List of High Quality Resources for Link Building in 2011

Search Engine Blogs

• Official Google Blog
• Official Yahoo! Search Blog
• Official Bing Search Blog
• Official Ask.com Blog

Great Link Building Articles

• Your Roadmap to Ranking #1 in Google – Things to consider when building links to your website, what you really want and need. (Published February 10, 2011)
• 21 Advanced Link Building Strategies – Here is a non-numbered list of different link building strategies. (Published February 27, 2011)
• Deep Link Building Strategies (Published June 29, 2010)
• To Buy Links or Not to Buy – That is the Question (Published by Merle’s Cyber Promotions)
• How to Get More Link Juice – Here is an article with good visuals to help you learn how to gain more link juice. (Published July 15, 2010)
• Links Are Good for Business (Published by Scottie Claiborne)
• Link Building Q/A with Industry Experts, 2010 – Hear what industry experts have to say about link building. (Published July 7, 2010)
• One Way Link Building Secures Long Term Ranking Results (Published by Daria Goetsch)
• Rand Fishkin Bought Links and they worked – Here is an article that includes a 3 experiment video hosted by Rand Fishkin. (Published June 24th, 2010)
• The Importance of Building a Natural Link Profile – Website link building is essential to getting found in SERP’s, here are good tips to make it look natural. (Published July 18, 2010)
• How to Balance Link Diversity, Velocity and Volume – Learn ranking factors and how to manage your websites links. (Published March 13, 2008)

Google Algorithm Articles

• Playing Nice with Panda – How to Take Advantage of Latest Google Update (Published April 6, 2011)
• Google Panda Farmer Update – Detailed article on what the Panda update with details on how to track information and update your website. (Published March 10, 2011)
• Google Announces User Generated Filters for Unwanted Search Results – Now internet users can filter their search results using this cool new feature. (Published March 11, 2011)
• Finding Higher Quality Sites in Search – Changes made to search algorithm to provide searchers with what they are actually searching for. (Published February 24, 2011)
• Google Search and Search Engine Spam – Here is a post on Googles Official Blog that speaks in detail about webspam and what action is being taken. (Published January 21, 2011)
• Google Pagerank Update October 2010 Explained – . (Published October 2010)
• Treating Customers Poorly is Bad for Business – Algorithm Update – Algo update due to NY eye glasses merchant was rude to customers that incited them to review his company more often online. (Published Dec 1, 2010)
• Google May / June PageRank Update – May of 2009 Google began updating their toolbar PR. (Published June 25, 2009)
• PageRank Update Dec 32, 2008 – Confirmation tweet by Matt Cutts on Google PR update. (Published December 31, 2008)

Link Bait & Viral Content Link Building

• More Guidance on How to Create High Quality Content (Published May 6, 2011)
• Step By Step Guide for Content Types
• Content Great, Big or Just long – Quality VS Size
• Enough with Content Rules, Where Do You Get the Content From (Published April 11, 2011)
• Why Quality Is The Only Sustainable SEO Strategy (Published March 28, 2011)
• Get Hundreds of Links to Your Next Blog Post, Guaranteed(Published March 14, 2011)
• A Model For Link Building: Beyond “Great Content” (Published March 15, 2011)
• 17 Ways to Increase Links to Your Link Bait Content – Entice online users to link to your companies web content. (Published by Garrett French)
• 22 Link Bait Headlines Anyone Can Use – Here are some great starter ideas to get the link bait ball rolling. (Published March 11, 2010)
• The ELements to Create Link Bait Success – Very informational article that still holds true today for link bait. (Published September 23, 2009)
• Link Building vs Content Promotion for Links – How link building and content promotion work together to create more backlinks. (Published August 2008)
• Link Bait Tips – 3 Good and 3 Bad (Published February 24th, 2010)

Guest Blogging and Social Media Link Building

• 8 Reasons to Start Guest Blogging
• 3 Limitations on Guest Posting’s Scalability for Link Building
• 5 FREE Social Media Monitoring Tools
• Are There Social Media Best Practices?
• Beginners Guide To Optimizing Social Media Channels
• Eight 2011 Link Building, SEO, PPC and Social Media Resolutions to Make 8 Resolutions to make in 2011 when working with your SEO Agency. (Published on January 3, 2011)
• Twitter and Facebook Affect Google and Bing Search Rankings (Published December 7, 2010)
• 65 Great Social Media Infographics – Here are 65 great social media infographics. (Published January 30, 2011)
• How Social Media Can Assist Link Building Campaigns – Good visual article that references how social media can assist in your link building campaign. (Published November 16, 2010)
• 29 Ways to Find Guest Blog Opportunties – Use unique search terms to find places to guest post. (Published November 24, 2010)
• Article Marketing vs Guest Blogging – The comparison betweet articles and guest posts. (Published October 2010)
• Guest Blogging Guide – This article touches on why to guest blog, where to start and how to move about the process. (Published by PiggyBankPie)
• The Social Media Revolution Is Forever Changing the Way We Do Business – Social media has had a lasting impact on how online businesses target their audience. (Published by Michael Jon Lazar)

Archived Link Building

• A Link Is A Reference And What It Is For Us – Just how valuable are some links to you? (Published on 11-17-2006)
• 5 Facts on Link Building – A good article if you are new to link building (Published on 06-15-2006)
• Website designers want searches to work for free – A couple things to point out. First this is USA Today talking about search but more importantly it’s an article with interviews of people in the industry all saying the same thing – if you want good rankings you need links (Published June 14, 2006).
• Link Building Guide  – Great guide for link building (Published June 5, 2006).
• Natural Link Acquisition – Oilman’s take on link building. Tip – it must appear natural (Posted on 12-01-2005).
• Link Baiting – An article about link baiting (Published on 02-13-2006).
• Too Many Links? – Has links to some very good podcasts on link building (Published on 03-09-2006).
• Article on Link co-citation – How link co-citation can affect your SEO (and link building) efforts (Published on 03-15-2006).
• Proper Link Requests – Providing suggestions for email subject lines that get noticed and get responses (Published on 04-05-2006).
• I Am Not a Link Communist – Great article from Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl.com (Published on 04-06-2006).
• E-Zine Article – Tips for building inbound links (Published 04-17-2006).
• How to Get the Links You Need – Doing the Math on Link Building – Yet another great article by Stuntdubl. Maybe you don’t need as many links as you think? (Published on 05-10-2006).
• The 5 minute Link Value Test – 6 Link Quality Indicators – Some common ways to find the value of links from Stuntdubl (Published on 05-10-2006).
• Preventing Link Popularity Leakage – Not strictly link building however it does show how to maximize your link popularity inheritance from the home page (Published on 05-10-2006).
• News.com Article Discusses new laws which, among other things, may hold site owners legally (and likely criminally) responsible for outgoing links (Published on 05-16-2006).
• Thinking (a lot) about linking – A good article that touches on many aspects of how site interlinking works (Published on 05-30-2006).
• E-Zine Article – Link Building Article (Published 05-30-2006).
• Nofollow No Good – Jeremy Zawodny raises some interesting points about the effectivness (or lack thereof) of the nofollow attribute (Published 05-30-2006).
• Link Development Tools – A great one-stop-shop for a variety of link building tools, tips and tricks (Published on 07-25-2005).
• Web Links from the Search Engine’s Perspective – Barry Swartz aka Rusty Brick provides his ideas on link building (Published on 11-04-2004).

Backlink Analyzers

• OpenSiteExplorer – A popular choice for analyzing backlinks. OSE has its on crawl data and doesnt rely on other backlink sources such as Yahoo Site Explorer, which only shows limited Data.
• MajesticSEO – Another popular choice for analyzing backlinks. Majestic has its own crawl data.
• Yahoo Site Explorer – Allows users to check incoming links to websites and specific pages.

Rank Checking/Tracking Tools

• Advanced Web Rankings – Windows based software for checking rankings. One of the most fully featured on the market
• Rank Tracker by Link-Assistant – Another popular Windows based rank tracker.

Pagerank Lookup/PageRank Tools

• PrProwler – Prprowler is another really great link analysis tool. Allows you to quickly analyze, collect info, and sort backlinks from your competitors and from analysis of top ranked sites for particular keywords.

Class C IP Tools

• WebrankInfo Class C checker – Allows you to check if some sites are hosted on the same Class C IP Range.

Keyword Research and Management Tools

• KeywordSpy Very popular tool for researching keywords. They maintain a huge database of millions of keywords and track where websites rank for those keywords. Great for competitive research.
• SEMRush Similar to KeywordSpy and just as popular.
• SpyFu Similar to KeywordSpy and SEMrush
• Wordstream Keyword Management Online tool that helps you research and organize your keywords. Great for SEO/SEM companies that deal with lots of keyword lists. Helps with keyword discovery, keyword grouping, keyword organization, keyword analytics, search marketing work flow, with the ability to act on keyword data for PPC and SEO.
• Keyword Search Volumes – Provides keyword data using Wordtracker and Google search results.
• Word Tracker – Probably one of the oldest and most well known keyword research tools. Requires paid subscription

Firefox Extensions

• SearchStatus Plugin – SearchStatus gives you Pagerank, Alexa, Compete right in the status bar of firefox, it also provides links to find backlinks and other stats for a domain/page in Google, Yahoo, MSN.
• SEOBook’s SEO for Firefox – A great plugin that allows you to see a ton of data about sites inside of Google or Yahoo Search.
• RankQuest SEO Toolbar – Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 25 intuitive SEO tools.
• SEO Keyword Competition Research – Gives you backlinks number, indexed pages, keyword occurences on the page, page rank and more.
• SEO Tools – Collection of useful SEO Tools
• SEOpen – Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization and link building.
• SEO Bar – Another SEO Toolbar.
• a4seo – Use to examine a site’s backlinks.
• FireBug – Tool used to pick apart web page coding.
• NoDoFollow – Highlights no-follow links pink to easily determine what is follow and what is no-follow.

PageSpeed Testing

• Test the load time of a web page – Test Now
• Google Suggestions to Speed Up Page Loading Time – Test Now

Link Building Tool Directories

• These are some of the best papers published by students, individuals and employees of major search engines.
• The Anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine – The definitive paper on how Google works (pdf)
• Who Links to Whom: Mining Linkage between Web Sites (pdf) – From Google Labs
• Improved Algorithms for Topic Distillation in a Hyperlinked Environment (1998) (pdf) – From CiteSeer (Penn State)
• Efficient Identification of Web Communities (2000) (pdf) – Discusses using links to find communities of sites
• Fast Parallel PageRank (pdf) – A new method for improving PageRank calculations
• Informational Retrieval Based on Historical Data
• The Pagerank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web
• Topic-Sensitive PageRank – A Context-Sensitive Ranking Algorithm for Web Search
• Link Based Spam Detection – Yahoo Patent

Link Building Books

• Amazon Link – Marketing Through Search Optimization: How to be found on the web (Paperback) by Alex Michael, Ben Salter 2003 – 264 pages
• Amazon Link – Search Engine Visibility (Paperback) by Shari Thurow 2002 – 320 pages
• Amazon Link – Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization (Paperback) by Andrew B King – 2003 – 528 pages
• Amazon Link – 101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site : Filled with Proven Internet Marketing Tips, Tools, Techniques, and Resources to Increase Your Web Site Traffic (Paperback) – by Susan Sweeney – 2004 – 460 pages
• Amazon Link – Search Engine Advertising : Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (Voices That Matter) (Paperback) – by Catherine Seda – 2004 – 368 pages
• Amazon Link – Guerrilla Marketing for Free: Dozens of No-Cost Tactics to Promote Your Business and Energize Your Profits (Paperback) – by Jay Conrad Levinson – 2003 – 188 pages
• Amazon Link – Google Hacks : Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching (Hacks) (Paperback) – by Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest – Computers – 2004 – 443 pages
• Amazon Link – How to Do Everything with Google (Paperback) by Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen – 2003 – 350 pages
• Amazon Link – Search Engine Optimization : An Hour a Day (Paperback) – by Jennifer Grappone, Gradiva Couzin – 2006 – 312 pages
• Amazon Link – The ABC of SEO (Paperback) – by David George – 2005 – 172 pages
• Amazon Link – Search Engine Optimization for Dummies (Paperback) – by Peter Kent – 2004 – 384 pages