LBBP - The Weekly Delete - Back with a Vengeance

After nearly a month away from the blog, I'm not necessarily back to where I want to be, but it's time to be done with the pity party, kids gotta eat, mortgage(s)(s)(s) gotta get paid. First, thanks to you all for the many kind words, plus the excellent link building questions. I will answer them one by one starting tomorrow, but for today, I begin a new feature here at the Link Building Best Practices blog, called the LBBP Weekly Delete.

The Weekly Delete will feature a real link request email that I received in my own inbox, which in and of itself is just idiotic, but I get them every day. Some are priceless. This one, pasted below for your pleasure, with exact formatting intact, is so bad it hurts. The saddest part of this to me is that someone somewhere was able to be convinced that this approach was worth paying for. It isn't.

Have a look and tell me, if you could give the very eager but misguided Rakesh one (and only one) piece of advice, what would it be?

__________________________________ ------ Original Message -------- Subject: Regarding Link Exchange With SITE-XYZ.com Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:23:33 +0530 From: Rakesh To: eric@ericward.com Dear Web Master, We are in process of link building of our site to increase its relevancy and traffic with the top SEO Company’s. I am sending you the request for becoming link partner. As you can see my site ranks highly in Google with many keywords. Title: Link Building India URL: URL removed to spare them the indignity Description: offers Professional link building services and link popularity building solutions. We offer reciprocal and non-reciprocal (one way) link building services, delivering high (PR) page rank and relevant links. I will place your link here:- URL removed to spare them the indignity (2 PR) URL removed (2 PR) URL removed (2 PR) URL removed (1 PR) URL removed (1 PR) URL removed (1 PR) URL removed (1 PR) URL removed (At any category) URL removed any category) Send your text link details to be added on my site, your link will be added immediately. I will welcome any hearing from your side. Regards, Name removed to spare Rakesh the indignity __________________________________

NOTE: To ask a link building related question, click the Comments link below, or the Post a Comment link at the bottom of any individual post.

What is the meaning of life, and link building?

It's been an eventful Spring and Summer. In April my father David Ward passed away, in a miserable sort of slow-motion way, and on his birthday of course. Dad had a great life, considering it ended -and started- terribly. (that's him below on an airplane somewhere over America, circa 1960)

Dad was from Duluth MN, and had polio as a child. He finished high school from his hospital bed, then found the means to flee the frigid Duluthian tundra and make his way to college at the somewhat less fridgid Northwestern, where he was determined to make something of himself. He did so. In fact, my Dad's marketing savvy for Shulton in the '60s and '70s is one reason Old Spice is a National Brand today. He didn't get rich, because back then you didn't get rich by being a loyal company man, but he was good at what he did, worked hard at it, took nothing for granted, and probably deserved better than he got.

(SIDE NOTE: When I was 15, we moved from New Jersey to Tennessee, and I was not happy about it. Dad was smart enough and gentle enough to wisely convince his skeptical and snotty son (me) to go to high-school here, which cost Dad a fortune, instead of where I wanted to go, which would have cost him nothing. He was generous even when I didn't deserve it)

After Dad's death, and after putting up a brave face for several weeks, my Mom was admitted to the hospital . She ended up staying in the hospital for over a month, which necessitated several additional trips out and back to Phoenix. Each of these trips have the unintended consequence of causing my older brother and hero Steve or I to stop work quickly and mobilize for travel cross country. During these times I can lose touch with clients, they can get (rightfully) annoyed , and I can end up making the whole world mad, losing money in the form of client refunds along the way. I have a 6 year old (Noah) and a 1 year old (Abram) at home that I also have to say goodbye to for these trips, and that's no fun for me, or my wife.

As a mid-Summer-bad-news-palate cleanser, in early July our 3 year old golden retriever Izzy was killed by a reckless moron driving way too fast for the road in front of our house. Izzy had gotten out of the backyard, ran into the road, was hit, limped home, and collapsed. Dead. The rest is just too sad to write about. She was the most gentle animal I've ever met.

You know what's more fun than a barrel-o-monkeys? Explaining to your son that his dog is dead. After the initial shock and tears, the conversation goes something like this:
NOAH: "Daddy, when I die will I get to see Izzy and Grampa again in heaven?"
DAD: (to himself) "There is no god Noah, because if there was a god none of these things would happen and Al Gore would have been our President.
DAD: (out loud) "Yes Noah, we will all be together again one day in heaven and it will be awesome, and we know this because that's what they teach us in Sunday School, right buddy?"
NOAH: "Right Dad!"

SHOOT. ME. NOW.

If there has been one positive thing to happen this Summer, it was my wife Melissa urging us to give the boys (and ourselves) a Summer so good they'd have a chance to forget the bad. So off and on we've spent most of the Summer in a house a couple blocks from the beach next to Seaside Florida. People like to make fun of this area, but they don't get it. It is a wonderful place, and I get to watch my son thrive in this not-of-this-world idyllic bubble, just as Truman Burbank did, only for me it's by choice, and I get to play with Noah doing things like skim boarding, surfing, trail mountain biking, hanging at the ocean, and just trying to provide a sense of normalcy during a time that is anything but.

I'll wrap this up with a note aimed at anyone who has been trying to do business with me over the past 4 months. I'm here and working, just not as much as you'd like. Parents come first, wife and kids come second, myself third, and you, patiently waiting client, come fourth. It has to be that way, for now.

I'm working a few hours each day, as well as late in the evening when the kids are asleep. In mid-August, when school starts and we're back in Knoxville full-time, I will be back providing link building services, strategy, and training, working longer hours, as usual. I have to. I'm going to buy that place at the beach and semi-retire by gosh, and you, my new and existing clients, are what will make that possible.

Thank you for your time and patience.

Eric

Updated - Farewell LinkMoses, Hello Link Building Q&A

Regular readers know I've been building links since the launch of TheTitanicJustSank.com, or close to it. This wasn't by design. I just had the bad/good luck to lose my advertising job at the right time; Early nineties. I needed something new to do, I went to grad school, and the Internet fell into my lap. The full story of the early years of ericward.com is yet to be written, but I hope to get to it this Summer.

The whole LinkMoses shtick was also an accident. A few years ago someone at a conference made fun that I was still link building, like it was a disease. So I made lemonade out of the joke and turned it into a few thousand new inbound links. Don't mess with a link builder...

I've never intended to be an expert at anything, and the only reason I know so much about link building is that I had the sense or stupidity to stay focused on just that one skill as the web exploded around me. I could have done a thousand different things, but I stayed the link building course. I passed up a $1.3 million buyout offer from BCentral. I ignored Overtures from Overture. I didn't move to San Francisco, Seattle, or New York like everyone thought I should. I stayed right here in my garage office. I didn't write a book when the publishing houses called. Instead I kept doing what I liked. Studied web sites and links. Watched how content gets known, linked, found, by who, when, and where. I did a few industry shows back when just us geeks went. Back when real talent like Danny Sullivan was working his rear off at his kitchen table for just a couple hundred appreciative readers. Somehow my business strategy resulted in other authors writing about me in their books. Again, accidently successful. I was and remain to this day very happy doing what I do. I hope to continue being a content publicist/link builder for many more years.

For several reasons I'm a bit reflective right now. I'm also worn down a bit due to criticism, some deserved and some not, from folks who have have taken issue with my contributions to several link building expert articles. They say I don't give up any secrets. I don't provide worthwhile advice. My answers to link value factors questions are too vague.

Fair enough. This month I begin Link Building Best Practices - Q&A With Eric Ward.

I'll take questions from all comers and turn the best of them into posts where I provide my opinion on what the best practice should be for that particular topic. Send them to lbquestion@ericward.com. I don't pretend for one moment to believe that my best practices should be your best practices. I'm just using this avenue as a way to provide very specific advice and opinion developed over the course of building links for 1,000+ new and old sites from 1994 til today. Here's the link to the Link Building Best Practices RSS feed

Link well friends!

Eric Ward

Anchor Text Best Practices - Update 8-24-09

I've contributed to several Link Value Factors type articles, including SEOmoz's and Wiep's, and was glad to be included by Rae Hoffman in her awesome Link Development Experts Group Interview. I always have a tough time providing the kinds of answers that would be useful without being so long as to put people to sleep. I can't sum up my own best practices for something like link anchor text in a few words. But I can try to do so here. If it bores you then think of my words as a cure for insomnia.

Here are several anchor text BPs that I hope do a better job of explaining the challenge and nuance of link text.

1). The most trustworthy pages will NEVER let you control your own anchor text, and it is obnoxious to ask. Case in point. See the below site.



Here's how they link out...

The Queen of Trees
Website for a program that looks at the relationship between a Kenyan fig tree and the wasps that pollinate its flowers. Includes background about fig trees in general and about sycomore figs trees in Kenya, a photo essay on sycomore figs and fig wasps, video clips, and related essays and links. From the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) show Nature.
URL: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/queenoftrees/
Added to LII: 2006-06-08

If you were the link builder for the site being linked to above, of course you'd be thrilled if the above link instead had words like Kenyan fig tree or wasps or pollinate flowers. But that's not going to happen, because every content editor has their own fairly evident method for how they link to other sites.

Asking someone who has put a lot of time and effort into finding great sites to change the protocol they use for outlinks, just for you and your site, is not very polite nor effective. Be happy you got a link at all. This doesn't mean you cannot ever get the exact anchor text you want, but let's be real. Anyone willing to grant you that kind of control over what's essentially part of their content must not have too stringent a requirement for what they call "content". As Groucho Marx once said, "I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member." If Groucho were a link builder today, he'd say "Any site willing to give me a link plus whatever anchor text I ask for is not a site I'd want a link from in the first place".

2). As much as you might want to include HTML code in the email you send to the target site editor, don't. Why? Same as above. And don't you love it when you get email from someone you don't know telling you what to do?

"Dear webmaster, please add the below code to your website..."

Any site that will do that for another site based on receiving that type of instruction is nuts.

3). The fastest way to create a suspicious looking inbound anchor text profile is to pay too much attention to it. There are some sites that rotate the anchor text using random generation tools in hopes of approximating a natural looking anchor profile. Yes, and Burt Reynold's plastic surgeon is approximating the way Burt looked when he was thirty. See for yourself.

Yep. No doubt about it...perfectly natural...

4). Start with your own on-site anchor text first. By that I mean the anchor text YOU use to link to YOUR OWN PAGES from your own pages. This is especially true for sites that are already ranking fairly well. Here's an example that illustrates the power of on site anchor text.

Do this Google allinanchor search: allinanchor: link bait strategy

Of Google's 27,300 results, the first page listed is mine. See below.

Results 1 - 10 of about 27,300 for allinanchor: link bait strategy.

Expert Link Bait Consulting and Link Bait Content Strategy Plan...
Eric Ward . com - My approach to link bait is based on nearly 15 years of successful link building and publicity generation for timely or new content. I use my experience to perform a link bait analysis/audit of any existing linkbait in your niche, to determine what role link baiting can play in your online marketing strategy. I then work with you by phone to concept the types of linkbait/content you can create for the best strategic effect. www.ericward.com/linkbait-services.html- 21k -Cached - Similar pages

Here's the kicker. That page from my site ranks first out of 27,300 pages, but there is only one (that's 1) page linking to that page, and it's from my own site's homepage. Let that sink in. No other sites or pages are linking to my page using that anchor text, except my own, and Google has plenty of other pages they could rank ahead of me, but they don't. The primary conclusion I draw from this is Google has a great deal of trust for the anchor text I use to point to my own pages. It's true that the trust I speak of comes from the overall collection of inbound links I've earned over the years in the first place, but the point lost in this is once you have such trust, don't ignore it as a driver of rankings for...yourself.

Over a year ago I wrote a related piece for Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land called Are You In The Circle Of Link Trust? The point of that column?

"In the course of seeking new links and publicity for new content on an existing site, don't ignore your already trustworthy content as a driver of reputation for the new content. If you are in the enviable position of already having high rankings, if you're in the circle of link trust, leverage it"

5). There is no perfect percentage for keyword anchored vs. non-keyword anchored backlinks. People want to hear me say something definitive like you should try to keep your off site inbound keyword anchored backlink profile to no more than 20% of your overall IBLP. If that makes you happy, go for it.

I wonder what percentage of Adobe Acrobat's backlinks say "click here" in the anchor text? Looks like more than 20%

NOTE: To ask a link building related question, click the Comments link below, or the Post a Comment form at the bottom of any individual post.

To request a private Link Building Strategy Session, Analytics, and Blueprint read more here.

Yahoo Directory Paid Link Best Practices?

If your site is listed in the Yahoo directory, and you didn't pay for it or you got in back before they charged the review fee, then IMO you leave it alone. Make no changes and enjoy the free ride. I have two Yahoo directory links for two of my sites, both grandfathered because they are ancient. If I was asked by Yahoo to start paying for those two, I'd probably drop them both. On the other hand, there are instances where I do recommend paying the review fee. A new site in a very competitive topic may want to pay, because commercial sites already listed in the Yahoo Directory to can then also receive enhanced placement (for another fee) in certain commercial categories in the directory. Read more about the Yahoo Sponsored Listing options here. FYI, tried this program out a few years ago and in my case chose to stop after three months.

-Eric