The 10 Golden Rules to Attracting Authority Links |
The 10 Golden Rules to Attracting Authority Links Posted: 01 Feb 2012 01:08 PM PST Posted by neilpatel This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. In the world of link building, getting an authority link to your site/blog has been one of the most important aspects of growing your blog. Back in 2009 Page Level Link Metrics and Domain Level Authority Features accounted for over 46% of your pages own authority:
In 2011, that percentage has dropped, but only by 4% [42.58%], suggesting that link building will continue to be a critical factor to your blog/website’s success.
But we pretty much know that not just any link will do. The better the site the link is coming from, the better the link. That’s why your link-building campaigns need to be built around attracting authority links. But how do you do that? And what exactly is an authority link? Let me explain. Absolute and relative authority links explained There are two types of authorities. There are the absolute authority sites like Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and Google’s blog. These sites are also labeled “informational” authorities versus navigational authorities like DMOZ. On the other hand, you also have relative authority sites. These are sites run by bloggers or webmasters that are authorities in a niche. Bloggers like Robert Scoble, Dooce or Mashable are authorities in their markets. While the link juice they’ll give you if they link to you is not as high as what an absolute authority site could give you…they are definitely worth attracting. But how do you actually get a link from these sites? Here are the ten golden rules to attracting authority links. Rule 1: Write content that attracts Editorial In-content Links The most fundamental tactic of attracting authority links is to write content that is worth a link. What does this content look like?
Building up a blog/site with this kind of content will take time, so you may not pick up a natural authority link out of the gate. Better yet, once you have a solid archive of content, approach these authority sites and ask for a link. Give them a good reason, which could be one of the following:
Rule 2: Fix other people’s broken links Links die all the time. People shut down website or pull web pages. When these documents or sites vanish all the links pointing to them are dead. For example, if you work through a web page by a publisher who links out a lot and the page is a few years old, you are bound to find at least one or two dead links on that page. Work through the entire site and you could find dozens. Mashable is a good example of a site that links out a lot and will probably have a lot of dead links on older pages since they tend to report on startups that don’t always last. You can easily solve this in 2 ways:
Drop link into sub form:
Choose your options:
Click “done” and then wait 644.47 seconds:
You can then work your way through the status report:
From that report you can build a list of dead links, the pages that need to replaced and the authors you can approach if it is a multi-author site like Mashable. Rule 3: Create a desirable image library If you have high-quality images on our site, you can use those images as an incentive to get people to link to you. Imagine you have a gallery of large, high-resolution pictures…well, then offer a contact form that allows a person to grab the file and linking code right there on the page. You don’t have to go all out like a photl.com:
Or freepixels.com:
But more like a Haw-lin:
The last site specialize in photos, for you though being a content publisher looking for ranking juice, you could build a sub-domain devoted to photos like these. Here’s what you have to do, though.
And to help you benefit fully from this tactic, keep this in mind when building a library of images:
Rule 4: Offer to write a column or do a guest post Giving a publisher practical, highly-researched content as a guest post is a great way to get links to your site from him or her. Keep in mind this tactic typically be easier to pull off for those relative authority content sites than absolute authority sites due to their blogging policy. But if you have a guest posting strategy that involves focusing on building links, traffic and exposure via guest posting on a select few relative authority sites, you’ll eventually have an arsenal of content that you can pitch to the absolute authority sites. Some authority sites like Open Forum or Huffington Post have so much need for content that you can usually get a post on there. But you typically still have to provide a portfolio of posts so they can understand what level of writing you are at and not just someone off the street. Here are some resource to help you write, submit and get published guest posts:
Rule 5: Go to where your target audience hangs out As bloggers and people of the internet we often forget about all of the face-to-face connections that can provide us with valuable links from relative or absolute authority site publishers. For example, travel to conferences and hook up with some of the people you want to influence and convince to link to your site. Don’t be a pest to these people, but hang out, be cool to them, and then leave them alone for the rest of the events. You then need to go to the after-event event at the bar. This is where you can make things happen by simply buying them a drink or two. If you really want to take it to another level, offer to take them out for dinner and pick up the check. During that dinner suggest they link to you in some purposeful way…perhaps you offer to create an infographics or a beginner’s guide. But even if you don’t get some agreement like that you can say as you grab the check, “No, let me get this. You give me a link or something.” That way the person thinks, “A $50 dinner for a link? You got it.” Rule 6: Fill gaps in content As I mentioned above, when you are talking to content publishers, ask them what content they are missing…and offer to create it for them. It could be a video interview of Guy Kawaski or a periodic table of the fundamentals of link building. It could be an idea they’ve had for an ebook. Whatever it is, offer to create it for them. Once you create the content you will get the credit as a link back to your site. Make sure you offer content that you can create professionally and will attract people who are in your target audience. Creating a weight-loss calculator for a site when you are in real estate will drive traffic to your site…but it will be the wrong traffic. You might as well done nothing. Rule 7: Contact big media at the right time When you are trying to attract the attention of big media sites like CNN or The Economist, knowing when they publish their content is important. For those sites who are less tied to a content schedule, like a Drudge Report, you will not need to know when they publish their links because they do it pretty much as the story breaks. Still, having some kind of bead on when that time is will improve your chances. Here’s a guideline to follow:
And even if you do get coverage…it won’t be a lot and it probably won’t be a link. Late content entries are typically reduced to the show that doesn’t impact SEO at all. 8. Approach government or education sites A sure sign of an authority site is a .edu or .gov. This could be a link from a college like Harvard or Stanford or a link from the White House or Usability.gov. Getting those links are not always easy. One example is to look for ways you can register accounts with these institutions. For example, Harvard has The Harvard H20 Playlist Project. It’s simply a series of links to books, articles or content that hopes to spark content.
Simply create a playlist and add a link to a useful post inside your site. Creating meaningful, researched content or break an interesting story and these sites might naturally attract these sites might link to you. Examples of content that you could write that might actually grab their attention include:
The kind of content you could create that would attract a government link could be:
In some cases you will just have to approach these institutions. When you do, you are more likely to get an answer however, and a positive one at that, if you inspect their site, identify the content gaps and then offer to fill them. Again, it’s going to be important that you have something to show that you can pull off the content professionally, so don’t try this tactic until you have a good catalog of posts in your archives. 9. Buy links without penalty It’s no secret that buying links violates Google’s policy and the penalty can be very stiff. So you may be wonder why I’m suggesting you buy links. There are ways to buy links that will not be a violation of Google’s policy. Here are two:
As you can see these examples are based on an exchange of value between two people and their websites that can relate to the relevancy of content…so it’s an ethical way of buying links. Rule 10: Know the difference between a good and a bad site Finally, one of the most fundamental rules to link building is knowing the difference between a good website and a bad one. This might sound obvious but it’s sometimes easy to get tricked into asking a site that looks like an authority but is in reality spammy. What are the elements that determine if a website is a bad one? Here are five ways:
Ads easily dominate 2/3 of the real estate. But it’s a legitimate website with pretty good content. If that’s the case, then evaluate the copy. Is it well written, heavily researched and specific? Is there an author attached to it? Is there a convincing author bio page? These are all elements you need to look at to determine whether you should write a guest post for them or not.
Conclusion Trust me when I say that you will not be wasting your time if you invest it in attracting authority links to your website or blog. Remember: nearly half of what determines the rank of your site is based upon the types of links driving to your site. Hopefully this guide has given you the tips and the tools necessary to help you succeed.
About the author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
Find New Keywords: Simplifying Keyword Research Posted: 01 Feb 2012 05:12 AM PST Posted by Karen Semyan In December, we rolled out branded keyword rules and metrics to campaigns to help you segment your branded traffic. Now, we’re excited to introduce a companion feature to make your keyword research easier: Find New Keywords. With this feature, you can view keywords sending you organic search traffic, filter on your brand rules, and determine if you want to track them in your campaign. First, the basics.You’ll discover the Find New Keywords feature in a tab under your Manage Keywords section. (This feature requires that you connect your campaign to Google Analytics, so if you’re not connected to GA, you’ll find instructions on how to do this on the Find New Keywords tab.)
But wait, where did the Manage Brand Rules page go?! We’ve moved your brand rules page into a tab under Manage Keywords, as well, so you can easily move among these sections as you manage your keywords. Now, on to the hunt for new keywords!1. View the top 200 keywords sending you traffic that you’re not currently tracking.
Why stop at 200? We want to make it easier for you to add the keywords that may be most interesting to track because they are branded terms or common words heavily associated by searchers with your site. After that, you can go straight to GA to manually grab more terms. If we see high demand for showing more keywords, we’ll consider showing more terms in the future (so let us know what you think!). 2. Decide which keywords are candidates for tracking.
3. Add keywords of interest to your managed keywords list. One thing to note: If you are tracking all 200 (which we don’t necessarily recommend--please make your choices carefully), you’ll see a message telling you to check later for new keywords that have moved up the list. We’d love to know what you think of the feature, so let us know! Leave a comment right here, e-mail help@seomoz.org, or share a feature suggestion in our feature request forum. Happy keyword finding! Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
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