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)…
- Google.com: get in the directory
- Adobe.com: followed forum links
- Blogspot.com: If you cant figure out how to get a link on blogspot, give up now.
- Yahoo.com: join the directory
- Youtube.com: Create your own channel
- Wikipedia.org: Add it, it will be nofollowed, but still worth it.
- W3.org : Newsletter Auto-Linking
- Facebook.com: Facebook Apps (check out the retailer icons)
- WordPress.org: Write a Good Plugin (Author Homepage)
- 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. - Microsoft.com: Amapedia FTW
- Macromedia.com: Get Mentioned, hard link to get
- 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.
- 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? - StatCounter.com: Member profile Contact Info
- Miibeian.gov.cn : Good luck
- Msn.com: Movies Search Results
- Apple.com: Get Written About. Yeah, this one is tough.
- AOL.com: Propeller cross-domain. Now that is clever!
- MapQuest.com : Map Listings
- Sourceforge.net: Forum Profile Pages
- NYtimes.com: It never ceases to amaze me what spammers can find.
- Feedburner.com: Feed Links Count.
- CNN.com: Create a Fan Nation Blog
- Free.fr: Create a Site
- Tripod.com: If you don’t know how to get a link from tripod, you need to give up on SEO.
- Live.com: Create a blog on Windows Live Spaces
- Go.com: Create a Sports Nation Fan Blog
- Addthis.com: Only nofollows from forum links.
- Typepad.com: Create a Blog
- PHPbb.com: Signature Links
- Digg.com: Go Popular. Write fantastic content and get on the homepage of Digg to get PR flowing links.
- technorati.com: Site Reactions Pages and others
- del.icio.us (now delicious.com): Get mentioned on the blog
- php.net: Become a Mirror
- imdb.com: make a movie or documentary
- about.com: followed links in the forums
- ebay.com: user pages have followed links
- rambler.ru: forum links followed
- blogger.com: Get into the “Blogs I follow”
- fc2.com: Blog
- joomla.org: followed links in the forum
- google.de: Directory
- creativecommons.org: Try installing ccHost and mentioning your installation
- 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
- Check the linkfromdomain command in Bing to find out .
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
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While I recognize and commend you for this post and strategy, the problem is for every site that uses this approach properly and on behalf of quality content, thousands of junk sites with no redeeming value will use these same tactics as well. Link chasing from high power domains goes back to pre-engine days, when you did for potential traffic. Now, due to rank chasing, all high power domains are under fire 24/7 from the link spammers. I’d augment what you’ve outlined here with an extremely vertical approach, identifying industry specific venues where links can be “earned”, rather than “snuck in the backdoor”.
great list! seem to have a lot of complainers, but I bet most of them are trying first
the list ROCKS !
plz keep similar lists coming
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Author, thank you for the great article!
Do you think links from Blogspot.com, WordPress.com and other free site/blog hosting services mentioned above are worthless and sketchy?
I think link building is killing content, i think today as search engines have given so much importance to backlinks that webmasters spend most of their time in link building.I have a gamessite with retro games and puzzles, i had worked hard to get quality games but my site gets very few hits , on the other hand sites with traffic trade concept which keep transferring users from one site to other make good money and get good traffic,google must now stop giving importance to links and put it back on content.
Good tips
@Eric Ward: Definitely true, although the spammers do it the dumb brute force approach. More subtle, providing real value, there is no need to sneak in your link, you can take the front door 😉
Intresting, very helpful. Thanks for the great list!
Thanks for this links!
Oui ce post dit de choses vraiment cool. Car de toute façon plus tu postes de liens sur des sites plus tu as de visite. Car il n’y a pas que google dans la vie combien de fois tu as cliqué sur un lien sur un article qui vous éloigné de ce que vous cherchiez… n’est pas le but d’ailleurs, le jeu, et l’intérêt du web…
Super article bien vue…
I actually have an easier way to get a link from IMDB. Just right an external review for submission.
I’ve written an explanation on the process here:
How to get backlinks from IMDB
Thanks for list though, really excellent
Great post, I think it’s a great place to get external links just as a base for your SEO. However, I noticed that the MySpace link with Gamespot that you referenced is only working because it was done in August of 2006 just before myspace started using msp links in 2007. Today that wont work. Unless there is something in the source code that I am missing. Am I right or wrong?
How can we get on the Mapquest listings ?
My business is in France.
“IMDB – make a movie” – you don’t have to actually make a movie, you can put your movie into either “development” or “pre-production” and still get the link.
Not sure you will get much seo value doing this, however use this strategy and try and get you links in places of high discussion, so more people will click your links and get you targeted traffic.
And now, I suppose we should also add this comment box in the Top 51 domains 😉
That is great guide, not easy but if any one would like to have good PR have to try…. thanks to share
Thank you for this info. After having just created a new website a couple of days ago, doing a sitemap, pinging, etc… I hope to be able to use this to get Google to see my site.
This article helped us a lot. Thank you for writing!
IMDB: Take old movies, the PR is often better 🙂
Propeller allows to include several links in profile. Great tips.
It seems that Flickr has fixed most of the dofollow trick , although you can still get a nofollow.
Some really great tips and tricks in this article to boost your PR and search engine rankings, thanks for sharing it has been really useful.
Thanks for this list. Great read!
Isn’t it easier just to write some posts in the blog of imdb instead making a movie? I think those links are also dofollow ones.
Isn’t chasing links for links sake a bit outdated? Surely a link on a page not in any way related to your site isn’t worth that much? Maybe I’m wrong – discuss. lol :o)
Author Response: While the issue is up for debate, I agree with your first statement and disagree with your second. First, you are right, many of these links are valueless – PR0 orphan pages that will never pass on any real juice. At most, it may help with some form of trust-rank measurement by being closer to the source of trusted domains, but aside from that I doubt they would do any good. However, links from related pages are not the only ones you should acquire – certainly Google wouldn’t ignore a link from the BBB or from businesses that use your services (ie: a restaurant client that links back to your tax company’s website). Google’s algorithm attempts to measure both relevance and popularity. There is no reason to avoid a link simply because it doesn’t meet both criteria simultaneously.
Some great sites there but would surely a link from a site thats is not in anyway relevant to the site its linking to would be considered as spam? For instance a link from adobe forums to a site about holidays in Spain. Just a thought??
The directory of Google and the forum of Adobe doesn’t exist anymore
Quite a few good ones, some are nearly impossible but a twisted and creative mind will make it.
Maybe you should update this list in a new post for the 2012 linkbuilding strategies. Some of them are working anymore or became worthless because of Google devaluating the links coming from the websites.
Nice list but how many are still working today? And I disagree with Iano. Many people put few links in their forum signature which are not relevant with the forum itself and it’s not spam.
good stuff, link building may kill content if you make it bad, just depends by the use you think.
Great set of links, still very relevant and useful.
Excellent sharing. How to get links from .edu domains? appreciate your help!
You should do broken link building – http://www.brokenlinkbuilding.com
Replying to the last comment, obviously if you create a blog specifically for SEO then those free links will be useless, but if you have a blog for users that actually generates traffic and gains links then the power of those links become huge!
Was searching for so long for a list like this, thanks a lot!
Thanks for the List
Thanks for list. Great sites.