A free-flow message from Jim Boykin, Internet Marketing Specialist, and CEO of We Build Pages

OK....so you Want Links...and Lots of em...from Lots of places.

Here are some choices you may be facing right now.

1. You can get links yourself.
You may want to be the one getting links for your site, because you know more about "Optimization" than anyone else on your team, but you've found that unless it's a "full time job" you're not going anywhere fast. You spend your day viewing spam emails, trying to decide if "it's a good trade" and wasting your precious time. You've got better things to do than to spend your day weeding through "link request spam" or worse yet, sending "link request spam", and finding it's not getting you anywhere.

2. You can hire an in house Link Manager, or even a Link Team.
Give them the right knowledge and the right tools, and that might help. Any company that is doing this, or considering doing this, I'd recommend you fly me out to your facility to help train your link team. Why? Because I can guide them through the "right training" and show them the "right tools" that will help ensure that their time isn't wasted sending out hundreds of emails where only 5% ever have a chance of getting a response, and then getting 5 links where only 1 have any value. If you don't give them the "right" training, or the "right" tools, you may be wasting your time, and theirs.

3. You could just buy Big Links and hope that that alone will work.
Been there, done that. It worked well once, but it doesn't work as well anymore, and it's getting worse.
Some observations: The sites that tend to rank at the top have lots of links, from lots of places (as opposed to having Tons of links from a Few places). Another thing to consider is the PageRank (PR) Distribution of your backlinks. If most of your links are coming from PR8's, 7's, and 6's....but only a few from the 4's and lower, then your PR Distribution is going to be "backwards" from what it should be in the "Natural Web" (lots of smaller links in ratio to more powerful links).

4. You could hire a Search Engine Optimization Company.
You'll certainly find "Cheaper" SEO's than us. The first thing you'll want to ask your prospective SEO company is what is their main Optimization Service. There are thousands of SEO companies that are very good at "On Page Optimization" and that's great, but there's only a small handful of SEO companies that focus on getting sites links, and far fewer who go beyond "link trades" or "buying Big links". If you know you Need Links, and you're prospective SEO company doesn't sound like they are aggressive in getting you those links, then they may not get you anywhere.

5. You could Hire Us to get you Text Link Advertising.
I believe that our solutions are the best in the world. Read on.

We are Serious about Link Advertising...Very Serious
We believe that obtaining links to your website is the most important aspect of any search engine optimization campaign.

Let me tell you a bit about our company and our focus.

• Our Specialty is Internet marketing services, which encompasses many areas....pay per click (PPC), shopping feeds, SEO, email, link advertising, directory submissions, etc.
  
• Our specialty inside of Internet marketing is search engine optimization - That is our focus of services...in fact, over 90% of our business is from optimization services, with about 5% being PPC, and 5% being website design services.
  
• Our specialty inside of search engine optimization is obtaining links. In fact, about 90% of our work involving search engine optimization services involves obtaining links.....why? Well, we feel that links is about 90% of the factors involved in your rankings in the major search engines. That's why we focus on LINKS.

History First:
Before I get on to what services we can specifically offer when it comes to links, I need to explain to you where we've been and where we are, as far as our style of getting links.

A few years ago we were big into the link trading business.....hey, you link to me, I link to you, and we're both happy....we loved it...webuildpages.com was an "8", we had over 100 clients with "7"'s and we'd trade, trade, trade....and yup, we racked up a lot of links. Everyone wanted to trade with us, and our clients...in fact, so many that we got more spam than fish in the ocean....we'd spend our time reviewing link offers and responding to email saying "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, YES, no, etc...."

After about 6 months of link trading, we dropped out of that "game" for several reasons. We don't do link trades very often today. Maybe one out of every 20 or so links is an exchange, but only if it seems really relevant to trade for one reason or another.

We moved from Link Trading on to buying "Powerful Advertising Links".We bought them for us, we bought them for our clients, and everything worked nicely for a while. Later we started to see "PR filters", and questions of "what counts" and "what doesn't". (Don't trust the Toolbar....you're a puppet on a string if you're believin' what its showin' you!).

Like link trading, once "Buying PR" got abused, some search engines started to take, and are still taking, action.

So where do we stand?

We like Quality links....let me rephrase that...Lots of Quality Links.

We believe this is the way of the Natural Web. We believe as engines get smarter and smarter, linking structures that look "natural" will "win out"....we try to mimic the "natural web" with our linking strategies.

So the big question you're wondering is "What's your definition of a "Good Link?". To answer that question, I'll show you our process of obtaining links.

We identify possible Authority sites and Hubs in your industry.
We've created our own program that we use in house (not released to the public) which searches a major engine for the top results. It then looks at what sites link to 3 or more of those top sites. It then goes to every site and checks a few factors that returns us a short list of possible "authority" sites. (for example, DMOZ often show up as a Hub because the Homepage is Very Powerful, and often many of the top sites have links from DMOZ. We run this report covering main keyword phrases for a business, and adding to our list of Hubs and Authorities for your industry.

Below is a Screen shots of our internal Authority and Hub tool (only a screen shot - won't work for you...sorry).

Authority Tool

Type in a search phrase. We will find Google's top 15 results for this phrase. For each result we will find backlinks. Then we will issue a report with the high-value sites that link to multiple top results for the search phrase.

Here's an example of the results we get:

Top 15 results for search: weight loss

1 http://www.freeweightloss.com/
2 http://www.free-weight-loss-resources.com/
3 http://weightloss.about.com/
4 http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/nutrit/nutrit.htm
5 http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/nutrit/pubs/wtloss/wtloss.htm
6 http://www.weight-loss-institute.com/
7 http://www.practicalweightloss.com/
8 http://weightloss4u.hypermart.net/
9 http://www.dwlz.com/
10 http://www.weightlossforgood.co.uk/
11 http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/
12 http://www.thecolumn.org/
13 http://www.annecollins.com/
14 http://www.weightlossguide.com/
15 http://weightlossinternational.com/

Possible authorities:

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dmoz.org

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www.att.net

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www.globallifestyle.net

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www.selfgrowth.com

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weight-loss.udub.com

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directory.dominion-web.com

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store.yahoo.com

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www.incywincy.com

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www.practicalweightloss.com

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www.specialneedsfamilyfun.com

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dir.nodeworks.com

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www.slider.com

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www.yahoo.ca

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www.miragorobot.com

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www.ebiztechnet.com

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www.bizeurope.com

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www.excite.it

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www.jsurfer.org

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www.directory.net

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www.alldietsource.com

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linkcentre.com

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linkspider.co.uk

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We then start making a list of those Hubs and Authorities for use in our email program by exporting the site list each time we run this program. (I'll talk about the email program later)....but we start by finding Possible Authority and Hub websites in your industry, and making a list of them.

Why?
There are some in this industry that feel that a top rankings can be achieved without obtaining thousands of links, but rather by having the "Right" links from the "Right" places. These Authorites and Hubs could be the exact right places.

Now what?
Next we look at who links to your competitors.
This is an ideal place to see who might link to you as well.

Here's how we find who's linking to your competitors.
First, we look at one of your main phrases, and we find your competitors for that phrase (not all of the Top 10 are your competitors. An example of someone who's not your competitor - if an Amazon page ranks in the top 10 for your phrase you're targeting, they are not a competitor).

We find your top competitors, and we look at everyone who is linking to your competitors, then we narrow that list down to "who's linking to more than 1 of your competitors". If a site is linking to more than one of your competitors, then there's a good chance that they will link to you too.

Check out how our program works. Here's an example below:

Results that are generated:

Sites

Common Links

We export this site list, then we add these URL's to THE LIST. We may run a few more competitor reports, depending on your markets, and we add these URL's to The List.

We've now got a pretty big list comprised of Possible Authorities and Hubs, as well as lots of sites that are linking to your competitors. That's a good start.

Now we go over to our We Build Pages Link Request Email Program.
I should mention that we've worked with all types of Link Finding and Request Programs that are on the market, and they all seem to have their "small faults". If you want, you can see a list of these programs in our Internet Marketing Store Page.

We took the best of the ideas of the current popular, and not so popular, linking programs and made OUR OWN....I may be biased, but I think ours is better than all of them...and NO, we don't sell it....I like the advantage we have by owning this ...let me show it off to you...

We can find places by either uploading THE LIST we've created....OR, we can search for sites like this:

We can choose any phrases we want, and combine it with any of the drop down search phases.
Now what our tool does is to scan the search results. In the case of the example, it's going to search for "SEO Forms " in combination with one of the drop down searches. From the search results, our email program will find email addresses and pages that rank for that combination of phrases.

Once we've uploaded our list, or done a search, we're presented with a page filled with lots of these for lots of sites:

At the bottom of the long page filled with lots of email letters like above, there is a button for:

When we click on that button, this program goes to each email that we checked off, one at a time, and sends it out, one email every 3 seconds. Then we're presented with a page that has all the emails and letter we sent for our records.

Be aware that Before we send ANY emails we VISIT THE SITE IN QUESTION, and PERSONALLY EVALUATE the value of pursuing a link on that site. Including the SPECIFIC PAGE we are requesting a link from. We also edit the email....computer generated emails are never accurate, they all need that personal touch to make it "right". On a side note, our first language is English...in fact, that's the only language we speak. (We're an American Company, located in Upstate New York).

Is Value Just PageRank?
NO! Perhaps it's best to tell you what's Not Value in our opinion.

• If the site looks like "Link Spam Junk City" linking in and out with "anybody".
• If the site we're requesting a link from doesn't look like there's any relation to the site we're seeking to get links to.
• If the page where we'd want our link to be placed is buried so deep in the site that the value is near none.
• If the page in question has LOTS and LOTS of links. We understand that the Value of a link is "the power of the page" divided by the number of links going out from that page.
• Or any one of hundreds of other little things that can "tick us off" about a page.

Here's an example of one of our emails that are sent out:

Subject line: Not your average link request - Real Value

Hi Paul,
I found this page http://www.widgets-widgets.com/widget-car-resources.htm and I have a resource that would go good on that page. Our resource is at http://www.car-widgets.com, and, in my opinion, this link would compliment your page.

To thank you for linking to us, I can link to your site on our other widget related site on this page http://www.relevant-cars.com/resources.htm

If you'll agree to this advertising exchange let us know. If you'll use the following HTML code that'd be great.

<Suggested HTML Code for them to use>

Thanks for your time Paul,
Judy
Judy@car-widgets.com

The letter above is just an example of what we'd write. Sometimes the email contains several deals, and sometime we can give them "Powerful" links, in exchange for a bunch of advertising on their site....every letter and every "trade" is unique, and personal, and yes, we've visited the site, and found some type of relevance for wanting our clients link there. We get tons of "Spam link trade emails" all day long, and we know how to spot them a mile away, and we know that the people we're sending our request to can spot "link request spam" a mile away too...so we do things to make our request stand out, be short, simple, unique, worth it to them (clearly), and worth it for us.

You may have noticed in the letter above that it wasn't a direct link trade. We were offering to link to them from another related site. That "other site" is going to be "another REAL site" ...not some "Throw away site" or "junk site"...a REAL site. We don't own, nor do we work with any junk sites. In our own "inventory" of clients sites, and our own sites, we have many that are willing to Give links to Get links (still not recip links) There's a good chance that we have some Real Pages on Real Sites, that we can use to offer these other sites in exchange for them linking to Your Site.

We usually sweeten up the deal, by offering them a Better Link, than what they are giving us. Why? Because we've got the Inventory, and it helps us to close more Advertising Deals.

Let's talk a little bit more about the emails we send. Everyday we get Junk Link Requests in our inboxes.....If you have a website, you do too....that comes from too many people abusing email harvesting programs and sending out thousands of link request to people where they offer to put your link on their Junk buried page with hundreds of other Junk links...we hate these emails, and we know you do too. We don't send our email to places where we don't think they'll link to us, or where we don't feel there is value, it's wasting our time, and their time. Our job is not to send out 1000 email link requests only to get back 50 "Yes's" where 49 of those are Junk links, and one person was just stupid. Our job is to send out 50 emails to 50 good places where we feel there is a chance that they'll link as requested.

Another great advantage of working with us is our partners.
We've partnered with a few other Large SEO Firms that work with lots of clients. We help their sites to get links, and they help us get links. You'll find that many SEO companies will not make public their list of clients. They do however realize that if We Build Pages has a lot of sites that are willing to advertise links, and they have a bunch of sites that are willing to advertise links, then it's in both our interest to trade some advertising between us. It's certainly faster to send one email with 200 link requests from 200 sites, rather than sending 200 separate emails to 200 different people. Our network of SEO companies makes a big difference in the speed and quality of links we can obtain.

So you think you know your "Link Goal"....you think
You may be used to doing things like looking at Google Backlinks (Stop doing that), or by even being clever, and checking Yahoo's backlinks....you may even be using one of our tools, like the Top Analysis Tool. These tools/tricks may look really cool, but they're only showing you Part of the Story.

Say your competitor has 1000 back links...pretty impressive right? What if those 1000 links are only coming from 10 websites (where each site is giving 100 links) are you still as impressed? You might be suprised at comparing the Number of Different Places that links may be coming from. Not everyone may agree with our philosophy, be we feel that fewer links, coming from more sites, can do better. We feel a "truer" measure of Links is found in the number of unique sites that those links are coming from.

Beyond the methods mentioned on this page:
We've also got a few other programs, and "groups" we belong to, along with a handful of linking methods I'm going to leave off this page...but the moral of all this is that we've got some pretty awesome tools and resources for getting links....eneough so that we don't have to get junky links...we can choose wisely, and help ensure a better tomorrow for our clients.

So that's what we do, how we do it, and what we cost. I have complete confidence in our team, our tools, and our methods. If you want to try to be a bigger part of the Natural Web, a little aggressively, let us know, we're that solution.

Now...on to the prices: ***Updated 11/25/04 **

Prices: $1000 per 10 relevant links achieved.
These links are designed to be *permanent, and are guaranteed to be live for at least 1 year (or we'll replace with other links for you free of charge). All links will come from different IP addresses and will carry relevance to your sites' topic. These will be One Way Links, not reciprocal.

You amy also want to explore our Directory Submission Services which costs $1000 per 20 Directories submitted to. Up to 80 Directories.

Jump right to our contract and see some of the cutting edge services we're offering. We can put together a great winning package for your site. Check it out, and contact me. I'll talk with you to find the right services for the right results for your sites.