SEO, Google and backlinks - discussion and ideas for a beginner

[Slowdive]

This seemed relevant enough to fit in this topic...

On the topic of linking, has this ever happened to you?

You sell or promote let us pretend black kettles but somehow all you rank for is black kettle? That's great you have cracked no1 for black kettle, but its bringing you a measly 30 visitors a day and no conversions. It is a less searched term and people are more prone to typing in where to buy black kettles, than buy black kettle. Even worse perhaps all you are attracting is advice seekers looking how to maintain their black kettle or info on Chief Black Kettle, when you want conversion traffic buying kettles.
Its an easy SEO foible to make and sometimes you did not even do anything wrong. You go back your check your content, headings and sure enough your saying kettles as often as you can.

Clearly there are two factors at play here.....
Black kettle and black kettles are not the same, example.

Black Kettle - About 15,000,000
Black kettles - About 8,210,000

Its not awfully fair as you did your keyword research, you saw black kettle had more searches, it was a sound target but its just not panning out. The second problem is that although there are nearly 50% less people targeting Black Kettles, its the money term so its likely better optimized.

Chances are for anything competitive no amount of inline SEO is going to fix this for you, you need links and more vitally you need anchor text that clearly states you are all about black kettles and the buying thereof.

Getting links is hard work, especially targeted ones, proper ones that have some value but in this instance you can save yourself a lot of work by understanding what you are trying to do. This is not about SERPS its about changing what Google thinks your page is about and what's important to that page.

I often harp on about contextual linking, best served as part of an article where you get link dropped but equally important when employing anchor text. A great link should look something like this.....
<link+anchortext>
<Brand/sitename> is having a blitz sale on keyword, and some keyword. (See now even if the link is no follow your brand a link to brand and keyword are clearly being discussed by sites)

Even better link
<keyword rich article>
We would like to thank the rockstars at <brand> for this great info about <keyword>, go check em out <link to site page>

So for this exercise you can use directories, online submissions, and even the link that started it all the reciprocal one. First prize is obviously for links that are follow, however you can even employ places that mark links no-follow for this. As although google claims that rel=nofollow does not carry page rank or anchor text. The fact is that the above links are more than just anchor text, they also have content associated.
The reason the reciprocal link can be useful here is you can more easily dictate your text and anchor, as long as you no-follow these links it is no harm no foul in google books. Obviously first prize is always a one way, followed link from a reputable source but when you are trying to change a "perception" about your target any sensible link can be useful.

It is also debateable that nofollow links have no value at all, but that is a different discussion! My rule any reputable link is a score however it comes.

[Chabrenas]

Thanks for the links to resources for link-building tasks. I've spent a couple of hours working through a few of them, and very quickly come to the conclusion that if I had to do it at piecework rates I'd starve. I'm even worse at it than filing, because there are so many tempting alleys to go off track into. If there is a job I really should outsource, it's the bulk of link-building.

Can I outsource it effectively? I'd like to try using Scriptlance or some similar site to find someone to provide me with a small number of good traffic-generating links (don't care if they're no-follow as long as they attract valuable visitors), Would this be a waste of money?

[nehpets]

I thought it was about time that I gave you guys an update on my progress considering all the help I got. Thanks for all the replies and for turning this thread into an interesting discussion.
After the advice I received, I have not been chasing links but have instead been concentrating on content and social networking. I have found Facebook and Myspace to be great tools in getting word of my website out there. I have also been making posts on platforms such as Hubspace and Squidoo with relevant links to my site - is this a strategy worth persuing with regard to other, similar platforms? I have downloaded the SEO toolbar for Firefox which has been interesting and today my website has broken into page 3 on the big G for the first time! Still some progress to me made clearly but this excited me far more than it should have done! One thing I have noticed though, is despite submitting my website to Bing, it is not featuring at all for any of my keywords. Any likely reasons for this?

I'm itching to make a start on my next project now but I must try hard not to lose sight of this one so I'm holding myself back.

[Clinton]

Clinton went a step further and said to forget about ranking on Google althogether. If so, what should I be concentrating on instead? Surely Google is essential to capture "window shoppers" as it were?

Here's one idea to build under the radar, undetectable-by-the-competition, links that drive traffic and business! (And bypasses Google altogether)

[JJMcClure]

Great story and a good example of how the best way to contrive the signals that Google likes to reward is to actually generate those signals, for real. In a funny way, the email offer is link bait. Nice out of the box thinking.

[Trythemon]

I have just come across this question. Backlinks will go a long way to helping you get onto page one for your key phrases and words. Write some good quality articles and submit them to article sites such as ConstantContent. Put a link in back to your site. I have an SEO company who do it for me as there hundreds Article Sites. Go onto Google to research your keywords.

But the best way is Social media - Twitter, Facebook are my favourites, other people swear by Stumbleupon.

[Slowdive]

Hello Trythemon.

Do you think that in light of Googles recent update sites like constant contact are viable sources of quality backlinks? Certainly I still see the value in buying unique and link worthy content, however sourcing backlinks from mass submission sites seems to be a polar opposite of what we should be doing in Googles eyes at this time. Certainly linking to hundred of article directory strikes me largely as SEO suicide and where as it may be working for your site or a few sites over all in niches dominated by strong link profiles and quality sites, it will almost certainly have at best no impact at worse it could damage rankings.

Also I think its a little misleading to imply twitter and facebook are good sources of backlinks, I could create a twitter profile right now and tweet all day to no effect. What proves to have positive results is people interacting with, talking about and in turn dropping your link. However these are more of site signals than actual backlinks effective page rank?