Linking for the sake of linking

[88sahara]

I don't know if I posted this before, so forgive me if I have.

I am working on a site that has decent PR of 4 (should be 5 as soon as my 20+ backlinks get indexed). All the sites that I get to link to this site are industry sites, but I am still get murdered in the SERPS due to a few sites that have link exchanges with any tom dick or harry. I mean this site links to everything from actors, to pool supplies, to insurance.

It is hard for me to convince this client to link to other industry sites, and personally I don't like the idea of just linking to sites outside of the industry.

What do you guys do in situations like this?

I think my strategy may be better in the long haul, as Google will eventually find a way to penalize sites with thousands of arbitrary links, so in the long haul I feel that I'll be ok (but I obviously can't wait on this),

I continue to find industry sites to link to the site in question, but this approach takes a whole lot longer than just linking to 500 people willing to swap links on just about any topic. Throw in this whole sandbox issue and I don't know what is effecting what right now.

Arrggghhh!

[awall19]

if it is a business that has money to spend then random link swapping is dumb.

[awall19]

if they got money I use directories. exchange with maybe a few sites. ask a few sites for links based on the topical authorities and related pages of interest and then maybe sponsor a few sites.

you can use press releases too to get links.

[88sahara]

awall, thanks for the quick response. It just sucks watching a site at #1 with over 500 links where only about 150 are from industry related sites, while the other 350 are from total garbage.

I am definitely going the directory route right now, as they are not big on adding outbound links to their site. Oh well.

[ccb056]

can you give us a URL that we can work with, so maybe we can make a few suggestions?

[I, Brian]

If they have money, then they need to pay for a link-building campaign, IMO - that's the real core of SEO.

[mjm1905]

I see that term around often IMO. What is that?

Damn, I know I have reference to these terms bookmarked.....

[thebassman]

IMO = in my opinion.

[awall19]

IMHO = in my humble opinion. I am probably close to 2000 posts at various forums and still have no idea what a bunch of the random evil letters mean.

[mjm1905]

Yeah, seems like the AOL users got all them little shortcuts started... Makes me feel like a geezer when some kid im's me with all these letters that I cant decipher.

[ferret77]

Which photo do you think looks more trust worthy mine or I, Brian

" as Google will eventually find a way to penalize sites with thousands of arbitrary links,"

someday maybe more lilkely they will just discount them

but who knows

[mjm1905]

So where do you look into buying a link buiding Campaign I, Brian.

IMO, the ferret looks more trust worthy

[88sahara]

Discounting works just fine for me.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by ferret77

" as Google will eventually find a way to penalize sites with thousands of arbitrary links,"

someday maybe more lilkely they will just discount them

but who knows

Do you really think that Google and Alta Vista rank highly on Google because they are linked to from thousands of sites - even pages - just about search engines? Of course not! They are linked to in a rather arbitrary manner.

The only way to start discounting these links is to give a boost to "themed" links. But any accomplished SEO will be well ahead on that angle, and be able to provide link-building of themed and related content links. In fact, where I offer guaranteed ranking positions it is a standard practice. Try looking here for info on IBLN's.

As for buying link building - it should be an integral part of purchased SEO services - you usually cannot get good rankings for commercially lucrative terms without it.