The Paint-by-numbers Guide to Link Building
The second in our series of Paint-by-numbers guides concentrates on Link Building.
In just 3 pages we give you the SEO knowledge to build the most effective links to your content, and a step-by-step guide to effective link building techniques.
The Paint-by-numbers Guide to Link Building by Plug in SEO is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
A paint-by-numbers guide to building inbound links
Our 15 minute link building webinar shows you how to create linkworthy content and build relevant links: boosting your SEO.
You'll see Yahoo! Site Explorer, uberVU and Plug in SEO in action, with brief appearances from BackType and Majestic SEO. Tools that make creating great content and finding linkers as easy as paint-by-numbers.
Take My Keywords, Link Suggestions and Competitor Links for a spin in Plug in SEO.
Review: Majestic SEO
Backlink data and analysis from an index larger than Yahoo! Site Explorer and SEOMoz combined
- Free for your domain
- Other domains around £10-£50 for 7 day subscription
- Web based
- Download and API option
| Functionality | 5/5 | large index with download and API creates a seriously valuable backlink resource |
| Interface | 4/5 | straightforward web interface, API could be better documented |
| Value | 4/5 | free for your own domain and reasonably priced for others |
| Support | 3/5 | forum at majestic12.co.uk but early days for the SEO offering |
Majestic SEO provides a credible alternative to Yahoo! Site Explorer, SEOMoz, or scrapers of Google SERPs to investigate backlinks. It's built on the Majestic-12 distributed search engine project which seems to be succeeding where others have failed.
Breadth of Data
It's hard to think of a useful piece of data Majestic SEO doesn't provide for backlinks as anchor text, domain, history and 'ACRank' spread are all here.
ACRank is an attempt to flag the quality of a referrer, in a much simpler way than PageRank. There are some flaws, which Majestic SEO recognises, but having an open and quantifiable link quality index is a core part of backlink analysis. Hopefully they will develop the algorithm with input from the SEO community.
Quality
Where Majestic-12 and Majestic SEO shine is that they have the feel of a serious academic project. True, Majestic SEO does lack documentation, but it's new and what there is is thorough and gives the impression they'll be here to stay. That can't be overvalued for SEO companies who've had to contend with SERP scrapers that come and go.
Verdict
Give Majestic SEO a go. Compare the data for your site with Yahoo! Site Explorer. If your results are anything like mine you'll be pleasantly surprised when a few gems turn up in your analysis.
