5 Reasons Why Copying Links is Bad for You

When you start out in link building, almost everyone recommends to check out your competitors. And I agree: it is very important to know who you're dealing with in the SERPs.
Many people additionally recommend to "get" all those links your competitors have built so far. However, this can be a potentially dangerous and rather inefficient approach to link building. Let me tell you why.
1. You will never truly lead the rankings
It sure does sound promising and logical. Just copy all the links that can be copied of, say, the top 20 ranking websites for your target keywords. Depending on your niche, this may or may not be a ridiculous amount of work, but it can be done if necessary.
However, this has one implication: even if this works out great and you reach the top (e.g. rank #1), you will never become an actual leader. Your ranking will probably stick for a while, but if just one of those 20 competitors is actively building links on a daily basis, he passes you in no time.
Now if you approach the issue more thoroughly, you can try to copy all new links as soon as they appear in your favorite link research tool as well. This still has a serious problem to it, though: it's not natural.
2. It's unnatural and may get you penalized
Google watches link growth and link building velocities very closely. If all of a sudden, you start "obtaining" a healthy chunk of your competitors' links (which they probably acquired over a couple of years), your site is likely to be checked by one of Google's quality raters.
This can trigger severe penalties, rendering all of your work useless. If you're really unlucky, Google may even trust all of your links less, effectively devaluing even the links you've had before.
3. You risk being reported
SEOs really don't like to see their hard work copied. But it happens all the time nonetheless.
However, some competitors might take this very seriously and report you to Google - and you may be in for a penalty and link devaluation once again.
4. You depend on link research tools
I bet if there was no Yahoo! Site Explorer (and similar services), 90% of all link-building SEOs would be out of work. Way too many SEOs actually depend on other peoples' link building strategies.
5. You're not seeing all the links there are
All available tools can only return a limited set of link data. Some do a better job than others, but no tool can show you all the links that Google has actually taken into consideration to build their rankings.
Savvy competitors hide their own link networks anyway.
But I need those links!
I know you do. But if you're really dependent on copying other peoples' links (which you shouldn't be!), at least do it the smart way.
This means absolutely not getting a link on the very same page on a target domain unless it's highly relevant.
Also, slow and steady wins the race. Don't pull one allnighter after another acquiring all those precious links at once. Set limits! Depending on your niche this may be one link a week or ten links a day. This also greatly depends on your existing link profile.
If you're just starting out, get your first links elsewhere anyway!
But most importantly, and this is my advice to you, instead of being a copycat, try to learn, understand, adapt and apply. Find new link sources, discover new link opportunities, broaden your horizon. If you do, the sky is the limit.

4 Tips for Creating Link Bait

While link bait is frequently seen as more "fun", and it's definitely more creative, than doing things like guest blogging or emailing people asking for links, it has its challenges. I wanted to share a few things I've learned about creating link bait from my experiences. If you have other insights, I'd love to hear them in the comments.

 

Keep a Tight Scope

In most cases you will want to keep your content extremely focused around your target, or the person that you are going to get to link to you (Justin wrote more about this process here). While it’s tempting to try and cast as wide of a net possible, typically you will be more successful focusing on targeting one or two targets (and shaping the content around these demographics) rather than trying to create content that targets everyone.

 

While this is really important for a lot of link bait content, there will obviously be exceptions to this rule. A couple examples come to mind (if you can think of others, feel free to leave a note in the comments):

 

• If your content or subject really is universally applicable – While this is very rare, there is some content topics that apply to almost everyone on the web. A good example of this would be Facebook; just about everyone on the internet has a Facebook account and has an interest in changes (especially when it involves privacy settings).
• Creating exhaustive guides – Super in-depth and extensive guides and documents can receive a lot of links if they are done really well. Think about how many links SEOmoz’s Beginners Guidehas received.

Keep the scope tight especially with revisions and additions. When you want to add in more content to make it better, or the client wants additions, you need to ask: “Will adding X improve the linkability of the link bait”?

Offer Something New

There are two aspects of this: perspective and information.

 

Perspective

The internet is huge; sometimes it feels like everything has already been written about. Fortunately people tend to write the same thing. If you want to write about a topic that has already been written about a lot, come at it from a different angle. If everyone is writing about why something sucks, write about why it’s awesome. And don’t just say it’s awesome, back it up and make a case for why it’s awesome.

 

Information

Though it seems like just about everything has been written about think about what you can contribute that other people don’t know.  Here are a few types of information you can use:

 

• Sales data – you can analyze your sales data and segment it by population, gender, or other information you collect in the sales process to contribute something new. Yes this data might not be completely accurate as it is your sales data and may not be representative of the market. That said, it is still new and typically unavailable to people.
• User data – When users register, ask them for information. If they have profiles on their site, ask them for information. Then anonymously aggregate this information and present it with pretty charts and graphics (More on this from Dr. Pete). OK Cupid does a great job of this with most of their blog posts. Check out this one on stuff white people like (original stuff white people like).

• Do your own research – Offering brand new data is great because no one else has it so you get to be the definite (linked) source for forthcoming references. This can be really helpful with infographics – if you are having a hard time finding research that someone has published, do the research yourself. Tools like Ask Your Target Market are great for this as they provide you with a large panel so you can get quick responses and you can focus your time on creating your link bait, not doing research.

 

Publish your data from the research you did and provide excel/csv downloads for people to be able to use the data to do their own research as a way of earning links. You can even go as far as requiring attribution to use the data.

Feedback is Key

 You need to make sure that your infographic is correct and there aren’t mistakes or typos. These will get your link bait torn apart on sites like Reddit. You should minimally have people looking at:

 

• Spelling/Proofreading – do you have typos or misspellings. It happens. A lot. Get someone who is really nitpicky and uptight to go over it.
• Technical details – Make sure that the content is technically correct and that you aren’t wrong. Find a subject matter expert and have them verify your work.
• Readability – While the linkbait might make complete sense to you and your cohorts, you this is your baby (and nobody thinks their baby is ugly) so some things that might seem obvious to you really aren’t obvious to everyone else. Have your mom look at this, kind of like when you were in grade school and your mom checked your homework. Get someone object who isn’t invested in the project verify that it makes sense (and that it’s cool).

 

Get subject matter experts (especially those who you would like a link from) involved in the project – reach out to them before the project launches, tell them they are awesome and ask them to review it because they know so much more than you. When it goes live tell them and thank them for their help. Then encourage them to share it. They have invested time in the project and are more likely to share.

Have a Killer Hook

You can have great data but if you don’t have a hook, then it is significantly less likely to succeed. Todd Malicoat has a great overview of link baiting hooks here that you should take a read through. I will list them here quickly for you though - to get the full explanation you'll have to read the post ;):

 

• News hook
• Contrary hook
• Attack hook
• Resource hook
• Humor hook
• Ego hook
• Incentive hook

 

While each of these hooks are effective, you should choose the hook based on who you are ultimately targeting and who you want to link to you. While a humor hook may work well for broad appeal, if you want to increase topically relevant links you might want to go with something like a resource hook or contrary hook.

 

If you have a strong community you can often use the ego hook to scale your link building and get your community to build links for you.

Likewise Copy Blogger has a crash course on magnetic headlines that you should read through. Having really strong headlines will not only help improve the number of people reading your content but can have a big impact on how well-shared your link bait is. As such make sure your title contains a hook.

Back to Basics: Seven Simple Sources for One-Way SEO Backlinks!

SEO can be mainly split into two key areas, which both must be looked into if you want to get anywhere with the search engines. Firstly there is the onsite SEO, where the website is looked at from a technical perspective in terms of how ell built it is and how good the content is on it. A lot of technical people can get on these easily but struggle on the second SEO technique, which is offsite link building.

Other websites need to mention and cite yours in order for them to send you some authority. Think of it as reputation. If Google visits a site and sees they are referencing yours, they will send you some power for the keywords and themes around that link. This is the basic principle why you should link build. Posting links on Twitter and Facebook with a URL shortener might not work though, because these websites are ‘no follow’ meaning power is not passed onto the link destination. But where do good one-way links come from?

Directory submissions – There are few good articles directories nowadays, but some of them are still worth the effort. Make sure the directory you are submitting to is unique-content-rich!

Article marketing (don’t confuse with guest blogging!) – This is a broad way to get links, and includes writing of articles that you can  publish on other people’s sites with your website as a link.

Blog commenting – Commenting on other people’s blog posts can be a good way to get links.Comment naturally though, by reading the post and having a good comment to say. You can drop a link in the post here or through your name when you submit the comment to be moderated.

Forum links – Similar to blog commenting, you can post your website on forums to get a little bit of power. Users on profiles will sometimes have your website as a link in their profile signature meaning your link can be seeded over a large number of pages on a website. Of course, a link should not be your priority: get involved and network! Add value to the community to avoid being called a spammer!

Homepage links – These are getting links directly on homepages of other websites on their blog roll, footer, or sponsored link section. Don’t overdo with these: homepage links make Google think you are a spammer

Social bookmarks – Join some social bookmarking websites and submit your articles, website and blog posts (don’t spam!). Submit other people’s articles as well to add value to the social network, don’t just link-drop.

Web 2.0 properties – These are like platforms you can create to put links wherever you want. Websites such as WordPress, Blogger and Squidoo are great places to make websites and pages where you can link to your site. Don’t forget a presence on Twitter and Facebook too as every little helps.

Remember a mix of anchor text when getting your links because it needs to look natural to Google. Don’ spam out your site with thousands of bad links with the same anchor text. I hope you have found some of these link sources useful, and good luck getting to page 1!

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