Talk by Patrick Altoft at SES Conference & Expo in London, February 2012, on Key Link Building Strategies

1. KEY LINKBUILDING
STRATEGIES
Patrick Altoft
Director of Search

3. Links Are Important

4. Link Analysis
• Very important to carry out link analysis for your site
and your competitors before you start to build links
• Every site needs different links and you don’t know
what links you need until you have carried out the
analysis
• We offer free link analysis & link strategy suggestions
to anybody who emails us

5. Competition Link Profile Analysis
Client Anchor Text Distribution
Brand
Brand + Keyword Competitor 1 Anchor Text
Keyword
Distribution
Noise
Brand
Competitor 2 Anchor Text Brand + Keyword
Distribution Keyword
Noise
Brand
Brand + Keyword
Keyword
Noise

6. Competitor Analysis
Competitor 1 Anchor Text Variations
voucher codes
voucher codes UK
discount codes
Competitor 2 Anchor Text
Variation
Net Voucher Codes
vouchercodes.co.uk
Voucher Codes
www.vouchercodes.co.uk
VoucherCodes
(img alt) [No Anchor Text]

7. Domain Authority
250
Linking Domain Authority
200
150
NVC
Vouchercodes
100 MyVoucherCodes
50
0
1
4
7
10
13
16
19
22
25
28
31
34
37
40
43
46
49
52
55
58
61
64
67
70
73
76
79
82
85
88
91
94
97
100

8. Different Types Of Links
Linkbait
Giveaways Paid Links
Link
Social
Types Guest
Links Content
Exchanging
Syndication
Links

9. Prospect List
• The easiest links to get are from people you already
know
o Customers
o Suppliers
o Friends
o Bloggers
• Email everybody you know asking whether you can
contribute some content to their site in return for a
link

10. Outreach
• Once you have emailed your initial list you need to
broaden your reach
• Find blogs in your sector, make friends with the
editors
• List sites and email lots of people offering content or
other incentives
o Pay for links (carefully)
o Give products away for reviews, competitions

11. Linkbait
• Linkbait is the art of creating a piece of content to
place on your website with the aim of attracting links
• It’s pretty hard to do and should only be done after
you have explored other easier options
• Sites are reluctant to link to commercial sites which
reduces the impact of your linkbait
• Links usually point to the linkbait page rather than
your commercial page
• Hard to control anchor text

12. Linkbait Is Not About Social Shares

13. Linkbait Has to Get Links

14. Link Penalties
• Bad links can hurt sites and the only way you can
recover is to remove the links and submit a re-
inclusion request
• The biggest risk is if you acquire links through a link
network
• If you outsource to an agency they should send you
a link report every month – you need to look through
this and see if you think the links are on good sites
• If the links look bad they probably are

15. Don’t get links from these people

16. Or these……

17. Example Strategy – Travel Site, Cumbria
• We shortlisted all tourist attractions & asked for links
on their “How to find us” or “Where to stay” pages
• We wrote about things to do in Cumbria and
mentioned the best tourist attractions in return
• Published travel guides to Cumbria on lots of travel
blogs
• Arranged for sites about mountain biking, walking etc
to add links to local accommodation for each
ride/walk

18. Example Strategy – Gadget Retailer
• Made friends with 100+ blogs and give away
products to review
• Arranged a scheme with bloggers where they link to
our clients product page when they write about a
new product
• Allow bloggers to use high quality images as long as
they add a link back to the source

19. Example Strategy – Financial Site
• Publish regular press releases commenting on
stories in the press and releasing statistics on
financial issues and products
• Our in-house journalists cover the story on lots of
relevant blogs

20. Example Strategy – High Street chain
• High Street chains offer a unique local opportunity
• We spoke to local newspapers across the UK and
published dozens of interesting stories about their
specific local business
• For example a newspaper in Manchester could talk
about how the Manchester branch of a particular
department store was running a promotion on a
certain product & link to the ecommerce page

21. Example Strategy – Flight Comparison Site
• Targeted tourist attractions with “how to find us”
pages and placed links to the “flights to xxx” page
• Published travel guides on blogs for each major city
in the UK with an airport
• Arranged for 100 tech blogs to review iPhone and
Android apps

22. Example Strategy – Bingo Site
• Targeted mummy blogs with infographics
• Arranged articles in local newspapers focussing on
local bingo trends

23. Questions?
• www.branded3.com
• patrick@branded3.com
• twitter.com/patrickaltoft
• www.blogstorm.co.uk