Thursday, January 04, 2007

Where to Find Great Backlinks

Back in August of last year, you may remember I was preaching the value of mining and using expired domains. Naturally, I told you this because, up to that point, for me - they were working. I even cited some examples. However, things have changed.

When reviewing my sites that use expired domain names versus the ones that depend on linking for strength, the linked sites always win. Why is this?

I believe, if you're expecting to get indexed in Google, that your expired domain that carried some page rank and back links, is flagged. It worked for the first few weeks, for me. But soon, the pages were de-indexed. So my advice is to find inbound links.

For me, the jury is still out on inbound links - mainly because the search engines don't go public on what won't work. But there are plenty of blogs out there, and SEO sites that have vast amounts of information.

My studies show that links from sub pages of other site have a little more value than links from a homepage. I mean, think about it - if it smells like a red flag... so links within content, from a content page of a site, linking to one of your inner pages (content), is probably the best link you can get.

So, how do we start? Well, there're a couple of page types I like. First, ask yourself what page on their site is most relevant to the page on the site I want a link to? And, how do I find that page?

In the Google you can search for (site:theirsite.com keyword phrase), to find that relevant page. You do know that relevance is a huge factor in linking. That's why I am not certain those free for all types of links work. Can they hurt? Maybe.

The second page I like is the one with the most "power". These are pages that have reputation - indexed, backlinked, page rank. How do you find these? Let's use Yahoo search.

Here's the syntax - (site:theirsite.com)

Yahoo is cool, because they list pages in their SERP in order of importance. That command may start Yahoo's Site Explorer. This shows the best backlinks on the top. These are the "power" pages.

The homepage is often not the best choice because your shooting for a link from their content to your site - not some simple link in the margin. Try to get the most powerful page when you're asking.

Your comments?

2 comments:

Ron Coble said...

Hi Dave,

I read something within the last 3 to 4 months that Matt Cutt's supposedly stated that the big G did not have a problem with someone buying expired names and pointing them to their existing domain "as long as" the expired domains had the same or similar theme as the site you are pointing them to. I do not recall if he stated there would be any link or PR value but if they were similar in nature (theme or subject matter) he did not see a problem.

Ron Coble

Dave Jackson said...

Hi Ron,

I've read the same, but the fact that Google is a Domain Registrar leads many to believe they use the info they can now access to keep track of changes. If you buy an old domain, it can't be expired and should be making money.

In my experience and that of my colleagues, using an expired domain with backlinks isn't worth the effort that creating good linking strategies will bring.

Thanks for your comment, Ron. Much appreciated! Dave