This is the last part of our series on how to use footprint searches to find websites to build links on.  You can use this series to find footprints for blog commenting and profile link building.  We have covered other platforms and uses for footprint searches.

You can use the principles outlined in this series to find all sorts of things that will benefit your own link building strategy, including Web 2.0, bookmarking, submission sites etc.  The skills you learn in this series will help you to be “self sufficient” in your link building.

This content is for members only. You can get access to the members only content for as little as $4 a month.  Click here to read more about membership options and the many benefits included.

.

.

Related posts:

1. Part Five: Guide To Finding Footprint Terms For Link Building Wow, it’s Part 5 already.  How time flies when you...
2. Part Three: Guide To Finding Footprints For Link Building In Part One of this series of articles I covered...
3. Part One: Guide To Finding Footprints For Link Building One of the things that can make you “self sufficient”...

Go to a forum that has a section on SEO, any forum you like.  You will find the same three questions asked a dozen times a month on every single one of them.  It drives me insane that people do not know how to use the search box!

I am sure you are now wondering what these questions are,  so in no particular order, the three most annoying, pointless and ill-considered SEO questions asked on forums are:

.

“How many links is it safe to build in a day?”

“How many links do I need to be number one on Google?”

“Why is Google not finding my links?”

.

So to put this to bed once and for all, lets go through each question, then you can point them here next time you grit your teeth while reading a forum.

.

“How many links is it safe to build in a day?”

A better question would be “How long is a piece of string?”.   Being mischievous, I often cannot help replying with a random number, assuring them that this is the number they need to build.

The real answer is, there is no safe limit and it really does not matter how many links you build each day.  Even if you built a million links in a day, Google would only find about 1% of them during that 24 hour period.  So by the time Google has found all those links, days and weeks have passed with a few links found every day.

Some people will swear that any link building strategy requires limits on the links built each day/week etc.  Basically, that’s rubbish.

Google for example asks you to create content people want to link to.  So you create that content and a load of people link to it.  Is that in your control?  Can you control how many links other people build every day?  Nope.

Just mix up the ways you build those links, build them to all the pages on your site and keep on building them until you shut your site or die.

.

“How many links do I need to be number one on Google?”

The answer is 42.  Actually it’s not, but it is a good an answer as any other number.

The real answer is that nobody knows.  Why?  because not all links are created equal.  Some links carry more weight and authority than others.

As an example, one of my sites was cited in a national newspaper once, that single high-authority link skyrocketed my sites SERP’s in a week.  I went from zero to hero.  That was one single link after months of link building had produced little impact.

On top of that, you need to factor in topical relevance and Latent Semantic Indexing of your content.

So quality links trump quantity links and there is no way anyone can tell you how many links you need to build to rank in X position.

.

“Why is Google not finding my links?”

Beginners always do the same thing.  They create a site and spend a week building links.  Every single day they feverishly check the SERP’s to see if they are ranking for their chosen keywords.  Then they check Google webmaster tools or Yahoo Explorer to see if their links are indexed.

They never are.

Sometimes links are never found  – you can minimise this using a variety of strategies I may outline in the comments if you ask me nicely

Sometimes links take weeks, months and years to be found.  Sometimes they just never are found by the search engines.

And even if they are found, sometimes they simply do not appear in Google webmaster tools or Yahoo Explorer.

Nobody knows why.

My advice is always the same.  Stop worrying about the links you built.  Spend the time building new ones rather than checking for old ones.

Related posts:

1. The Top 5 Forum-Asked Link Building Questions Go over to any of the main webmaster/SEO forums, such...

Why?  Because I have noticed that a lot of the people who are saying these things have either tried and failed with their linkbuilding, or they are forum, blog or site owners who are trying to play down their effectiveness.

So what is the reality?

In my own testing, I have ranked sites using only profile links and followed blog comments and continue to do so.  So they still work for me, but does anyone else agree?

Well, how about Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, will he do as an authority on SEO and linkbuilding?  Yes, I thought you would agree he will.

This is what he posted a week ago:

“On nearly every commercially lucrative search results I pull up these days, I see bad links pushing sites into the top rankings at Google.”

So Rand of SEOmoz agrees with me.  Profile linking and followed  blog commenting still works as part of your link building strategy.

Now I am not suggesting using these types of links exclusively, nor am I saying that they are good or bad links.  Personally I do not subscribe to the opinion that they are offensive to the site owners, as along as you do not make them offensive.  If you comment on a blog with a polite, relevant comment then is that spam regardless of the motivation?  If you  create a profile on a membership site that, amazingly, allows you to create a public profile, is it wrong to put a link in it?

To me no.  That is what a profile is for…for you to add a profile and links in the places they allow you to place links.

As for blog commenting, of course the morons still submit automated “good post boys, bookmarked.  Viagra” but these rarely get through and its just a waste of everyone’s time.   But if you visit a blog and you ADD VALUE to that post with a relevant comment, regardless of your motivation for doing so, then is there harm in that?  Of course not, unless you subscribe to Google’s whiter-than-white “build it and they will come” mentality (which incidentally even well-respected SEO’s like Gray Wolf are now questioning) then you will be clicking away from this post right now.

So in terms of one way backlinks, profile links and blog commenting do still add value.  If you are believing the dis-information, then you are only hurting your own rankings.  Your link building strategy should be “whole of world”, and like it or not, the rest of the the world is still ranking above you because they use profile links and blog commenting as part of a fully developed strategy for their link building.

If the experts are telling you that sites are ranking for “spammy” links, then unless you run a church website, why are you not still using these link building methods? A successful site will have a good mix of a few big links, under-pinned with lots of less powerful ones.  By leaving this to chance, ie, by hoping someone will link to you, then you are only hurting yourself.

Forget relevancy,  ignore the propaganda.  Just build links.

.

PROFILE LINK POWER – My Guide To Building Unlimited FREE Profile Links.

BLOGPACKS - My lists of followed, open comments, quality blogs to comment on.  These are great value.

.

• do profile links work
• blog commenting sites free
• blog comments vs profile links
• blog commenting sites
• blog commenting vs profile
• free edu profile builing links
• link building inurl:/blog comments
• profile linking
• profile links still works

Related posts:

1. Warning From Google On Building Links Through Blog Commenting Personally I am looking forward to a break over Christmas,...
2. Get Profile Link Power – The ultimate guide to building profile links. It’s here! The ultimate guide to building profile links. Of...
3. The Top 5 Forum-Asked Link Building Questions Go over to any of the main webmaster/SEO forums, such...

Within the broader process of “search engine optimisation”, building one way links is definitely the second most important.  The most important is of course to have relevant content to point those links at.

Put simply, through a variety of methods, you either create your own links or inspire people to link to your content, through such strategies as linkbait.

So in terms of importance within your overall SEO strategy, linkbuilding is asolutely vital to your website’s success.

.

Improve Your Link Popularity.

Building link popularity will give your site a real boost in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Link popularity is nothing more complicated than how popular your site in terms of other sites linking to it.  Building or improving your link popularity means getting more links from other people and building them yourself.

.

Effective Link Strategy = Website Success!

Having an effective linking strategy is key to your website gaining visitors.  Build content and then build links to it, do it all the time, and make sure you are aware of the latest strategies that work, and also those that are now out of date.

It is also vital to be aware of things such as the use of the nofollow attribute, and the recent news from Google that they are downgrading the effects of most blog comment links.  You need the best information so you do not waste your time on an outdated or ineffective linkbuilding strategy.

For a comprehensive guide to linkbuilding, check out The LinkBuilders Bible 2010 – Over 600 other people already have their copy!

Related posts:

1. How many links should I build per day? This is a question that, surprisingly, comes up a lot...
2. The Top 5 Forum-Asked Link Building Questions Go over to any of the main webmaster/SEO forums, such...
3. Grab our FREE linkbuilding tips ebook…it’s REVOLUTIONARY! Who says you cannot get something for nothing nowadays?! We...

Professionally I am concerned at the number of people who might get caught out by Google’s webmaster blog post about blog comment spam.

It points to a focus on this type of spam, and the clear implication in the post is they can track it and punish it.

Now to break a threshold to get your comments ignored or for further investigation/action to happen I reckon you would have to break a large barrier, maybe several thousand comments a day. But consider the volumes that some people on this forum claim they are chucking around with software at best it could be a waste of time and money and at worst they are storing up an increasing chance of a slap from Google.

I will be scaling back my automated efforts from now on, at least in terms of linkbuilding, and will be focusing on using mass commenting for traffic generation through name dropping instead.

You need to review your linkbuilding strategy going into 2010.

No related posts.