Teen Internet Marketer

During the SMX Advanced conference, Jay Young gave a presentation on his views of link development. To my surprise, Jay Young gave us some grey-hat techniques to SEO sites. Here are some of the techniques that Jay Young recommends for link building:

Directories

Jay Young still supports directories - commonly overlooked, they are still a good way to build up some links. Don’t waste time submitting to the lower-tier directories - instead, focus on top-tier directories such as DMOZ (bribe an editor if possible), Yahoo, Joe Ant, Blog Catalog, and Best of the Web.

Non-Profit Sponsorships

Non-profit sponsorships can be slightly controversial, but still can be a good way to build up links. Many non-profit organizations will give you a link to your site in return for a sponsorship - they will list you as a “sponsor”. Non-profit links are also arguably editorial - many organizations will need to approve you as a sponsor before you can get the title of sponsor, and the link. Thus, sponsoring a non-profit (and getting a link in return) may not seem like a bought link - and may not incur the wrath of Google.

If all fails and the non-profit link loses it’s value, Young notes that all is not lost: the “sponsorship” is tax-deductible, and you help a good cause.

SEOcialize

Social Networking - a great way to build links. If your post makes it to the front page of Digg, you can get thousands of organic links. Other good services like StumbleUpon, Reddit, and many others can also bring in good traffic.

Buying links via brokers

There are big brokers which can handle link buying for you. They are your best bet if you cannot spend the time to buy links yourself. Otherwise, you have other choices: link networks, blog advertisers, specialty brokers, and amateur brokers. Text Link Ads is a popular link network - although Google has started to remove PageRank from sites with TLA. You can also advertise on blogs with services like PayPerPost or ReviewMe. The lowest quality links are ones purchased directly from sites like DIgitalPoint and Sitepoint - the quality of sites on there can be horrendous, according to Jay Young.

Link Bait

Link bait can be the subject of a whole new blog post - it’s a vast topic with many ways to do it. Matt Cutts defines it as “something interesting enough to catch people’s attention” - not necessarily bad. Good link bait can attract many backlinks - from hundreds to thousands of links. Young told people not to worry about morality when writing link bait - he believes that there is no morality in marketing - and so that stretching the truth - if it’s good for your website - should be done.

Additional tips when buying links

• Don’t kill your self with relevance - if you can find relevant links, get them. If not, that’s okay too.
• Vary anchor text and anchor location - this is the single most important thing when getting links to your page - it tells Google that your links are natural. Also, deeplinks are also helpful for SEO - natural link growth does not always center on the homepage.
• Then again, if you have a new site - vary the anchor text. If your site already has thousands of backlinks, don’t bother varying the anchor text.

Darker Methods

*Of course Jay Young would never recommend these.* Most often - you cannot hurt yourself by employing these methods.

• Comment Spam (do it manually!)
• Trackback spam (don’t forget to turn off the program - nothing tells Google that you’re spamming like 20,000 backlinks in 3 days)
• 3-way links (they still work)
• Link farms

Thinking outside the box

In addition to all of the above methods, Young also recommends

• Making widgets for websites (to get yourself a backlink)
• Templates (embed a footer link in the template)
• Sponsor a popular Wordpress template (contact the author of a popular Wordpress template and ask for a link in exchange for $$)
• Give away an iPhone in a contest in exchange for a backlink
• Content trades (be sure to use original content - you don’t want duplicate content penalties)
• If your competitor is SEOing too cleanly, throw some chaos in the mix - purchase 5,000 links for $50 on DigitalPoint and send it their way (to make your link building pattern seem “normal”)

Lastly, Jay Young stressed that there is too much fear in the SEO industry - Google is not omniscient. Do what you need to do to get to the top.

This is an ongoing blog series about SMX Advanced 2008. I will continue this series tomorrow with the discussion of Stephan Spencer’s presentation on organic link building.

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