Link Velocity - What Works Best!!? THIS!!

[MisterGemini]

I have been asked to make this a topic of conversation.

This topic has been loosely mentioned in some postings, but never gone into detail. It's surprising because it does have a dramatic impact on the success or failure of your site. It's what we often refer to as link velocity.

Link velocity is what refers to the rate of links that your site receives within a certain period of time.

I can write a whole rendition on it, but there have been a few out there who have recently already covered the subject.

I have seen various contributions made here on peoples own take about link velocity, but I would like to invite everyone to post what they think makes the best formula for both new, and existing sites.

Resource 1: Great explanation most recent and a dumbed down example of how link velocity works and how it applies to your site: http://linkvanareviews.com/link-velocity-questions-cleared-up

Resouce 2: Less recent explantion but illustrates why you want to pay attention to link velocity: http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/b...ieving-stable-rankings-through-link-velocity/

Resource 3: A fellow BHer blogger who gives an example of how he used link velocity to outrank a PR7 site that seemed immovable. *NOTE* That post is from 2007. I think it would be a very different story today with new algos in place, still its inspiring to see David take Goliath out: http://www.digeratimarketing.co.uk/2007/04/19/dominating-serps-with-better-link-velocity/

So go read those, and give us your own take on link velocity and how to best apply it to sites.

On a side note, I think this also plays well into the question of quality links and how they impact that velocity as stated in the first resource. If you got something to say about that then please share it also.

My Thoughts On Link Velocity:

I personally think that a constant stream of links is important to any and every site. Not just at the domain level, but at the page level (especially now). Post-Mayday, more import has been given to the page of sites rather than the site as a whole. Steady link building to every part of your site is a good practise. Starting out a site I would do the following:

1. Launch a Press Release once every two weeks
2. Following the first PR proceed to post links in blogs, forums, and any other social web I can find at a rate that is humanly possible. For me, this is about 50 a day.
3. A week later start creating social web properties for your specific categories/pages you are targeting
4. A week after that (2 weeks in now) join a link network and/or start writing articles to post to article directories.
5. A week after that (3 weeks in now) start submitting the site to directories of value including dmoz (worth a shot anyways )
6. A week after that (1 month in now) introduce a contest of somekind that will gain me some links (whole subject on its own I won't go into here)
7. Rinse and Repeat for 4 more weeks
8. Month 2 - Start identifying my competitions link sources via their related terms and attempt a link exchange to get sitewide links.
9. Rinse and Repeat daily for another month
10. Month 3 - Increase everything by double using some automation tools so your daily average increases.

This to me would be a decent velocity of links to build for a new site. For an existing site, if the velocity should go up or down at a signficant level then you are looking at a drop in rankings. Yes, you can blast your site with tons of links and you will disappear for a time, but then later come back a little stronger, but if you can resist the urge to do that, and simply increase that ratio week after week of incoming links, then you can see a steady climb in the SERPs without the disappearing act when google sees a ton of links and goes WTF?!

So that is my take on what to do. What about you?

 

[ipopbb]

Pretty good, but pretty aggressive! I'm a lot more paranoid with my production sites. You'll get to PR6 a lot faster than I will!

Here is my "Nervous Nellie" tactic:

(50 a day is a lot for a new website. A well timed and good niche press release could blow you out of the water too.) I'd say start slow with singular but quality links... My first week with a new web site I place 1 PageRank 8 backlink just to get the site indexed organically. Then I build pr3-4 backlinks at a rate of 4 per week for 2-3 months. Then I focus on pr3-6 backlinks at no more than 2 per day on average. If I skip too many days I don't play catch up. At about month 6 I'll do the press release gambit @ 1 release every 2 weeks for several months. My number of backlinks will jump to 300-500 and my average PR per backlink will drop sharply but all my back links will be good quality. At ten months I break out and build 10 backlinks a day until I hit PR6... At PR6, I safe a crap load of time and effort and money by going old school and giving the website something worth linking too. PDF Ebook about the Keyword Space... doesn't even have to be good... just so when you link to it from outside the link text is honest and has your keywords and stuff the hell out of the PDF... google will index that too. Put lots of links in the PDF, because google can index those too. I don't know where they fall in the post MayDay world but WhitePapers with pdf links has always worked well if you can get places to link to them.

Thats my 2 cents, but I'm very timid because the sites I work with are built up on huge investments that can't afford to fail. People lose their annual raises or get benefits cut or even worse layoffs if I fuck up the time tables with SEO... Thats why I hate Google now... They (especially Matt Cutts) have no concept of payload. They don't even care about how many careers & families were negatively impacted with the MayDay update. I had 6 weeks of down numbers...and dropped about 15% in revenue, but wow! It's still crazy out there... just another reason I share my stuff... its the right thing to do most of the time. I know in online retail I'm one of the lucky ones, most of them are just spending more on AdWords to compensate and its driving up the retail CPC...Q4 is going to be real ugly in PPC. Google will be laughing all the way to the bank though. Fucking Evil! They made Microsoft look kind and saintly over night.

Thats my rant... sorry for the language... I used to like Google. I even thought they were honest for while. I knew better than to drink the koolaid but I wanted to believe...

 

[thestig]

Pretty good, but pretty aggressive! I'm a lot more paranoid with my production sites. You'll get to PR6 a lot faster than I will!

Here is my "Nervous Nellie" tactic:

(50 a day is a lot for a new website. A well timed and good niche press release could blow you out of the water too.) I'd say start slow with singular but quality links... My first week with a new web site I place 1 PageRank 8 backlink just to get the site indexed organically. Then I build pr3-4 backlinks at a rate of 4 per week for 2-3 months. Then I focus on pr3-6 backlinks at no more than 2 per day on average. If I skip too many days I don't play catch up. At about month 6 I'll do the press release gambit @ 1 release every 2 weeks for several months. My number of backlinks will jump to 300-500 and my average PR per backlink will drop sharply but all my back links will be good quality. At ten months I break out and build 10 backlinks a day until I hit PR6... At PR6, I safe a crap load of time and effort and money by going old school and giving the website something worth linking too. PDF Ebook about the Keyword Space... doesn't even have to be good... just so when you link to it from outside the link text is honest and has your keywords and stuff the hell out of the PDF... google will index that too. Put lots of links in the PDF, because google can index those too. I don't know where they fall in the post MayDay world but WhitePapers with pdf links has always worked well if you can get places to link to them.

Thats my 2 cents, but I'm very timid because the sites I work with are built up on huge investments that can't afford to fail. People lose their annual raises or get benefits cut or even worse layoffs if I fuck up the time tables with SEO... Thats why I hate Google now... They (especially Matt Cutts) have no concept of payload. They don't even care about how many careers & families were negatively impacted with the MayDay update. I had 6 weeks of down numbers...and dropped about 15% in revenue, but wow! It's still crazy out there... just another reason I share my stuff... its the right thing to do most of the time. I know in online retail I'm one of the lucky ones, most of them are just spending more on AdWords to compensate and its driving up the retail CPC...Q4 is going to be real ugly in PPC. Google will be laughing all the way to the bank though. Fucking Evil! They made Microsoft look kind and saintly over night.

Thats my rant... sorry for the language... I used to like Google. I even thought they were honest for while. I knew better than to drink the koolaid but I wanted to believe...

I also take my time in building links slow but have found at this present time building a site around model numbers has worked fine, even with the mayday madness, people always talk about quailty links, what is a quailty link? i really do not know what a quailty link is but i work on getting links from forums, article sites, press realease's and even you tube has a page with a do follow link, but problem is it's not an anchor. I do all my on page seo first and then build 4 links over a period of a weeks and leave the site to sit for two weeks and then start building 2 links a day, slow but safe, i guess this is the reason why my info domain sites ar doing so crap. Also what you guys doing now, building large sites or small sites? large sites seem to be the way to go because of the work load that these mini sites require and you can add alot more which of course looks good to the dicks at google.

 

[MeAmRussian]

Excellent topic Good resources in the OP.

It looks like we've got some conflicting opinions here though. MisterGemini seems to say 50 "low" quality backlinks (like forum posts) a day is fine. ipopbb says 4 high quality links a week! That might be a bit overkill, it seems. But like you say, it's for high quality, long term sites with investments, so it's probably not work taking any risks.

Couple questions:
MisterGemini: What kind of press releases do you do, and where?

ipopbb: You say you focus primarily on few, high pr links. The first is PR8, the rest a bit lower. I'm assuming you're talking about the actual URL your link is on, not the domain. May I ask where you are able to find such high quality links? Are you paying money for these links, or you just search through relevant sites to post them up as user submitted content? Are you finding your PR2-6 links through blog commenting, or through purchasing the advertising? Also, do you bias your links toward non-nofollow, or everything goes?

 

[MisterGemini]

Pretty good, but pretty aggressive! I'm a lot more paranoid with my production sites. You'll get to PR6 a lot faster than I will!

Here is my "Nervous Nellie" tactic:

(50 a day is a lot for a new website. A well timed and good niche press release could blow you out of the water too.) I'd say start slow with singular but quality links... My first week with a new web site I place 1 PageRank 8 backlink just to get the site indexed organically. Then I build pr3-4 backlinks at a rate of 4 per week for 2-3 months. Then I focus on pr3-6 backlinks at no more than 2 per day on average. If I skip too many days I don't play catch up. At about month 6 I'll do the press release gambit @ 1 release every 2 weeks for several months. My number of backlinks will jump to 300-500 and my average PR per backlink will drop sharply but all my back links will be good quality. At ten months I break out and build 10 backlinks a day until I hit PR6... At PR6, I safe a crap load of time and effort and money by going old school and giving the website something worth linking too. PDF Ebook about the Keyword Space... doesn't even have to be good... just so when you link to it from outside the link text is honest and has your keywords and stuff the hell out of the PDF... google will index that too. Put lots of links in the PDF, because google can index those too. I don't know where they fall in the post MayDay world but WhitePapers with pdf links has always worked well if you can get places to link to them.

Thats my 2 cents, but I'm very timid because the sites I work with are built up on huge investments that can't afford to fail. People lose their annual raises or get benefits cut or even worse layoffs if I fuck up the time tables with SEO... Thats why I hate Google now... They (especially Matt Cutts) have no concept of payload. They don't even care about how many careers & families were negatively impacted with the MayDay update. I had 6 weeks of down numbers...and dropped about 15% in revenue, but wow! It's still crazy out there... just another reason I share my stuff... its the right thing to do most of the time. I know in online retail I'm one of the lucky ones, most of them are just spending more on AdWords to compensate and its driving up the retail CPC...Q4 is going to be real ugly in PPC. Google will be laughing all the way to the bank though. Fucking Evil! They made Microsoft look kind and saintly over night.

Thats my rant... sorry for the language... I used to like Google. I even thought they were honest for while. I knew better than to drink the koolaid but I wanted to believe...

When you are messing with a company that is understandable. Myself, I view a new site launch similar to how a business would launch. Lots of hoopla and fanfare taking off, and then it weens down. However, by continuing my link building I am effectively turning that weening period into a vote of popularity. I would love to know how exactly Google views link timing and link quality, but of course I have better chances at winning the lottery before that info is revealed.

The only controlled measure of quality can be what we perceived value of quality. I have to wonder from an algo point though what that is. I can only assume some of the factors I mentioned in another thread. Either way, what I do in that velocity outline builds a nice steady flow of traffic even without and before google gets me to #1.

I would love to hear how others treat their link velocity. I am sure there are others out there that are way more aggressive than my outline. It seems there are some out there even less cautious than yours too as thestig outlined.

 

[ipopbb]

Excellent topic Good resources in the OP.

It looks like we've got some conflicting opinions here though. MisterGemini seems to say 50 "low" quality backlinks (like forum posts) a day is fine. ipopbb says 4 high quality links a week! That might be a bit overkill, it seems. But like you say, it's for high quality, long term sites with investments, so it's probably not work taking any risks.

Couple questions:
MisterGemini: What kind of press releases do you do, and where?

ipopbb: You say you focus primarily on few, high pr links. The first is PR8, the rest a bit lower. I'm assuming you're talking about the actual URL your link is on, not the domain. May I ask where you are able to find such high quality links? Are you paying money for these links, or you just search through relevant sites to post them up as user submitted content? Are you finding your PR2-6 links through blog commenting, or through purchasing the advertising? Also, do you bias your links toward non-nofollow, or everything goes?

I'm lucky... 15 of the sites I manage are PR6-8 online retailers. And correct... the backlink is PR8 if and only if the page it resides on is PR8... domain PR is vapor in my opinion. I don't care about d0f0ll0w and n0f0ll0w... in fact I would expect google to expect a healthy mix evenly distributed across all PR levels.

I also don't see conflicting opinions... MisterGemini's approach will certainly work faster and with less effort. I can't really say my way is safer, because who knows what the rules are now. I think my way is safer, but I don't know for certain... 9/10 of this forum doesn't care about safer... they'd rather have expediency. We can both be right and its your particular needs that determine which is more appropriate. Choices don't have to be conflicts and there doesn't have to only be one right answer.

 

[MisterGemini]

I also don't see conflicting opinions... MisterGemini's approach will certainly work faster and with less effort. I can't really say my way is safer, because who knows what the rules are now. I think my way is safer, but I don't know for certain... 9/10 of this forum doesn't care about safer... they'd rather have expediency. We can both be right and its your particular needs that determine which is more appropriate. Choices don't have to be conflicts and there doesn't have to only be one right answer.

Good news is that I have a few site launches coming up very soon, and I will be going through what I stated above. If I see anything weird happen will share it. Think I should do one of those 'journey' threads like we see all the time here?

 

[GreyWolf]

I'm lucky... 15 of the sites I manage are PR6-8 online retailers. And correct... the backlink is PR8 if and only if the page it resides on is PR8... domain PR is vapor in my opinion. I don't care about d0f0ll0w and n0f0ll0w... in fact I would expect google to expect a healthy mix evenly distributed across all PR levels.

I also don't see conflicting opinions... MisterGemini's approach will certainly work faster and with less effort. I can't really say my way is safer, because who knows what the rules are now. I think my way is safer, but I don't know for certain... 9/10 of this forum doesn't care about safer... they'd rather have expediency. We can both be right and its your particular needs that determine which is more appropriate. Choices don't have to be conflicts and there doesn't have to only be one right answer.

I'd say you could scale up your tactics quite a bit and still be pretty safe, but since you're doing it for business you work for then you're method is probably the best.

You've also been able to do a lot of testing. More than the average person for sure. If the results your getting work, then why change. The companies you're contracted with are looking for long term success anyway, if it takes a few more weeks to get things going they aren't going to worry about it.

You have some of the most informative threads about the different variables affecting seo. Thanks for all the input.

 

[MisterGemini]

Couple questions:
MisterGemini: What kind of press releases do you do, and where?

It depends largely on the type of site I am going to launch. I will try and make the release seem a little interesting, but it is really just a sort of 'hello we are here' type thing to start. I have used PRweb in the past, but recently there have been a lot of new players to the table. These free PR distributions are little more than spam sites the most of them. I have tried them in the past on a few projects, and I was sorely disappointed with the results. I don't want my first announcement to be 'hey I am a bottom feeder'. . Make your site like the celebrity who is all nice a shiny on camera. Once your site is famous, you can get it drunk, and have affairs with the bottom feeders if you like. Do it after, not before, or you don't get celebrity status.

I am aware that there are a few 'good' free PR distributions out there, I just have never bothered to compile a list of them to do what I do. If someone else has a list of 'good' PR distributions places then please by all means share.

Basically most paid submission services will do the trick. I only go for the basic packages as my 'hello' start is only just that. Nothing really news worthy unless I planned it to be. I prefer to take in a month or two before I come up with some kind of angle. Usually by then I have some survey and poll results and stuff like that. Use that for news story fodder. That gets picked up by other sites big time. So for something like that I would put in a few extra bucks to get some added coverage.

Here is a list of some decent paid submission places other than prweb in no particular order:

• www.webwire.com
• www.i-newswire.com
• www.24-7pressrelease.com
• www.rushprnews.com
• www.wiredprnews.com

Some of them are better priced and seem to offer more than PRweb does. After carefully looking at some of them I might give one of them a try this time round.

Hope this helps.

 

[MeAmRussian]

Yeah, I agree with greywolf: if you're getting results doing what you're doing with the slow method, then it would be quite stupid to change it.

Thanks for the press release info, MisterGemini. For the amount of visibility they give, the price is fairly low, anyhow.

Another question: how would the playing field change when it comes to smaller audience sites? I'm talking "micro niche" sites and "local" sites, for example. Only people from a specific city will visit a local business's site, of course. Is a press release then useless? Or maybe all the links that get around will still be worth it for the SEO? Getting backlinks the "legal" way for local sites by only using other local sites is nearly impossible, yet other methods such as forum postings are also very limited.

I do believe I read one of your posts saying you did the micro niche business as well, and I'm wondering if, or how, you handled those sites differently.

Thanks a lot for the info!

 

[MisterGemini]

Another question: how would the playing field change when it comes to smaller audience sites? I'm talking "micro niche" sites and "local" sites, for example. Only people from a specific city will visit a local business's site, of course. Is a press release then useless? Or maybe all the links that get around will still be worth it for the SEO? Getting backlinks the "legal" way for local sites by only using other local sites is nearly impossible, yet other methods such as forum postings are also very limited.

I do believe I read one of your posts saying you did the micro niche business as well, and I'm wondering if, or how, you handled those sites differently.

Thanks a lot for the info!

I don't regard PRs as huge SEO boosters (even though many try to market them as such). Think of it like the smoke screen to google to build links. A PR goes out, and suddenly sites start linking to me. Seems like if I was google and I factored in news media coverage into the new links appearing, then everything looks decent. The actual SEO benefits got from a PR are very short lived. Which is why you need to maintrain your stream of them.

As for micro sites, I have done them before, but no longer. I had a network going upwards of 15k sites at one point, never again. That was a few years ago. Today, taking such a direction in my estimation would be a waste of resources unless you plan to grow those sites beyond the typical 5-10 pagers into real sites. You can use PRs for any size site though, it doesn't matter. You have to consider the cost to benefit ratio though, and when it comes to micro sites, I don't see them being able to provide enough ROI on the cost of PRs.

However, it might help if you want to get more SEO benefit from them, to setup a Google Alert for a specific phrasing within your PR, most likely the title. Then using that alert, dump every single URL it finds into your bookmarking accounts. This should at least help keep those pages indexed and getting a little more boosting.

If you have time, go to some of the major publication sites that are syndicating your story in their site somewhere, and join the site and start commenting on stories using your press release page on their site as your URL. Many big PR sites might nofollow external links, but they will follow the internal ones. How nice would it be to get your particular page getting some of that weight poured onto it.

These are just some ideas of ways to use the PR to boost the SEO value, but like I said, this isn't what I use them for primarily. They are smoke screens to my 'natural' link building campaigns. :reddy:

 

[goingreen]

Good news is that I have a few site launches coming up very soon, and I will be going through what I stated above. If I see anything weird happen will share it. Think I should do one of those 'journey' threads like we see all the time here?

id be interested to see the results. backlinking is all about formulas and this seems practical. excellent topic

 

[goingreen]

1. Following the first PR proceed to post links in blogs, forums, and any other social web I can find at a rate that is humanly possible. For me, this is about 50 a day.

this 50 a day is continuous throughout the process or just during the first week of every cycle ?

 

[MisterGemini]

[/LIST]
this 50 a day is continuous throughout the process or just during the first week of every cycle ?

Continued and ongoing.

 

[voodoo1]

Pretty good stuff guys...lots covered!