After my blog post 5 Link Building Myths… Busted, I’ve been getting so many questions about linking that I figured I should just answer them in public so everyone can benefit.

(Note: I really would prefer the questions as comments on the blog rather than direct e-mails so that it saves me and you time; but I’d rather you ask via e-mail than not ask at all)

Links are of critical importance when trying to get free traffic. Really, I can’t emphasize enough how powerful having quality links are to free traffic; in my opinion it is the best thing you can do to get a steady stream of willing buyers.

I did a little research for this and was appalled by some of the bad information out there, no wonder I get these questions. To be fair, there is also a lot of good information out there but obviously there is still massive confusion.

I’m going to answer these “burning questions” I’ve received as truthfully as I can.

Do I know everything?

Of course not, who does, but I’ve studied and implemented and get tell you what I’ve found to be the truth and what the current generally accepted “best practices” are.

You’ll need to try them and test them to see if they work in your specific situation but they work in most situations so they are good places to start if nothing else.

How Do I Get Thousands of Links?

This isn’t the right question to ask.
The point is you should much prefer quality links over quantity.

At one point in time, the more links you had the better it was but that time has come and gone. What matters now is the quality of your links not the quantity of them.

Look at it this way, say you wanted to get into real estate investing and you went looking for help.

You could walk out your door and ask your neighbor and walk around asking everyone who lived in your city and when you were done you’d have talked to thousands or millions of people, most of whom no nothing about real estate investing, and gotten a lot of answers and opinions.

But if you had Donald Trump’s personal cellular telephone number and could just call him and talk to him.

Which do you think would help you the most? Donald Trump, of course, because it isn’t the quantity of information but the quality.

The search engines care about quality links and consider them tremendously more important then links from other places.

I can tell you that links from places like Squidoo, Hub Pages, universities and other sites that are considered “authority sites” are worth hundreds or thousands of links from other unknown places; just like a recommendation from Donald Trump will be much more valuable than a recommendation by lots of strangers.

So don’t ask how you can get thousands of links, ask how you can get quality links. Of course, getting thousands of quality is the Holy Grail

Isn’t It Hard to Get Links?

Absolutely not!

Well wait, it depends upon what you mean by hard.

There are lots of ways to do it and those ways are really hard but they do take some work (all of which you can outsource so you don’t actually have to do it yourself.

Remember what I said above about the importance of quality links, well, most of them you can easily get links from.

Here’s some ways to get quality links, the more you do the better it is but doing any of them are better than not:

1. Create Squidoo Lenses
2. Create Hub Pages
3. Do Social Bookmarking (like Digg, Propeller, etc.)
4. Create articles for submission to article directories
5. Create press release and submit them
6. Create videos and submit them to YouTube, Viddler and video directories
7. Create and submit podcasts
8. Go to forums and other groups and submit questions, comments and answers
9. Go to other people’s blogs and post comments (you could even post one below!)
10. Enable your RSS feeds and submit to places like Feedburner where are sort of clearinghouses from RSS feeds
11. Use trackback services (I use http://rpc.pingomatic.com/, http://api.moreover.com/ping, and http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)
12. Use a Social Media Domination Machine like I do

These are all good ways of getting links, most of the high value links.

They do require some work but it isn’t hard and, like I said, you can pay others to do it.

Won’t Google Slap Me If I Try to Get Links?

Really, people are concerned about this.

There are not many successful Internet Marketers who don’t try to get links; successful being the key word here.

Google LOVES links but they don’t like it when people try to scam the system so you’re more a risk if your use “black hat” techniques.

If you stick to the ways above then you’ll be okay.

Also, the search engines like “normalcy” so if you, all of a sudden, have hundreds or thousands of articles, bookmarks and things pointing to your site this is unnatural and they will notice it and likely devalue the site.

What are “Bad Links”?

I got questions about whether this type of link or that type of link was bad.

There are virtually no “bad links” but some are better than others and some ways of using links are better than others.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Internal Links

For some reason, internal links have a bad reputation.

In fact, Google at least, seems to subtract points if you do not have internal links; so links to your privacy policy and disclaimers are easy ways to do this.

But if you reference one page from another, not uncommon, like I did above when I referenced previous blog posts, that is fine and can even be very helpful.

Excessive cross-linking though can be bad depending upon how it is done; for example, if every pages links to every other page,

Links to External Sites

Link internal links, search engines actually like links out to external sites.

Remember, they like natural and normal and it is very natural and normal to link out to other sites so doing this is okay.

What is not okay, and not natural and normal, is LOTS of links out to other sites, so don’t be excessive about it.

Also, there is some evidence that where you link to has a small effect on the value of your page so if you link to spammer, links farms, etc. you may get hurt; these are bad links.

Finally, as I talked about in my blog post, Google has decided it doesn’t like external links that are raw affiliate links so they would be (sort of) bad also.

Spammer Links

There is some logic to thinking that the search engines would consider links to your site from people like spammers and link farms would be bad links.

But, there is also logic to thinking that since you can’t control where links come from it isn’t your fault. After all, if you wanted to destroy your competitors you’d just get a lot of links to them from these bad sites if that worked. They certainly won’t help you though.

I have not seen any indications, nor have I heard any true experts say, that these are bad links so I wouldn’t worry about them.

Conclusion

There you have it, the truth about links.

Remember, it’s more important to get quality, high value links than thousands of just any old links.

You can get those links by: creating Squidoo Lenses, creating Hub Pages, doing Social Bookmarking, creating articles for article directories, creating press releases, creating videos, creating podcasts, commenting at forums and other groups, commenting at other people’s blogs, enabling your RSS feeds, using trackback services, use a Social Media Domination Machine

Remember that Google and the other search engines love links but they like them to be “natural” and don’t like it when people try to scam the system.

So while there are virtually no “bad links”, internal links and links out from your Web sites are good things because they fit in the normal and natural category.

Do you have any link advice?

Do you have any link questions?

If so, leave a comment and get a link!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this, particularly because the purpose of links it to get traffic and build a list.

You’ve probably seen lots of e-mail about the Tellman & Shawn from free, $1,997 List Pros list building course they’re giving away (well for $7.95 shipping and handling).

There is an exit pop that let’s you get a digital version for 99 cents so I did and, just so far, my opinion is you SHOULD get this, it is definitely worth $1 (well, it’s worth more actually!).

You can find it at http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/ListPros

Note: you are automatically enrolled in Tellman’s List Building Club, free for 30 days, if you don’t want to continue just call them or submit a support ticket. It’s worth trying out, I’ve gotten a lot out of it.

Talk soon,

David
The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. Don’t forget to pick up your free list building course from Tellman & Shawn. Go to http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/ListPros

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