6 reasons why link building is so hard
Building links is probably the hardest task a marketing consultant faces when they sign up a conventional business as a client. Here are the reasons why:
Reputation – unless the company has the best reputation in their niche it will be hard to attract links. Most “free” links are given to the best companies and its a hard task for a company to take the top spot in the reputation stakes
Stigma – any conventional website with half an idea about how search engines work probably knows that getting links is important. For this reason they are also likely to be wary of linking to other sites. The “Why should I give them a link?” attitude is prevalent and isn’t going anywhere soon.
Time lag – even if you succeed in persuading a site to link to you the likelihood of your contact being the actual person responsible for updating the site is slim. Often decisions have to be made through meetings and are passed to the web design company for action. Most of the time the answer is that a link will be added “at the next redesign” which never seems to arrive.
Opportunities – every niche has a limited number of link targets. When you take away dead sites and competitors this list shrinks significantly.
Static sites – bloggers link out to interesting content and new sites every day. The majority of normal websites are static 5 page brochures without anywhere to legitimately link to something new.
Understanding – the simple fact is that most of the company director generation don’t understand how the internet works. They think that websites should be closed door affairs and that linking to other sites is a bad idea unless its from a links page. As bloggers we know the relationship building importance of linking out but business owners are usually quite short sighted in this respect.
Conclusions
This might seem like a negative post but it just serves to highlight how valuable good quality linkbuilding consultants really are.
These valuable consultants are not people who can buy links and submit to directories but people who can identify viable link targets and then work to leverage existing contacts and business relationships, high quality customer service and advertising deals to gain natural citations from the target sites.
In fact, these people are probably not consultants at all but existing members of your own team.
Not a negative post at all. In fact, dead on with the topic of niche markets. For those, gotta get creative.
Comment by Michael — September 11, 2007 @ 11:00 pm
This post by Michael Martinez changed my outlook forever on ranking through external linking.
I thought I would share it with you.
Comment by John — September 12, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
100% agree with your comments, and with numerous site demanding reciprocation it gets ever more difficult to find those true one way links.
But it’s like my friend tony used to say, “invest in good and regular content and you wont need to go far to get a link”..
Wise words.
Si
Comment by simondance — September 13, 2007 @ 8:32 am
Where there’s a will there’s a way. It might not be easy, but it’s always possible.
Comment by Darren McLaughlin — September 13, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
Great post…but or which SEO consulting would you recommend. Especially one that will not just rob people or cost thousands?
Comment by 43 — September 13, 2007 @ 5:22 pm
of course, web2 kinda makes it easier in a way since there are so many ways of getting links to your site out there on other sites…but harder in others since it’s easy to look like a spammer when trying to build links in this way
Comment by mcrilf — September 15, 2007 @ 7:53 am
A great post seems very true. It really is difficult to get links
Comment by -Tom from create a website — December 26, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
[...] David Eaves posted a comment yesterday pointing out how hard it is to build links to certain types of ecommerce and especially FSA regulated insurance sites. Building natural links [...]
Pingback by Is your website unique enough? | SEOptimise — March 10, 2008 @ 10:00 am
Its so easy to fall into a lazy routine in relation to building links, where the mind is 1 dimensional & you dont give that little bit of extra effort to attain a higher standard of natural links,
Comment by Website SEO — March 14, 2008 @ 12:00 am
This is true, that web linking can be difficult. One of the best ways to build links is offer good content and people will naturally link to you.
Comment by Web design in Lincolnshire — March 25, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
It seems just from the previous posts here that people are already realising that content is king.
Comment by Reflexology-Spa — May 6, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
Thats true, Link building is hard and Tiring process, but there are people out there in the market, who provide good quality link building service with good content writing. Cause if one needs a good PR, then Link building and good content writing is important…
what are you review about the same.
Comment by Shrenik Vora — May 8, 2008 @ 10:23 am
Your post brings to reality and the difficulty in getting good links. Once you understand the issues, only than you can move ahead with a strategy that works and help your SEO long term.
Comment by SEO Leeds — May 20, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
I love this website it has a lot of good info for us all to take on, keep up the good work guys
Comment by poppyseo — June 10, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
Building links is like building a business, you can not go after the largest clients on day one, nor can you attract the highest PR links. But after time and after many PR1 PR3 andPR3 links have been established one can begin to set their site a little higher and soon PR4 and PR5 links are in the mix. After that good luck, as you will most likely need to be published in order to acquire a higher link.
Comment by dhurowitz — June 23, 2008 @ 6:33 am