I’m never surprised by the amount of questions I get that are centered around getting .edu links. I think this partly stems from the blogging I’ve done on the subject and also a comment I made back in 2008.

Edu link building is definitely a service I offer and I’m always happy to talk about it with potential clients.

In this case, the person who emailed me owns a SEO biz, is interested in some .edu link development and has a relatively small budget of $500/month. My response basically covers my thoughts on what it takes to attain .edu links and what services I felt I could offer him for his specific situation and budget.

Oh, and before you decide to lynch me in the comments, please note that I am not advocating .edu links as the be all and end all of backlinks. I do think however, that there’s nothing wrong with trying to attain them as long as it’s not the ONLY type of links you’re focusing on. I firmly believe that every good link campaign involves getting links from a wide variety of high-quality sources.

Also, if you have a weak stomach for things like ‘paid links’, then pretty much just stop reading right here.

Hi Melanie,

I run a SEO consultancy business and am looking for a .edu link building service. I read your blog post about .edu link building and it seems that you are an expert in this area. If you can offer this service, please give me a quote for getting 10 .edu links from resource pages of US .edu’s through email outreach. I have a budget of $500/10 links per month and can guarantee 1 year/120 links or $6,000 worth of business *per site*.

I have 5 sites to order for but would like to test 1 site first. So to put it another way, my business is worth $30k/yr.

Thanks!

My response:

Hi (name removed),

For $500/month, I could definitely research and contact at least 5-10 .edu sites every month on behalf on 1 of your (or your client’s) sites. The site I’m building the links for, would need to have some linkable content though, or the chances of actually getting the .edu links would be very slim.

If the site had NO linkable content to speak of, then you would have to be willing and able to:

A) find out what type of content will attract .edu links for the niche
B) create the content and put it up on the site

Otherwise I would have to obtain your .edu links by purchasing them from my contacts. This would be no problem however $500 would barely be enough to buy 1 permanent .edu link (as the good ones are understandably expensive) and I have a feeling you’re probably looking for more than just 1 .edu link per month.

The other option is to hire ME to carefully research and create the linkable content, implement it and THEN commence with the natural .edu link development @ $500/month. This can still be tricky though as many .edu sites are simply unwilling to link to sites that make obvious money, therefore I couldn’t guarantee “xx” amount of links per month.

I know this probably isn’t what you were expecting to hear, but links from authority domains aren’t easy to come by. There is definitely either a lot of time, effort and/or money involved depending on which route you go.

Obviously you recognize just how valuable high-authority links can be though, and I commend you in advance for your willingness to try attaining them.

Happy to answer further questions,

Mel

The moral is, in order for your purely commercial site to attract natural .edu links, you need to be willing to create good content that is .edu link “worthy”. Either that or be willing to spend good money to buy natural looking links from .edu domains. There aren’t many shortcuts if you’re looking for results.

What are your thoughts on .edu backlinks? Are they worth the effort? Please share with a comment.

Link Building FAQ: Professional Edu Link Development on a Tight Budget? is a post from: CanadianSEO

This means that I’m personally in the trenches every day, working hard to track down and attain the type of links my clients need in order to rank in Google.

As owner of CanadianSEO, I’ve been doing this at home, mostly on my bed in my pyjamas, for the better part of 3 years (why yes, I do drink lots of caffeine and rarely brush my hair, thank you very much). Before that, I directed SEO departments at a few Edmonton agencies and even further before that, I had my own profitable ecommerce site that I sold and made a butt load of money from.

I work with small mom and pop type businesses, as well as big American, Canadian and International brands. I build links for the clients of other well-known SEOs and trusted SEO agencies. I build infographic links to citation links to contextual links and everything in between. I build both small quantity and large quantity links while always striving for quality. And I respect and follow (who I consider to be) some of the top link builders in the industry.

This is why, when I hear reckless advice being spewed about link building or the link building industry in general, I sometimes feel compelled to voice an opinion that happens to be based on years of actual experience.

That said, here are my thoughts on the top 3 link building rumors I’ve been seeing since the Penguin updates began and why I believe they are smoldering piles of crap myths that average site owners need to be aware of.

Myth 1 – You shouldn’t build links anymore.

You’ve probably been hearing that link building is dying or that’s it’s no longer important to try to get links to your site. In case any of my competitors are reading this, then I completely agree and you should definitely stop building links.

For the rest of you, who I actually care about helping, the truth is that if you listen closely, Google’s recent Penguin updates aren’t telling us that links are no longer important. If anything, the fact that Google has become so zealous with their policing of links, means that links are STILL as important as ever (if not MORE important) when it comes to a site’s rankings.

What’s changing is how Google views your links.

In Google’s ideal world, site owners would be expertly creating thought-provoking, stellar content and other sites would naturally stumble all over themselves wanting to link to it. I’m here to tell you that, in the ‘real’ world though, it rarely happens this way… especially for small business owners.

I’m also here to tell you that trying to get online exposure without link building is like hosting a wedding without invites. Great if you don’t want to share your champagne. Not so great if you’re trying to be the most talked about wedding of the year.

As always, stay away from shady link schemes and tactics (you know what they are!), but folks, never stop facilitating quality links to your website. Your online success depends on it.

Myth 2 – You shouldn’t use anchor text anymore.

By now you’ve heard that using anchor text on your links will put your site into the seventh circle of hell with Google. This simply isn’t true. Anchor text is not the enemy.

The key (as it always has been) is to diversify your anchor text in order to emulate as natural a link profile as possible. You should also be focusing closely on relevance. If your site is about ‘wood products’ and the link comes from a page dedicated to ‘wood products’, then you don’t need the anchor text ‘wood products’ to make your point to Google. Relevance makes the point for you.

The fact is that this aspect of link building hasn’t changed much over the years. If you’re in it for long-term success it is STILL bad practice to build 1000 links using the exact same ‘commercial’ anchor text… especially if those links are coming from irrelevant sites. This isn’t breaking news.

What Google Penguin tells us, is that Google is finally taking notice of sites that use these tactics to manipulate the SERPs, and if you were/are involved in doing so, you’d better switch tactics to make things look more natural. This is actually good news for average site owners who have been struggling with cheating competitors.

As a site owner, by all means use anchor text where you have control. If your page is about ‘cute kittens’ then it’s logical to assume that another pet site would link to your page using ‘cute kittens’ somewhere in the link, isn’t it? Then go for it. On that same token, other pet sites might also “naturally” link to you using terms like ‘click here’ or ‘learn more’ or even just a straight url. Diversify!

Today’s “natural” link profile is about being smart and includes all of these components and more. For the average site owner though, using anchor text – where it makes sense -  isn’t going to send your site straight to search engine hell (as much as we wish some sites would go there).

Myth 3 – You should hire a company to remove all the links that Google might think are “bad”.

Since Google starting sending out unnatural link notices, I’ve watched in utter fascination as site owners (and even some SEOs) scrambled to have portions of their backlinks removed. This is well and fine IF you had some links that were shady/irrelevant/obviously paid.

It’s sad to see unwitting site owners getting rid of perfectly good links though, simply out of fear or because they saw some blog post or, worse yet, because some SEO company told them they should.

I’ve even recently had clients reject good links I’ve obtained for them because they’ve heard one thing or another about contextual links or footer links or blogroll links or pagerank or links from pages that aren’t “social” etc. I’m not saying that site owners shouldn’t be picky about their backlinks, what I am saying is that there is an irrational fear being built surrounding backlinks and decent people are losing out on perfectly good links as a result.

It’s also sad to see an entirely new industry springing up which is pretty much designed to bilk frightened site owners out of their money. Especially in the cases where there has been no evidence of Penguin penalization but link removal companies are happy to remove links anyway.

Things ARE changing but in a lot of ways they’re staying the same. If you have questions or doubts about what to do as far as your backlinks, it couldn’t hurt to contact a few of the well-known link builders and ask for some advice before you decide to do something drastic. Except if you’re a competitor of mine, in which case please disregard this post entirely.

Have you heard any reckless link building BS lately? Please share with a comment.

3 Reckless ‘After Penguin’ Link Building Myths and Why to Avoid Them is a post from: CanadianSEO

I consider myself to be a very successful link builder which is why I know that even before you attempt the link, there’s heavy research to conduct and careful analysis to consider.

Don’t believe me? How else will you get the info you need about your top competitors? What types of links are they getting? Where did they get their strongest links? What anchor text are they targeting? Are there any opportunities for my site??

This is why a huge part of link building often involves gathering and sifting through mountains and mountains of data.

Maybe not a problem if you’re doing it for just one site (i.e. your own) but what if, like me, you’re often doing several different campaigns at once? Never before have I gathered and managed so much data, on so many different sites, as when I started to do link building professionally for clients.

I love it though. Which is why I happily do my own research (using Google and Yahoo), chart everything in Excel and then draw conclusions and select prospects based on my own criteria. This method takes time though and, being a busy little link builder, time is something I’m in short supply of lately.

Therefore, in an effort to streamline my services, I’ll be actively looking for and trying out various paid link building tools that make my life easier.

Maintaining the same level of quality that my clients are used to is extremely important to me though, so you can be sure that the tool(s) I finally settle on (if any!) will be, what I consider, the best.

Since I’ve had a few curious followers express their interest on twitter, I’ll also be writing about my findings here. If you’ve ever wondered which link building tools truly give you the most bang for your buck (I certainly have!), then you won’t want to miss this

And, if you’ve had any experience (good or bad) with paid link building tools or if there’s a tool you think I should try, be sure to leave a comment below!

Data Girl! An Experiment in Paid Link Building Tools is a post from: CanadianSEO

It’s more commonsense than rocket science so please don’t judge me too harshly at the simplicity of the technique. I know there will be some hardcore link builders out there who may scoff at it, but the fact remains that there are site owners out there who aren’t as hardcore as you and they have to start somewhere.

For those of you that will be trying the Reciprocity Method, I plan to post follow up articles here, that will help you find suitable prospects within your industry as well as custom email templates that are tailored to fit almost any situation.

I started out as a small ecommerce site owner myself and I know how hard it can be to generate results. If you have any questions or need some help implementing the technique, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Srsly

The Reciprocity Method Guest Post is a post from: CanadianSEO

This tweet gives you a plethora of insight into the man that is Matt Cutts. If you lie, he will know. If he knows, he’ll get mad. If he gets mad, you’re toast. Pretty cut and dry lol.

This is funny on so many levels lol. From this you can learn that Aaron is hilarious and that poor @graywolf gets burned a lot on twitter (we laugh with you Michael, WITH you lol).

This was even funnier when the account was active. Twitter catches spammers pretty quick though.

For some reason, even though I don’t literally have balls, this stuck with me. Note: I do have gigantic figurative balls though.

I already knew this but it’s nice to hear someone who matters saying it. Maybe people will listen?

Turns out, @sugarrae was just joking BUT this doesn’t mean that this isn’t a perfectly acceptable use of twitter!

He obviously doesn’t know many Canadian link builders lol.

lol I wonder how $$ much he made?

I may make “Sweet Tweets” a monthly deal, so if you know of any spill em’

A Selection of Sweet Tweets is a post from: CanadianSEO

Truth is, I’ve been extraordinarily busy and I hate posting just for the sake of posting, you know? I’ve got enough interesting things on the go now though, to be able to give you a healthy update as to what I’ve been up to for the past two months. Some pretty exciting stuff on the horizon (if you’re geeky, like me)!

The Reciprocity Link Building Method

I’ve developed (what I consider to be) a good method for gaining authority links. I’m calling it the Reciprocity Link Building Method. It involves offering, er, “something” of value first (not money/gifts or blackmail though) and then creatively “suggesting” a reward for your initiative. So far, the success rate is great. So much so, that I’ve been invited to write about the method in an upcoming guest-post at Search Engine Land. I know right!?

I’ve truly been blessed with a lot of success in my link building career. I figured it was time to share some of my winning techniques though, which is why I’m also…

Writing an eBook

Or at least *trying* to write an eBook. It’s just like writing one great-big, gargantuan, in-depth blog post. In spite of this, I’m aiming for release in approx one month. It’ll include a step-by-step guide to finding and qualifying prospects, the Reciprocity Method email template and a few secret places to get instant authority links (including .edu and .gov). For the sake of the resources getting abused and thus devalued though, I *will* be charging a nominal fee for the book. I hope you don’t mind but I promise it’ll be well worth the money

Link Building Tool

Being a professional link builder, well, I build a lot of links (duh!) and I constantly identify things that, if a tool were around for them, would make my job a lot easier. I’ve therefore been sitting on a bunch of ideas for link building tools and I finally picked one and put a plan in motion for it’s creation. My partner in crime is @teifion and we’ve already started building. Keep you posted as we go. He’s already had a heart attack at the size of the database we’ll be needing so don’t expect a launch anytime soon though lol.

ORM Stuff

Along with steady link building jobs, I’ve also taken on a couple of Online Reputation Management campaigns (which is basically link building anyways). This involves getting rid of or burying a negative listing on Google. I’ve been making Google dance for a number of years now but even a veteran like me needs a little guidance now and again (no, I’m not afraid to admit that). With that in mind there were a couple of articles that were helpful to me and I recommend that you check them out if you’re facing a similar ORM situation.

50+ Sites to Help You Bury Negative Posts About You or Your Company

38 Must Reads on Online Reputation Management

The major downside to these type of campaigns is the waiting involved. Especially when the client is eager to see things happen. So far so good though. If all goes as planned, I’ll be offering affordable ORM packages as part of my link building services.

Lastly, on a more personal note:

I’ll soon be trying to change the world via an anti Drunk Driving video and accompanying song. The song itself is beautiful and touching and, I’m proud to say, was written a long time ago by my dad. The cause is personal to us because we lost someone to (what we suspect was) a drunk driver when I was four years old. My mom.

Since the culprit was never caught, we can’t be *sure* they were drunk, but I figure you can’t plow over a pedestrian in the middle of the road and then just drive away as if nothing happened. Although we’ll never know what really happened, we’d like to try to and raise awareness in the hopes that we can save just one family from experiencing the same anguish and heartache that many innocent families, such as ours, are forced to face daily.

The song has been professionally produced and recorded and the video is now in the planning stages. I’ll need your help promoting it when we’re ready to launch though. I hope I can count on you

Other than that, I’ve been working diligently for my clients, growing my business, taking care of my family and trying to pop in on twitter now and again to catch up with all my buds.

Miss you guys!

To Do: Write eBook, Create Tool, Change World is a post from: CanadianSEO

Depending on the skill level of the audience, I may even spill a juicy link building secret or two. If you happen to be in Calgary next weekend, I hope you’ll drop by and say hello

In the meantime, I’m interested in hearing what YOU think women in business should be aware of when it comes to marketing themselves and their businesses online. Are there any special sites geared towards women and their businesses? What are some of the challenges they face? Are there any different marketing tactics they can use? What has or hasn’t worked for you?

When it comes to women in business, there are some absolutely stellar role models out there (yes, you!) and we could all certainly benefit from sharing our experiences. If you’ve got a comment, anecdote or even a compelling story, I hope you’ll post it here so that others can learn from it.

Thanks!

Women in Business: What Should They Know About SEO? is a post from: CanadianSEO

In spite of this, I got mentioned on Lee Odden’s site recently (yay!).  He says I’ve got a shot at making the BIGLIST of SEO blogs, I just need to get my butt in gear and post at least once per week. Naturally, I’m now making it my top priority.

Here’s exactly what he said:

Alberta based Melanie Nathan publishes a brand new and very well designed blog that offers the promise of posts on link building, interviews and miscellaneous. We’re hoping she can tap into her vast link building knowledge and post more often so the blog can get included in the BIGLIST at a future date.

When I started this blog, I honestly had every intention of posting regularly. In fact I have an entire folder full of post ideas which include;

• How to qualify a link prospect
• How to quote link building services
• What I learned from twitter
• How to make money with SEO

And… something about ‘Social Media Parties and SEO Cage Dancers’, which upon re-reading it, I must have wrote when I was tired and deranged so don’t ask

I also have a post from my sister, who I have been teaching how to link build. She’s catching on, and she understands the ultimate goal, unfortunately with her day job and taking care of a diabetic kid, she isn’t able to spend as much time on it as I’d like. In an ideal world, she’d have fallen in love with link building, dropped everything in her life to pursue it and we’d be happily running a link building empire by now. I can dream can’t I?

Note: Look for her post next Monday. It’s not ground breaking stuff, but hey, she offers some good insight on link building, from an outsider-looking-in perspective.

Luckily, my lack of posting hasn’t deterred me from getting work. In fact, shortly after launch, the requests for work started pouring in and I’m now doing more than 40 hours of solid link building per week. As you can imagine, this makes me one busy beaver. Also, as a result of all this new work, I’ve been toying with different search operators in order to uncover wicked new places to get links. I found some great ones too, and I totally plan on sharing, I just have to find a way to share them, without killing them. That always has a way of happening whenever I share a backlink resource publicly. If you have any ideas, I’m all eyes.

So you see, I *do* have some content to offer, which I consider to be of value (hope you do to!), I’m just finding it a tad difficult to juggle my client workload and everything else a solopreneur has to tackle. Although, I had some idea of what running my own biz was going to be like, I forgot to factor in that, as my only employee, when something needs done, there’s me, and only me, to do it. I knew it would be a learning experience though and I’ll eventually get the hang of it. When I post more than once in a week, you’ll know I made it lol.

Being mentioned by Lee Odden as an up-and-coming SEO blog, gives me some excellent motivation. In fact, I’ll be holding another contest in order to get the community involved in helping me post once per week.

Ironically, you’ll have to wait for upcoming details

Lee Odden, Intentions and One Busy Beaver is a post from: CanadianSEO

Congratulations to… Jesse Friedman, the winner of a sweet Canadian themed prize package! I’ll be contacting you soon regarding your shipping address.

I’ve also decided to give @ChrisHooley a consolation prize on account of his energy and enthusiasm (and because he makes me laugh like a banshee lol).

To all those who participated… thank you! To those who couldn’t be bothered… well it serves you right… next time don’t be so lazy

The Canadian Prize Package Winner Is… is a post from: CanadianSEO

She’ll be blogging here about her experiences, as she learns from scratch, one of the most challenging aspects of search engine optimization – organic link building (link building for the intention of ranking).

She’s 27; her name is Jodie, she fully rawks and I know you’ll adore her. Watch for her first post next week. For now though, you’ll have to settle for me (hi!) and a recap of our first lesson…

Examining Competitors for Relevant Backlink Opportunities

We began with a lengthy discussion about the different value of links (anchor text, vs. straight url, followed vs. nofollowed, high PR vs. low PR, image vs. text etc) and some of the different types of links available (directory listings, blog comments, article mentions, lists, news resources, etc). After a couple of hours, I felt she had a firm grasp on some of the concepts so I gave her an example site to work with and set her loose with the following scenario and instructions.

The sample client site is: www.canadianseo.com
The sample client keyword is: “SEO Canada”

Perform a search for the client’s keyword on Google.com. These sites are the ones that Google considers most relevant to “SEO Canada” and are our client’s direct competitors. Visit each of the top 20 competitor websites and look for backlink opportunities. It may be in the form of a blog comment, a product review, a directory submission, a play list, content submittal, a profile page etc. Record possible opportunities on a word (or excel) doc. And, for future reference, make notes on what exactly will be required to get the link.

Next, you’ll need Yahoo.

Using Yahoo’s Linkdomain Command

Perform the following search on Yahoo, substituting the url for a competitor’s (the one’s within your word doc):

• linkdomain:www.competitorswebsite.com

This shows you the majority of websites that link to this competitor. Start visiting these sites and keep a sharp eye out for backlink opportunities. It helps to start by locating the competitor’s link within the page to see if it’s a viable prospect. For example, if it’s a page from CNN and the link comes from the competitor being quoted in a story, then there’s probably not much possibility of us duplicating that or getting a link off the same page (without some planning that is). If, on the other hand, the link comes from a mention in a resource list from a blog, then there’s a decent possibility that we can get added to the same list by contacting the blog owner.

If you find a backlink possibility, take note of the following:

• Will the link be “nofollowed”? If so, it won’t help with PR or rankings but it might still be good for traffic purposes. Record it anyways.
• What’s the PR (pagerank) of the page? We’ll want to give more importance to pages with higher PR. We won’t discount pages with little or no PR though… we just won’t try as hard for them.
• Will we be permitted to use anchor text or will the link be a straight url (i.e. “this is a Canada SEO company” vs. http://www.canadianseo.com). Although links with anchor text are definitely better for ranking purposes, we won’t discount a straight url link because they can still help increase our client’s PR.

Use the Yahoo “linkdomain” command on each of the competitors within your word doc. Yes, visiting each of the sites may seem daunting, especially seeing as some competitors will have thousands of backlinks, but try to think of it like this; uncovering more competitor backlink’s = uncovering more opportunities for our client. Record all prospects on your word doc (which should be getting fairly big by now).

Finding Directory Links

Next, we’ll look for some good directories to submit our client to. Perform the following search on Google.com:

• allinurl:directory “Canada”

This shows us some popular directories that have Canada related categories. Visit the top 20 (or more) and look for ways to get our client listed. Some directories are free to submit to, others cost money. We’re mainly interested in the ones that are free. Keep in mind that if a “submit site/url” option isn’t readily apparent on the homepage, you may have to go to the category we want to submit to, and look for the “submit site/url” option there. If it’s a paid directory, you should then be presented with a pricing page and you’ll know it’s not a prospect.

Hopefully by now you’ve got a healthy little list of link opportunities, with detailed instruction on how to go about getting the links. If not…

Digging Within Related Industries

If your list isn’t as big as you’d like and you can’t really find any viable opportunities for links, you can try researching the backlinks of sites within industries that are highly related to the client’s keyword. In the case of “Canada SEO” some highly related industries may include:

• SEO Consultant
• SEO Services
• SEO Specialist

Although the terms are broader, it stands to reason that any sites ranking for the above terms will be direct competitors of ours and therefore are good prospects for backlink examination. As long as it’s a related/themed industry we can go after links within it.

Basic Link Building Tools You’ll Need:

Since she already uses FireFox (converted her months ago) I told her to either get the Google Toolbar or install one of the many FireFox plug-ins, which shows Google PageRank (a list was provided). You’ll now be able to see the PR of every page you visit.

After that, you’ll need Greasemonkey so the “nofollowed” links on every page you visit will be highlighted in pink for you. This will save you a lot of time. You’ll need to enable the “nofollow highlighter” option either during installation or right after.

Lastly, if you have a Google account (gmail etc)…. make sure you are logged OUT when you’re performing your research. When you’re logged into your account, Google tends to show you more “personalized” results based on your location and habits. Same with Yahoo.

Oh and I wrote a well received link building article awhile back that I think you should read it as it pertains to what I’m trying to teach you. Lastly, don’t forget to use the “find” command (ctrl+f) if you need to find a word, phrase or url on a heavily worded page. It really helps for finding those tricky “submit site” or “add url” links and also locating competitor backlink’s on crowded pages.

She’ll be giving me the results of her research after the weekend. Can’t wait to see if we’ve got another link ninja in the family

Keep you posted.

A Link Builder is Born: Learning to Crawl Before You Walk is a post from: CanadianSEO