Link Building in 2011
Quite a bit has changed since I my Link Building 101 was published on SEOmoz – most of which still applies to this year but I thought I would take the time to list what I feel will be the important / unimportant link types for 2011.
Social Media Links
Google has admitted that it values links from social media profiles such as Twitter and Facebook even though they are no-follow (unless you put one on your personal Facebook page) but what about other links coming from what we would call social media profiles?
Personally I feel that any link coming from pages containing social media components will be valued higher by Google and possibly other search engines – why wouldn’t they?
Verdict: Important
Site-Wide Links
Since around November / December site-wide links seem to have taken a massive hit, this may be because it is one of the easiest link types for Google to crack down on when looking into link spam – Lists of links containing “money” keywords rolled up one after the other must be easy to spot.
Verdict: Stay Away (or use branded keywords)
Guest Blog Posts
Guest posting is a great way to get links and always has been – provide a great post and that post will get links from Twitter profiles and other blogs to help power your link.
Verdict: Important
Contextual Ad’s
Contextual Ad’s seemed to pop up quite a bit last year (some disguised as Banner Ad’s) and seem to work well for now but I think these types of adverts will be the next link type to be discounted by Google (if they can).
Verdict: Potentially Dangerous
Blog / Forum Commenting
This link type is usually associated with spam, if you do this properly and post a great comment it is more likely to stick and prompt replies from the community. These links are in no way powerful and will not help you rank on their own but they provide you with a good mix of natural anchors and nofollow links which can help build a solid base for other link types and create background noise around your website.
Verdict: Important
Directories
Directories have always been the bread and butter of link building – I’ve seen many posts over the last few months saying there is no point in these BUT people seem to forget about the hundreds of high quality directories out there – when submitting just keep an eye out for spam.
Verdict: Important
At the end of the day these are just my opinions on how important these link types will be to the search engines this year so it would be great if you could leave your thoughts too.
