Link Building to Inner Pages at Will
Most of the articles we write about link building or SEO in general tend to be about theory, updates, and recommendation. To tell you the truth only a few articles here and there are actionable articles of "how to" category that tell you what to do, action style. Well, I'll try to tell you a few actionable tips on how to link build to your deeper pages at will without having to rely on webmasters for answers and still get some solid quality backlinks.
First, why is it important to link to deep pages? I feel that this is important to explain before we get down to link building part. Building only links to your homepage will be seen as spammy for sure, so you need to diversify your link targets. But at the same time, even if you build only to your top level pages the effect won't be as beneficial as when you pass some link juice to your quality content pages that are deeper in the structure. To say it like this, your website is as strong as your weakest page, so make them stronger!
Link Building at Will
Link building at will is when you go out, do some searches, follow some breadcrumbs and find sites where you can personally create backlinks to your website. So in other words you don't depend on other webmasters to approve your cooperation and post links. But let's not kid ourselves here, the best quality links come from cooperation with other webmasters, but this is also needed to improve our link diversity and get more new domains to link to our website.
Scouting Communities and Link Building
One of the best places to start are your niche and local communities. We are talking about everything from forums to simply online communities that connect people with similar interests. The idea is simple, find a community, create a profile and engage. Just creating a profile will not make any difference, but some activity on the website will build more internal backlinks to your profile page and you will also be able to improve your authority on the site in question and score some additional backlinks.
Few Search Queries to Use ("travel" keyword used as example):
"travel community"
List of travel communities
"travel forum"
"travel" inurl:forum
"travel" inurl:community
Just using these few simple searches I managed to find a great number of travel communities and forums. Most of these communities allow you to post your own travel experiences and stories with content backlinks, just what we need. And since there are plenty of users, people always submit content to these sites, they link to their pages and profiles so you can be sure that the domain has some solid authority and is going up as we speak. So this counts as a great backlink if you work a bit on it.
Q/A sites
Q/A sites are very similar to communities, in fact they are a form of community but their approach is a bit different. Here you mostly rely on your profile page, so you need to be active in order to get some scores and followers. Eventually you can create a real quality page (your profile) that can send a quality backlink. But this is not all, with Q/A sites you build your trust as an authority in your niche, and yeah, if you can answer some question by pointing a link to one of your pages you get inner links as well. A good tactic is to find interesting questions and write posts about them and then link from Q/A sites offering them as the complete answer.
Posting Articles to Top Level Sites
When I say post article to top level sites I am talking broad, but this is broad and we are not talking necessarily about article directories. From the example above you saw that you can easily write articles for community websites and publish them there, so there are more website you can use to post your quality articles. Think web 2.0, you can use HubPages or Squidoo, or you can go a step further and use sites like Gather and Tumblr. These are also type of communities, which makes it better, as anything that engages other people and get them to know you is essential for link building and website promotion.
Competitor Links
Competitor backlink discovery is one of the first things we do in every new link building campaign. But we often miss something or something new comes along. Gazing at your competitor backlinks you will surely find plenty of backlinks that are easy to recreate. Look for links that comes from authority websites, don't waste your time with bookmarks and digg clones, in fact, if you have too many of those links you can drop a few.
Find Roundups and promote your content
Although we said that at will link building shouldn't rely on webmasters I have to stress this one out as it is a no brainer and it's incredibly easy to get some great links this way. When you have some quality content, a really great article, you can find blogs that do weekly roundups and suggest your article. Of course, this would go much easier if you know the webmasters a bit. So find related blogs, comment regularly, tweet their content and when the time is right pitch your article for their roundup. If you do it like this, then it can fall under "at will" category.
How is this different from Low Level Links
The problem with link building at will is that most people will stick to bookmarks, profiles and comments (although commenting has a different sort of power, the power to connect). Manual link building is the best way to get backlinks; anything that runs completely on auto pilot cannot be good. These at will links are not of the highest authority, but there is nothing wrong with them and I'll explain why.
The definition of low level links according to some can also be seen as the time put in into creating a link. In other words, if I can create a link in 2 minutes how can that link be of quality and authority and that is a perfect point which I agree with. But all of the link opportunities mentioned here require more than just slapping a link on your profile page! They require you to engage, connect and post quality content. So with just that being said these are not 5 minute links, you do have to write quality content, you do have to be active in those communities and you do have to spend some time. So although they are at will, they are not low quality links and can greatly contribute to your overall link profile.
Zarko works as SEO strategist and link builder. He is the founder of Practical SEO Company and advanced SEO Strategist at Dejan SEO. He is also the chief editor and writer for Practical SEO blog.
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Community link building is seriously underrated because it takes time to integrate but I think that benefit of it is that not only do you get a "link" but you are getting out of the mindset of simply targeting keywords and doing what you should be doing; targeting an audience. The strategy is long term but the benefits go far beyond the land of bookmarks and backlinks that are easily attainable.
Leo Dimilo recently posted: Why Brand Ultimately Trumps Niche “non” Brands
Hi Leo, you got it right, we are building links at will with communities but we are not targeting only SEO, in fact we are more concerned about the audience and connecting with the audience. And like you said, these are not low level links we are talking about, with regular commitment this can be traffic gold links.
Using roundups is an idea I hadn't heard before. And I need to explore some more Q&A sites. The one and only I tried some time ago didn't do much for me. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Linda Stacy recently posted: How to Choose Blog Web Hosting
Hi Linda, roundups can get you a great number of good links by just writing your quality content and networking, and like I said in the post pitching the idea when the time is right. Of course some people will recognize quality and link to you by their own will.
As for Q/A sites, you can try Quora, Mahalo, Wiki Answers and LinkedIn Answers as well. This is a powerful way of setting yourself as authority, when you do people will want to find out more and they will visit your site. but if you manage to find questions that relate to some of the topics you answered on your site all the better. Or you can find some questions related to your market and write posts on that subject and than offer that as your answer, people have been doing that for years with great success.
Zarko recently posted: Ranking Factors Popularity and Weight- SEO Case Study 1
Hey Zarko
What is your take on link directories as part of an overall link building profile? Some are saying forget link directories, others are saying if you pick and choose and focus on the higher quality ones they will help with your IP diversity. What do you think? Do you still incorporate directories in a backlinking profile and if you had a new client come to you would that be an area you would look at for a fairly new website?
Dan recently posted: New Era Debt Solutions Complaints
Hi Dan,
well yeah, I use directories, and like you said, for new websites, a few high quality and niche oriented directories simply can't hurt. I really don't understand why anyone would want to forget about any link opportunity type. No one is saying build links in thousands of directories, but going after the few valuable ones is a always a good idea.
Zarko recently posted: Link Building Tip 2 – Using Linkable Assets
Ok, good to know. So the trick is finding and figuring out which directories are the ones worth taking the time to go after. I know SEOMoz is supposed to be updating their directory list but I haven't seen it yet. Do you happen to know any sources that could point me in the direction of some of the higher quality directories?
Thanks
@Dan,
well SEOmoz has a solid list, but they haven't updated it in a long time. There was recently a post on SEOmoz about the benefits of having your site on the BBB directory, but this is a costly opportunity.
You might want to list directories in your market and simply look at quality, look at SEOmoz metrics and find directories with high domain authority, that can work well.
Here is a link of some of the directories you can use: http://www.garethjames.net/authority-directory-list/
But I suggest you find more and pick on your own, if you are not sure about authority as a metric then pick few random websites listed in those directories and see how they stand with their authority and rankings, that should give you more than enough to go on.
hope this helps
Zarko recently posted: Link Building Tip #4 – Competitor Link Analysis & Acquisition
Hi Zarko,
Good post. Actionable posts are always my favorite kind. I hadn't thought of roundup, that's a good one. Also, we have been using "keyword" resources as a suffix as well to find good places for links to our best content. Fewer opportunities, but when you do find one it is sometimes pretty decent.
And you are right, competition analyze with OSE and yahoo site explorer can really reveal some good link opps.