Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Ideally we want links from the top tier of 'good'. Maybe it's good to get .gov links, or .edu links, or really old links. But sometimes we can't.
What I'll do is try to get links from second tier sites. Say I want a find a page on a .gov site that has a list of links. I'd like to be on that page, but I can't get a link. What I'll do is look at all the sites that are linked to from that page and try and get a link from them. I'll still get whatever good comes from that .gov link, just diluted and flowed through another site.
Anywhere you can find a list of links on a powerful page is a candidate for this. Links pages on .gov's. Links pages on industry professional organizations.dmoz pages, Yahoo directory pages. In my niche there's a very old, dead directory linking to sites that are also very very old that I've used before. I can't get a link from that directory, but cruising the sites it links to gives me a list of 10-15 year old sites in my industry that have a lot of old backlinks.
i have only gone link hunting recently for sites that can potentially drive a lot of targeted traffic, by checking the technorati rank, alexa, quantcast, pr; you could not only find the pages to which a trusted link points, but, although not as valuable, pages that link to that trusted site. you could get an idea of how good the link by performing your queries.
you may not get the link protein originally source from that trusted link; but you could find other neighborhoods that are just as good or better.
and yeah, it works.
Takes a lot of research but once you've mapped the neighborhood, it's very easy.
I'd place this tactic a distant second when compared to the importance of a proper internal link structure.
i don't know; i have seen some blogs drive good traffic with poor metrics that make a "quality" link:
- low pr
- low alexa ranking
and i have seen links from sites with pr's of 5 and better; better alexa ranking and not drive any traffic; however, if it's for link protein, we're comparing eggs to eggplant. but i have boosted serp positioning landing one link coming from a site with pr 1 that is, nonetheless, very related to my niche.
so is it internal link structure? or 2nd tier links?
thoughts?
Then how do you get a link...
This discussion is about identifying high value sites. How one obtains a link is a completely different topic, in fact it's a vast topic. You may want to read our Link Development Library [webmasterworld.com] to get an idea of what is involved. Good luck. ;)
I was using this technique yesterday. Found a well linked dot mil site that was linking out to other sites. Couldn't get a link from the dot mil site because there was no contact information. So I went for the sites the dot mil was linking to.
Related: is your friend
yes!
this is all based on the TrustRank patent Google filed a few years ago, isn't it?
TrustRank is a Yahoo! assigned patent
uspto [appft1.uspto.gov]
There was an interesting discussion on this topic started by tedster in 2004. (I just read it for the first time.)
I don't know if there's a coined phrase for it. Link Juice Hopping? Assumed Grandparental Relevance?
Does anchor text work to the 2nd generation? [webmasterworld.com]
However, I've also believed that webmasters getting so much more search traffic than referral traffic was at least in a way a self-fulfilling prophecy, because they often seem to go for links they wouldnt go for for traffic purposes.
Actually, I'm in this situation right now: I have the opportunity to get a ton of links from such sites as the ones that wheel mentioned (.edu and .gov pages with 10-15 carefully selected links) for my new site - I've actually tried my approach already and one .gov site and multiple .edu sites have promised me a link already.
However, I came to the realization, that that will only give me search traffic and not much referral traffic.
So, I assume there still are many linking opportunities that'll send you a bunch of link juice, but virtually no traffic whatsoever?
If that's the case, and we're thinking long term (which we all should), will such links still count a lot in the future or will links that help you rank, but not send any traffic go the way of reciprocal links and the like in the future? (I've often heard about the concept of using user data, which Im pretty convinced will be done...and statements such as "why would a search engineer want to count a link that people don't click on",etc.).
I assume if we're talking links from very good neighborhoods - untapped areas (that your average commercial webmaster in your niche wont go for) - such as .edu and especially .gov links....then they probably still will count into the future (as long as links remain important). Agree/disagree?:-)
