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The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

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Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#11

Post by dchuk »

dchuk wrote: post #8
ovi256 wrote: post #6

Wow, it's pretty amazing, but you've described one of the use cases for my upcoming webapp: www.alertoid.com Technically, Alertoid would be an RSS reader that goes beyond the Read/Unread tagging, with the Commented/Comment Approved stages you described. Furthermore, it can be used for inbound marketing: as you monitor the keywords that interest you, you see the blog posts that mention them and can use those as starti…

oh man I've wanted to build such a webapp for so long. That's awesome, congrats! I'd love to hear how you're tackling the problem of tracking the actual comments that were left without resorting to a browser plugin in order to pull the details from the actual form on submit. Or maybe I said too much :)

I can't seem to be able to reply to you directly, so email me at admin@serpiq.com and I'll gladly connect with you

Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#12

Post by WillyF »

dchuk wrote: post #9
WillyF wrote: post #5

I'm not a fan of blog commenting for link building. Most blogs use nofollow on the comments links, and that makes them near worthless (except on very high traffic blogs where comment links send meaningful traffic). Moreover, many blog comments are spam. You don't want to be sending the same signal as spammers to Google. What I do like about this strategy isn't even mentioned about the author. Blog commenting can be a…

I briefly mentioned your main point, regarding starting a conversation and really getting involved in the community. This strategy is absolutely focused on quality over quantity, I outlined it the way I did just so people could follow it and gather a lot of possible sources of blogs to try and comment on. In regards to the nofollow topic, I left a comment on the post explaining my thoughts about that: http://www.laye…

I really like the way that you outlined the technical tips for implementing the strategy, but I think that you shouldn't have made the post about getting blog comment links.

30 minutes a day is a waste of time for blog links. Even if you get 10 a day from dofollow blogs, the ROI is very low. However, if you take the same strategy and get 1 blogger to blog about you every month, then there's a much better ROI (as long as it's a decent quality blog).

The bigger issue here is with Google's Penguin update. Building low quality links can now hurt you. Blog comments are a perfect example of low quality links. There are all kinds of automated software packages for spamming blog comments with links. If you do the same thing manually and in a high quality way, you're risking a chance that your link building footprint will look similar to a spammer's-- at least in Google's eyes.

As someone whose site is just climbing out of Panda (thankfully not Penguin), I would probably choose not to link to my site if I was going to start commenting on blogs at a large scale. I'd just focus on the relationships.

Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#13

Post by dchuk »

WillyF wrote: post #12
dchuk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I briefly mentioned your main point, regarding starting a conversation and really getting involved in the community. This strategy is absolutely focused on quality over quantity, I outlined it the way I did just so people could follow it and gather a lot of possible sources of blogs to try and comment on. In regards to the nofollow topic, I left a comment on the post explaining my thoughts about that: http://www.laye…

I really like the way that you outlined the technical tips for implementing the strategy, but I think that you shouldn't have made the post about getting blog comment links. 30 minutes a day is a waste of time for blog links. Even if you get 10 a day from dofollow blogs, the ROI is very low. However, if you take the same strategy and get 1 blogger to blog about you every month, then there's a much better ROI (as long…

I've been doing active (and oftentimes aggressive) link building for a few years now, I guarantee that this method is safe. I do agree that a judgement call needs to be made when choosing to comment on a blog post to make sure that the quality of the post and site is up to standards.

Honestly, if someone asked me how to get a lot of links to a site, I would not tell this method. If you want a lot of low quality links, you need to be automating heavily. This strategy isn't meant for low quality links.

Just because there's software out there to automate blog commenting doesn't make all blog comments bad. A good comment on a good popular post is gold.

Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#14

Post by benologist »

There's an even easier strategy and it can be very successful: use your company blog to write generic startup fluff for HN even if it's irrelevant to your company and users or customers, which it will be almost 100% of the time.

Edit: I'm not referring to the author's blog.

Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#15

Post by bhartzer »

If SEO and link building/link earning was this easy, then everyone would be doing it and there would be no need for SEO firms. There would be no SEO industry. Companies wouldn't be hiring SEOs to do link earning for them.

Go ahead and try all of these methods described in that post and then see how well it works. Shortly thereafter you'll be contacting a good SEO firm to clean up the mess, remove bad links, and start creating content for you that earns you links.

Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#16

Post by ovi256 »

benologist wrote: post #14

There's an even easier strategy and it can be very successful: use your company blog to write generic startup fluff for HN even if it's irrelevant to your company and users or customers, which it will be almost 100% of the time. Edit: I'm not referring to the author's blog.

That would bring a lot of badly targeted traffic. Sure, maybe better targeted than from a general interest site, but if your startup is targeting a specific profession, HN traffic is a drive-by, not exposure. Targeting is as valuable as raw traffic numbers, hence why Google is rich beyond the dreams of mortal men.

Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#18

Post by dchuk »

bhartzer wrote: post #15

If SEO and link building/link earning was this easy, then everyone would be doing it and there would be no need for SEO firms. There would be no SEO industry. Companies wouldn't be hiring SEOs to do link earning for them. Go ahead and try all of these methods described in that post and then see how well it works. Shortly thereafter you'll be contacting a good SEO firm to clean up the mess, remove bad links, and start…

Well before I built my product for my current startup, I was an SEO consultant. And this is a very good, albeit simple, technique I've used. That's why I shared it.

Most people fail at SEO because they simply aren't persistent. This method breaks down the process to the point where it's the easiest it's going to get to stay consistent with your link building efforts.

Also, it's really easy to avoid bad links with this method: If a site doesn't look legit, just skip it.

Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#19

Post by WillyF »

dchuk wrote: post #13
WillyF wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the way that you outlined the technical tips for implementing the strategy, but I think that you shouldn't have made the post about getting blog comment links. 30 minutes a day is a waste of time for blog links. Even if you get 10 a day from dofollow blogs, the ROI is very low. However, if you take the same strategy and get 1 blogger to blog about you every month, then there's a much better ROI (as long…

I've been doing active (and oftentimes aggressive) link building for a few years now, I guarantee that this method is safe. I do agree that a judgement call needs to be made when choosing to comment on a blog post to make sure that the quality of the post and site is up to standards. Honestly, if someone asked me how to get a lot of links to a site, I would not tell this method. If you want a lot of low quality links…

If you're building a business in the SEO industry, you probably shouldn't throw around guarantees like that.

I think that this method is probably safe, especially if you the target site has a decent number of higher quality links. Still, it does come with some risk.

It wasn't long ago that Matt Cutts told us that duplicate content was ok and that Google would find the canonical version on its own. Then Panda came along. It was a widely held perception that incoming links couldn't hurt you. Now we know that they can.

Google's algorithm is a moving target, and it only seems that they will get more aggressive on discounting or even penalizing links that aren't given editorially.

Re: The Really Easy SEO Link Building Strategy For Startups

#20

Post by halcyondaze »

benologist wrote: post #14

There's an even easier strategy and it can be very successful: use your company blog to write generic startup fluff for HN even if it's irrelevant to your company and users or customers, which it will be almost 100% of the time. Edit: I'm not referring to the author's blog.

I think that the author's blog is separate from his company blog. Looks like he writes not only about SEO (which is what his product is built around), but startups, code, and general business.
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