In my post from March 2009 Link building advice from 11 Experts, some real experienced professionals gave great advice on how to best gain links.

But I just stumbled across this interesting post on Keeping track of links with link building tools & spreadsheets. Anyone who ever done link building knows how important it is to keep track of URLs, anchor text, dates etc. Especially keeping track of all data is paramount during link building campaigns, when more than 1 person is working on gaining links.

The 3 link building worksheets & guidelines mentioned are as follows:

• The öntolo Link Qualification Work Sheet
• Ask Kalena link building help
• Your SEO Plan, from the book “Search Engine Optimisation an hour a day” by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin.

Additionally in the comments of Ann Smartey´s post are a couple of link building tools listed, which some of you may find helpful.

• Raven SEO tools, which also offer a 30 day free trial (you have to enter your credit card details for the trial!)
• Wordstream

And here are a couple I would like to add to the mix:

• Internet Business Promoter, which allows you to download a trial version, which is sufficient if you just work with one website.
• WebCEO, which also offers a free version for download but has some limitations of course.

For anyone pretty new to SEO and link building, this should give you a good overview of what’s available to ease some of the link building tasks for you. I am sure there are many more tools out there, feel free to share them with us!

Just a couple of weeks ago, I read Sugarrae’s interview: 11 Experts on Link Development speak out. It’s a really interesting read and covers the insights on link building resources and tips of the following whizz kids in the SEO world.

1. Jim Boykin of We Build Pages and Internet Marketing Ninjas
2. Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz
3. Justilien Gaspard, Link Columnist for Search Engine Watch
4. Michael Gray of the Graywolf’s SEO Blog
5. Rae Hoffman, CEO of Sugarrae & MFE Interactive
6. Andy Hagan who is living the dream at the Tropical SEO Blog
7. Todd Malicoat from Stuntdubl
8. Debra Mastaler of Alliance Link and the The Link Spiel
9. Roger Montti, founder and owner of Martinibuster.com
10. Aaron Wall of SEO Book and Clientside SEM
11. Eric Ward from URLwire

I like Rae’s idea to get each person to chip in a link building question, which is then in turn is answered by everyone. Nice idea!

As I am planning on having a series of interviews coming up, I may “borrow” this format!

It is also a fact that there are really no two links that are indeed the same. Therefore Wiep Knol decided to ask about 17 well known and respected SEOs to gives us their input on link value factors. This article is really interesting and outlines about 40 link factors and their importance.

The importance of each link has been rated as follows:

1. Not of any influence on the value
2. Fractional effect on link value
3. Moterate influence on the link value
4. Strong influence on the link
5. Very strong influencing factor

There is also a section on so called “dampening effects” of links that perhaps lower the strength of a link.

These factors were also rated as follows:

1. No negative effects at all
2. Slight negative effect on the value
3. Somewhat negative effects
4. Big negative effect on the link value
5. Maximum negative effect

It’s about time we had a full “bible” on link value factors.
Read it! It’s an eye opener!!