Rae Hoffman, in all her brilliance, devised a round-robin link interview on Sugarrae that truly rocks. She asked five experts in the link building space (myself included) to generate their toughest questions around link building and then had all five of us answer each question. The results are terrific. I’ll share some of my favorites:
What are the factors you would take into account before buying a link from a directly contacted site (not a link broker or seller)?
Roger: Backlinks. Take a look at the backlinks then note any from the same site. Remove those similar sites and search again. So if you’re in Yahoo and you’re doing this:
1. linkdomain:linkseller.com -site:linkseller.com
2. And find they have a bunch of inbounds from anotherlinkseller.com, do this:
3. linkdomain:linkseller.com -site:linkseller.com -site:anotherlinkseller.comIn sectors where links are particularly tough to come by (retail, B2B in boring industries, etc.), what are content tactics you’ve taken to appeal to relevant sites in those industries (specific examples would rock)?
Todd: …A specific example would be if I had an site about accounting (I don’t) – even accountants have a sense of humor to appeal to. Rather than writing a tutorial on how to file a 1099 – why not write the 23 ways most people cheat on their taxes, or the top 12 worst audits of all time. In boring industries you have to think twice as hard, and put in ten times the effort on creating interesting compelling content. The hardest sell on this stuff is the championing of a project like this internally because it takes some real stones to explain an “off the wall” concept like this. Think about who might link to you and create something compelling for them. Your users will most likely enjoy it too.
Automating the link acquisition process: How far do you recommend going with it? What are the benefits and pitfalls of automation?
Rae: …I have no problem locating potential links automatically or researching the competitions backlinks via automation (a mechnical grunt is a good thing) – it is the contacting of those possible link sources that needs to be natural. Benefits of automation is obviously speed, with the downfalls being noticeable footprints – mainly for those who use automated sources to display those links as well as those who use the same automated technology and therefore have the same “paths” as many other sites using the same programs in their niche.
There’s so many good responses to very timely and relevant questions that it’s going right into my favorite articles about links list. Great work, Rae (and everyone else involved). Now – go read it!
BTW – I should add, since it’s relevant, that SEOmoz is producing a new version of the ranking factors article in the next 10-15 days. That should be an exciting one, too – I just love the community responses; the depth and breadth of content and overall quality is drastically improved when you put smart people together on tough topics.
