Getting Links from the Top 50 Domains

The good folks over at SEOMoz have provided us with a list of the Top 500 Linked Domains according to the Linkscape index. I thought it would be interesting to start churning through the list and finding out how search marketers, spammers, etc. are finding ways to get their links on each of these incredible domains. Some of them are incredibly sneaky and blackhat (check out the Flickr and AOL links, for example).

Here is a list of the top 50 or so. (Sometimes we have to resort to subdomains)…

  1. Google.com: get in the directory
  2. Adobe.com: followed forum links
  3. Blogspot.com: If you cant figure out how to get a link on blogspot, give up now.
  4. Yahoo.com: join the directory
  5. Youtube.com: Create your own channel
  6. Wikipedia.org: Add it, it will be nofollowed, but still worth it.
  7. W3.org : Newsletter Auto-Linking
  8. Facebook.com: Facebook Apps (check out the retailer icons)
  9. WordPress.org: Write a Good Plugin (Author Homepage)
  10. Myspace.com: If you can’t figure out how to get a link on myspace, you need to give up on SEO.
    Check out the link to gamespot on this page.
  11. Microsoft.com: Amapedia FTW
  12. Macromedia.com: Get Mentioned, hard link to get
  13. WordPress.com: Create a Blog, If you can’t figure out how to get a link on wordpress.com, you need to give up on SEO.
  14. Flickr.com: Add and Edit a Comment
    Create a comment with a link in it like this… <a rel=”follow” href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>text</a>. Flickr will add a nofollow after the HREF, but the rel=”follow” will already have been parsed. Sneaky, eh?
  15. StatCounter.com: Member profile Contact Info
  16. Miibeian.gov.cn : Good luck
  17. Msn.com: Movies Search Results
  18. Apple.com: Get Written About. Yeah, this one is tough.
  19. AOL.com: Propeller cross-domain. Now that is clever!
  20. MapQuest.com : Map Listings
  21. Sourceforge.net: Forum Profile Pages
  22. NYtimes.com: It never ceases to amaze me what spammers can find.
  23. Feedburner.com: Feed Links Count.
  24. CNN.com: Create a Fan Nation Blog
  25. Free.fr: Create a Site
  26. Tripod.com: If you don’t know how to get a link from tripod, you need to give up on SEO.
  27. Live.com: Create a blog on Windows Live Spaces
  28. Go.com: Create a Sports Nation Fan Blog
  29. Addthis.com: Only nofollows from forum links.
  30. Typepad.com: Create a Blog
  31. PHPbb.com: Signature Links
  32. Digg.com: Go Popular. Write fantastic content and get on the homepage of Digg to get PR flowing links.
  33. technorati.com: Site Reactions Pages and others
  34. del.icio.us (now delicious.com): Get mentioned on the blog
  35. php.net: Become a Mirror
  36. imdb.com: make a movie or documentary
  37. about.com: followed links in the forums
  38. ebay.com: user pages have followed links
  39. rambler.ru: forum links followed
  40. blogger.com: Get into the “Blogs I follow”
  41. fc2.com: Blog
  42. joomla.org: followed links in the forum
  43. google.de: Directory
  44. creativecommons.org: Try installing ccHost and mentioning your installation
  45. Mysql.com: Forge Comments

How to Find Link Targets

I thought it may make sense to mention how to find some of these link targets. While there are some more sophisticated tools available to those willing to delve in blackhat strategies, the easiest thing to do is find out what others are doing. Let’s say your target is myspace.com

  1. Check the linkfromdomain command in Bing to find out .
  2. Then choose a domain from the list and check for links to it in site explorer from myspace. This will help you find the actual pages on myspace that link out.
  3. Then go to a few of those pages and look in the source code for examples of how that link was placed. Make sure to check for nofollow
  4. The other option is just search google for site:yourtarget.com “cheap viagra”. Chances are, if there is a hole, it has been exploited by someone promoting generic pills.

84 Comments

  1. Dave Dugdale
    Jan 11, 2010

    Not sure I understand the Flickr entry. Can you explain a little more?

    Author Note: When adding a comment to flickr, you can edit your comment after posting it. Flickr automatically adds a rel=”nofollow” to your link, but at the end of the A tag. So, write your comment with your link in it. Let Flickr add the nofollow tag. Then edit your comment and change the link code to be &lta rel=’follow’ href=’http://yoursite.com’>. When you save the comment again, Flickr will add the rel=nofollow back, but it will not remove the rel=follow which precedes it in the A-tag. If the spec is followed even remotely close, Google should accept the first use of the rel= attribute (your rel=follow) and ignore the latter one added by flickr.
  2. Dave Dugdale
    Jan 11, 2010

    Wow, very interesting! Thanks for the tip.

  3. Dave Dugdale
    Jan 11, 2010

    I think Flickr must have changed because I have tried this several times and is not working for me, Flickr removes the first rel tag each time I try this method.

  4. Dave Dugdale
    Jan 11, 2010

    Oops! It does work. I was confused because I thought you were talking about the description and not the comments. Yes, it does work in the comments.

  5. Jim Gaudet
    Jan 11, 2010

    At least someone has found that. I hope that Flickr will now fix this.

    I think I will stick to the old fashioned way of getting my links. The best I have had was from creating a WordPress plugin..

  6. Dave Dugdale
    Jan 11, 2010

    I am guessing Google will not count it, but I started a test and will report back if it works or not.

  7. RyanF
    Jan 11, 2010

    I maybe retarded but how can you get SEO links from myspace?….i guess i should give up on SEO.

    Author Note: You can start with linked images with appropriate alt text, or follow the lead by looking at these sites that have secured links from myspace
  8. Michael Martinez
    Jan 11, 2010

    Interesting list and I think the idea has some merit, but I’m not sure people should count on child inheritance from the mother domains. That would be too simple.

    These Websites offer some visibility to people, and visibility has always been important to marketing. I doubt most of them would help much with search engine optimization, though.

    Author Note: You are completely right, Michael. I should make that clear in the post – this was not so much about presenting a viable link acquisition strategy, but more about seeing the possibilities of links: from whitehat Google Directory to blackhat cross domain listings.
  9. truffo
    Jan 11, 2010

    Very Interesting, it is not possible to get a link a each Website.

  10. Mark
    Jan 11, 2010

    Great info thanks seems like this is becoming more important by the day!

  11. Koorus.org
    Jan 11, 2010

    “Blogspot.com: If you cant figure out how to get a link on blogspot, give up now.”

    ^ Now dat dere is darn funny! ^

  12. Josh
    Jan 11, 2010

    Very interesting, thank you for the information!

  13. Chris
    Jan 11, 2010

    I’m with Ryan,

    I thought all links from myspace were redirected as 302’s through the msplinks domain. Can you show me on example of a direct link (using image alt text) from an image in Myspace?

    Cheers

    Author Note: Updating the post as we speak
  14. Parthipan
    Jan 12, 2010

    Idea is good!!! But, do you think Google giving importance to comment links?

    http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

  15. Ali
    Jan 12, 2010

    Thank You, MERCI!
    Nice tips.

  16. SEO Doctor
    Jan 12, 2010

    Yer I think Flickr stopped these likes after Dave Nayor did a live example in a seminar on how to get these links.

  17. Mark
    Jan 12, 2010

    I approve of this entire post.

  18. Andrew Nattan
    Jan 12, 2010

    “IMDB – Make a movie” – Not the simplest advice ever, but full marks for logic!

    Author Note: No one said it had to be a good movie, or even an acclaimed one. In fact, it could probably be a fake one 🙂
  19. Richard Vaughan
    Jan 12, 2010

    r.e #14 Flikr: Matt Cutts has already said publicly that Google will make sure in the future that rel=”nofollow” takes precedence in links. http://www.google.co.uk/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5339458995acf256&hl=en

  20. Kieron Hughes
    Jan 12, 2010

    I think number 14 is quite a cheeky one really, and I wouldn’t do it personally. Also, Matt Cutts said the nofollow will take precedence (in future at least) – so I’m sure adding ‘follow’ to a link won’t do anything.

    I did a blog post on the nofollow exploitation last month:
    http://webtoastie.co.uk/nofollow-exploitations/

    Author Note: While I understand Google’s prerogative to give nofollow priority in a link, it is a different thing altogether to say that Google will parse broken HTML (ie: dual rel= tags) and choose to use the second instance. It may take significant changes to their parsing engine to start taking into account second instances.
  21. Remco Stel
    Jan 12, 2010

    Great post! Thank you for sharing!

  22. Maverick
    Jan 12, 2010

    hey thanks a lot for that list and tips.

  23. Richard Vaughan
    Jan 12, 2010

    Hi Author,

    Kieron already reconfirmed that Matt Cutts has said quite clearly that in instances when people attempt to confuse links by adding an additional rel attribute the nofollow will take priority, and that they will update their engine accordingly. Therefore #14 is a pointelss excercise (for building a follow link anyway)

  24. rishil
    Jan 12, 2010

    Not sure if this is valid anymore, but re: IMDB you can actually pay to create an actor profile (or used to be able to). Then link out to your “profile site”…

  25. Eryck
    Jan 12, 2010

    Thanks from France, very interesting, i hope that Stéphane will wake up and use it.

  26. webmarketing marseille
    Jan 12, 2010

    Thanks for this link, it’s very good link

  27. devno
    Jan 12, 2010

    Damn spammers are smart 🙂
    thanks for the list

  28. Pritush
    Jan 12, 2010

    i think to get site listed in google directory, site need to get listed first and dmoz and it will automatically appear there. IMO,

  29. Uttoran Sen
    Jan 13, 2010

    wow, so much of info, am sure budding new spammers will find this really helpful 😛

    some of it is good though, i mean if someone cares to put meaningful and helpful posts and replies then a backlink from the forum or a comment is well earned, but the question is, how many will do that…

    just went through most of those links and they were badly spammed 🙁

  30. Sarah Cyr
    Jan 13, 2010

    This is a useful list but I would double check that the links you are building are for pages that actually get indexed by search engines. I found many forum comments not indexed. If Google can’t find the links, it doesn’t really help you.

    Author Response: All of these were found using Bing and Yahoo, so they are at least bot accessible. While I cant be certain Google has seen all of these pages, there is nothing in the list that is blocked from Google.
  31. SEO Services Tampa
    Jan 14, 2010

    Great Post. I think no good PR website give us link in our Website.

  32. SEO Doctor
    Jan 14, 2010

    You can ensure they get picked up by linking your profiles together. Or chuck a couple of spammy links at them.

  33. SEO-Nord
    Jan 14, 2010

    Great list, thanks. Hope that people will not all walk thru this list in the same pattern now…

  34. Mikle Grig
    Jan 14, 2010

    Very interesting, thank you!

  35. Pablo
    Jan 14, 2010

    Getting in the Google directory is a good way. It can take you time, however.

  36. Abraham Williams
    Jan 14, 2010

    Has anyone accomplished all or most of these?

  37. Спасибо за статью.
    У меня маленький и узконаправленный сайт по теме аренда квартир в Кисловодске + ко всему еще и 100% он русскоязычный, но Ваши идеи мне понравились и я их попробую.
    Ждем аналогичного уровня актуальных статей.

  38. Alaev SEO
    Jan 15, 2010

    Ohm. Thanks. I would like to translate this to Russian on my blog. Topic, i think, will be more interesting to Russian-speaking users in native language.

  39. Rassa
    Jan 15, 2010

    Спасибо! попробуем!
    А как насчет ссылок с профайлов?

  40. Markus
    Jan 15, 2010

    Very good information. And really cool ways to get these links.

  41. SEO Foto
    Jan 16, 2010

    По поводу того что все сайты там иноязычные, есть англ сайты, есть на иероглифах, и др.
    Из всех 50 воспользовался всего несколькими. Завтра в вебмастере Яши посмотрю на эффект и скорость индексации!

  42. garrett
    Jan 17, 2010

    great tips, dmoz for sure takes a while to get included though, i think i’ll start in the middle and go about it randomly

  43. Website Promoten
    Jan 21, 2010

    Wow, this is an amazing list. Thank you so much, I’ll let you know if it really works after a while.

  44. Markus
    Jan 21, 2010

    Great Post.

    The link after 11) didnt work – thanks

  45. dumber
    Jan 23, 2010

    very interesting 🙂

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