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Most of us now realize the critical role links
play in search engine optimization, but have you
ever wondered about the strategies the pros are
using to build the best possible links to their
client’s web sites?
Link building expert Esoos Bobnar shows you how
to get the links that improve rankings, drive
traffic, and protect your site from the whims
of the latest Google update, as well as how to
avoid the link building mistakes that can get
your site banned from the search engines.
Recorded Live
January 20, 2006
How to Jump Start a New
Link Building Campaign
Description
Avoiding Linking Penalties
Description
Advanced Link Building
Strategies
Description
Introducing Esoos Bobnar of Planet Ocean Communications
On the 20th of January 2006, Cindy Turrietta,
Brooke Schumacher and Todd Sarouhan interviewed
the link building expert, Esoos Bobnar of Planet
Ocean Communications while he was taking a
break in Hawaii. Esoos Bobnar is a contributing
author to the Unfair Advantage Book on Winning
the Search Engine Wars and also acts as a
writer, researcher and project manager for Planet
Ocean Communications which runs Search
Engine News. Apart from this he also helps
them do their monthly “subscribers only”
publications.
How to Jump Start a New Link Building Campaign
In this interview Esoos talked about how to get
links that improve ranking, drive traffic and
protect your site from the latest Google updates
as well as how to avoid making link building mistakes
that can get your site banned from the search
engines. He also shared link building strategies
of professional search marketing experts. Esoos
explained to listeners that if they want their
website to be found in organic search, they will
need links.
Esoos pointed out that many sites hire SEO firms
because these firms have already developed these
relationships and can quickly get your link onto
a quality site, many times through article syndication.
Esoos emphasized the importance of article syndication
in link building and told listeners that once
they have found someone who is willing to run
their articles and is willing to link to them
under other circumstances, you return to that
person again and again when looking to build new
links to new landing pages or new sites or to
help the ranking of your existing site.
He advised listeners that if they want to lay
a strong link foundation for a new site or an
under optimized existing site they will have to
use a combination of directories, article directories,
press releases and paid links.
Avoiding Linking Penalties
In the second segment Esoos gave listeners tips
on how they can avoid link penalties. Todd questioned
Essos and said that since Matt Cutts of Google
has said that Google can detect links that have
been bought, should website owners continue to
buy links or should they get rid of the paid links.
Essos replied that paid links will continue to
play an important role in link building for a
long time but people will probably have to start
doing the work of hunting down good sites and
negotiating the link buys themselves rather than
going through link brokers. Even though link brokers
are convenient, it is easy for Google to sign
up with these link brokers and see who is involved
in selling links.
When Brooke asked whether page rank still plays
a role in link building and whether people should
still aim to get links from sites with page rank
5 and above, Esoos replied that even though page
rank shows Google’s overall impression of
the quality of the page, website owners should
look at other quality indicators as well before
getting a link from a site, such as:
- Back links to make sure that the site did
not get its link page from a link farm. This
is done by checking the back links to see if
the site in question is linked to other unrelated
sites. A common links page indicates that these
websites got links from a ‘link farm’.
- The overall quality in terms of advertising
- Making sure that the site is giving direct
links and are not using redirection or “no
follow” link tags on those links, especially
if you are buying links or want to get your
article syndicated on this site.
- Making sure that the page is getting indexed
by the search engines by searching for a bit
of unique text and quotes on the page.
- Checking the cache date of the page to see
when the page was last indexed because it is
preferable if it was indexed fairly recently.
Advanced Link Building Strategies
In the final segment Esoos encouraged listeners
to get links from “edus” or their
international equivalents such as “.ac.uk”
which is the UK version, and “.gov”
and other such trusted authority sites.
He informed listeners that Goggle has a preference
for “.edu” links and these links can
either be obtained from student webpages or by
doing a site search. This is done by doing a search
for your keywords but restricting them to .edu
domains to see if anyone out there on a edu website
is writing about something similar to what your
website covers.
Esoos went on to talk about the unconventional
methods of getting links such as:
- Getting links from people who you are doing
business with who would like to link to you
or would benefit from linking to you.
- Another technique would be to submit testimonials
to sites you really like because a lot of sites
like authentic, enthusiastic customer testimonials
and if they allow it, include a link back to
your site.
Esoos shared with listeners that apart from using
these techniques he also goes through the back
links of other SEO firms or their clients because
they are very creative and this gives us a lot
of ideas.
Esoos also advised listeners that if they have
a low ranking site e.g. a page rank 2 or 3 site,
they should not buy links from page rank 7 or
8 sites such as news sites because by doing this
the lower ranked websites draw unwanted attention
to themselves and run the risk of getting penalized.
At the end of the show, he offered the listeners
free access to the January issue of Search Engine
News and encouraged them to go through samples
of the articles he and his co-authors had written
at http://www.SearchEngineNews.com/radio.
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