How Would You Go About Building a Private Link Network?

[ConversionChamp]

Assuming you need to build a private link network from scratch, how would you go about doing it? I am not looking for some shady tactic, but rather something that would be white hat, yet will help in our SEO efforts.

Thanks in advance.

[SimonCullum]

Hi ConversionChamp

Any private link network created to aid SEO (Rankings) is shady by nature, even if that's not the intention, there is no avoiding the fact that's it's not an ethical practice.  Though granted that won't stop many from participating in it.

A far better, more beneficial and sustainable strategy (your white-hat alternative) would be to build up relationships with relevant site owners;  do some guest blogging and provide them with content, socially connect with them and distribute your content around their audience, which will lead towards some awesome links.  Building up your own contacts to engage with and hopefully get links from without exchanging links that go round & round the network, is the way to go.

Regards

Simon

[ConversionChamp]

Yes I know that I may have to be slightly grey hat for this.

Here is the problem with guest posts. If I build relationship with people (blog owners), then they'd know more about me. They'd know where I work and what I do. The problem comes when doing a guest post for someone else. Most bloggers I know do not allow you to post guest post linking to your clients for the purpose of SEO. There are some that do, but majority of the A listers, don't do that.

So when we have to build link for clients, it's difficult to get links from them unless we have a very good say in how the blog links out. This is best achieved by private link networks.

Of course there are other ways. But my question revolves around this idea. How viable is it to build a network of sites (Domain sites or web 2.0)

[SimonCullum]

Yep, guest posting is on the whole a pointless exercise for Search purposes, the links that are followed will tend to be poor quality links.

That's why I suggested Guest Blogging which is different and with the right blog, most worthwhile, also for reasons of building up ones' authoritiveness. A good blog post will attract social sharing for example and those social signals and social links are very important.

One important service from agencies should be advising and educating their clients rather than doing all the work for them. Advice for the client on where to guest blog, what to blog about and why is an important part of the agency/client relationship I believe.  If the client is unwilling to put any effort in and only throw the bucks at an agency to do it all, then perhaps they are not the best client to work with.

Going back to how viable is it to build up a network of sites for linking purposes?  It's time consuming, resource heavy and more often than not will provide very little benefit, those days have gone.  So it's viable in that it can be easily done, given the time and resource, though totally non-viable from an expected results perspective.

So education, advice and encouragement can go a long way in helping the client to achieve their goals, so long as the client is up for it

[wojkwasi]

I wouldn't.. private link networks are becoming more public by the day as Google improves their algo...

Rethink your strategy & look at social media & other types of link building (e.g. create some compelling content)