Getting any site to link to you

After a long discussion with a few fellow SEOs I think I made my point. They said: “You cannot get every site you’d like, to link to you. Most authorities and competitors won’t give their linklove.” and my opinion is: “You can get all the best authority links. Sometimes you just need an intermediate site.”

The best way to get any link, is to create content specifically as linkbait for that link or website. Normally a competitor will not intentionally link to you directly, but here’s where an intermediate site comes in. Use an existing intermediate or create your own one for full controll how the linkjuice is transfered.

Authoritive links
First let me tell you that apart from ranking factors like anchor text, relevance, PR and page location; The authority factor is domain wide. This means any link from for instance CNN.com gives much weight for ranking on many search queries (general authorities. A link from for instance ICANN.org gives some general weight, but extra weight for hosting companies selling domains.

Authority is something you build over time and getting authoritive links speeds it up. Any authority you build can be transfered to other domains without losing any of it yourself. Except when you mainly link to websites with a negative authority (spammers and indecent content) or act spammy yourself. Then you can lose the authority you have.

Finding authorities
You probably know what website is the most authoritive in your field. You probably also know a few more general authoritive sites. If you don’t, here’s where a high PageRank comes in. A site with a with a PR 7+ homepage is bound to have much authority as well. This is not a rule, but I’ve seen little exceptions. Also the first indexed dates in archive.org say something about authority as well. For more indicators see the Relevant Authority Transfer checklist.

Existing intermediates
Once you know on which domain you want the link, you can easily find out where it already links to. Thanks to Live.com’s “linkfromdomain:” you can just enter it as a query. http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=linkfromdomain%3Acnn.com gives you 300.000 possible intermediates so you’re bound to find one willing to link. Just create your linkbait for them in stead of begging directly to CNN. But if you still want a direct CNN link you can always see how all the linkfromdomain: sites got theirs.

Creating intermediates
A huge advantage of having your own intermediate website is “controll”. You can get the right anchor text and the exact right way to transfer the linklove to the right page within your website. The best way to redirect linklove is cloaking, but I don’t recommend any whitehat websites to use it. If you want an example: Cloaking for linkbuilding.

Linkbaiting intermediates
Creating linkbait is much easier with intermediates. You can even create different intermediates for all your linkbait. Here are some examples:

• Create a testimonial or comparison website and give the best review to the website that needs to do the linking.
• Create a seeming authority on a subniche of the industry. And some research or report claiming the unique-selling-point of the baited site is very important for that product or service.
• Create a tool that is ideal to calculate or research something specifically for your industry. A collection of seemingly unimportant tools creates great linkbait.
• Combine al RSS feeds in your industry into one website or feed. Collecting is always a good way to become an authority.

As you can see there are many ways to create linkbait. Just make the bait specifically for the site that needs to do the linking. Know as much as possible about the person responsible for placing the link. You can even meet them in person and become their friends (just for the links?).

You can get the authority of any site shine down on you. Just use intermediate websites to get it from the hardest places.

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 12:12 pm | Tutorials, Opinions, Links
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