Get BackLinks, Increase Street Cred

A free backlink strategy for beginners from inside the walls of Schawel.com. Resurfacing the original article from earlier this year due to quite a bit of interest/questions via email.

Intro

This post centers around using backlinks to increase your “Street Cred” in the search engines. Street Cred is defined as a certain level of worthiness that you have with the search engines based on what, where, and how sites are linking to you.

This post is also a result of many past successes and a few fizzles we have had. Some of our colleagues have already asked us, “Hey Schawel, aren’t you giving away your money making super secrets?” No, all the information is already out undulating through the interwebs. We are just here to consolidate it and make it palatable. Bon appetite!

Caveat: There will always be backlinks that we can’t control. Que sera, sera.

Stage One: The Approach

1. Client Requirements

The first thing we do is identify certain keywords our clients want to be found for and which pages (deeper than the home page) they should link to. We fold that into what we know to be true, Adwords logs and what Analytics tells us. At this stage we also determine if paid links is an option. This would influence our list of targeted sites and timelines.

2. Anchor Text – What Will the Link Look Like?

Based on the above, the second thing we do is create an <a> that takes into account all the ingredients of a good backlink:

Example: <a href="http://www.schawel.com/backlinks/2010/05/01/" title="backlinks">Backlinks</a>

The example above is assuming that we have control of the attributes of the anchor tag. That is not always true. Sometimes we simply just have an input field for the URL. Oh well, life goes on.

3. Benchmarking and Flagging

We always peep out the competition, who are most likely found on the first couple pages in search engines, to see how many backlinks they have and where from. This gives us a good idea of the competitive landscape. We make note of these sites.

4. Building the Backlink Matrix

Once we have an idea of some sites we would like to target, we start building a backlink matrix. The matrix can be Excel, Google Docs, or a napkin. Don’t get bogged down by technology, it’s a waste of time at this point. The matrix is based on the values below:

Quality of Backlink

What is the backlink source’s position in the search engines (for the keywords we are going after) and their overall page rank? What sort of links point to them? This is important for the mere fact of going after quality not quantity.

Backlink Source

Where kind of site are they? Below are example sources for our backlink matrix.

• Large branded entities with world wide appeal
• Backlinks that are from well known blogs
• Backlinks from bookmarking sites (e.g. delicious, digg.com, stumble upon)
• Backlinks from various social sites. These can be quite fruitful especially if the social space does not use the “nofollow” rule.
• Press release sites and feeds
• Reputable free directories
• Very active forums that have a category that pertains to your industry.
• Backlinks from .edu, .gov and .mil. These hold a certain amount of weight because it is assumed that to get a link on these domains, it takes real work and a real relationship.

Type of Backlink

What type of relationship will the client have with the site? Some sites will give a backlink for one back to them (e.g. reciprocal backlink). This is decent and may be a start of a good relationship, however, we generally aim for one-way backlinks. They “generally” carries more weight. We also stay away from link farms, weirdo parked domains, abandoned blogs, those annoying directories of directories and stinky socks.

Backlink Attributes

Nofollow Backlinks

(e.g. rel="nofollow" or rel="me nofollow"). These backlinks are not necessarily bad. It just means Google* doesn’t follow the link, which ain’t so great for organic SERPs. However, if that nofollow backlink is placed on a super duper popular site and there are already lots of users, they are bound to find the link and – if it’s a valuable contribution – pick it up and share it around. SO while the initial link isn’t followed, a copy could end up on various blogs and other channels which do not have the nofollow value.

Redirected Backlinks

(e.g. /redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecom%2Fschawel&urlhash=XtI6&trk=pro_twit) Currently, if you do a HTTP header redirect, the destination page of the redirect will get the link credit. So this is not that great either.

Regular Backlinks

These are the straight-up, regular backlinks on the rocks which add immediate points to the street cred. How many points relates to everything above, and since we are not Google we can’t tell you the exact algorithm for this. Our take? We still aim for both.

* Ask ignores the nofollow and Yahoo basically indexes the content but will not count it as a point towards the street cred.

Wrap-up

Now that we have the matrix built, we return to the Benchmarking and Flagging from above. We dig deeper and find plenty of other sites that would be a good source for backlinks based on everything we have said above. We combine all lists to form about 50-100 sites that we will be going after.

Stage Two: OMG, The Hard Part

So we have this long list of sites that we need the backlink from, we have our approach laid out above, and some dates on when to execute everything. We even built a little matrix. Now, we now have to actually get the backlink – also known as the hard part.

1. Create a Top 10 List

These are always great. We put these lists on bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg) and usually have a lot of success with them. We are always surprised where they end up.

2. Trends

We find a trend in the client’s industry and figure out how it would relate to their product/service. We generally pay a copywriter to produce a juicy article. Professional copywriters cost money, but it’s totally worth paying someone for their craft. Plus, it forges another relationship. Once we have some unique content, we submit it free to various PR/content sites.

3. Solve Problems

Posts which answer users’ questions are always helpful. Our crew legitimately answers items on blogs and forums. Sometimes the link gives the user the answer and other times our profile simply links back to the client’s site.

4. Contribute to a Discussion

We find a discussion that relates to the client’s offering. We try and add intelligent content to a blog/forum reply and then drop the link as a resource to the discussion.

5. Videos and Podcasts

We add video or audio to sites like YouTube.com, Vimeo.com, and various podcast directories. Sometimes we make a video or podcast based on some creatives we come up or the client sends us a video from their vendor and we post that. We always make sure to link users back to a specific landing page. We also generally use these services to host these large files and then use embed code for the clients site.

6. Photos

We create/upload a product or event gallery on sites like Picassa, Flickr (uses the ‘nofollow’ value), or Smugmug. The gallery describes this cool product, event or service all the while linking back to the client’s site.

7. A Jaw Dropping, Sweet as Molasses Newsletter

We write something unique and interesting and send it out to the world. We always make sure to have some “share this” functionality so users can share the web version of the newsletter that should be sitting on a server. This is similar to 2.) above but it’s sent to the entire customer DB. These customers may be a bit more apt to share it.

8. Vendors

We instruct our clients to make contact with the vendor. If our client sells their stuff, there is a good chance they will link to them.

9. Microsites

We create small microsites which either aggregate product feeds or we simply write a bunch of content which carefully focuses on a high level keyword and the derivatives thereof. This works well when we have clients with hundreds of services and/or products. We can then take one of their keywords and really add some serious weight to it through these 3, 10, or 20 page sites.

10. Offer Something Free

If our clients have acute knowledge and a few extra human resources, we usually work with them to release something valuable as a download or a free thingy. This works pretty good with free recipes, free product for the 100th customer this week, free coupon for Twitter connections only, free video lesson, free souvenir, free demo, etc.

11. Launch an Affiliate Network

This is a pretty good solution with e-commerce sites that generally offer a product for sale which is an easy way to generate commissions and buzz. The users then have to back link to you if they want their commissions recorded. You simply reward the community for doing the work for you.

12. The Link Magnet

This is a biggy. Think about the economics behind backlinking. You can pay a team of people (like us) to seed for you. That is needed but you should also think about letting the community seed for you. That cuts costs and time by big margins enabling you to fast track your campaign.

The concept is simple. Develop some sort of widget, badge, or thingy which rewards users. You may have great content which may qualify as link bait, but now you are going to reward someone for linking to you; you are creating an incentive for them to link. Thousands of users who downloaded or copy/pasted “this thingy” stitch it (sometimes .js) into their site. They don’t mind it due to the fact that it helps round out their “own” site’s worth. In the end you have a network of users pointing to you. This is what the big players do and have been doing for a long time.

In Conclusion

Ok, now you have a full-fledged backlink strategy which touches on client requirements, approach, backlink methodologies, and creatives. There are plenty of edge cases and tangents we can go down, but this is a basic summary of proven steps for building backlinks. We have had a lot of success using this simple strategy. Contact us to learn more.