Sep 04 2009
An Attempt at Tracking the Success of Inbound Links
I know that inbound links are key to a site’s rise up the Google rankings and, since I am on a link building mission at the moment, I thought I would attempt to prove it. Or at least see what a bunch of new inbound links do to my rankings.
One of the sites I am trying desperatly to get ranked is my living in Sydney site. A few weeks ago it was nowhere to be seen on Google and now it is ranked at number eight on page two of the results for my target keywords ‘living in Sydney’.
So here’s my plan: I am going to link build for this site and keep track of everything I do. I will be building links anyways so it makes sense for me to track of the links I end up getting and reporting on how they effect my Google results. All of the links I go for will have the anchor text ‘living in Sydney’.
Here’s what I will do to get links:
- Link swaps
- Attempt to get one-way inbound links
- Article submissions
- Blog comments
- Leave comments on forums
- Add in-content links on my own related pages
My focus will be on the first three but I will throw a few more things in the mix as well just to spice things up a bit. Guest posts on other people’s blogs would be a smart way to build links but, unfortunately, they would probably be terrible posts since I don’t actually know much about living in Sydney (most of this site’s content has been contributed by other people who live there) so I’ve left that option off my list.
I have no idea how long it will take but it’s my goal to get to within the top five results for this search term. Will it work? There’s no reason why it shouldn’t, it’s just a matter of how long and how many links it’ll take, I think. So far I’ve been able to get two quality one-way inbound links so I’m off to a good start. It should be interesting!
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Hey Kirsty–your Living in Sydney site link should be stuckinsydney.com, right? Just a quick heads up!
I suggest you target that keyword with your site’s internal linking too. Instead of just a link to the homepage with ‘Home’ as the link text, it would be much better if you have a link that says ‘living in sydney’ on every page. You could leave the top link as Home, but add a footer link with this text.
I think you should watch how much you focus on 1 single keyword phrase. This makes your link building look unnatural and may set off spam filters with the search engines. If it were me, I would build links all around 3 - 6 related phrases, preferably ones with some overlapping words. Maybe phrases like life in sydney, sydney living, etc. A lot of the time you will find that you can get rankings easier for some of those phrases. Then you can switch your keyword focus as certain rankings improve.
Google really cares about authority these days. So make sure you get lots of links from well trusted, high PR sites.
Another good trick is to check where all of your competitors get their links. You can often copy some of those links to take away that advantage.
Thoughts:
* Link swaps - can be ok, but don’t do a ton
* Attempt to get one-way inbound links - 99% of your time should be spent on this.
* Article submissions - wouldn’t spend a lot of time on this- try UAW to speed up the process so you don’t have to write so many. remember no one reads these anyways.
* Blog comments - worthless. most are no followed and 99% of webmasters will deleted a keyworded name.
* Leave comments on forums -worthless b/c most are no followed and its time consuming
* Add in-content links on my own related pages - ok for internal seo but won’t help you overall in your google ranking b/c google really doesn’t add weight to how you link to your own content. It helps shows importance on the backdrop of your overall site but that’s about it.
@alan Thanks for letting me know! I made a mistake on that one and have changed it to the correct URL.
@aluminumcase Thanks loads for the advice! I will do a bit of keyword research and try to find another few combos to target. I plan to do a bit of internal page targeting as well but for the moment and for this little experiment, I’m going to target the main page. Checking out the competition’s links is something I’ve done in the days when Travoholic was getting started but I’ve sort of dropped the ball on that lately so thanks for the reminder.
@nomadicmatt I knew you would chime in about blog comments and forums, I just knew it! I don’t plan on spending much time on this but if I can find a few that do-follow I will. The trick is finding them though and that’s not something I really want to dedicate a lot of time to. Maybe I will just scrap that idea. I should have mentioned this in my post but the link swaps I do will all be three-way so I will link to the site that links to StuckinSydney.com from another one of my sites. This makes the inbound link a one-way I think, is that right? Same for internal linking… I don’t mean I am going to link from Stuck in Sydney to Stuck in Sydney, I mean I will find related pages on my other 10 or so sites and look for content that I can work the links into. I am guessing Google knows they are all hosted in the same place and it might not do much… do you know?
Thanks again for the tips and advice guys! It’s too soon to tell anything but it looks like I’ve jumped up a spot already. We’ll see where I am tomorrow though!
I left a huge comment earlier that got either rejected or eaten. Oh, well.
Kirsty, you can find do-follow blogs by using Comment Kahuna. It’s a free tool that searches for blog posts on any topic you choose. I think it’ll help you on your strategies.
Some other practices to help your blog commenting strategy:
- Vary your anchor text, as others have said.
- Build 25% of your links to your home page. Direct all others to inner pages. It’s more efficient, and helps you with long tails as well.
- At the comment box, you can put your name like “Sydney Area Guide by Kirsty H.”, and link the comment to http://www.stuckinsydney.com/sydneyareaguide/ — this way it looks more personal, and it also helps to vary the anchor text.
The first two suggestions can/should also be used on article marketing, Squidoo lenses, Hub pages and all that.
As for link exchanges, try to reach webmasters whose pages are complimentary to your inner pages. I think you will find success there. Not to mention it’ll help you to vary your anchor text. Echo, echo…
Cheers,
Diogo
Hi Kirsty, I’ve been following progress for the last year or so, still finding some of the SEO stuff a little hard to get my head round. The thing I find odd is the lack of solid correlation between Page Ranks and traffic. I have a couple of neglected sites that are PR3 that never get much traffic. To be fair I have been distracted from my dream of becoming nomadic this year but plan to get more focussed soon. Good luck with your search for traffic.
Adrian.
Oops - forgot to mention if you want to link swap or post an article with links just shout .
I think forums are worth while. My first travel blog has been going for just under a month, and when I started posting on forums (LP Thorn Tree, India Mike and Trip Advisor) my traffic really increased- now about 70% of my traffic comes from them. Each post does count as a link too, at least on LP and India Mike.
“The thing I find odd is the lack of solid correlation between Page Ranks and traffic. ”
There is really no strong correlation at all. That’s by design. Google doesn’t want you to know how to rank. They are currently losing the battle, because they have over-relied on links and are suffering the consequences. A search engine will never tell you how to rank. This knowledge has been built up by large numbers of people prodding Google with sticks and building up the picture over years. All the while, the factors are constantly shifting and being tweaked by Google.
Really the only place on the Web where you will get the latest info as it develops on the state of Google is on Web Master World’s Google Search Forum. Also, it’s the only forum where Google is officially represented by employees. Although, they don’t answer questions directly and post rarely. If any news bombshells drop regarding the algorithm, then it usually happens there or comes out of Matt Cutt’s mouth or blog directly.
I take back mentioning WMW as the only place. They might have representation on Digital point or site point. But WMW is usually where anything new and useful happens. Not as often as it used to though.
@Language Dude Thanks for taking the time to post in response its really appreciated, I will check out WMW
I would mix it up for every link you create with your key term i would create one other with another term linking to a random page, i have found this to be the best approach.
I’d be very cautious about doing too much interlinking between sites you own. Although the links might be relevant, you don’t want to trigger the mystical point (wherever it may be) where Google sees the linking pattern as a blog farm and deindexes the lot… perhaps that’s being overly paranoid, but I wouldn’t interlink your money sites too much if I were you.
Do you rank for “cost of living in Sydney”? That’s usually the first query I enter into a search engine when researching possible destinations to move or travel to.
Best way to make ranking is to choose easy ranking terms. Use Google Keyword tools to see how much searches has every rank and see how many results has the term. 35 millions are a LOT to position ok, but 8 in the second page is huge. try top position on any other terms which envolves “Sydney” and position with “Living in Sydney” will raise a little, and will be easier to position better then.
I think these process are good for increase inbound links and get good ranking for your site.
Use adwords tool and see what google thinks are related terms - try to mix it up so that you only use your actual main kw about 25% of the time - but remember that a link such as “poms stuck in Sydney” - still gives you a bit of juice for “stuck in Sydney”. Lissie
Yeah !
Google really cares about authority these days. So make sure you get lots of links from well trusted, high PR sites.
Good moves to do and it will need hard work from you to get to top in google’s first page, good luck.