Ask Kirsty - How To Quickly Build Effective Links?
Ask Kirsty, Beginners Affiliate Marketing Add commentsWayne dropped me a wee line after my last Ask Kirsty post asking for a bit of general clarification on a remark I made about link building.
Hi Kirsty,
I’ve read a lot of affiliate blogs and websites trying to learn as
much as I can and yours is the first I have come across that is based in the UK
(as I am). I will read reagularly from now on.
Anyway, my question is this. I have just read your response to a question posed
about whether a beginner should go for a single niche large site or several
smaller sites. I was interested in part of your response where you said you
have a site that sells single product that makes you about £150 per month. You
created it within a day and spent a couple of hours getting links into the site.
My question is how did you spend your 2 hours link building to get good enough
results?
I have sites that convert quite well but traffic is building very slowly (I
don’t want to get into Adwords at this time).
Thanks
Wayne
Hey Wayne,
The thing about link building is that the amount of work and time required to build adequate links is connected to the competitiveness of the sector you are attempting to break into. Because the site I was referring to was within an extremely targeted niche with low numbers of competitors, I only needed a very low number of incoming links to rank well for my target search terms. The URL for my niche site is also keyword rich, which can assist with achieving good rankings relatively quickly.
For more information on “niche marketing” see this thread about achieving a number one ranking on Google in 36 hours, and check out Stu Fosters Niche marketing blog. Andy Beard also has shedloads of niche wisdom on his blog!
But back to the link building!
For the reasons I’ve outlined above, alas there is no magic formula to effectively building relevant links within a short time. However, you can make sure your link building efforts are more productive by making sure they are strongly relevant to the content of your web site. I firmly believe that these days quality of links is far more important than quantity (although you do have to strike a fine balance between both!).
So How Do Links Help Your Site To Rank?
Back in the good old days of search engine yore, to rank well in the search engines you merely had to get thousands of incoming links to your site and you were well into the search engine gold! Alas, those days are gone… these days link popularity is a different beast.
Link popularity is one of the many things search engines look at when deciding which sites are most relevant to search engine queries. At a very, very, basic level, a search engine will analyse the relevance of sites linking to yours. If you have a site about Blue Widgets and have carefully made sure that other sites in the blue widgets sector are linking to you, then your site will be seen as relevant. Personally speaking, I also try to get links from sites in broader, but related sectors also.
So What’s The Quickest Way To Effectively Locate Potential Link Partners?
I find the best way to perform link research quickly as part of my initial marketing activity is to locate other related sites that are actively seeking link partners.
To do this, I first make sure I have created a comprehensive list of target search terms (more on keywords in another thrilling installment of “Ask Kirsty”. I then methodically work my way through these search terms by entering them into a search engine and appending them with terms such as: -
Add URL
Exchange Links
Submit Links
Link Submission
Link Exchange
i.e. Blue Widget Link Exchange, Submit Blue Widget Links… etc
This exercise can also be repeated for broader, related subject areas.
There is far, far more to building links than this… but I feel this is an excellent first step. One proviso, it’s important to vary your link anchor text and make sure you don’t build too many links too quickly. Similar anchor text and rapid increase in incoming links can trigger an adverse reaction from Google who is always on the lookout for scurrilous search engine behaviour!
I hope this helps… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you how to effectively build links in 2 hours. But if I’d worked that one out I’m afraid I wouldn’t be sharing! 
August 8th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Hi Kirsty,
- and see who is linking to them, and then approach those same sites to links to your own site.
I guess another quick and easy tip you could add to that is to search for links to any of your competitor sites - unless your niche is so good that you don’t have any
August 8th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
My ears were burning. Thanks for the link
I shall return the favour.
August 9th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Hi Rob,
Yep, absolutely! I do use that method also but I do find it to be a lot more time consuming. Well worth it when you are in a more competitive niche.
No worries Stu, your number one in 36 hour post on A4U was probably exactly the kind of domain I got up there with my own niche site. Very interesting stuff!
August 9th, 2007 at 3:34 am
August 9th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Extremely interesting resources Steve, thanks so much for posting about them!
August 9th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Kirsty,
thanks for responding to my question and thanks to all you other guys for your contribution too
Wayne
November 17th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Hi Kirsty,
Thanks for writing such a great blog!
You mention finding suitable sites to link exchange with using search terms, ‘Add URL, Exchange Links, Submit Links, Link Submission, Link Exchange’.
This seems fine but when finding a site to exchange links with how do you incorporate a link in to your site? Generally these links are not going to be affiliate links and provide any earnings, so do you create a new page for these non affiliate links?
Adrian
November 19th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Hey Adrian, Yeah you’d pop your links up on another page. Exchanging links with other sites is an essential SEO function, and you’ll find for the large part only those with an interest in exchanging links will visit that page. Especially if you link to it in a discreet way.
November 19th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Thanks Kirsty, that’s helpful to know. Is there a danger you can be too discreet with such links and be reprimanded by Google? You may not wish to show one of your own sites but do you have an example of a page on a site that does this well?
November 19th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
so long as the links are not “hidden” i.e. same as background coloured text etc, you will be fine.
Link to a links page from every page of the site using a text link, but perhaps place the text link right at the bottom of the page.
http://www.freeonlineprints.co.uk/
Is an unfinished site of mine…. all my SEO type links are at the bottom of the page.
November 19th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Cool, that’s very useful to see, thank you. I’ve read that reciprocal links are not as powerful as they used to be as they cancel each other out. For example I have a casino review site and have been contacted by another (affiliate) casino review site to see if interested in a link exchange. I wasn’t sure if I’d get any benefit from this especially as we are really in direct competition. Any thoughts on this Kirsty?
November 19th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Well, I still do link exchanges and so do most other affiliates I know. Yes, one way links are stronger, but if reciprocals are all you can get then reciprocals it must be! They do still help though… I’ve had improved results for SEO clients from these.
November 19th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Thanks Kirsty, that’s good to hear as I wasn’t sure where to begin with building links. It will be fun testing this out to see how results develop over time.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:10 am
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July 5th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Thanks for the link to this from A4U Kirsty. Really useful article… I predict many hours of digging through Google for baby sites with links pages!