of your own content.

 

[fisicx]

Wasn’t meant to be defeatist, it was really just a response to his post which suggested he had found a few places to place links. You and I both know link building shouldn’t be done ad hoc, it takes time, skill and effort. Which is why I said he needs to spend money on marketing - of which SEO is just one component.

If you look at the content on his site it’s not good. Not the sort of thing that adds value to an inbound link and no much use in promoting the freelancer service. Before any linkbuilding there are a whole load of things need fixing on the site.

 

[SEOpie]

Ok, right. Yep, I agree with that. It really needs a sustained effort combined with content development. The low hanging fruit isn’t really going to make the difference in a competitive industry.

 

[timwulf]

Hi guys,

thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it. I am aware that our content is not really linkable yet, and we are currently working on building linkable content. That's why I thought that in the meantime it would be a good idea to start collecting some backlinks that don't require content, in case these exist.

If you look at the content on his site it’s not good. Not the sort of thing that adds value to an inbound link and no much use in promoting the freelancer service. Before any linkbuilding there are a whole load of things need fixing on the site.

What would you say needs to get fixed? To give you some further context, the platform has been quite successful in Denmark and we now moved to the UK to show that we can get traction in larger, more competitive market. We are doing Marketing via other channels (mainly AdWords and Social Media) and have found that search converts quite well, which is why we want to get SEO up and running. We have identified several high-volume and low-difficulty keywords for the pages that are already live (Also surprising to me that these exist in our industry) and have high-quality content in the pipeline that we are working on right now. However, this requires some time and next to doing the necessary analysis and research, I am looking to find some ways to increase our domain authority already at least a little bit.

 

[fisicx]

What would you say needs to get fixed?

Get a website review and members can help you out with suggestions.

We are doing Marketing via other channels (mainly AdWords and Social Media) and have found that search converts quite well, which is why we want to get SEO up and running.

SEO requires a whole different approach to SMM and Adwords. The key is content - the stuff Google can index that is relevant to the purpose of the site. And this is where you will struggle. Everything on your site is dynamic so every time Google indexes the site it will see different content. You do have a blog but this is pretty much independent of the main site so isn't going to help you much.

 

[fisicx]

@vishakha20 please do not post bad advice. Your suggestions are wrong, incorrect, pointless and useless.

 

[WeddingsInWales]

I have a few niche websites for a hotel I own in the Brecon Beacons and link building is not something I have done nearly enough of. I have managed over time to SEO some of the sites so they get found 'somewhere' for some keywords on Page One or Two of Google but I also notice a number of our competitors are often sat solidly at the top as well.

The more niche you get the more you will be found on page one or two - try searching for 'Dog Friendly B&B in Wales' and you will probably find my hotel in the Brecon Beacons, or try searching for 'ghost hunts in south wales', or 'weddings in south wales castle' etc. So I like niche websites and niche marketing. Links can follow on from this.

For example I tend to post on a few forums where the subject is one of my niche interests, dogs, ghosts, weddings, etc. My wife runs a visa business and has gone overboard building links, spending hours on it each week. She said this does tend to bring her site to the top in Russia and if she stops adding new links it drops down again. Yandex (Russian Google equivalent likes any old links it seems - but not sure how effective this would be in the UK ass Google is more discerning!

The standard literature on this is to build links slowly steadily and consistently, maybe a couple a day.

One way I got a load of links going was putting all my wedding suppliers on my site and linking to them if they linked to me in turn.

I did a similar thing to a lesser extent with dogs. On the ghost site I found Adwords was very cheap (such an unusual niche, so low cost per click!) and Google posted me on some very good sites to get me more clicks.

I did a lot of work on reciprocal links, and it is useful in my case as it supports the wedding suppliers, who then verbally recommend us and back us to the hilt on their social media pages, as they see we are backing them.

I think Google do frown upon excessive reciprocal links and probably wants the links to have some relevance to what you do. Also you should really control the link text used which only you can do - hence the use of reelevant forums may be helpful.

Note on some forums you can get a 'signature' link to your own site, which means every time you post on that forum, your signature creates a link to your site. The better quality forums are aware of this advantage and this uk businness forum for example limits your ability to do this.

I suppose it really comes down to 'trading alliances' and simply teaming up with non competing but related businesses which customers may also use - and linking to them and them linking to you and giving each other mutual support in social media.

Link building en masse with a load of junky irrelevant sites is not going to be useful or helpful at all and will probably knock your site off the rankings. I will be interested to see if anyone else has anything enlightening to say on the subject of link building that actually worked for them.
Martin

 

[Awinner2]

Press releases can also generate backlinks/citations that the search engines love.. driving traffic back to your site.

 

[fisicx]

.. driving traffic back to your site.

Does this work for you?

 

[Alan]

@vishakha20 please do not post bad advice. Your suggestions are wrong, incorrect, pointless and useless

You missed that you can get 5,000 high PR backlinks on Fiverr for $5.

 

[xoxoseo]

I advise to watch Ahrefs youtube channel, they have lots of amazing ideas

 

[fisicx]

They key here is information architecture, supporting content and internal linking.

Exactly!

Get this right and you just need enough of the right links to pique Google's interest.

 

[SystemPioneer Ltd]

SEO is like a pie and link building is only a slice. You get half the pie if you don't have good natural marketing but essential if you want to outrank the competition (and get the full pie)

 

[Cash Cow]

Write blog posts, find similar conversations, join in and add your link.

I find a useful way to do that is to Google your subject, followed by ''Notify me of follow up comments".

That will return blog posts in your niche, which accept comments with a link

 

[ITBadger]

high-quality backlinks

low-hanging fruit

Tell us when you find them, the entire SEO community would like to know.

But seriously, link building is not something you should look for low hanging fruit in, as the chances are they're going to be of poor quality that's going to do diddly squat for your site.

You're better off spending your time writing exceptionally well researched, informative content that you can also pair with content off-site of the same nature. Look at what your competitors are doing, what they're writing about and see how you can do it better.

 

[Silky]

Does this work for you?

PR releases do drive traffic back to your site if they're successful in getting good placement. One of our first press releases ended up with a rather useful little article in the Guardian, with a heap load of traffic and sales. The link also showed in our profile for many years. A press release simply posted up on cheap and nasty database of nothing more than SEO articles though? Nope, I'm with you on that one.

Rather than aiming for cheap links, the OP should aim for sales and finding their customers, a far better way of attracting the right links and traffic to a web site.

 

[Awinner2]

PR releases do drive traffic back to your site if they're successful in getting good placement. One of our first press releases ended up with a rather useful little article in the Guardian, with a heap load of traffic and sales. The link also showed in our profile for many years. A press release simply posted up on cheap and nasty database of nothing more than SEO articles though? Nope, I'm with you on that one.

Rather than aiming for cheap links, the OP should aim for sales and finding their customers, a far better way of attracting the right links and traffic to a web site.

Agreed. My team carried out a press release for a Canadian engineering company last year. They got hundreds of top-level links/citations and three requests from US companies to tender for contracts (a country that they had no previous inquiries from). In addition, they appeared on a local TV news show and got more exposure from that. We are now contracted with them to do one press release per month for the next 6 months.

 

[kajal35]

You build an audience for your product and give users additional reasons to link back to your website. Spending a day or so to create something worth sharing is beyond worthwhile for a starting website. Submitting your website to all the relevant local directories, and the search engines, is vital for every small business.

 

[fisicx]

Submitting your website to all the relevant local directories, and the search engines, is vital for every small business.

No it’s not. It depends on the business and their marketing strategy.

 

[ValenDigital]

Submitting your website to all the relevant local directories, and the search engines, is vital for every small business.

Submitting to every directory known to man is down right spammy! Its not going to do you any favours at all.

No it’s not. It depends on the business and their marketing strategy.

Agree with you here. However submitting to relevant niche directories can help overall in your local SEO efforts if your looking for citations. As a rule of thumb if you can submit to a directory and get a link back straight away, then stay away its more likely to be classed as spammy. If however you have to jump through a few hoops then it may be well worth your while. Moz used to have a good list but seems to have gone with the wind when they started to update there moz local tool. Having a quick gander, found this https://moz.com/learn/seo/citations-by-category which may be useful for you to create citations for your local seo efforts.

Apart from your own efforts on creating content on your own site and then reaching out to build relationships and 'acquire' links, a guest post strategy may be extremely useful to you. Plenty of resources online that can help you in this area.

 

[EmployMe]

I recommend to check backlink profile of your competitors through Ahrefs and Majestic. This will give you more ideas than any insight here.

 

[kathrinalewis]

Hi all,

I am currently doing link building for our platform which we just recently launched. We have a few pieces of content live and have already built quite a few pages. Do you guys know of any good tactics for initially getting a few high-quality backlinks to get started?

We have already started the "classic" process of building links to our content and I am looking right now for a few low-hanging fruits to boost our efforts.

Thanks a lot in advance for any insights

I suggest you to start with a guest post and broken link building techniques.

 

[fisicx]

I suggest you to start with a guest post and broken link building techniques.

I suggest you do some research. This is not how to do SEO.

 

[Barry12345]

SEO, PR, content marketing is so difficult, should I just go google ads

 

[SEOpie]

SEO, PR, content marketing is so difficult, should I just go google ads

If you're not clever with Google Ads, you'll lose a whole load of cash very easily. However, it should certainly be looked into, yes. Advertising your product or service right at the point where your potential customer is looking to purchase... Well, it can't be beaten.

 

[Teepig]

I can see there are many differences of opinions in this thread, I can also vouch that submitting your site to multiple free directories doesn't work well and can penalise you site. There are a few directories however that are paid and do add some value to your website, or at the very least some extra traffic due to relevant product/service searches.

What I'd be interested to know is what the SEO experts consider the best DIY approach for basic SEO prior to spending money with SEO companies? What would be the first thing us beginners go to to get extra natural traffic, prior to being able to afford expert consultancy?

 

[UKSBD]

What I'd be interested to know is what the SEO experts consider the best DIY approach for basic SEO prior to spending money with SEO companies? What would be the first thing us beginners go to to get extra natural traffic, prior to being able to afford expert consultancy?

Keyword research and writing natural content based on the results of your research.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

What would be the first thing us beginners go to to get extra natural traffic,

What would be the first thing us beginners go to to get extra natural traffic..

I think you are on the right lines by having some community/local content on your site but you need to (if you'll excuse my phrasing) make it more interesting and much more in-depth.

I would concentrate on this aspect rather than playing safe with stuff such as 'what's the difference in printing methods' etc..

Don't be afraid to make your site a bit more basic and usable either.

Good content is essential but content for content's sake will be a waste of time. I note from some other posts here on this subject that people expect google to know such content is good - it doesn't work like that, it needs some external clues too. That's the hard part.

 

[hikebranding]

You have to find the best way to get the high-quality backlinks and you will not get those type of backlinks from regular link building activities. Content marketing can help you here. Try to publish some in-depth content and increase your or brands value. It will take time but you will have good traffic on your website.

 

[fisicx]

Content marketing can help you here.

It can do but mostly it doesn't. Mainly because everyone is doing it.

 

[evhow90]

Hello, I have always found following Brian Dean on Backlinko is really helpful. I would recommend giving his blog a follow as he tries and tests lots of different SEO techniques.

 

[johnbritto]

Presently, Niche sites only help more for generating genuine results. For picking the low hanging fruits, follow your competitors. Analyze the backlinks of your competitors by using aHrefs and participate there

 

[Jamesdavide]

Start off page techniques like web 2.0, Classified ads, Social bookmarking, Infographics submission. To be get more specific start guest posting for relevant niche links.

 

[fisicx]

Start off page techniques like web 2.0, Classified ads, Social bookmarking, Infographics submission. To be get more specific start guest posting for relevant niche links.

No don't do this. It's pointless, a waste of time and won't achieve anything useful.

 

[Rifat Ahmed]

Guest posting works really good these days, You may have to spend some money but it's worth it. Focus on backlinks from related blog comments it can drive you traffic, as well as a no follow backlink. Web 2.0 still works but it's a gray hat method so it's your personal preference. One thing before starting to create backlinks make sure your on page seo is done correctly.

 

[fisicx]

Guest posting works really good these days

No it doesn’t. It stopped working a couple of years back. Google tells you this in their guidelines.

I agree that some guest posting still has value, but it mostly doesn’t.

 

[TheWebDesignCompany]

If you want to find relevant places to get links from, check your competitors and the highest ranking websites in your industry and use one of the many websites that will allow you to pull up a list of their links.

Then work through the list looking to get links in as many of the same as possible.

 

[DRDR]

Hello, I have always found following Brian Dean on Backlinko is really helpful. I would recommend giving his blog a follow as he tries and tests lots of different SEO techniques.

This. There are many people giving their own opinion on here its hard to make out whose advice to take. So you are better off reading from sources that have performed tests and have data to back up what they said.