Post Panda Link Building
After the last Google algorithm update known as Panda link building has changed. The way we use to build our links was for the most part through article marketing. As an apprentice to Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins back before they launched Stompernet we learned that link building through article marketing was hard to beat. And they were right we build a huge network of links through this manner and made quite a bit of money because of it. But as they told us early on and one of the primary reason I belong to such membership groups as Stompernet is that Internet Marketing was a moving target. It is constantly changing.
The latest change was the Panda update. What we saw in our own sites and the sites of our clients was that links coming from sites that had lots of duplicate content and for the most part all Web2.0 sites were discounted. This is not to say that they did not count, just that they did not count as much as they use too. Our clients that were heavily invested into these type of links and no others saw a tremendous drop in their rankings. Another way of describing these sites that we saw with the discounted links were sites that accepted massive amounts of articles that in Googles eyes seem to be for the purpose of building links. Some examples would be Hub pages, Ezinearticles, Squidoo and most of the article directories.
So our strategy changed a little. The process of link building that we work in now still has some of the things we use to do with some new things added in to the mix.
First we still believe in the concept of Level 1 and Level 2 links. Probably more so now than ever before. The biggest change probably comes in our level 1 strategies.
Before I go any further here let me explain Level 1 and Level 2 link building. Today we look at level 1 as the easy lower value links. This where we use to do massive amounts of article marketing but now we believe that the best level 1 links come from a combination of blog commenting, profile link building and article marketing on a smaller scale going out to massive amounts of places including blogs. (Just so you know we found this to be the case through testing. We have over 100 sites that we use for testing these type things)
Level 2 has not changed much. This for the most part is the best kind of links. These are links from quality sites that are not in the business of giving links. The best kind of link from these type sites would be a homepage link. I have heard many gurus speak on this subject and say that it would be best if these were the only kind of links you should get. I agree except for the fact that in some markets (most markets I deal with) It is way to expensive to only get Level 2 type links. If your budget allows for this I agree totally. But if you are like me and having to build your business on a budget the dual level system works just fine and is much less expensive.
The first step in building these links and probably the most important step is to establish your self as an authority site. We believe you do this by looking at your site in Open Site Explorer and building your domain authority up to at least a 70, building at least 10,000 total links from at least 100 different Linking Root Domains. Now let me push into this area a little deeper. You also want to beat the numbers here of your major competitors. If your major competitor has 15000 links from 400 Linking root domains and a domain authority of 71 then you want more in each category. Also if they have some of the other essentials of the algorithm. Such as domain age and keywords in their domain and you don’t then you need to beat them by and even bigger margin to even these things out. The main thing here is to focus on the things you control and not worry about the things you don’t control. You have control over the number of links you get and from what type of sites they come from. One last thing if your competition has a low domain authority and you have a higher one but it is still low this does not always mean you will beat them. Again they may have some of the other parts of the algorithm in their favor. An example if they have a 30 domain authority and you have a 40 they still may beat you in the serps because you still are not an authority site and if they are ahead of you in other areas this will not matter. You should push ahead to get your domain authority to 70 then you should not have a problem with them if they are still a 30.
Again we look at a site in Open site explorer and we build our links according. We are trying to build 10,,000 total links from at least 100 domains and build the domain authority to 70. We do this in the Level 1 and 2 modes. So first lets focus on the Level 1. We have people on our team building profile links and doing blog commenting manually. We also have a person on our team taking 10 articles in 10 different categories, spinning them and submitting them out in masses with software. This is all for the purpose of building the total links and the total linking root domains. Our main focus here is to build up the total linking root domains.
Next is our level 2 process. Again this is where we build our most valuable links. We have a person hired who goes out and finds high quality sites that would be willing to give us links. I would compare him to an insurance agent. Every one he talks too is not willing to give us a link but some are and if he talks to enough people every day we get a lot of great links. And because this is all he does he becomes pretty good at it over time. Another part of his process that makes our system great is that once he finds a person who is willing to give us a link. (They don’t actually give it to us they usually charge us a monthly fee) The first thing he does is test the link but putting a link to one of our sites one there. He gives it time to take effect and if he sees good results out of the link then he goes back to the site owner and negotiates a better rate by using the power of our group. If they were charging him $100 per month for the single links he ask them if they will take $250 for 5 links or even less. He has done this so well that we probably only pay on average about $10 per level 2 link and we have some really great links.
This is where some people get nervous about our system. They worry about the fact that you are having to pay a monthly fee to keep these links. We do. But we also make a monthly profit because of it. We have some clients that have maintenance fees of over $2000 per month to maintain the level 2 links we have gotten them. But they have seen their monthly profit grow to over $25,000. So I am willing to pay $2000 for the ability to make $25000 anytime. And for our clients that pay us to build links for them. Once they have reached their goals of ranking where they want to rank in the search engines then they can stop the program and put the level 2 links on a maintenance program. We do this by simple charging them the cost of the links plus a $20 month fee for our level 2 guy to watch over them.
