Link building Activities

[conversiontactics]

As everyone is saying that link building is dead , And we should be doing RCS, to earn links.

Q1, so my question is that are  these below mentioned activities no longer effective?:

directory submission
classified listing
business listing
social bookmarking
reciprocal listing
Guess bloggin
blog comment
forum posts
inforgraphics
Articles
Press release

What sort of activities should we be doing for earning links Has anyone got any process , please share.

[Klarke]

Years worth of free material here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4

Most of it is all about earning your links and position in SERPs.

As for the Q1.

The majority of items in that list should be avoided.  With things like Guest Posts, Press Releases and Directory submissions, it's very easy to go overboard.   Personally,

I avoid "guest posting" on poor sites, or sites that don't have traffic, or sites which seem to only publish guest posts.

With press releases, your goal isn't to get a link from prweb.com or prnewswire.  Those links are worthless.  Yes you read right.  Your goal is to raise awareness and get people to take action on the content of your release.  That rules out all the free or cheap press release sites since humans don't read them.

There are less than a dozen general directories that are worth submitting to.  Definitely avoid anything that even smells like mass submission.   In addition to those few like Yahoo, DMOZ, maybe business.com, botw.org ..look at smaller, specialized niche directories.

Avoid article directories, period.  There were a bad idea from the start, they're even worse now.

Infographics ? I'd try not to overdo it.  Definitely avoid trying to get anchor text in there.

[conversiontactics]

Thanks for your reply ,

Just one more question , you said to avoid article directories then how can i distribute my content on the web.

i do share on facebook , twitter and only these social bookmarking site

digg, delicious, stumble and reddit but the profiles do not have any significant following.

Any tips to how to market quality content for getting links.

[danatanseo]

Hi, I understand your frustration because there are so many posts saying "all that stuff you used to do doesn't work any more so stop it and do something else...like RCS." I totally and completely agree with the RCS part. In my opinion if there isn't RCS going on, then SEO strategy shouldn't even be talking point. That being said, let's say you are doing SEO for a company that does do RCS. Then what? Are you still not to do any of these things?

I would argue that every element on your list still work, even directory submissions (okay, nobody shoot me...but hello...Yahoo anyone?)  And Press Releases still work too...when you have real news. In fact, just today YouMoz put up a post I wrote about how blog commenting can actually still work and work really well, even post-Penguin.

I'd approach everything on that list and create a strategy and schedule for each one, but one that is driven by connections, relevance and newsworthy events instead of quotas like "I need to build 50 links this week." We get so fixated on the idea that someone has the "secret plan" the "formula" to a special SEO potion that's going to work for everyone. There is no such thing. The reason people go around proclaiming that any one of the things on your list don't work is probably because they beat them like a dead horse, and dead horses don't run.

There isn't a secret combination or plan or strategy...the only one that's going to work is the one that custom made by you for your site. What works on one site or for one business, may most likely not work for another. Try things. Experiment. Some things will work, some things won't. The great thing about SEOMoz is that you can ask such a huge variety of people in so many different areas of businesses what's working and what's not. Here, you will find enough ideas to keep you occupied trying new things for a long time. But don't let anyone tell you all the old things don't work any more. They work, just maybe not quite like the cog wheels of some big SEO machine some were hoping to turn and have links come flooding out.

Hope that's helpful. Just my take of course

Dana

[conversiontactics]

Thanks Dana,

Thanks for your answer, Yes everyone is talking about  Content Content Content, and do RCS and you absolutely correct  to have a  proper strategy and plan base on your business. Also it is frustrating at time when you ask for content and tips from clients and they reply by saying get it from the internet because they are busy and at times they would say that's why Im paying you.But as an expert in there field the tips and advice that they will give would be better than what i would produce.

Anyway sorry sharing my frustration lol. Going to follow  you on twitter , many thanks

[Michael-Goode]

Hi,

If you have created fantastic content, I would recommend running paid ads for a little while. Just recently for an automotive infographic we have created, we ran a paid promotion on Stumble Upon. For $10, your content gets shown a 100 times. So we added just $10 as a fund and now the infographic is on its way to nearly 700 stumbles + gaining links from it.

Definitely worth checking out if your content is fantastic.

Good luck!

[Klarke]

Sites that lift content from today's article directories are not sites worth getting a link from.

If you want to distribute content, find sites and building relationships with people who are willing to accept your content directly.

[conversiontactics]

Good idea,

i was thinking this with facebook paid marketing any experience with that.

[conversiontactics]

Thanks Klarke,

Any experience in getting influencer , for e.g i got a site that sell stuff related to babies and im targeting mummy bloggers is that any good, they do ask for incentives and sometime money thou.

[danatanseo]

Wow, thanks so much. I appreciate that. It is frustrating, I know. I am working with an arts organization right now and they haven't got a clue what SEO is. I have a lot of education to do. It's difficult, but necessary!

[GBC]

I'd agree with Dana - you should build a site with great content (why wouldn't you?) but social bookmarking does have an effect, press releases still work in the post-penguin world. Just remember you're at the mercy of Google and all this could change with futures updates, so if it's ALL you're doing and you don't do any RCS you could be in trouble down the line.