SEO link strategy

Link Strategy Number One:
Old fashioned reciprocal linking between sites. Sometimes called
two-way linking. Some SEO's believe this method is diminished by
Google. Others feel it is still a good strategy provided you link with
sites that have related content.

Link Strategy Number Two:
Triangular or three-way linking is when a site A links to site B for a

Link Strategy Number One:
Old fashioned reciprocal linking between sites. Sometimes called
two-way linking. Some SEO's believe this method is diminished by
Google. Others feel it is still a good strategy provided you link with
sites that have related content.

Link Strategy Number Two:
Triangular or three-way linking is when a site A links to site B for a
link back from site C. This supposedly is considered better by some
SEO's than two-way linking. Their thinking is that two-way linking is
no longer effective and that three-way linking "appears" to Google to
be one-way links. But other SEO's believe that Google can identify
three-way linking and that you risk huge penalties.

Link Strategy Number Three:
This strategy is similar to Number Two above. It is also a three-way
link strategy. Instead of a link from site A, the SEO offers a link
from the SEO's site or a separate site such as a directory to site B
in return for a link from site B to site A. The advantage is that site
A doesn't even need any of its own outbound links. Still, other SEO's
believe Google can detect a link cluster and punish site A.

Link Strategy Number Four:
Four-way linking is also possible but with the same pros and cons as
Number Two and Three above. More complicated and fewer webmasters
willing to participate.

Link Strategy Number Five:
Article links. Many SEO's believe that what appears natural to Google
is a link or two from the inside of an article about the theme which
the site that is to receive the link is about. Usually the SEO will
create an informative article with the links in the middle or end of
the article. They offer the article to any number of webmasters for
free, as content for their sites in return for a link to their
client's site. It could be said that this will backfire if the article
is published on various sites as it is duplicate content and has the
same link destination in each article. Also, a lot of these articles
get submitted to "article farms" which can be identified by Google (if
not now then at sometime in the future). The best way to do this would
be to offer a unique article to each webmaster but the cost of
producing a number of unique articles would be expensive.

Link Strategy Number Six:
One-way links are the most difficult of all but the most effective in
my opinion. There are a few sites that will link to you one-way if you
ask them the properly. Some modest sites do not think like SEO's. Some
of them do not even know the meaning of the term SEO. It is hard work
but well worth the effort (in my opinion) even if the links come from
low or no PR sites. But many SEO's believe one-way links from FFA's
and directories are identifiable by Google as spam so one must work
hard to find honest and related sites willing to do this. The typical
link request probably won't work.

Link Strategy Number Seven:
Buying links. Some SEO's believe that if you buy links, banner ads
will do no good as they do not contain keywords. They therefore
believe that you need to buy text links with keywords in the link.
Google mentions on its guidelines for webmasters that they do not like
link buying and they even have a form you can submit to report sites
that buy links. Some say Google does nothing about it. Others say
differently. Perhaps Google creates fear so that people buy adwords
rather than advertising elsewhere. In my opinion buying banner ads is
safer than textlinks as Google cannot call that spam. Surely a site
has the right to advertise. But text-based ads are probably a bad
idea, especially if it says "Sponsored Links" somewhere near the
links. Some say that without keywords in the link, it will do nothing
for reputation. But if Google is smart, it could detect the reputation
from the site the banner is on.

Link Strategy Number Eight:
Let's say that site A is the site you are promoting and also one you
want to "protect." Instead of doing any risky linking strategies on A,
you could create a number of information sites with related content on
various IP C-blocks to "take the fall" should Google decide to flex
its muscle. In this strategy, site A does noting but receive links
from sites B, C, & D, while B, C, D participate in various linking
activities to create PR which they then pass on to site A. This could
be considered spam depending on how you look at it. The junkier the
information sites and the more risky the linking patterns of those
sites (B, C, D), the greater the chance of A getting hit, I would
think. This could also be quality work, again, depending on how you
look at it. It could natural and it could be artificial.

Link Strategy Number Nine:
Build a site naturally. Many SEO's are now saying the only white-hat
way to make a high ranking site is to develop excellent content. In my
opinion, this is easier to do for a site that is purely an information
site but is more difficult to do for a commercial site. It takes lots
of time and most people are not successful at getting it off the
ground. The concept is good but it is hard to come up with a winner.
It is also most discouraging if you are beat in the rankings by sites
that cheat. You could wait forever and not get anywhere.

Link Strategy Number Ten:
A combination of all of the above. The problem with this is that
Google can punish a site for any one strategy and you won't even know
which one it is.
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Does anyone have any other link building strategies to add?

How about:

11. Devise some unique tools or interactive gimicks to be used as link
bait. I'm not talking content for your site, but content which can you
can offer other sites to use, and within this would be a free link
back to your site. For example, one of my websites is based in the
gambling industry and I often get a couple of sites ask if I want a
calculator tool for my site. They're usually done in flash and all
they ask is for a link back. Obviously this is going to be different
for each niche, and you probably have to think 'outside the box'. It
has to be something that offers added value to other sites but
something that can't easily be replicated.

I'm a database programmer. I can tell you that the answer is: yes,
it's possible. But "possible" and "practical" are not the same thing.

Some of the sites I'm seeing that use these methods have ranked very
well for years now. So apparently, for whatever reason, Google has not
worked this detection into their algorithm. Perhaps it's much more
difficult to apply this kind of detection across billions of pages
than people seem to realize?

jonathanleger, I am not suggesting that three-way links are the way to
go but you brought up an interesting point I had been thinking about 3
hours before you even posted it. Possible but not practical. Perhaps
in order to determine a cluster, you would have to query an inbound
link to site A from site B against every inbound link to site B. Then
do the same with site C which is also linking to site A. If site A had
2,000 inbounds and each inbound linking site had an average of say 500
inbounds, that is a lot of checking. If Google had to go through all
that for every site in its database, it probably would not be
practical.
However, it might be possible for Google to do that in special cases
whereby a red flag was raised regarding a suspected site.

Another problem with 3-way linking is that in most cases an seo makes
a three-way link proposal in an email sent out to prospecitve linking
partners. If it falls into the hands of a white hat samaritan who
takes pleasure in reporting people, that could spell trouble for
anyone taking this risky fork in the road.

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