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As everyone knows, if you want to increase the amount of traffic you receive from search engines, you need to build backlinks to your websites. Each link is essentially a ‘vote’ which shows the likes of Google and Bing that you’re a trustworthy site. Because links are so crucial, marketers around the world have come up with hundreds of ways to build them.
Some of these tactics are easy to follow, while others require more obscure work, and some even cross the border when it comes to ethics. The backlink building tactic I want to talk about today is most commonly viewed as greyhat – not totally natural but not totally immoral either.
Just like all other advice I share on this site, this is something I’ve tested across multiple industries and have found to be working well for me. It’s not a tactic that hasn’t been written about before, but it is something that is currently highly effective, which I’ve increasingly been putting to use across my network of sites. Other marketers have their own name for this method of building links, but I like to refer to it as a link trio.
The Current Way
One of the most popular articles on this site is my in-depth guide on fifteen popular ways you can build links to your website. Search engine rankings rely so heavily on links that attaining them is often a very competitive challenge in just about all niches online. While this post contains what I believe to be one of the most effective ways to build backlinks, it is rather simplistic in nature.
The defacto way to increase the number of backlinks to your site often involves tactics like guest posting, article marketing, directory submissions, and even finding link sources by searching through your competitors’ backlink data. Article marketing, for example, simply requires you to write articles for sites like Ezine Articles which are relevant to your industry, and then include a link back to your site in the author bio.
There’s nothing too complex about this, and it tends to work very well in industries which aren’t too saturated or competitive. For every article you create, you get one or two backlinks to your site, and you then repeat the process on different topics, various industries, and across different article directories.
The same goes for guest posting, another common and highly effective way to build links to your site. You write an article for another blogger, include links back to your website, and repeat the process in order to amplify your link count.
Making Links Powerful
As I mentioned in the introduction, some links are more effective than others. It’s not so much the tactic you use to get the link, but more about where the link comes from that matters. Through my own experiments and research, it is becoming clearer by the day that the major search engines are giving more weight to the quality of backlinks you have, rather than the quantity.
Because of this, I would much rather have a site which has 100 powerful, quality links pointing to it, than 1,000 which anyone else can duplicate with ease. Some of the things that make links more powerful include:
- Relevance: If you’re running a site about viral marketing, it would be far more effective to get a link from a site which talks about internet marketing, rather than dog training. It would be even better to get a link from a site or page which covers viral marketing.
- Page Strength: The strength of a web page, in the way that I use the term, refers to how many links are pointing to that page. If it’s a brand new page on another domain and has no other links pointing to it, the quality of that link is often minimal. If the page has some PR and has been around for a while, then it can be very powerful.
- Anchor Text: Search Engines look at the text that is used in the link to your site, and not just the type of page or site it is on. You can use the example of Adobe ranking no.1 in Google for the phrase “Click here” – even though the text isn’t on their page – to see this in action.
- Domain Strength: The strength of a domain (links and age) contribute to the power of your link both in a general sense, and in terms of passing weight to any individual pages which may link to you.
- Outbound Links: Link Exchanges used to be a very popular and easy way to get links to your site which helped you rank, until the increase of outbound links on a page led to the decline of its importance. Ideally, the pages with links to your site on, shouldn’t have many links to other websites.
Most of this probably isn’t new to a lot of you, but the reason I covered it is because this Link Trio tactic relies heavily on page strength, so I wanted to make my definition of these terms clear.
Introducing Link Trio
After trying to explain this tactic to my friend this morning, I quickly discovered how difficult it was to describe in words, so please bare with me. I have tried my best to illustrate it in graphics below, but I recommend that you read this section to help you fully grasp this concept.
The best way to do so, I believe, would be to use an example. The friend I explained this to runs a relationship blog, so I’ll choose some phrases from that industry. Let’s say that I’m trying to rank for the phrase “relationship blog” but also trying to rank my post on online dating advice for the term “online dating”.
First of all, I could create articles on Ezine Articles, Go Articles and other directories, which talk about relationship blogging, and link to my homepage with my desired anchor text. I also create pages on these sites which talk about online dating advice, which link back to my blog post on the same topic.
At this stage, the only strength these pages have is thanks to the domains they’re hosted on. Ezine Articles, for example, is a very powerful domain, so the pages do have some strength, but because they have hundreds of thousands of articles on them, that weight is spread quite thinly. None of these pages have backlinks to them, so the links back to my site aren’t as powerful as they could be.
Now instead of just getting one link per article that I publish to these sites, I can easily make other pages that link to my site more powerful. Instead of just including a link back to my website, I can also add a link to another article I’ve written. In graphic form:
In this example, the strength of the page at Go Articles has increased because it has a relevant backlink to it, from Ezine Articles. Because the page is stronger, it increases the strength of the backlink back to my own website. Thus, for the same amount of work, I’ve created a link which is going to help me more.
You can then take this much further by implementing more free content websites, as shown below:
Although this graphic looks complex, all you have to remember is that every article links to a page on your site, and to an article on another website. It’s important that you don’t link two articles together in a form of link exchange, and you continue to link in a linear fashion. Doing so would minimise the benefits of this tactic.
Of course, you don’t just need to use article directories. You can do this with guest posts, increase the power of pages using social bookmarking services, and even link your own sites together if they’re in the same industry and have different C-class IP’s.
After implementing this tactic very recently for ViperChill, I’m now ranking third in Google for the term ‘viral marketing’ which is both highly popular and highly competitive. I’m sure those of you with some spare time can search through the backlink data for this site and find out how (if you do find it, please note that the work in question was not done by me, and purely for testing purposes).
I would love to hear what you think of this tactic, and as always, I’m happy to answer any questions in the comments…
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Hi Glenn,
Great post. I am new to the whole blog world… I will definitely try this for my blog.
Thank you
Manu
You’re welcome Manu,
I’m glad you liked it
I actually said out loud (in a room full of computers) ‘aaaah of course!’.
Awesome Glen, good to see your writings again! Powerful as always.
Hahah, awesome!
Thanks Stefan, it’s good to be back after focusing on software development for so long
A nice and easy to understand post, Glen.
I have read something similar somewhere but never quite understood it. But this post and especially the graphic, makes it very clear. There is a reason why they say “A picture is worth thousand words”. Right picture is worth more than thousand words.
The bigger the network gets, the better. There are many other social hubs which we can use to build a bigger network of links. There are sites like Posterous, Tumblr etc.
The best part about this method is that, the articles in article directories also have a better chance of ranking in Google because of the extra backlink, which will in turn drive more visitors to our main blog.
Thanks for the strategy Glen.
- Ramkarthik
P.S: Long time. How are you? I’m having my final year exams in college. So very inconsistent in blogging. Although I expect December to be a great month for me, with exams getting over. Good luck to you man. Your blog is getting better every month and also good luck with your new product. Nice to see you having a lot of success.
Hey Ram,
Yeah it’s been a while. Good points
Best of luck with your exams, you’ll be seeing me here more as well!
Hi Glen, are you familiar with a guy called Pat at smartpassiveincome? You on one of his posdcasts or somthing? Anyway he recently had a great post on how he builds strength to his articles pages like goarticles and ezinearticles by using pograms like UAW and social bookmarking. Its a bit like a link wheel but with a few levels before getting to your “money site”. Your method seems cool too though, do you do it on other sites like hubpages and squidoo too?
Hows Thailand btw?
P
Yes I know Pat, he’s one of my best “e-friends” and I talk to him most days on Skype
I saw his post but haven’t had a chance to go through it yet. Good to know it doesn’t touch on the same topic.
I don’t personally, but you can.
Great post Glen (Again!).
Can you give an indication of how many guest post articles you need to write and inter-link to have an influence on the search rankings?
Thanks,
Nick
Thanks SS,
To be honest, the question is just too broad for me to give you a proper answer. It really depends on the industry. Any links should have some influence, but by how much depends on the niche.
Hi Glen,
Thanks once again. I have read most of your posts and love the simplicity of your writings.
Link Binding using “Link Trio” looks a very cool option. Though I have tried to link my two blogs by providing links, I have never tried the power of doing this using powerful domains like Ezine Articles/Helium or Hub pages.
It is time to try these techniques
Thanks Elizabeth,
Best of luck to you!
Thinks for sharving this good idea~~
You’re welcome hi3w
Really nice stuff! Thanks for sharing this mate. Had been playing around with some similar stuff (in a much less organised fashion) and it’s really nice to see the write-up. As you say, it’s a pretty difficult concept to explain to someone but I think you’ve made it really about as easy to digest as one could hope for. Well done.
Thanks Sam,
How are things going at Distilled?
Glen – thanks for a great article! What’s a “C-class IP”?
It’s the third part of an I.P – the part in bold 292.161.72.65
All of my sites have unique C-Class IP’s.
Glen – How do you get different C-Class IPs? Do you need multiple hosts? I have a lot of sites I could interlink but I’ve been holding off because I thought google might doc me for it…
I mentioned how in the post
Hi Glen,
Very well explained, and it kind of reminds me of point 4 in my post How I Got More Than 4500 Visits Through Blog Commenting, which is about promoting (with links or social shares) posts where you have a comment of yours. I didn’t write it in that post, but this also applies to your guest posts or whatever content you have interlinked: more likelihood of visits and small increases in link strength (cummulative!), like you have put very well.
Cheers,
Ruben
Thanks Ruben
Great link juice Glen. I feel it’s worth trying.
Awesome,
Let me know how it goes.
Awesome link building tactic Glen. I love the way you explained it. Great Job man.
Thanks Devesh,
How’s life?
Life is going awesome, having so many great projects running. I’m also thinking to work on a niche site.
Anyways, Thanks for the awesome support as usual.
Awesome post Glen,
Really great strategy. I’m just hearing about this new strategy and since I’m very obsessed with SEO I will be giving this a trial on one of my niche sites.
Thanks so much for the awesome post,
-Onibalusi
You’re welcome Oni – we have that in common.
Thanks for the heads up on my subscriber issue. I have fixed it now
This is very useful, and will allow me to save $60/month. I was previously building links to the anchor articles, but this process looks better and more effective. Thanks!
Wow, that’s awesome Oscar
You’re welcome. How is Spain treating you?
Spain is fantastic, next I want to travel and visit the south of Spain also. So far I’ve only been to Madrid but I like it!
Awesome man. Congrats again on the engagement.
Good heavens… this is pure genius!
So basically it’s like a backlink merry-go-round that ensures that each article with the various keywords has maximum juice for search engines while linking back to your site? (I think I confused myself)
I suppose the downside to this would be the amount of legwork it would take to ensure that everything links properly. Otherwise this method does appear quite doable, and effective. Going the extra mile almost ensures that your site will stand out to search engines.
I will definitely give it go for one of my sites.
Thanks Glen,
Hey Ron,
Yes, you’ve got it!
Good luck
Glen I think I been doing my link building campaign something like that, but I’m not a 100% sure…This was some great advice…I’m going to give it an try to day..thanks bro..
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
You’re welcome buddy.
Interesting new username
Hey Glen,
Been following you for a while now. I love this example and the graphic really helps to understand this cross linking method. I have been doing this for a while now with great success. I also link to the author profile page that contains all of my articles. That way all of the articles increase in value by having a variety of domains pointing to the author bio page. The page rank ends up filtering down. Have you ever tried this too?
Thanks,
-Nate
Hey Nate,
I haven’t done that, but it’s a great tip. Thanks for sharing
Awesome post Glen,
I will give it a shot..Thanks for sharing this strategy! Have fun..
Let me know how it goes
I’m going to try this out with my next niche site and see how I go! I’ll let you know how I do
Awesome,
Where did you get the idea for that domain name? haha
Excellent post. I’ve just gotten into using articles for backlinks, and while beginning to us social bookmarking to bookmark my articles, I failed to think of this. You’re advice really is to notch man.
Thanks Andrew,
If you’re using an iPhone, then I totally understand!
Ehem top* notch. My bad. Posting from a mobile device.. heh
Hey Glen,
The whole backlink thing has always seemed too complex and a bit confusing. This article made things a little more clear for me.
Thanks
That’s great Steve, I’m glad I could help.
You’re very welcome.
Hey Glen, nice overview of a concept that would be hard to convey in text only
Linking to your links is a concept that people probably don’t go for when starting SEO, but it obviously has merit. Thanks for the walk through.
You’re welcome Devin
Awesome and informative post. I was recently looking into (outdated) forms of daisy chain based linking. This post tops all of the old fashioned styles of interlinking I have come across. I am sure the old method still has some validity, but it was based on just linking websites, not individual articles/squidoos/etc. I think your strategy makes it somewhat easier, more effective, and reduces the risk from big old G.
One Question: I know you talk about the controversial “No Follow Sculpting” in a few posts. After implementing link trio strategy, do you recommend any additional no follow work to make the most of the link juice?
Thanks
There’s not really much nofollow work you can do it you don’t own the sites…
Or did I read your question wrong?
My mistake, I did not phrase my question correctly. I meant to ask if an individual page/blog post is being linked to from one of the content sites you mentioned, should any other links on that page be no followed?
For example, lets say that you applied this link trio to post ABC on ViperChill. Would you recommend no-following all the links in your sidebar, as well as links within your blog post, to ensure that post ABC gets “concentrated” with link juice?
Or is this thinking too much
?
That really depends on how you want to set-up your on-site SEO. Don’t just change each page specifically, look at how you want to change your site as a whole.
A lot of “experts” have different opinions on internal-nofollow, and I don’t think I’ve tested it enough to give the best advice here. I use it on internal pages as you can see on this website.
Hi Glenn, great post. I have heard one term a while back about “Linkwheel.” Is your Link Trio strategy similar to this? Link Trio is actually a simple method but a powerful one. I might try this method.
One more question if you don’t mind: do you suggest to use hundreds of article directories, or just a handful of “powerful” ones, like ezinearticles, go articles, hubpages, and Squidoo? I would assume just a handful, because if you were to use hundreds of article directories, you would probably use article submitter software, which make it hard to modify the hyperlink for each one of them.
I’m assuming so, based on the number of people that have asked. I like to call things differently, no biggie
It really depends on your aim, but I would never suggest using hundreds. There are better uses of your time after a certain number
Thanks for this post, I understood what you wrote exactly and the graphics definitely helped. I’m still new to the whole Internet Niche Website thing so I’m definitely going to try this strategy out right away.
Thanks again!
You’re welcome Peter, best of luck
Me again. Was thinking through this a bit, and came up with this question: Is this more valuable when you chain articles together one at a time (1 link to each article), or when you have, say, 10 articles pointing at 1 other article, giving that article more “power”? Is there a point when the amount of other backlinks to the article becomes to excessive?
Also, do you think linking to a modified version of essentially the same article on another site could cause more grief than it’s worth?
I don’t see any harm in taking it further (more links to articles) but really this is something you should test. I’ve only tested one or two links to each page so far, no more than that (usually one). I think a lot would look a little suspicious, but I would have to test it more to give you a better answer.
I’m not a fan of article spinning in general, but I know a lot of people I respect use it and have success with it – so take that for whatever it’s worth.
Why you are “re-inventing the wheel”? I smell an attempt to coin a term “link trio” here
Isn’t this just a standard link wheel with two “money sites/pages” instead of one – Clever yes, but nothing new, and I don’t exactly get the “trio” in the term even that I know how to make these…
I usually only provide comments which provide value, but I’ll answer you:
1) I’m not trying to coin a term, use it or don’t use it. Even if I was…what difference does it make? It’s not like I can make money from it…
2) I have heard about this strategy a while ago. It seems to be called link wheel according to the tweets I’ve received, but I don’t know.
3) Not everything I write will always be something new. I’m glad you knew about it already…that’s great
Glen, I didn’t mean everything you, or anyone else, should be new, I was just surprised you didn’t connect the term link wheel, as your posts are usually do in-depth and cover a topic to detail.
I’m also curious why you edited my comment and removed the link to the post I specifically created as a response to this, I even took the time to draw the diagram as a wheel, which makes it easier to understand, at least for me – and that link was 100% value adding to this post, which is quite confusing for many, as you can see from the comments… It’s cool if you don’t allow links in the posts, but you should have a clear comment policy up if you don’t.
hahhahahahhhahhahahaaha
is this guy for reals?
Makes complete sense. I’ve been setting up something similar. You can even take it a bit further and instead of having all those semi-relevant mass backlinking sites that a lot of people implement (buying links, warriorforum, etc.) link to your website, have them link to your HubPage or Squidoo lens. That way you don’t get all the crap to your website, yet the free content pages get a boost which you can then pass to your site…crap free.
Link juice laundering.
You just made it sound shady. Which I suppose it is. Shame on me.
EUREKA! Thanks a lot for sharing your experience!
That’s my job
Hey Glen,
Interesting post indeed. One thing to keep in mind is circular references though. Not sure how Google would be handling those, maybe you can give some tips if you know? The idea is that if you have:
Ezine Article -> Blog
Ezine Article -> Go Article
Go Article -> Blog
Go Article -> Ezine Article,
then it gets circular and Google might (should at least) penalize this type of linking.
I did notice you did not build circular links in your examples so maybe you realized the “danger”.
Can you explain what you mean? No pages ever exchange links with each other…
Nice article Glen. I’m going to give it a try on a low competition key phrase I’m trying to rank for and see how it works. I really enjoy experimenting with stuff like this, it’s like being back at university without all the assignments
Haha, nice example
Do you find it time consuming writing articles for these article directories? Though, I would assume, it requires less time than writing a guest post for a blog.
This is a very interesting tactic, one I will try.
I have three assistants, so I don’t write anything
Wow, that’s quite a statement to make about your own blog, directly under the title is says: Written by Glen
Is one of your assistants named Glen?
Why wouldn’t you write your own posts? Darren does, Brogan does, Risley does, it just doesn’t make any sense, and it really doesn’t make sense to announce it…
Hi Keith,
I’m not sure if you’re being serious, but yes, of course I write my own blog posts for ViperChill. I was talking about articles for article directories, which was the point of the post.
My bad Glen, sorry for the confusion I would outsource those articles too.
I knew something had to be wrong LOL
I just did a little research… and correct me if I’m wrong… but aren’t links on ezine ‘no follow’ ?
Assistants lol!
‘
Nope…
Not in the author bio. Random example –> http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Build-A-Kitchen-Cabinet-Without-Paying-For-A-Bomb&id=5379211
I think it’s less that it’s passing page rank and more that it’s identifying each page as more of an authority on the subject because of the anchor text. So if you get the anchor text with the correct keywords, it will work well.
In fact, I don’t think any more page rank is even transferring at all.
What do you think
Why would none pass?
Every page has a page rank. When page a links to page b, it transfers x amount of page rank. So a loses x and b gains x. If both a and b initially had .5 PR each, there is still a total of 1 between both pages, before and after linking. So when they link to your page, the transfer amount is still the same. Or if there is any increase, it is negligible.
This is what I’m thinking. What do you think?
Another thought, there is the duplicate content issue. When google sees the articles are all duplicate content, the non original articles (ie the article directory pages) will drop in ranking.
I’m not trying to be argumentative. Just trying to understand.
Game on then!
Hi Glen,
Good post. It’s important to note that if you have two sites which link together and have other identifying characteristics in the eyes of google such as ads from the same adsense account or analytics account, that they may still not pass a lot of link juice to each other, even if they are on different servers.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Jonathan
You’re probably right. It would make sense
Though linking sites like this was just a small recommendation in the middle of the post, it’s certainly not something I would expect many people to do.
The main tactic you presented is sound.
Do you limit the number of links from each resource to two? EZA only allows 2 but the others can include more.
Generally, yes.
I’m not sure why Glen, but it always makes me sad when I reach your post and realize that I’m a few hours late to it, haha.
Anyway, your link building strategy seems good. Just to make it clear:
Say we have 10 articles for 10 diff. article directories. Each article points to my site and to the next article in line. The last one in line points back to the first article. Correct?
Questions:
1. When creating links to our blogs, we are suppose to use targeted anchor text. What about when pointing to the next article in line? Is a direct link (http://goarticles.com/myarticle) okay or should we still use anchor text when pointing to next article?
2. The only main rule not to violate is not have two articles point at each other. Yes?
Thanks Glen and I’m still reading through your report
Hey Moon, I’ll let you off
1. I would use the anchor text that the other page is about.
2. Correct
Hey Glenn,
Great post! But not sure what you meant by this:
I also create pages on these sites which talk about online dating advice, which link back to my blog post on the same topic.
When you say pages on ‘these sites’ – what are you referring to? Pages on the article marketing sites? If so, what is that?
Thanks!
Stacey
Pages on the article directories. You can submit articles to them and get a link in return.
Does that help?
Lots of helpful information here. I had to smile at “bare with me,” though.
*bear with me
My bad
Good to have you back and creating great content Glen! Looks like your software release went well!
Two quick questions….
1: Would it be more useful creating this unique content and adding it to your site (whilst using bookmarking demon) as opposed to submitting it to an article directory? I think the answer may depend on how much content/backlinks you already have but I may be wrong…
2. Where did you pick up your ‘assistants’ from? The more I can outsource the better but it’s hard finding reliable workers
Thanks as always!
1. You need content on your site and links, so it’s not really a question of either / or. You should be doing both.
2. Forums.digitalpoint.com usually
Do you have a plan/spreadsheet that you use to keep track of which articles link to which websites and web 2.0 sites? I’ve started this process recently but I am having a heck of a time remembering what i’ve done and what I still need to do.
Not personally, but the people who work with me do keep track of them, yes. I think keeping a spreadsheet with a list of links is a good idea.
Interesting. In a way I am doing just what you described. You explained it better than I could when I tell others how I am doing it. The way that I describe it is to just backlink the backlinks. I really have no idea how I got the idea for it but it seems to be working well. I am glad that I have a name for it now.
Thanks, it was pretty tricky to explain!
Awesome post Glen. I read in the post that you used it recently for this site to rank for viral marketing. How long exactly did it take you to rank for the keyword phrase?
I think it took about 4 months to get on the first page of Google. I was at 7th for a few months and then fourth for as long as I can remember.
I hope that helps
Damn Glen, you beat me to the punch
Link-wheelin’ eh? Love the graphics for it; makes it so much easier to comprehend because when you’re trying to explain it – it does get a little out of control haha.
The real denominator is really that it’s content that works best (not just social bookmarking like a lot of people implement) – sure SB works but to get that powerful link you need to utilize the best of the web 2.0 properties and other places – SB sites are there mainly to just get your content pinged and indexed more quickly – or at least how I see it.
Just curious – how many of these would you usually set up when working with your niche sites?
Exactly Murray, the SB sites, much the same as forum sig links really only do one thing well, get indexed faster….
I couldn’t disagree more. How much have you tested SB links?
I actually have tested them quite extensively, both forums and SB’s. I find article marketing and even blog comments to work better than most SB..
Glen, always a pleasure to read your posts.
Tonight I made some great efforts cleaning up Titles on some web pages, thanks to what I’ve learned from you so far.
Keep up the great work, and thanks for the free report, too!
That’s great Paul; you’re very welcome!
Glen,
I just started to dive into your site after reading your 10k subscriber ebook. Do these tactics still work..or are they outdated in any way. I realize stuff changes so quickly in the seo world.
Well I only posted it today, so judge for yourself
my bad…was reading two articles of yours regarding link building at the same time…posted on the wrong one…lol
Holy sh#t Glen, you really are the man!
Great article, awesome information – I can’t believe you don’t charge for it!! Better get to work I guess
Cheers,
Thanks Shaun!
Thanks for sharing this tactic Glen.
A quick Question: Would it work too as an internal linking strategy?
You’re welcome Franck,
To be honest, there are much better ways to link your site interally than using this linear method. I wouldn’t recommend it.
Making incoming links stronger is definitely a valid way to increase your rankings. My only “concern” is that by following your tactic, you’re “giving away” what pages you “control” and a SE can easily devalue every link. I would personally feel more comfortable creating a independent Tier2 linknet that links to the Tier1 net, but never to the actual website. That would make it harder for the SEs to figure out what pages you control.
But the tactic definitely works.
/Mikael
Feel free to do things your own way Mikael, by no means is the the only way of doing things
Being somewhat new to the internet marketing world, reading of these backlinking strategies I always ask myself if there is a quick way to create article to submit to differente article directories or sites like Squidoo (without outsourcing). If I use the most part of my time to create (hopefully) good content for my blog, and I can’t use the same content for the other sites, how can I easily and quickly create good content for this strategy?
Your options are simply to write it yourself, or pay someone else to write them. Or, you could ask a friend?
What a great blog. Thanks for teaching an old dog new tricks. This looks likes a very natural way to build backlinks. I’ve never been comfortable with the tactics that create 100′s of links going to anchor sites.
This is a technique that looks and feels much more in line with building authority, and your business, for the long haul. Many thanks.
Welcome to ViperChill, Claude
You’re very welcome!
Hi Glen,
Nice to see you back to VC. This is really informative post usually not shared for free by many gurus. But I had learned that we should avoid link loop and in this tactic I am seeing many link loops. I believe google bots are very smart in finding this link loops. The solution to this problem can be randomness and wide sources of backlinks.
So I think if we are using this tactics for backlinks we must not used just this one. A combination of this + blog comments (both do and no follow) + bookmarking.
I recently get some success with seo and backlink building but still to learn more or may be forever..
Thanks!
Great post as usual. I hope you are enjoying Thailand as much as I enjoy your posts.
What do you think of doing this repetitively? Set up blogs that link to one another randomly with each new post and to the “money page.”
Hi Glen, I wanted to email you this question but on your contact page it says we should ask these type of questions in comments so here it goes…
How much exact (not broad) searches mini site keyword should have on Google, daily, for you to consider making a website around it?
I researched a lot during past few days and I have found that a lot keyword phases on keyword tools are broad searches — so these are not exactly the best candidates for minisites since I don’t plan to write article for each broad phase and doing SEO for the same.
What do you think about 1200 exact searches a month ( for 1st stop), adwords competition huge, has affiliate products?
Thanks
Honestly, the most powerful links for established sites are incontent links from trusted/authority sites. Which is why guest posting is booming, and is worth all the effort. But, if you cannot get on relevant blogs in your niche, or you don’t want to give away content, what do you do? Outsource. (ahem.. this is just exactly what we do… sorry for the self-promotion, but, we kill it with this type of link building)
Hi Glen,
This sounds very much like a typical link wheel set up. Is there any difference between your method and a linkwheel using high ranking article directories and web 2.0 sites?
You might want to read some comments above
Nice post Glen, the text explaining it was clear to me (and it’s early in the morning here) so thumbs up!
Haha, awesome
Great Glen, thanks for sharing another great tactic backlinks us!
epically awesome.
understood the explanation in words but think graphic will be a lil clearer if you made it like a pyramid with coupleoncouples on top and the article directories on the bottom. that’s what i kept picturing at least
super respect will def implement
Hi Glen,
very useful and doable backlinking strategy .i actually do know about linking directly to domains but never thought of consolidating a link by linking articles to another website before linking directly to a blog or website.
i have been learning a lot about backlinking and other related stuff lately..am glad you mentioned VA becuase doing all the strategies seems very very daunting especially now that i work only a few hours online.
talking about using VA,how and how much do you pay and for which kinds of tasks.
Thank you.
That’s a really interesting technique you have, I had just about given up on article writing for links, perhaps I was too rash…
Glen,
I love it – But I do have a question, which requires your opinion.
Are you worried about the appearance of link patterns for large, authority sites? Meaning, should strategies be carried out in a random, almost chaotic fashion to avoid algorithm detection? I really haven’t heard a lot of people discuss this issue and perhaps it’s because it’s not an issue at all – Just wanted to hear your thoughts.
All The Best,
Tim
Hey Tim,
I have no doubts that doing this on a massive scale could cause some red-flags and detection. I think the important thing is that you use this tactic in conjuction with a number of other things and not rely on it solely. Remember, you don’t always have to use the link-trio method either. You can, at times, just use the traditional method of one link for one article.
Hi Glen,
thanks for the article! I´ve just downloaded your free report and enjoy reading it. I love how you write and that you share a lot of valuable content
My question is – would you recommend programs like viralsubmitterpro.com?
Thanks in advance for your answer
I’ve never used it or heard of it Monja. Sorry
Great article, Glen. So well edited, too.
I think that this theory actually makes using article spinners so much less effective. I see so many marketers spinning out thousands of articles a week and posting them on all these article directories, instead of taking the time to make sure that each one has a few links pointing to it. It could be a way for Google to counter “article-spam”.
I don’t think that is particularly grey hat. Build links, and build links to links, just how the game is played it you have any clue about SEO.
Right now I am on page 2 for my main keyword, and have two separate affiliate money posts which I am gunning for on page 2. It’s always a pain I find getting to crack page 1, but what I am doing has gotten me this far so I will just keep hammering away.
Also, WTF is with the PR update! Last one was in April? EOD is going on 5 months at PR 0 = lame. Sorry, just had to rant a bit
Great tips the link wheel diagram really helps us slower folks
Hi Glen,
First of all, I would like to thank you for all your great posts. I have started following your blogs just few weeks back , but I already feel like I have learned a lot.
My question is, when you backlink eZine and other articles, aren’t we increasing the strength of their page as well which could be directly competing against my blog for a particular keyword?
Even if they did get traffic because you’re “competing” with them, you’re sending that traffic back to your own website anyways…
Glen, thanks for introducing u to the Link Trio. I am going to give it a shot for a new niche site I am building.
For my main site I mostly use social media to build backlinks. What do you think of these?
Hi Glen, very informative article. I hadn’t actually appreciated the importance of sites such as Ezine until very recently. However, the niche I’m trying to focus on has a number of Government Agencies which are ranking higher (which naturally have a high PR) so I need to do more marketing to stand out. Looks like I need to do a lot more of this, or narrow the niche further still.
Thanks, Matthew
Hi Glen,
Great article. While I definitely use all or at least most of the back link tactics you listed under your 15, the link trio in this article is an interesting new way to go. I of course post article on Ezine and Go, as well as other large article directories, but this could increase the links so much more. The graphic definitely helps ‘illustrate’ the point so that it’s clearer to understand. Thanks again for the great post.
Great post. Quick question: is there a reason that you use images for your subheads instead of using text? Does this have SEO advantages? Thanks,
Will
No, it’s pretty bad for SEO. It’s actually text, but made to look differently by a plugin called Cufon. I use it on my titles as well
Good post! I’ve been doing a similar method to the “link trio” for awhile now, but you’ve illustrated it much more eloquently than I could wrap my head around.
Haha, thanks Adam
thanks for this article. I want to clearify one thing that is this the same as link wheel?
Hey Glen,
This tactic is similar to what Pat Flynn did in his Niche Site Duel.
I think that it’s an awesome idea to increase the strength of links linking back to you. If you do it correctly, you also decrease the chances of Google penalizing you for tons of backlinks, since a new site that suddenly gets a lot of backlinks in a short amount of time would look strange to search engine bots.
Well written, insightful article.
Christina
that’s quite a good idea
Hi
A nice explanation of a difficult concept I actually really like th part up to the trio section excellent writing.
This is a simplification (although powerfull) version of a link wheel. No bad thing.
Its very worth while experimenting with not closing the “wheel” as you do inthe last diagram. the googlebots looking for built wheels. Myth maybe.
regards
Hey Glen,
Thanks again! I have a question that is related to this post, but a little off topic. I bought my domain, http://www.laughletter.com is January of 2010. However, with the SEO quake plugin, the age of the domain says December 2002. This means that someone purchased the domain and let it expire. I have two questions:
1) You mentioned page and domain strength. Since this is an older domain from 2002, will it help me in the rankings?
2) Since someone owned it before and dropped it (that is, let it expire), can this actually work against me?
I appreciate your time!
Ryan
Pretty excited to try this out. If this was done with say 100 articles, would it have any negative effects on my rankings?
I use this tactic to raise my site’s placement on google. First i’ll tell you what I’ve done so far. And then i’ll want your advices
What I’ve done so far:
I’ve made 9 blogs from wordpress etc. i am posting an article a day for a month. All my articles are the same. This means when i posted an article on one of my blogs, i post the same on the others. i post different articles everyday. I write my articles. None of them is copy.
I use a method for linking. i give 7 links in my every article. 3 of them to my main site. And 1 of these 3 is like site.com/article and the others like site.com. other 3 of 7 to the next blog. 1 of these like blog2.com/article and others like blog2.com. and finally last one is to the blog itself. this means if i wrote this article on blog1.com this link goes to blog1.com/article
And i wrote 9 tags to my every article. All of them are the same all the time
I guess i am doing something wrong! My page was no.18 on google. now no.24
What should i do to fix this? What is wrong with my link wheel?
Is this situation temporary or my site’s position will decrease unless i give up writing?
You have too many outbound links per article (7 is 5 too many), this depletes any real benefit per link.
You’re using the same domain: WordPress (unless you’re hosting these WP sites on various C Class IPs). That utterly removes any benefit of SEO (you need diversity).
Dupe content – you’re using the same articles on all these WP sites? Either spin or write new content.
Just my two cents, and no you shouldn’t give up writing unless you can outsource…
Anyhow, Glenn – great advice on the mini net idea. I like to use software to do that automatically, but do some manual wheels (or trios as you call them – I use more sites). So far it’s worked fine.
Goga, you’re strategy is “too try hard”. Just Relax a bit, build it in a more natural fashion and results will be explosive. Remember only 1 links carries from the same origin page to the same insertion page. You can have that for free!
Thanks for some incredibly great articles. It’s nice to know us newbies can jump in running from all this great info. I think I may need to be excused though- I think my brain is full.
Well, thanks for replies. i’ve changed all my blogs. Not all my blogs in wordpress.
wordpress->blogspot->livejournal->bravejournal->friendster->edublogs->tumblr->webs->weebly->yola->jimdo->wordpress(first one)
thats how i built my wheel. every article has 2 links now. 1 to the next blog and one to main site. still all the contents same. i do not know any program to spin. none of the programs for this purpose is free. i couldnt find even a cheaper one. i built this wheel for 2 main sites. totally there are 22 blogs i manually built. any sugesstions? i’ve written one of the blogs from each wheel to mail section for owner of this site. you may want to look at them
and one more question: you saw the sites i’ve chosen for wheeling. are there others you may suggest? should i built larger wheels? 11 now. adding blogs after building wheels is bad for my wheel? if so, how bad?
Is do follow link really important in Link Trio? I’ve taught not to worry at all if I get do follow and no follow backlinks as long as it is relevant to my link landing pages and I added something meaningful in my conversations.
I agree the Anchor Text should be the Main Keyword in the Backlink when using Link Trio technique.
Great post Glen, I have been away for quit some times and miss out lots of your work here:). lot to catch up to do here. Planning to intensify article marketing strategy and this post would be good guide to my effort. Well written with graphic make its easy to understand. Thanks
Glen, relevance seems to be a big topic of debate when it comes to link building. The guys over and Link Liberation say it has absolutely no bearing on link weight. Is there any evidence to prove otherwise? Just can’t believe there are that many experts that can’t agree on this one topic.
awesome guide man, brilliant article
Hey GLen, great information, I never actually thought about linking to one of my articles in an article directory but I can see the potential there. The links are relevant and they’re coming from a powerful resource. Great advice! Liz
Hey Glen,
I have used something very similar to something like this, but I prefer to call it a “link wheel”, where I have a few different articles linking to another site or even a web 2.0 property and then all building up pointing back to my site. I have been able to actually dominate the entire page one of google that even had over a million search results come back, this strategy works, but take time and patience.
Great post, thank you for sharing!
Thanks for the post this is a really cool way to simplify what can be a tricky subject. One question though: about how many pages that you link to is sufficient?
I do like this technique but I do have to wonder if Google and other search engines would not be wise to it at this stage? Would they not pick up on the similar patterns of links that are coming in to your site or is the algorythm not that sophisticated?
Dev,
Just wanted to put a tidbit of crucial information about the structure you are developing. The concept is great, and there is actually a term for this type of link system. (can’t think of it off-hand), but it is the most complex link structure (and most powerful available). It is used by “Hard Link Exchange” So good job! Do let me save you and everyone else using this method (which I do as well) some hardache – EXCLUDE EZINE ARTICLES! They are “no-follow” PERIOD. Just “view source” Hope this helps!
Bryan Hollis
This is one of the most helpful, refreshing sites that I have visited. Thank you so much. Plz keep it up
Hi great article Glen, this is certainly worth a try…
Just wondering, doesn’t Google penalize if it detects the type of backlinks coming to a particular website via a select few article submitting directories?
That loos like a good technique to obtain good backlinks.
Just wondering though, doesn’t Google penalize if it detects the type of backlinks coming to a particular website via a select few article submitting directories?
I feel so stupid! It seems so simple now I have had it pointed out!
Cheers Ryan
Nice..the really best way in marketing and getting rank, or whatever related
What about sites that only allow one backlink?
Don’t use them for this tactic
Then Buzzle might not be a good place to employ this strategy.
Thanks, Glen.
Than you for this Glenn! i can´t wait to implement it!
Revenge of the Mininet!
Just found your blog recently. Have added you to the feed. Linear linking strategies have been a great way to build up juice for awhile. Always nice to see it broken down into easy to digest terms.
I’ve been putting this off since I first read this post because I’m lazy, finally getting round to it today!
Great strategy. But isn’t it similar to a link wheel?
How about if you added a video and audio and perhaps a social bookmark page to the wheel (not a trio anymore) Would that not enhance this tactic even more? Requires more work but maybe worth the extra effort? Great idea and thank you Glen.
Todd
The link trio could be an easy way for Google to find ireggular linking patterns aka your link network. Am i wrong?
Nice clear post here. Just getting started in the online world and figuring out a backlink strategy is one of my main difficulties.
Many users of Google Chrome, including myself, use the personal blacklist extension to block results from ezine, goarticles, articlesbase, squidoo, and similar junk directories. The Panda update saw many article dump sites get penalized. I think you should rework your strategy so that it does not rely so heavily on sketchy neighborhoods.
I can see how it would be hard to explain that in words. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and the pictures are what made it really click.
I’m with those guys though in thinking that Ezinearticles are not nearly as good as they used to be. Doing this with guest blogging though could really pay off. Guest post on a blog, discuss an article you wrote, link to it, and then bring your readers back around to your home blog/website.
Glen,
I have not been back to read here since I read Get Hundreds of Links to Your Next Blog Post, Guaranteed. Since reading this article I have bookmarked page to keep up todate and I find your article very helpful to someone starting out as I am.
I will try what you have descibed and let you know how it goes. Your discription was clear to even someone like me with limited knowledge such as myself.
Keep up the great work and I will finish reading your other posts to.
Thanks
Thanks for drawing things out for me. Link Trio is a great way to build high quality links. I too have found it hard to describe the best ways to get backlinks to my bolg and website. I started doing things similar to this a couple years ago and have had great results. I just started selling a product in a highly competitive industry and this article helps organize my approach to the best link building technics.
Another awesome and real informative article, Glen. I am realizing that guest posting, blog commenting and article marketing are the fastest ways to link building and get better rankings. I need to concentrate on article marketing. I like the term “Link Trio” I will be looking for more articles from your treasure.
Thanks
Two questions…
(1) Will it work with articles you’ve already published? Like at Ezine Articles, if I changed the links in the bio? Or would it be better to write a fresh new article?
(2) Will it work with competitive keyword phrases that you normally wouldn’t be able to rank for or should we concentrate on ones with low competition?
Thanks!
Jeanine
Hi Glenn
First off, thanks for your absolutely awesome content! I have been reading casually about IM for a couple years now, and your stuff is by far the best and most easy to understand I have come across.
A couple off questions about this tactic, for Glenn or anyone else that feels like helping out a newbie…
:
First off, does this work as well with the Google panda update? As I understand, the article directories and other “link farms” have been hit the hardest by the new algorythm.
Second, (presuming it doesnt work the same way with panda) what would be a good way to implement this tactic? Would I need to build 3-4 page minisites for backlinking to my minisites (to ensure there is enough good content for google to be nice)?
Thirdly, what are the best places to to create the backlinking sites (presuming things changed)?
All the best,
Thomas
Once again………..extremely informative and innovative
Thanks Ajay
Glen,
I have thought about doing this before, but I’ve never put it to work because when I link to one of my articles on (lets say) Ezine Articles, I’m transferring 1 full link to that article’s page, but because there are 100 links or so on each article page, and only 1 or 2 of them are mine, I’m only getting 1/50 of the link value back to my site. So, why not link ALL links to my website, because I get the full value of a link when it’s straight to mine?
I thought my idea above was concrete until you talked about your ranking in viral marketing. So, here’s my suggestion: Do some type of measurable experiment to see just how powerful this method is. I’m curious if this method is responsible for your #3 ranking, or if it’s based on other factors.
Thanks for the post!
Hi Glen,
Another awesome post.As designers are very visual, your graphic(s) really helped illustrate this rather convoluted strategey very clearly.
I think I read it when it first came out but since I wasn’t trying to get into article directories, I forgot about it. Now that I am, it makes a lot of sense. I’m just about to submit to Ezine and Hub pages so this can’t be more timely!
Question: Does each article directory have exclusive rights to what I write for them or can I submit the same article to different directories (of course I won’t link the same articles toghether in the directories…)?
I really like your thorough explanation of using Link Trio. I’ll be using this myself…
Thank you Glen. Love your insights!
Lucinda
Thanks my friend for this Great and useful post, I liked the way you interlined the article pages, I think it’s similar to link wheel and eventually you closed the wheel, some experts says that link wheel should not be closed. Anyway, can you tell me if I use 10 articles to 10 directories how many Anchortext I should use on each page. As one anchor text will go to my blog and another will go to next article page, so should I use same anchor text for both?
Great post! Thanks for sharing these awesome tactics. I’m curious what you think about the big Panda Slap to content publishers like Ezine and Hubpages. Just read this article tonight on ZDnet and it got me thinking about how it will might affect the Link Trio concept.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/hubpages-ceo-on-googles-panda-algorithm-seo-doesnt-work/1928
What a brilliant idea. You are a big help to me Glen. Thanks so much
Do you feel like this tactic still works well post-Panda update Glen?
Hey Glen!
Two questions:
In the first link diagram above, if all four articles were the same article, would the links be redundant?
And does the link text that goes in the link from say Ezine to Go matter, or is it should as good to write “see more here” and link “here”? Obviously the link text from say Go to Your Blog matters.
Thanks,
Greg
Informative post – hoping you’ll provide an update soon to give some insight as to how well you think this still works following the wave of Panda changes.
Nice analysis and well discussion. I will try all you mention about on my blog. Thanks!
does this still work and recommended?
Indeed sir
Wow! This made a lot of sense. I smacked myself in the back of the head for not finding this post sooner. But, better late than never I suppose.
I have one quick question: should the links back to my blog be going to a single post or can this work if I have, for example, two posts on my blog that are targeting different keywords but are relevant to each other content-wise?
Keep up the good work Glen.
Your link trio technique is very interesting. Each article is limited to a maximum number of links, let’s say 1 for the sake of this discussion. So, if I link from my EzineArticles article to my GoArticles article which links back to my website, I get 1 backlink which admittedly has higher weight than if I had not done the link trio.
OTOH, I could get 2 backlinks, one each from EzineArticles and GoArticles. The example works on the premise that the “authority” is equal for the two article directories. In reality, I think EzineArticles is higher than GoArticles from my past experience.
I do acknowledge that if I were afforded more than 1 link out of EzineArticles, then the link trio makes perfect sense because two links from my EzineArticles article to my 1 webpage is only credited as 1 backlink (as far as I can surmise from having analysed the backlinks data from Google Webmaster Tools). However, don’t most article directories only allow 1 link per article?
I think what you have described for link trio makes a lot of sense. I am just exploring practical execution limitations.
Great article, also great to still have people talking about it 15 months after it has been written =)
From what I have learned in the paste, you give juice to your links depending on how many outbound links you have on the page.
Does anyone know if the juice being split by 2 links on one page (one to your blog + 1 to the other article directory) is worth the difference added by the other article with 1 inbound link and 1 outbound out of 2 to your site ?
I hope that someone gets me
thanks
Nice post Glenn, simplified it really well and explained it how some people need it explained.
Glen,
Daily reader. Your blog has really helped me stay on track and keep my eye on Google page 1. thanks a lot from New England!
Wow, that is actually quite powerful. I knew that this same link building effect can influence Youtube (increase rankings etc) but I just didn’t realize that it can affect articles. It is a great way to leverage the amount of work that you have done slaving away at creating multiple article sets. Great post.
Great linking building tactic. As a beginner I am still learning so every little bit helps.
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good advice. I definitely need this to get my blog a headstart.
This is the perfect site for everyone who wants to find out about this topic.
You understand a whole lot its almost hard to argue with you (not that I really will need to…HaHa).
You certainly put a brand new spin on a topic that has been discussed
for years. Excellent stuff, just wonderful!
I’ve done this and noticed more direct traffic but it hasn’t changed my google rank. How long does it take for the work you do to get noticed by google?
Fabulous post. I learned a lot. I cannot wait to try your ideas/methods. Thanks so much for sharing.
Great Ideas – simple and effective. Articles like this will definitely prevent SEO companies from charging their tad bit semi-unreasonable $16k a month services
Is this technique still available? or saturated these days? because I saw the first comment is in 2010. #lol
just curious to know, if this link building tactic is working nowadays?