Industry pratices for links from competitors

[positivecarry]

Hello everyone,

I am studying some SEO and have some questions about getting links from competitors. If you want to rank high for a keyword, is it not true that some of the best links would be those from the top spots in the serps when that keyword is searched?

Some of these sites may be direct competitors while some could be just broader authority sites. If a high ranking direct competitor does not have an add link area, do you even bother with attempting to get a link from them?

If you are involved in massive link building should you build a reciprocal page or will reciprocal linking do more harm than good these days. I have read that if you don't properly manage outgoing links with no follow then the outgoing links will drain link juice. Any validity to this? Any thoughts or experience, much appreciated. Thanks.

[jcorkern]

Let me start with this systematicaly, so 1 by 1.

1 "If you want to rank high for a keyword, is it not true that some of the best links would be those from the top spots in the serps when that keyword is searched?"

Yes, they would be great links, and if you can exchange links with a site like this, do it. But i would only do it with these sites. and the trick is to make sure they are not using a nofollow tag also, or they are worthless. Yahoo just implimented the "nofollow" at this last update Here is the link Yahoo! Search Blog: Yahoo! Search Support for X-Robots-Tag Directive to Simplify Webmaster's Control and Weather Update

2."I have read that if you don't properly manage outgoing links with no follow then the outgoing links will drain link juice. Any validity to this? "

Yes, PR, or page rank as it is called is a "juice" bleed system that works similar to electricity. the "juice" like electricity will follow links like elec. follows cords or lines. and this gives what SEO's call PR bleed. you can bleed your juice to other sites. I personaly only do recips to internals from internals for traffic purposes only, and they have to be from a similar pr page. and there is a reason for it. if you have a pr 4 page and recip with a pr2 page, i will lose more "juice" than the pr 2 page, so the other guy gets more from the exchange. this post will explain in more detail Seo for Link Building and Web Traffic. You can have your cake and eat it to.

I would not just start a link page for exchanges. Building links should be done through social bookmarking, press releases and the primary building system should be articles.. Directory submissions are also a plus for sites needing lots of links.

Read about my linkbuilding system on this post . little help in getting links

Edwin also posted a great help right after the post for free.

Hope this helps.

[Linda Buquet]

Whew Jim, was hoping you'd stop by and tackle that one.

Thanks, great info!

[positivecarry]

Thank you very much for the response. I read your other posts as well, very nice information.

I think I saw you say somewhere that SERPs are 80% links and 20% on page. Is this still holding true?

[jcorkern]

yes, that is 100% true. all of the major search engines are link popularity engines. you can actualy gain enough links without proper onpage to beat other sites.

This is an example, search google for "CLICK HERE" and adobe will come up #1. Yet is does not have click here anywhere on the page. Now consider why adobe ranks #1 for click here.

how many times have you visited a site that read: you can download this PDF file for free but you will need the adobe reader. If you do not have the adobe reader you can download it for free. CLICK HERE to download the free adobe reader.

and "Click Here" is the link to adobe.

I have had many people tell me that the traffic and or clicks a site gets gives top rankings. just onpage does it ect...

But the facts are that 80 % of top positions is link based.

[positivecarry]

Well, I guess this is good news for new sites if your market isn't too competitive and you can get links quickly.

I have noticed an interesting trend in my market: an authority site is building mini sites to capitalize on its ranking power. For instance, say they have a site about football, they are making sites about football helmets, football gloves, etc.
It appears to be working as they are occupying the top three spots for google in almost all keyword searches related to them. The top position will be their main site, and then the 2 and 3 position will be new domains they have created. Can you occupy the top position with specific pages on one domain when a particular phrase is searched or will google only give you one spot. I guess it is a powerful strategy as the user doesn't know that the top three sites are owned by the same company. Its a good idea, but it seems that your efforts then get spread over many sites and some type of diminishing returns sets in.

[jcorkern]

you can actualy gain two of the top 10 with one url, like the index and an internal. I have seen this happen also, but as long as they are within the T.O.S. they are ok .

they can get in trouble for having too may links from the same IP address if the mini sites all link to the main site, they can actualy get caught if they do not have different class c ip addresses. This would be considered a linking scheme and it is grounds for removal from the index.