Thrudigital

In previous articles, I mentioned various ways to acquire links that carry more weight in Google. The important thing is that these links carry at least some weight, and thus you aren’t spending your valuable time on useless endeavours. In this article I’m going to explain a very simple technique for acquiring free links of good quality. Let’s start brainstorming:

1) Competitors A, B, C, …, X are ranked higher than the site of mine;
2) I know directories that accept free links;
3) I know tools that allow me to find links which point to various websites.

How can one combine these facts to achieve higher rankings? Ordinary people and “directory submitters” usually do this: they search phrases such as “directory of directories” or “directories list” in Google. Trust me, you will end up lost doing this. Firstly, “directories of directories” may well link to the same sources. You will need to track all websites that you visited for submitting purposes.

Second, many such directories just don’t work any more: some are still accepting paid submissions, and some are still are accepting regular submissions, but they are no longer being reviewed by administrators.

Third, some (not many, but some) of these directories simply don’t exist.

Fourth, how do we know that these directories are worth our time? Are they indexed in Google, or at least in Yahoo! or MSN? How often do search engines crawl such pages? Do such links carry weight, or are they useless? These questions lead to one conclusion: we need a different approach, that is both more effective and less time consuming.

Here’s what to do:

1) Create a list of your top competitors (search relevant phrases in Google),
2) Find a number of links (between 10-100) that point to these websites (using our link popularity tool, for example),
3) Visit these websites.

It is very likely that you’ll find directories which list your competitors. Thanks to human laziness, people often don’t change descriptions of websites that they submit into directories, allowing us to find all relevant websites, by copying-and-pasting these descriptions into Google. Those who read this blog regularly know that next is some examle.

Take the term cichlids. See google.com/search?hl=en&q=cichlids&btnG=Search and you should see cichlid.infocrux.com ranked in the top 10. It’s not a website of mine, just an example. So, now we just analyse links to this website. For example, using our link popularity tool, you can find linkdirectory.biz/Home_Family/ which links to that site. You just need to visit that page and copy the website’s description:

“Articles on different types of Cichlid fishes, their types, and care. Learn about buying, maintaining…” (This is an abbreviated description)

When done, we enter it into Google. You will then see which websites link to cichlid.infocrux.com.

Of course, there are a few rules which one should follow:

1) Always track already visited directories/websites: you can get lost very easily!
2) Always follow more links from directories. Descriptions may be different and you risk losing useful and valuable links.
3) Always search records. Go to the last page of search results and click on repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Advantages:

You’re about to visit websites that carry some weight in Google. They’re not penalised, and they do exist (or, at least, they did when Google last crawled them.)

Disadvantages:

No-one can guarantee that these directories allow free listings.

In fact, in terms of link-building, you can do more than just copying your competitors. Firstly, you’re analysing a number competitors, not just one. So, you should end up with more links than they have individually. You can also find pages other than directories which link to your competitors. In many cases you can find blog/website comments that link to resources. Why can’t you contact webmasters and ask for a link, or post comments on blogs?

Naturally, you’ll first need a website of good quality. This won’t work for parked domains or made-for-ads websites. More ideas coming later.

By the way, this technique could also work against you, if your competitors also use it. Start now and get ahead!