Getting Do Follow Backlinks
Reputation Armor has been on a backlink (DoFollow Link) kick lately, because we want our clients to understand the importance of them. If you’re willing to work at it for a while, then the Reputation Armor process for building strong do-follow backlinks is the route you will want to take.
Reputation Armor (ReputationArmor.com) Step One: Research What Other Sites Are Linking To
Reputation Armor recommends that the sites that already have quality DoFollw backlinks are searched out. Good content attracts good links, as site owners feel compelled to share it with their audience. You will be looking for pages with a ton of backlinks because they’ve already proven to have link worthy content.
To find out which blog posts have attracted the most inbound links, follow the subsequent Reputation Armor process. Note: for this entire blog post, we’ll use a hypothetical example of ReputationArmor.com, an online reputation management firm looking to attract links, traffic and attention.
Install the SEO for Firefox plugin (it’s free!)
Run a search in Google (for this example, Reputation Armor is running a query for “online reputation management”), select “show options” button (below the search box, left) and click “blogs” from the categories
Click the “100″ option (just below the search box, right), which will give you the Top 100 search results
Once that’s resolved, click the “CSV” link (just below the search box, right) and export the results file
Firefox for SEO gives you a lot of great information, but for this exercise, we just want the data for the column “Y! Page Links,” so you can delete the rest. Sort the list by “Y! Page Links” from “largest to smallest.”
Reputation Armor now has a collection of all the blog posts about “online reputation management” that have attracted the most links. The next step in the process of building quality Dofollw backlinks is to discover which sites are linking to these posts.
Reputation Armor Step Two: Find Out Who’s Linking
Now that we know which content pieces are the link magnets, Reputation Armor next likes to find out who’s doing the linking. Why is the “who” important? It’s because these website owners have already pre-qualified themselves as link prospects by demonstrating their willingness to link out to a particular type of content, which in this example is content about “online reputation management.” Reputation Armor finds that the chances are good that they might link to our ReputationArmor.com site about online reputation management.
So to find out the “who,” pull up the CSV dashboard we created above, opt for each of the top linking posts and drill down into their link profiles. This can be done using the “Yahoo Page Links” button on SEO for Firefox Toolbar. This produces a SERP list of all links pointing to this page, minus any internal site links from the root domain.
Reputation Armor Step Three: Find Out Why People are Linking
To create linkable content, Reputation Armor takes the step to determine why certain pieces of content attract links. This is actually the simplest step. People like content that entertains and engages them. So you’re the owner of the hypothetical ReputationArmor.com and you’re hunting for content ideas that will attract links, writing a post about the latest news in reputation management or a high profile case would seem to be beneficial. This brings us to our next step.
Reputation Armor Step Four: Create the Bait
To attract links like the top link worthy posts, Reputation Armor recommends creating something of similar value. We are definitely not recommending to outright copy it, but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can absolutely do something comparable, but make it your own.
For example, take the premise above that people love content about high profile reputation management campaigns. There are multiple ways you can turn that intelligence into an effective content strategy. Reputation Armor has tossed together a few ideas for articles that we grade by degree of difficulty:
Easy: Create a blog post about a high profile online reputation management campaign: not the most original idea, but it will attract a random link or two.
Harder: Create an article about “Proven Online Reputation Management Techniques” This involves more work, but there’s more opportunity for links.
Ever Harder: Fire up your big brain, get super creative and start a contest on your ReputationArmor.com website. Create a contest page (with contest details, photo galleries and voting component), write a blog post announcing the contest and one announcing the winners. In Reputation Armor’s experience, the harder work put into a piece of content, the more links it attracts. This isn’t rocket science, but it bears mentioning.
Reputation Armor Step Five: Pimp Your Content
Okay, so it’s time to market your content. Reputation Armor recommends getting to work reaching out to the site owners, key influencers and bloggers for the sites in backlink profiles that you’ve gathered in your pitch list from step two. Don’t just ask them to link to your page about online reputation management in your request. That’s way too obvious and heavy-handed. Instead, you’re going use a more subtle approach, by writing to make them aware of your content and asking if they’d be willing to “share it” with their audience, as they’ve done with similar types of content.
Don’t fall for the trap that says all you need to do to attract links is create great content. Just because you write good content doesn’t mean the Web will automatically notice. You have to hit them over the head with it. It’s okay to be self promotional, in fact, it’s vital. Nobody else is going to market your content, so it’s up to you.
Reputation Armor’s Conclusion
Top ranking sites work very hard to acquire quality links. To rank among them, you need to apply the same level of effort to content strategy and DoFollow backlink marketing. If your goal is to outrank them, then you’ll need to go above and beyond. Dumping a ton of comment spam links on some “do follow” blogs isn’t going to get it done.