Using multiple link building services, which one is working?

“I’m using multiple link building services, how can I tell which one is working?”

I got this question several times in the past week so I thought I’d write about it.

Most serious webmasters who use multiple link building services have no real indicator which ones are proving to be effective. Most people are using a “throw spaghetti against the wall, and see what sticks” method for their link building, but if they DO see positive results, they/we can’t be sure which service is providing real value.

That’s why you need to use one service for one set of urls and another service for other urls/sites. You also want to make sure that you’re not linking to similarly optimized on site articles from different services, because if you’re interlinking well, then Post B about ProductName 123 that links to, and is in close proximity to (is next or previous post in the same category,or just in same category) Post A (previous post) or Post C (next post) then there’s a “rising tide lifts all boats” type of SEO effect.

Post B that’s getting all those links is going to push some link juice towards linked-to posts from that Post/article/page so if you’re using difference services for links to the same site, make sure, at the very LEAST, that you’re using different anchor tet, and unrelated posts that aren’t in close proximity to each other.

Proximity could and does mean a few things:

Note: I’m making up some SEO terms (I think) because I don’t see any good, proper explanations on what I want to explain here..

Page proximity refers to content that was published next to another piece of content.  On properly optimized and designed sites, all posts link to each other so if you published a series of posts they’d all be linked to each other using breadcrumb-style on site navigation, inter-linking withing the body of the content, and/or related articles scripts or plugins.

In your sitemap, these posts would appear in order, as the next or previous urls, and on site, the same would/should appear

Categorization proximity refers to content that’s placed in same category, so if you have a dog trianing site, you might put all your dog trianing tips in same named category, and pet/dog accessories in another, same-named category.

Keyword proximity refers to similarly optimized (tags, titles, etc..) content pieces.  Obviously, these should be in same category anyways, but if they’re not, they’re still gonna rank for the same keywords, terms, phrases etc…and might be listed/displayed by related articles/related scripts or plugins.

OK, so what’s this have to do with link building, and being able to determine which of the various services you might be using are most effective?

As written above, when you link a piece of content that links to another one, the second content piece gets link juice passed down or over to it. So when it comes to link building in general, you don’t always have to get links to your most important urls in order to have it rank better.

• You can strengthen the overall link juice of your site by getting links to inner urls; standard SEO practice
• You can increase your rankings for certain content pieces if you link to the content pieces that are in close proximity to the “more important” urls; proximity linking

This is why you should write 2 pieces of content for every keyword you’re targeting; it helps get you indented listings if competition is low, and it gives you 2 urls to get anchor text backlinks to.  Think of this like building on-site link wheels, but done in such a way that the effects are more immediate and beneficial to your site as a whole.

What to do:

• Try writing at least 2 back-to-back articles on same subject matter/keywords, if this is a term you want traffic for.
• Optimize them in a similar fashion, same tags, different titles, same category
• Wait to see which one of those ranks best for those terms
• Get backlinks to better-performing url until it’s page 1 or so
• Then boost and solidify these rankings by getting more backlinks for same anchor text, but for the other url

Enough of this proximity factors stuff though…

Point being, if you’re getting backlinks to one site using different link building services, you need to be able to separate and identify their effects, which means NOT using service A to get links to Post A, and service B to get links to Post B, if post A and B are in close proximity to each other (similar on-page seo, category, etc…)

Instead, pick a different site or different set of unrelated content pieces to get backlinks to and only use one service for each if you’re “into” analyzing the effectiveness of the multiple services you’re paying for.

“Real” Examples?

Earlier I mentioned a fictitious site have a category for content about dog training tips and one for pet/dog accessories.

• Assuming that the content in these categories are somewhat different from each other,
• Assuming you’re using multiple services and methods,
• Assuming that you’re building links to only one site with multiple services

…then focus on one type of content with one service, and focus on differnet content with another service