Eric W. • Please do not ask how to rank # at Google :)

Mark S. • What tools or strategies do you use for link building when it comes to finding & contacting bloggers or websites in a given niche for your client.....with the intent of developing the relationship, providing guest blog posts or other relationship building?

Kerry H. • How to find those hidden gems like library, community or resource websites etc by using specific search queries or link discovery tactics. And how to make the process as efficient as possible.

Robin W. • Ok, I won't ask that, although it does seem like a legitimate question.

How many links do I need, say to increase from pr 3 to 4? I understand that even this question might be difficult to answer, seeing that each link might have diff relevance, pr as well as other factors. But for budgeting purposes, getting a feel for what it should cost for a page rank bump up notch (3 to 4) seems necessary before beginning.

Eric W. • Hi Mark, I use several different tools depending on the subject matter. I do not personally feel there is any single source directory of blogs that is complete enough to be dependable as a source of blog targets across all topics. One tactic I use that can often produce great results is to search to see if someone has already compiled a list of the top blogs in the topic you are working in. For example, I was doing a link marketing project for a client that helped travel nurses find work in specific parts of the country. Their site contained a large database of short term nursing employment opportunities all over the US. They wanted to do some outreach to nurses who also blogged, in hopes of getting some attention and links for their site. The first thing I did was go to Google and search on the phrase "Best nursing blogs". Here's that result http://bit.ly/f9CIK5. What I was hoping to find was someone had already done a review of the top blogs in this niche, and I lucked out. There are several that did, making my target site list easy to compile. Now let's tweak that search a bit to "travel nurse blogs". That surfaces the better blogs that would be even more likely to care about my client's site. This approach works best within specific verticals. The more generic the topic, the harder it becomes. Finding and reaching out to the top blogs about nursing and travel nursing is easier than finding the top blogs about food. In the food vert you're likely to find thousands of blogs and many of the high readership ones will be part of a blog network, which can make outreach and link seeking much more challenging.

Jey P. • Eric, how do you price your cost per link when undertaking a link building job for a client?

Laurie H. • I am writing some quality articles that are relevant to our industry and would like to take a first crack at article marketing to draw more traffic to our site. I have already used ezinearticles, the free directory, but I know I need to do more. Of the article syndication services that are out there, which are the most well regarded (i.e., not considered scams or spammy)? I have come across some that run about $50/mo and some that are simply dirt cheap ones ($4 for 100 article submissions). I am wondering if "dirt cheap" means they're also a little dodgy or maybe it's because they're located overseas (Eastern Europe, India, etc.). Your recommendations would be greatly appreciated, Eric.

Eric W. • [Kerry Harding asked...How to find those hidden gems like library, community or resource websites etc by using specific search queries or link discovery tactics. And how to make the process as efficient as possible?]

Kerry - a great question as it indicates you recognize the potential value that those types of sites represent if you can earn a link from them. There are hundreds of thousands of librarians around the world, in an amazing variety of library settings. After I left the marketing and public relations field in 1991, I went to graduate school in Library Science. There are public libraries, school libraries, juco libraries, university libraries, law libraries agriculture libraries veterinary libraries, medical libraries, special libraries, private libraries, corporate libraries, and on and on. Earning links from these types of destinations is extremely challenging, in that you have to have the quality of content that will appeal to a library scientist that is a specialist in identifying (curating) quality links. But, this is also what makes such links so powerful. Here's one tip. Most library sites reside on .org, .us, .gov, or .edu domains. Almost every page of a library based web site has a footer that will include the word library. So let's say I'm seeking links for a company/site that sells supplies to veterinarians. A search such as veterinary supplies companies links resources library site:.edu would produce this result http://bit.ly/fQ4rRq - now click on the very first site in the results. Bingo. There's your first link target. Then key is tweaking and modifying the advanced search syntax and keywords for your specific situation, and working at it until you hit on that golden search phrase that surfaces the targets you need.

Eric W. • [robin wade asked...How many links do I need, say to increase from pr 3 to 4? I understand that even this question might be difficult to answer, seeing that each link might have diff relevance, pr as well as other factors. But for budgeting purposes, getting a feel for what it should cost for a page rank bump up notch (3 to 4) seems necessary before beginning]

Robin - To give you a short answer, it might be 50, or 500, or 5,000, depending on the subject and existing link graph of that vertical. Now here's the long answer. There is no magic number of links that will raise a site from a 2 to a 3 or a 3 to a 4. There are several factors at play here. First, the Pagerank shown in the toolbar is not the same metric used by Google for ranking purposes. With billions of web pages out there it is not possible to assign a score from 0-9 that would be an effective ranking signal. Google's internal scoring is much more refined. That said, it's also important to note that a site's Pagerank does not move in lock step with its ranking. I can show search results where a site with a lower Pagerank outranks a site with a higher Pagerank. For example, do a search on the phrase endangered species. Why does the federal government's site on this subject with a Pagerank of 7 rank at position 3, while the site above it at position 2 has a Pagerank of only 4? This illustrates just one way that Pagerank is not as important to link building as people assume it is. Another key aspect to Pagerank is subject specificity. A site about the nocturnal habits of the Brown Bat, even if it is the best site on the planet about that subject, is not likely to have a Pagerank of 9. But that doesn't mean it is any less important within that vertical.

Further complicating the Pagerank metric is that a few links from the right places can boost Pagerank, but the "right places" will vary from subject to subject. I never use Pagerank as part of my link building target selection criteria, because it can lead you astray. Lastly, if your rankings and traffic are not affected/improved by getting from a PR 3 to a PR 4, what does it matter? My own site at http://www.ericward.com once had a Pagerank of 6. It is now a 5, but my rankings and traffic are higher now than before. Don't let that little green bar torment you :)

Susan M. • Thank You, you truly are appreciated!

Kerry H. • @Eric thanks very much! Very very helpful. Already started looking around :)

Courtney G. • Hi Robin,

Your question has been answered by Eric! Please check the general discussion page or click here: http://lnkd.in/Tm_9rc

Courtney G. • Kerry - your question has also been answered by Eric! Please visit the discussion page or click the following link: http://lnkd.in/CF8fkY

Kay M. • Hi Eric,

How does a new website begin the process of link-building? What would be the logical first steps?

Any guidance here is much appreciated!

Lorry L. • Hey Eric, thanks for taking the time to our questions!

I have a colleague (based in the UK) who's site has gone from PR4 to PR0 practically overnight. The only recent change to his site was moving from a US server to a UK server, which I would have thought would have improved things(?)

Although, from your previous comments, I understand that PR is not the holy grail of Google ranking KPIs, what would you suggest he could do to establish what caused the problem and how to rectify it?

Thanks Eric :O)

Daniel C. • I am also new to the link building process. In my blog articles and in a number of whitepapers that I have published, I provide links to things like a business dictionary definition or a related study or other information to help the reader understand the concept that I am putting forth. My intention is, of course, to share information relative to the article I have written. Is this type of linking acceptable? I just don't want to get become an unwitting black hatter.

Richard S. • : I would like to add my own take on PageRank. It's not that PR doesn't matter… it's that PR as it is popularly understood has very little weight on it's own and it's often used in ways that are underappreciated. As Peter Norvig says, "PageRank is overhyped". So true.

For instance, we know that a variant called Truncated PageRank is a very powerful means to detect shallow linking neighborhoods. In essence, it informs the algorithm about how much reputation was passed from short distances versus long distances.

How about BadRank? If you make the mistake of procuring a link from a high PR site known to be untrustworthy, it may appear on the surface that you've increased your PR, but you've also increased your BR… and now you've dug your site a little deeper into a hole that may eventually be impossible to get out of.

As of a couple years ago, Google was carrying around at least 8 known versions of PageRank in their data centers. My guess is that there are more now.

Truncated PageRank is even more effective when combined with regular PageRank and BadRank. These are even more powerful when looking at the number of nearest neighbors at distance 1, 2, 3 and 4. Now combine this with the outdegree of a particular page (the number of domains it points to) as well as the indegree of the host. You should also consider the recall and precision of high-value advertising terms on your site. As you can imagine, this quickly results in an explosion of possibilities.

From a practical standpoint, this means that you should not be fooled by any person or program that claims a granular metric such as "X"-rank can be used to manipulate search engine rankings. In reality, these metrics have some utility but only as a small component within a much more overarching data classification algorithm.