Yell for Help

[AshJez]

Hi all. Being new to the real world of SEO I am attempting a diy approach to improving visibility of my website. I have been reading a great deal as of late and this has lead to greater confusion as to the approach I need to take.

My understanding is that if I receive links from high ranking sites, this will improve my own ranking. Given this, I have considered that if I advertised with yell.com so that I received a link back, this should in theory improve my own ranking as yell do not nofollow the links out, unless I am mistaken. Also, if I were to advertise with scoot.co.uk and again have a link to my site, this, one may think would help. Having said this, scoot.co.uk use the nofollow in link. So the question here is, would these sites be of any benefit.

Further, Google appears to want trillions of links to sites and at the same time, suggests these should be natural and if understand correctly, does not really like the idea of paid for links. This would be the case if I were to list myself with Yell and Scoot.

My thoughts at the moment is that white hat does not really work for the smaller business so what is one to do here. Comments appreciated.

[MRCSearch]

Welcome to SEO!

First, take a step back. Breathe. Jumping to conclusions like "white hat does not really work for the smaller business" is the absolute wrong thing to do. White hat does work, and if you're in it for the long game it's the only real strategy.

It looks like you've got some decent working knowledge. Good, quality inbound links are very important when establishing rank and domain authority. With some of the basics down, I suggest you give this a read:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011

Pay particular attention to Section II, link building strategies. While I applaud you for jumping right in and worrying about nofollow vs follow, paid vs unpaid, I get a feeling you haven't really thought about strategy yet. Do that, give yourself a day to digest, then dive back in. If you're confused on what is a good link and what isn't, be sure to read the sections on link profiles.

To answer your questions a bit more directly, having links back from IPYs like Yell and Scoot are part of a good, robust link profile. Since they are part of regular ads on other sites, they don't 'count as paid links' like you think they do. In addition, external citations from IYPs can have significant advantages in the local search vertical.

While link building, don't ignore the other aspects of SEO. Rand wrote a great post here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-responsibilities-of-seo-have-been-upgraded

That will give you an idea for every touchpoint you have in a greater SEO campaign. Also check out the posts on Ranking Factors for more information.

SEO/inbound marketing moves fast, takes no prisoners, and leaves many in the dust, but you'll do well. Just keep at it.

[AshJez]

Hi Nicholas and thank you for the words of encouragement. My comment about White hat not working was more to do with one particular competitor that has made a complete mockery of the system. It’s totally unbelievable what they have done. Thousands of links from total rubbish and now on page one. Yes, they may get caught but between now and then, people that are trying to develop an honest site suffer.

I take your point about Yell and Scoot however, I mentioned that scoot.co.uk use the nofollow. Listing myself in scoot I believe would bring in little or no traffic. After all, who needs scoot when you have Google. From my point of view, the only value scoot may bring is in adding to my domain authority but, the nofollow, would that not defeat the object of listing with them.

Thanks for the links above. I shall read those.

[MRCSearch]

Having a good ratio of follow:nofollow is part of a good link profile. Just because that particular link might not pass juice on to you does not mean to ignore it. However, if the link costs money or great amounts of time to obtain, you have to weigh that out against limited resources.

[AshJez]

Good point Nicholas. Also, those links you provided above seem real great. Thanks.

[AlanMosley]

Often I see the clain that someone is ranking well with heaps of crap links, but usually among those crap links they have a few good ones that is giving tem the rank, but are hard to find among the crap