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Hi Ryan, thank you so much for your answer. I think the key is in your phrase "not a new blog created on EXAMPLEnewblog.wordpress.org", true. Thanks!

I know this is a bit of an old topic but I had a similar question and here have been some of the things that have worked for me. 1. Case Studies with good visuals 2. See if customers might be able to link back to you if they have blogs 3. provide beginner information that customers or people in the same industry might be interested in. 4. I find product and/or material comparisons do very well. 5. Make sure your linkedin and twitter are optimized. 6. Look at doing videos explaining concepts or products on youtube 7. Look at other technical service providers that are industry leaders and see what they are doing. It is definitly a challenge. We are a building and manufacturing material supplier and it is hard to find customers who are web savvy and at the same time try not to attract the DIY types. Let me know if you have anymore ideas other than what I listed above. Thanks Paul

I don't think the SEO plugin will assist with that but there are a number of plugins that will help. I recommend https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Absolutely agree. Dealing with 20k keywords is something that is almost impossible to do manually. In this case I would personally turn up to http://keywordtool.io/api. This is basically an API for Google autocomplete. I'd use the API to get first 10 results from Google autocomplete for every keyword. Usually the first 10 results from Google autocomplete are the most relevant keywords anyway.

Thanks for your feedback Zen Man, Creating quality content was a prerequisite when redeveloping the website and I would like to add infographics but find this creates problems on a Wordpress website. Interviewing key employees is a good idea. I planned to have our technical team/partners write content for our blog (I'm a marketer not a tekky guy) to appeal to our audience, so I'll certainly take your advice to include employee interviews. Appreciate your advice. Thanks Jason

Thank you so much for this detailed response, and linking to those essays.  What an invaluable resource.

The BBB link is a good one. Their A+ certification/accreditation is worth it if your client sells to consumers.  This mainly helps on conversion not SEO because of the perceived credibility this gives the company.

Hi Tim, For that specific website (http://www.specialistblastcleaning.co.uk/), you can apply any of the following link building tactics: Submit the site to high quality local and niche-specific citation listings and directories (e.g. yelp.co.uk) Find resource pages that list down cleaning companies in UK. If they have broken links, you can use the BLB approach. Pitch 3 to 5 home improvement blogs with high search share (or with high SEPrice - metric used by SEMRush) and ask if you can become a regular content contributor for them. Happy link building!

First, it's crucial to know that 99% of directory websites out there at best will not help you and at worst will hurt you. The directory is good only if the answer to all three of these questions is yes: **1. Would I want this link if Google did not exist? **In other words, do a lot of real people visit this website? Would a link send you valuable referral traffic of people who are interested in your website's topic -- or, are you trying only to get a link to boost your search rankings. 2. Is this directory curated by a human who is an expert in the field and who does not accept each and every submission? In other words, would Google view the site's owner as an authority on the topic? For example, a list of recommended Seattle restaurants compiled by a local newspaper food critic is much better than a generic list of each and every restaurant in Seattle on some random website. 3. If this link is being paid for, does it not pass PageRank (i.e., is it a no-follow link that adheres to Google's guidelines as such)? Paying for any link to try to manipulate rankings could get you hit by Penguin. For this reason, Google is not a big fan of directories. And that's why more and more of them are adding no-follow tags -- they don't want to get hit by Google themselves. Yes, no-follow tags do not pass "link juice."

No-follows are typically reserved for spaces that are prone to spam - blogs, comment sections, etc. It is rare to have a company no-follow a link in the way you are suggesting. In the end, this method wouldn't be doing them any favors either. You can use SEOQuake or SEO Spyglass (Powersuite) to determine if a link is follow or no-follow. If you have had these links for some time, one possible alternative is that the pages you had links on have been removed as part of a website overhaul on the part of those dealer groups. If they are not showing up, there are 2 possible solutions: Either the new software hasn't crawled them (or analytics hasn't picked them up yet), or the page the links were on have been moved. Another approach could be to get in touch with the folks who you are missing links from and explaining the situation to them. Since they linked to you before, I don't see why they wouldn't again, as long as you are honest and open about it

Facebook and Twitter are no follow links, which means that there is no benefit at all to your link profile. I agree with Robert mostly. Since these links are no follow, the key terms will only help if users are searching the respective social media platforms for your product. The benefit to SEO from Social networks comes solely from the trust factor social signals send. High engagement tells the engines that you are a reputable business, and, as we continue through 2015 most SEOs expect these social signals to increase in importance. I would recommend that you use your social media to build popularity and increase your audience. Stuffing your pages with keywords will have absolutely no effect on your SEO rankings. The exception to this is Google Plus. Posts on Google Plus can influence the SERPs of people who are in your circles. For example, when I am logged into my MCC account and I search for one of my key terms, I often see my Google plus posts in the results. Other than that, there is no benefit to that platform either. Here is another post with some more information I might have missed. Hope that helps!

Great Stuff! Thank you for your time guys.

I can only hope that we'll see more penalties for guest posting. It's a tactic that I truly want to die because "guest posting" is just an amateur form of marketing and public relations that deserves to get penalized. It's trying to shortcut the traditional marketing process in order to get higher rankings quickly for a brand that probably doesn't deserve them in the first place. Nothing good comes quickly. Why do I mean when I say "guest posting"? As Jen Jopez wrote here on Moz, it's "trying willy-nilly to get your posts on every blog for the sole purpose of building (probably bad) links." Google, after all, doesn't want to give websites credit for links that they build themselves. In this and this post of mine here on Moz, I outline the proper process for obtaining the best links naturally through the traditional practices of public relations and publicity. Two of the parts are audience and channel research: determine the websites, blogs, and news outlets that are read by your target audience, and then aim to get news coverage from them or quality articles published on them. One of those links is better than 100 or 1,000 links on random guest-post websites that no one even reads. Just do good marketing, and the good links will come just as natural by-products without you even needing to think about it. EGOL, thanks so much for the kind mention -- you've got an upvote!

Here is Google's definition of bad linkbuilding: Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site. Google sites this an example: Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking. So, basically, if you arrange to get clients to put links to you in their footer in an attempt to increase your search-engine rankings, then you are violating Google's guidelines and risking a penalty. (Nutshell: Google doesn't want to give you credit for a link that you give yourself.) So, I'd make sure that those links are no-followed AND that the anchor text is your brand name and not any desired keywords. The value from those links is the referral traffic, not any help that they give for rankings.

Hi Frank, Thanks for the additional info on this and for clarifying that the business models are local and well-acquainted with the role citations play in Local Search Marketing. What follows is just my opinion, based on what I've seen over the years. I've honestly never been a fan of any paid local directory, though some people swear by them. You shouldn't be having to pay for a BOTW listing. Unless I've totally missed something, I'm pretty sure those are still free (https://secure.botw.org/secure/Signup.aspx?type=jumpstart&directory=local). I'm not familiar with the benefits of Business.com and have never submitted a client to them, so I'm afraid I can't speak to that. If my clients were in the hospitality industry, I'd make sure I'd covered their citations in as many of the free generic local directories as possible and then be sure they were enrolled in any industry specific directories that do drive traffic/bookings to hotels, even if these were paid ones. Beyond this, I'd devote resources to content development and social outreach rather than paid generic directories. I'd predict a better return from that kind of effort.

Theoretically this is not a good strategy because the value of these links are minimal compared to links to domains hosted on other servers in different places. There is no technical penalty for this unless you are over abusing the quantity of links, but, the value of the links is extremely low.

The search engines probably value these links in some way, but nobody outside of the search engines nobody knows exactly what their value might be. In my opinion, it is essential to have these types of links on your pages.  They decrease bounce rates and help engage visitors. If you go to almost any of the most important news sites you will see links to their related content in  the side bars and immediately below their articles.  You will even see them within articles.  They are often accompanied by interesting images, beautiful images, provocative  images, all to get your attention.   These content blocks can direct visitors to  related content, most popular content, most shared content and serendipitous content. Some websites even make money by displaying links to content on other website using services such as outbrain, taboola, and others. Promoting your own content in this way is a very important thing to do.   Promoting the content of others might be a good idea to make money, but it might be a better idea to promote your own instead of giving your engaged visitors to other website for a few cents.

Hi there, I'd agree with the comments from Richard and Jim below, the types of techniques you mention are not really the ones that I'd endorse when you're trying to build a business online. Social media links using Fiverr and link directories aren't as effective as they used to be and can cause link problems if you use them now. Instead, I'd recommend trying to make your website link worthy and using your business USPs to try and generate links. Here are some good guides to help you with this: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building http://moz.com/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links http://moz.com/blog/link-building-101-the-almost-complete-link-guide-updated-for-post-penguin http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies These guides and tactics focus on more sustainable methods of link building which should help you in the long term, I hope that helps! Paddy

Hi Monica, i am also not happy with this situation, especialy it's gonna be difficult to reach my kpi's when SEA is performing on SEO's traffic, but i have to find a solution to reach my goals. the conversion rate has changed, 1% less. what you say: "I cleansed the AdWords account of everything I wanted to rank for organically. As the CTR increased organically the AdWords spend decreased" Is something i want to do, i told the SEA guy about his, but he said it has no use, but now you write te same i'm gonna do it. Thanks for that! Grtz, Leonie

If you guys create a simple link network between one another, then no it probably won't help much and you're risking being seen as manipulating links. Instead, I suggest each writing up quality content that your site's focus on and provide a contextual link to one another. This way you are giving your users valuable content and if the article focuses on each of your own niches it then makes sense to provide a link to the site.