Somewhere at some point Dave came across a question around link building. The thing about this question is that it could have been asked this week, earlier this year, 2 years ago, 5 years ago or even 10 years ago.

If there is a Google Chat or Twitter chat with someone from Google you can almost guarantee that a question along the lines of the example below will be asked.

Am I crazy? I have a job up on (site X) for back links. I have no linkable assets or that offers any value, how is someone going to get links for me?

Also where should they link? I have different pages like money pages and my home page, where do I want the links to go?

I’m new and confused? What is the correct way to get links or is this the way to do it?

– The Internet (edited and paraphrased from a few original questions)

The goal of this episode was not to answer everything about link building but rather to try and dispense as much information as we could for those just getting started. Here are some additional resources and episodes you may want to check out:

Link Building Resources

• How to Identify Site Quality for Link Building
• 100th Episode With Debra Mastaler
  • Our episode from last year that gives a history of link building that breaks down what people have done over the years.
• E40 – Link Building is NOT Dead
• Google Says Don’t Focus on “Link Juice” Focus on this Instead
• Google: You Don’t Need A Good Distribution Between Followed & Unfollowed Links
• Google: Guest Blog Post Links Have Zero Value
• Google: Links From Wikipedia Does Nothing For Your Site & Has No SEO Value

Additional Link Building Topics

The episode digs into a number of micro topics around link building. If you want some better ideas of what else we covered, here you go:

• Work in boring industries? Mat walks through some things he has done in the past.
• What is a good link? How should I think about what sites to target?
• Reasons to link build – not just about “pushing link juice”.
• Why should you be number #1? Why should you be on the front page of Google/Bing? If you can’t answer that you likely have more work to do (besides worrying about links).
• Is your content the same as 50 other sites?
• Would you pay to advertise on a site? This is one of many ways to judge and “score” a site to help understand if you want links from a site.
• If the link is something you can scale there are likely risks and downside to it – are you okay with taking on that level of risk?
• Do you actually have something worth linking too?

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00 ] Welcome to another exciting episode of the, the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt scintilla and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have another business of digital podcast episode going for you. So we are going to just jump straight into this one. How’s it going, Dave? It’s

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:19 ] going, it’s going.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:21 ] Awesome. So, so we’re going to talk about, we’re going to, we’re going to dive into an SEO question. We’re going to call this one SEO question too. Cause I, I had to ask you when we, uh, before we were recording, like have we only done one other question like this? And then yes,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:40 ] I know you did a, a list of like, we were gonna, we had 10 and we covered like four.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:46 ] Right. We did as much as we could with.

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:49 ] Yeah. It was like 20, 25 minutes and we did four. So we’re just going to do one today.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:53 ] We’re going to do one today, but it is a big general discussion. We are going to dive into one on [00:01:00 ] drum roll. Link-building everybody’s favorite topic, right, Dave now. All right.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:08 ] Least favorite topic.

Matt Siltala: [00:01:09 ] So this, uh, and I like how you set it up. When we were chatting earlier, you know, this could have. This is, this is a question that could have been posed four years ago, two years ago, a month ago. And so, um,

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:26 ] so

Matt Siltala: [00:01:26 ] with that said, um, why don’t you jump into it? Give us the, just to the question and we’ll go from there.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:32 ] So I’m going to paraphrase a, an exact question that was asked, but again, they. Probably every time, you know, John, or, you know, anyone does a Google hangout where master hangout type thing. I’m sure people ask it anytime they’re on Twitter. They ask him any time. Yeah.

Matt Siltala: [00:01:51 ] Definitely walked by him

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:52 ] and he, yeah.

Um, you know, if people see Matt Cutts somewhere, they probably still ask him these questions. If someone [00:02:00 ] sees any SEO, they probably ask these questions. I don’t think we have the answers. All of them. Um, Noah does, but. Here

Matt Siltala: [00:02:08 ] we have many, many years

Dave Rohrer: [00:02:10 ] experience. Yes. Matt to do building links before really the, he knew what the heck he was doing.

Matt Siltala: [00:02:16 ] Yeah. Before I knew it was called link

Dave Rohrer: [00:02:18 ] building. Um, but here I will paraphrase it help. Okay. Am I crazy? Um, I have a job up on Upwork for backlinks as I done it at a du. Um, but if I don’t have a post or anything have to offer a value. So basically he has nothing that is link worthy.

Matt Siltala: [00:02:37 ] Nothing’s important.

Dave Rohrer: [00:02:38 ] Yeah. He doesn’t think he has any content worth linking to, but there’s trying to build links. I’m also, I was asking about different pages and money pages. Well, they just use the homepage. This person has blah, blah, blah, started talking about them. And then they explain that they’re lost. Um, what is the proper way to get back links?

And then they explain what their businesses [00:03:00 ] and it’s like, basically. I have nothing on my site. Someone would want to link to. I have no content, no assets, nothing cool. Nothing unique, nothing original, but I need links. Please tell me where I can go get cheap, easy links. That’s isn’t that? What usually

Matt Siltala: [00:03:20 ] everyone asks.

Yes. That’s okay guys, go to fiber. Okay. End of discussion.

Dave Rohrer: [00:03:24 ] Just go to Fiverr,

go.

Matt Siltala: [00:03:25 ] Just kidding. Don’t do that.

Dave Rohrer: [00:03:27 ] Go get a hundred. Web 2.0 backlinks for $10.

Matt Siltala: [00:03:33 ] You’ll find a blog, a network, a guest post network somewhere.

Dave Rohrer: [00:03:39 ] Um, but like, this is link-building one-on-one I need links. I know I need links. So can I get a better idea of what to do?

Matt Siltala: [00:03:48 ] So I I’m, I’m just going to jump, I just thought of this Dave. And so hopefully it’s all right.

Dave Rohrer: [00:03:54 ] Yeah. I can always edit you out.

Matt Siltala: [00:03:57 ] You can, but it, but I, I [00:04:00 ] used to love this. Like, it takes me back to the days when we would get those phone calls from people or, you know, and again, I’ve taken myself way back to the early days.

Like, did you know when, when people would want to get on the front page of Digg because. You know, it was, you know, you could actually brag about getting so much traffic and shut the server down back when that was like a thing that, Hey, I should the server dude. Anyway. So when I, when I read this, it makes me go back to the, that kind of thinking.

And one of the ones that I thought of when you were reading this question more than anything, was we worked with an accounting company, like a accounting tax type company. And if there’s anything. You can think of that as more boring than accounting for creating content, like chat, like challenge me. Okay.

And so one of the things that we did that I thought was brilliant was in [00:05:00 ] this particular case, we said, okay, Um, or no, sorry. Uh, I’m getting a couple of stories, uh, messed up here. This was a paper shredding company. Right. And so, um, this one that, that, uh, that I’m going to give the example is for paper shredding company.

Sorry about that. So, um, and, and in my opinion,