[Guide] Things You Must Know Before You Do Link Building

[Geasy]

When doing link building there are many questions that flow up on your mind like should we use the same site to link us twice? What kind of anchor text should we use?

I decided to make a post and answer some of the most important things you should know.

Common Questions

1. Referring Domain (RD) diversity, i.e. never a repeat backlink from the same RD? Or, a different page on the same RD is a-okay forever and ever? Or... somewhere in between 2-3 repeats is okay, but you believe in a "law of diminishing returns"?
2. What are your most preferred metrics in evaluating sites to secure backlinks from? TF, CF, DR, DA, PR, Ahrefs est. traffic, GA traffic, rankings analysis... or?
3. With respect to your backlinks' anchor text, what is the ratio of branded anchors: keyworded anchors: naked URLs?
4. Also with respect to your backlinks' destination URLs, what is the ratio of home page: money page: pillar content: other?
5. With regards to niche relevancy, do you believe a referring domain must be relevant to your site, or you will earn a penalty? Or, do you care more about the referring *page*'s relevancy? Or, neither? Or, both?

Answers

1. RD Diversity - Probably highly important. Chances are, it’s one of the things I went into a campaign looking for, especially with a paid vendor. The big annoyance with vendors is it feels like theft if someone has an author account (or another way to reliably post within a few days.) It seems like a month isn’t going to hit the link goal… then magically 3 links appear in the last week, all on repeat sites
2. Traffic est from aHrefs or SEMRush - it’s basically a snapshot at how their rankings have been doing. There are so many DR40 domains selling links that get like 300 visits a month. If the site actually had the trust that DR was looking to model, it would have way more than 10 visits a day. Traffic - and traffic trend - above all else. (Trend-wise - I am super not interested in a link from a site that’s lost 70% of the est traffic it was getting. You’re tanking, bro - a link from you isn’t going to help me.)
3. I do heavy branded - something like 50%, and then a good chunk of generics, and then longer phrases that contain my term - so ‘great dog food options’ not ‘dog food’
4. Overall - something like 30-40% home and then everything else mixed. But if I’m working with a specific vendor they may be just a piece of the puzzle and I want only links to money pages from them, etc.
5. Ideally, it would be a relevant + strong domain, the next best is a relevant page on a strong domain, and then a lower authority but relevant domain. Everything else is a distant second. Stuff like roundups on a high DR domain but no connection to the topic of the site getting the link may be good at pumping DR/DA/etc SEO-stats and not much else)

 

[TheVigilante]

Good to see your stuff again

 

[tazarbm]

Good read! Confirms what I already knew, but good advice for SEO newbies nonetheless.

Thumbs up!

 

[FlyFlay]

How to distribute links to a fresh domain?

Which links to build to a fresh domain in the first months?
Then what links to build in a year or two timeframe?

What should be the anchor test diversity for a fresh clean domain?

Are 10xdr20 links better than two Dr 40?

How many pbns max should you use for a fresh clean domain?

 

[dealmein923]

Thank you for these insites.

 

[JinxerCraft]

Also with respect to your backlinks' destination URLs, what is the ratio of home page: money page: pillar content: other?

Overall - something like 30-40% home and then everything else mixed. But if I’m working with a specific vendor they may be just a piece of the puzzle and I want only links to money pages from them, etc.

What anchor text do you prefer when building links for the homepage? And do you only take links from the author bio?

 

[dragonlube]

Really good collection of questions and your answers to it.
Thanks for the share

 

[mginz]

it would be a relevant + strong domain, the next best is a relevant page on a strong domain, and then a lower authority but relevant domain.

Really great questions and answers. Thanks
But. does it means that all "backlinks packages" and other so called SEO stuff sold around here doesn't worth "a lot"
Since actually almost no chance to get "a relevant + strong domain" within this packages
right? I am missing something?

 

[fb3003]

@allsystems - above is what I call expert insight.... and not once @Geasy has called himself an expert!


@Geasy - as always, thank you!

 

[HenryObi]

When doing link building there are many questions that flow up on your mind like should we use the same site to link us twice? What kind of anchor text should we use?

I decided to make a post and answer some of the most important things you should know.

Common Questions

1. Referring Domain (RD) diversity, i.e. never a repeat backlink from the same RD? Or, a different page on the same RD is a-okay forever and ever? Or... somewhere in between 2-3 repeats is okay, but you believe in a "law of diminishing returns"?
2. What are your most preferred metrics in evaluating sites to secure backlinks from? TF, CF, DR, DA, PR, Ahrefs est. traffic, GA traffic, rankings analysis... or?
3. With respect to your backlinks' anchor text, what is the ratio of branded anchors: keyworded anchors: naked URLs?
4. Also with respect to your backlinks' destination URLs, what is the ratio of home page: money page: pillar content: other?
5. With regards to niche relevancy, do you believe a referring domain must be relevant to your site, or you will earn a penalty? Or, do you care more about the referring *page*'s relevancy? Or, neither? Or, both?

Answers

1. RD Diversity - Probably highly important. Chances are, it’s one of the things I went into a campaign looking for, especially with a paid vendor. The big annoyance with vendors is it feels like theft if someone has an author account (or another way to reliably post within a few days.) It seems like a month isn’t going to hit the link goal… then magically 3 links appear in the last week, all on repeat sites
2. Traffic est from aHrefs or SEMRush - it’s basically a snapshot at how their rankings have been doing. There are so many DR40 domains selling links that get like 300 visits a month. If the site actually had the trust that DR was looking to model, it would have way more than 10 visits a day. Traffic - and traffic trend - above all else. (Trend-wise - I am super not interested in a link from a site that’s lost 70% of the est traffic it was getting. You’re tanking, bro - a link from you isn’t going to help me.)
3. I do heavy branded - something like 50%, and then a good chunk of generics, and then longer phrases that contain my term - so ‘great dog food options’ not ‘dog food’
4. Overall - something like 30-40% home and then everything else mixed. But if I’m working with a specific vendor they may be just a piece of the puzzle and I want only links to money pages from them, etc.
5. Ideally, it would be a relevant + strong domain, the next best is a relevant page on a strong domain, and then a lower authority but relevant domain. Everything else is a distant second. Stuff like roundups on a high DR domain but no connection to the topic of the site getting the link may be good at pumping DR/DA/etc SEO-stats and not much else)

I like this concise and straight to the point explanation to some of the most popular asked questions.

I've never really taken number 4 seriously both on my successful projects and those yet to be.

 

[hideath]

nice one dude!
some people do miss some important parts of these while getting their links in fact,
keep it up

1. Traffic est from aHrefs or SEMRush - it’s basically a snapshot at how their rankings have been doing. There are so many DR40 domains selling links that get like 300 visits a month. If the site actually had the trust that DR was looking to model, it would have way more than 10 visits a day. Traffic - and traffic trend - above all else. (Trend-wise - I am super not interested in a link from a site that’s lost 70% of the est traffic it was getting. You’re tanking, bro - a link from you isn’t going to help me.)

that's true, but I usually check the difficulty of the keywords that a website is ranking for as well,
you can rank easily for some useless keyword (not a buying intent for example) which are easy to rank for just using a decent (not good) content

that being said, if I want to choose between 2 websites, 1 have 20k pages targeting long tails with 10k monthly traffic and 1 website with 100 pages targeting med to difficult keywords (high valuable) with 3k monthly traffic, the 2nd would be much better for sure

Also, I wanted to add that the quality of content in the website, the number of pages, as well as the website silo and where your article is placed does matter,
some websites just place your article in the sponsored posts category which is not interlinked from the homepage, neither from the blog page or its paginations and next and previous posts (if there's any)

 

[Growth addictor]

Cool info, thanks

 

[ukigumi]

Good read, thank you.

 

[GreenGrass2019]

Thoughts on niche edit sites with "Get guestpost for x $ here" on the contact us page with average 2k monthly visitors? Is this more of a PBN website than a niche edit backlink? It's also DR40+ is this a bad link?

 

[HustleTong]

Nice cluster of FAQs.
Appreciate it, mate.

 

[Deleted member 1456969]

Thanks
Appreciate it

 

[Panther28]

You dangled a carrot, thanks for the write up, keep em coming, that's a bit short that one!

 

[zapionyu]

Nice and useful info. Thanks

 

[tester234]

Good stuff written in laymans terms.

What OP mentioned are stuff that are logical and straight forward. Using common sense can get you very far with SEO

 

[Geasy]

What anchor text do you prefer when building links for the homepage? And do you only take links from the author bio?

I usually go with branded and generic anchors, unless I want to rank the homepage itself where I also use partial match anchor texts. I never take links from the author bio box, which is similar to a blog comment.

Thoughts on niche edit sites with "Get guestpost for x $ here" on the contact us page with average 2k monthly visitors? Is this more of a PBN website than a niche edit backlink? It's also DR40+ is this a bad link?

Can't say for sure without knowing the actual site, but you should know that all bloggers nowadays are selling links so it doesn't mean it necessary is a PBN website. I try to avoid as much as I can sites that all of their posts are sponsored ones as it is a matter of time before it takes a dip.

Really great questions and answers. Thanks
But. does it means that all "backlinks packages" and other so called SEO stuff sold around here doesn't worth "a lot"
Since actually almost no chance to get "a relevant + strong domain" within this packages
right? I am missing something?

No, I didn't say that at all. There are good services here as well, it just depends how you use them. A diversify link package is a diversify link package, nothing more. You shouldn't expect to boost your rankings for a keyword like "best gaming mouse" or "best SEO software".

As for domain relevancy, you should do your best and optimize your article where the link will be placed on. RSOs technique is the one that I use to get a link from a site that is not 100% relevant to my niche/website and it makes sure that it pumps my rankings.