Link Building Quality Rating: Rating Quality and Difficulty of Link Building
July 28, 2010 by Pablo Palatnik
Coming across post today VerticalMeasures.com, their “Linktoberfest! SEO Infographic for Link Data Visualization,” was just a GREAT resource on rating the quality and difficulty of link acquisition.
For someone who is in the link business (SEO,) this is just a great post in how it describes the breakdown of the links that get acquired towards a full linking portfolio for a website. It is also a great resource for those who work on trying to classify their link portfolio.
{This content is taken from VeritcalMeasures.com and you can get straight to their post on the link above with the title of their post, couldn’t put it in better words)
In each of the mentioned ratings (except for about 2,) there are notes where you’ll see PALATNIKFACTOR VIEWS where it gives my personal opinion and a view on the rating.
Content Distribution
Description: Links from press releases, article marketing, guest blog posts, aggregated links such as RSS feeds
How to Obtain: Write unique SEO optimized content, publish, promote via social networks
Difficulty Score: 1
Quality Score: 3
PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Article marketing will take a bit of time and the link may not be worth it. Make sure, to be as effective as possible to try and outsource the content creation of that channel. Being a guest post is a great method, make sure you aim towards high authority websites but it may take some real work to get in touch with webmasters. Some are easy…some are hard.
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Blog/Forum Comments
Description: Links from forum signatures, posts, profiles, and blog “signing”
How to Obtain: Search relevant blogs & forum topics, register, create profiles, create anchor text signatures for forums
Difficulty Score: 1
Quality Score: 2
PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: These links are easy to acquire but the work towards some of them can be real tedious. Some forums where a link will actually be worth getting may have a rule where you have to post at least 10-50 post to get a forum signature links and start adding links to threads. I see signs of these type of links devaluing for seo.
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Purchased Links
Description: Links obtained through direct exchange of money, includes directories
How to Obtain: Search for keywords + sponsor, advertise, sponsored by, banner ads, submit URL, add URL
Difficulty Score: 1
Quality Score: 2
WARNING: Use caution, understand the risks, and don’t get caught buying links or Google might take your keys away!
PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: While many may think just because you pay for a link it’ll be easy to get, I have to disagree with the difficulty score. Some very good links will come if you pay for them but they may even be the hardest links to possibly get because the person that really takes care of the website may be hard to get a hold of or you’ll have to do some real work even if you pay for the link as the webmaster may want that link to look at natural as possible and may have you write a review, etc. Not that it’s hard, but won’t be as easy as opening a beer can.
Just a note on what was just said, that is by purchasing links through contacting webmasters. Paying for links through directory, difficult score: 1.
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Reciprocal Links
Description: Links from partnerships, exchanges, and trades (use sparingly, stay topically relevant)
How to Obtain: Use only highest authority relevant sites to exchange with, try to do a 3 way instead of reciprocal
Difficulty Score: 2
Quality Score: 1
PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: This tactic is just as hard OR maybe I’d say takes as much work as purchasing a link. Using highest authority sites to exchange links with is 100% absolutely the best strategy towards acquiring reciprocal links.
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Social Media/Bookmarking
Description: Links from various social media profile pages and bookmarking tools
How to Obtain: Find top bookmarking sites based on PageRank, Alexa, dofollow and submit website using good keyword anchored phrases
Difficulty Score: 3
Quality Score: 3
PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: This tactic may be easier actually, in my opinion, than purchasing a link. The How To Obtain is on point and should be a fairly easy way to acquire links. Try to submit some good stories to the bookmarkingw website before you submit just yours with the anchor text. The best ways to succeed in social media communities is to become a part of one. While most of us don’t have time, try to be as natural (non-spammer =)) as possible.
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Embedded Content
Description: Links via widgets, infographics, badges, and other embeddedable content
How to Obtain: Create visually appealing and useful content, promote via social networks
Difficulty Score: 3
Quality Score: 4
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Link Reclamation
Description: Links to no longer available resources to re-point at your pages
How to Obtain: Check Google Webmaster Tools for pages not found, contact websites linking to those to change link or redirect on your site
Difficulty Score: 3
Quality Score: 5
PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: If you can do this and have a good success rate, it’s a must in your seo strategy and part of your monthly process.
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Natural Links
Description: Links gained naturally due to link worthy (viral) content, link baiting, etc.
How to Obtain: Create good, informative content and promote through your networks
Difficulty Score: 4
Quality Score: 5
PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT.
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Link Requests
Description: Links acquired through manual requests from webmasters, site owners, etc.
How to Obtain: Conduct competitive link analysis, use search operators, keyword searches, manual email requests
Difficulty Score: 5
Quality Score: 5
