Get 1 Link and Go! Drive By Linking.
In the early 2000’s, a link was a link. Plain and simple, more links, better rankings. But that was 7 years ago. Today, Googlebot is smarter and can learn to hate you. So how can you fix that? Get 1 link per domain and get out of there.
Here is what I mean:
Find a blog you like, leave a comment, find another blog you like.
Or:
Find a site that is relevant, email the webmaster, asking for a link on a certain page, buy a permanent link, and don’t buy any more links from that seller.
With this strategy, you’re protecting your site from Google’s backlash, it is also harder to detect these links because they are in-content, topical, relevant to your industry, in fact almost impossible to detect by a bot.
It is hard to link to these types of pages because they are hard to find. You can look in the comments of most SEO blogs because people usually are looking for links so they hit and run the blog.
There are about 15 blogs that I like enough and find valuable enough to comment on regularly. These blogs I don’t hit and run, but most others I do.
Get a link and go!
Phill Midwinter said
March 22 2007 @ 3:43 am
That’s awesome advice, thanks!
Michael Dillon said
March 22 2007 @ 5:57 am
Pretty smart. I will give it try.
http://geniusoflove.blogspot.com/
Domester.NET said
March 22 2007 @ 6:15 am
This is the one great tip for traffic by Search Engine.
Mertin McConnell said
March 22 2007 @ 10:22 pm
Great tip as usual, your blog is great!
shen said
March 23 2007 @ 11:37 pm
I am starting now!!
Shane said
March 24 2007 @ 7:32 am
That’s not good advice. Since virtually all blog comments still use nofollow, Google will actually never see those links. Plus, if you only leave one comment per blog, you’re depriving yourself of lots potential traffic (as you describe here) — with is the main benefit of leaving comments. Finally, it takes a lot of links from one site to look unnatural to Google, and even then, they’ll just devalue the links, not penalize your site.
(P.S. The “leave a comment” link in this post has a stray “http//” in it that’s causing the link not to work.)
Brandon said
March 24 2007 @ 7:55 am
Shane, thanks for the comments. Regardless of nofollow, I think 1 link is still the best. I don’t know how much engines actually listen to the nofollow command. I would like to think that they do, but I still think they value the link, maybe not as much, but it isn’t completely devalued. Their algo’s are so intricate they could easily give weight to a nofollow without anyone noticing.
GG said
March 30 2007 @ 12:57 pm
Nice tip. Thanks, I will try it out!
http://www.winatmoney.com
Aniela said
March 30 2007 @ 7:58 pm
Good ideea
josh said
April 7 2007 @ 7:15 am
At first I was thinking… well comments are no followed but then I realized you are talking about traffic and not “links” in the PR way. Just good old fashioned traffic. And if you are posting on related websites then you’ll pretty targeted traffic too. Some good advice I’m going to try and make more use of. I’ve been a bit monolithic and uncreative in my strategies I’m realizing.
josh said
April 7 2007 @ 7:23 am
Also I’d like to weigh in on the “nofollow” thing. I have noticed Yahoo Site Explorer ignoring “no follow” which is kind of upsetting for me personally because I’ve been using “nofollow” to cut off the members area of my forum to stop the tons of spammers i get who join my forums just to be on the members list so they can link to crap. On the other hand I think Google really does ignore “nofollowed” links. And I’ve seen that they don’t cache my nofollowed links.. I’m not sure about MSN/Live but I would bet they don’t even know what’s going on.
But I do think Shane makes a good point in that some blogs are particularly popular in a niche and you could possibly get a lot more traffic by leaving comments on multiple posts and not only that you could really get into a working conversation with people interested in the same things as you.
I’ve got all of my blogs set up on blogger (I know.. ewwww) which really seems to stop people from wanting to comment as much. But my blogs are mostly not about SEO and stuff like that, so… In a way I think it just stops spam but I do like the way this site is set up for leaving comments much better. Much more likely to start a conversation this way.
Fashion Guy said
April 7 2007 @ 8:41 am
So more is less as usual and that sitewide links are punished?
EJ Cooksey said
April 7 2007 @ 1:50 pm
Great tip…Can’t wait to put it into action!
Will continue reading your blog for even more tips.
Thanks!
John said
April 7 2007 @ 5:43 pm
I am in the Student Loan industry http://www.studentloanfinancialgroup.com and .edu are gold for my site. I just submitted to 50 or so blogs using this idea. I will let you know how it works out.
M Georgeson said
April 9 2007 @ 1:06 pm
Nice idea – thanks
Chee Kui said
April 10 2007 @ 1:36 am
Good advice :p
And that’s what I am doing now. Haha!
Richard Hearne said
April 18 2007 @ 10:09 pm
For Google anyway NOFOLLOW == NOFOLLOW.
No juice through a NOFOLLOW link for sure.
Hobo SEO said
April 27 2007 @ 2:43 pm
Thought of this and posted a Q on Webmasterworld a couple of months back but no-one answered!
A good site you have, here
Matt Ellsworth said
May 6 2007 @ 6:49 pm
Don’t forget that technorati loves it when more blogs link to your blog as well. and technorati doesn’t care if the link is a nofollow or not.
Google will follow a nofollow sometimes from what we have seen – but whether or not they give that relevance to them in regards to PR is still up in the air.
Mark said
May 13 2007 @ 3:35 pm
This is safe strategy. But I think this is’t too risky when you will add more than 1 link per blog.
Shaun Anderson SEO » Victim of Drive-By Linking By Sharpshooter Brandon Hopkins… said
June 25 2007 @ 1:20 pm
[...] Brandon’s done it to me too. Both my sites (I don’t think he knows all of the rest [...]
Blake Cornish said
October 20 2007 @ 11:06 pm
Thanks for all the great advise and tips! I hope I can make it work for my site, http://urbandatabase.com
Fit Into Your Jeans said
January 1 2008 @ 1:03 pm
Great post. Keep up the advice which focuses on building links and traffic while still focusing on protecting the website from backlash.
eDave said
February 2 2008 @ 6:32 pm
Good tip we will put it to use as we try to build up some links for our new Man Quiz
Make Money Online with Brandon Hopkins » Using Google Alerts to Build Links and Traffic said
February 25 2008 @ 2:12 pm
[...] Every day you will get an email from every site that Google has spidered that has your keywords. Click the links, post a comment and move on. Works in conjunction with Drive By Linking. [...]
Excell said
April 13 2008 @ 11:36 pm
As always, your tips are fantastic
Make Money Online with Brandon Hopkins » Where To Buy Clean Links said
May 4 2008 @ 9:47 pm
[...] I like to get one link and go. I think a single link on one domain is just as beneficial as a site-wide link, and possibly even [...]
Adam said
January 25 2009 @ 11:42 am
this is one good idea. Theres a lot of good ideas on your site, I have been having a read through a big chunk of it today. keep it up!
Garage Sale said
August 24 2009 @ 12:11 pm
Even your links are no-follow so much for hit and runs?
Living on Dividends said
October 6 2009 @ 12:06 am
But finding related sites takes a lot of time.
I try to go for breadth at times, but mostly I stick with quality circle of related bloggers.
VitaminE said
February 2 2010 @ 3:03 am
Hi Brandon, Thank You for all the great advise and tips!
I am starting now.