Posts tagged Link
Hands-On Tips For Link Building
Patty_Moogan at SEO Moz recently explored the difficulties SEO consultants have in setting up their clients to manage a link building program. A complex problem, many clients aren’t necessarily aware of what it takes or even where to start with such a strategy.
The first step: What are your resources and USPs?
Clients must first determine their Unique Selling Point (USP), i.e., what sets them apart from their competitors. Identifying these traits helps you identify quality links to pursue.
A good idea: don’t just use marketing materials to determine a USP. They should come from the overall company culture!
Some of the most commonly identified USPs are:
Influence – that is, staff who are well connected and may call on this network to help build a link portfolio
Products – if your site sells products like shampoo or cheap seo hosting, consider sending samples to bloggers or even donating them to gain news coverage
Discount Vouchers – yes, coupons work. If you can, use them often and responsibly.
Email Lists – email your clients to keep them interested, but only when you have something worth saying!
External Web Properties – does your company have a microsite? If not, consider using business pages on tools such as Facebook and Twitter
Existing Content – are you just sitting on great content that could be used as linkbait? If so, reuse it!
Environmentally Friendly or Charitable Causes – tout the good things your company does, it will gain coverage and get you links
Utilize Your Staff – if anyone has spare time, put them to work! There’s always something to be done in a link building campaign
Once you’ve identified your USPs, go out there and get links! First see who already inhabits the space you want. How do you do this? Google it!
Googling can open the door to guest blogging opportunities as well as white hat directories that can be utilized in a simple campaign.
When you’ve found your niche, all that’s left to do is get the links. First, identify some key players in the space you want to inhabit then utilize one of the tried and true techniques to get noticed:
Direct email: Seems spammy, but it works! Explain how you can help them and ask for what you want point blank.
Phone: Nothing works better than a human voice. You can get a quick answer and even quicker response.
Twitter: Basically, just interact with the people you’re “courting” on Twitter. Follow them, reTweet them and ask their opinions about things.
Commenting on blogs: Constructive, thoughtful blog comments, especially on an seo hosting blog, never go unnoticed. The same goes for spammy, obnoxious comment clutter.
Send others traffic: Webmasters use GA to track who’s sending them traffic…you won’t fly under the radar long with this tactic.
When one of these tactics works and you’ve got yourself in front of an influential site, start building a relationship. Keep in contact with the site owner in case you need to use them again or in the chance the link turns into some deeper business venture.
Zemanta, EightFold Logic, Whitespark, and MyBlogGuest – 4 Great New Linkbuilding Services
Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz really knows his stuff and he’s taken some time to highlight what he believes are four of the best new linkbuilding services around. In no particular order they are Zemanta, MyBlogGuest, Eightfold Logic and WhiteSpark.
There has been an influx of new services over the last few months that offer SEOs something beyond the traditional linkbuilding strategy of reverse engineering backlink profiles. Some are more service oriented while some acquire links and still others focus on visibility challenges.
Zemanta:
A unique concept, Zemanta allows users to submit content in the form of data or images and then displays the data in front of other bloggers while they write. The idea is that bloggers will be affected by the message and mention the brand in their posts, increasing brand awareness. Another thought is that direct links can be obtained as bloggers link to the content provided and still another theory is that the bloggers themselves make up a pool of direct traffickers who actually click on the links themselves.
Google’s given Zemanta the White Hat seal of approval and is now approved to appear in both WordPress and Blogger platforms. SEOmoz reported good results after using the still-being-upgraded service for the last year.
MyBlogGuest:
Ann Smarty, founder of MyBlogGuest started the service in an attempt to match up those looking to write or receive a guest blog post. It’s a simple concept but if it catches on even with a select number of powerful blogs, the number of backlinks could be tremendous.
Ann’s thought is that deep connections will emerge between users of the service and she’s so far created a simple and elegant interface. It’s hard not to be compelled, but the action items on the site are not as pared down as they could be. With a little more branding and marketing, MyBlogGuest could really take off.
EightFoldLogic:
The site’s Linker function aims to create one on one, private connections. Similar to MyBlogGuest, Linker is directed towards a broader audience and connect sites with the idea of partnership in mind. Linker’s role ends once the parties are connected, though, which leads the mind to wonder exactly how up and up the link connections are on the back end. Linkbuilding connection marketplaces are an interesting idea but like best seo hosting sites will hold little water until the sites obtain enough users to make the service valuable. On that note, Linker’s free for the first couple of months.
WhiteSpark:
WhiteSpark’s Local Citation Finder’s goal is to help identify sites that Google uses as “sources” for local map data or conversely reference several sites that rank in SERP results. As local continues to become more and more of a major player the competition for a service that provides useful data around the mysterious field will become fierce. In the future, it would be interesting to see more data about the listings provided and also some services that help SEOs manage multiple listings with a multiple host.
Thanks to Rand and Heather Hendrick for summarizing him here.
Link Profiles, Visualized
Everyone uses backlinks, as Tom_C over at SEOmoz recently pointed out, and there are seven great ways to visualize them. Link data is useful for many things like analysis, education, adjustments, and sometimes it’s just plain SEO fun.
Which Folders are Top
OSE’s top pages function is supremely useful as it allows users to see which folders and pages are linked to most often. Users can create their own subset of folders and gain data over which pages are the most popular.
Create a GEOlink Map
Create a map of backlinks that shows where your links are coming from…it’s particularly useful for analyzing competitor data and even creating marketing targets for a campaign.
Neat Tag Clouds
Wouldn’t it be cool to create a tag cloud that was shaped like something else to display your most popular keywords? Well, you can! Create a cloud based on the theme of your website for added visual interest.
Directory Links Visualized
It’s good to look at both the spammy and non-spammy links on a company’s backlink profile, and it’s almost always the case that the better links are more interesting to analyze. An interesting way to weed out any directory links from a competitors profile is to use the formula:
=IF(IFERROR(FIND(“directory”,A2),IFERROR(FIND(“directory”,B2),IFERROR(FIND(“Directory”,B2),0)))>0,”Y”,”N”)
Then create a pie chart from the data. This will tell you what kind of links make up the bulk of your competitors stash and also which of their links is worth copying.
Venn Diagrams
It’s interesting to create a Venn Diagram based on your links as well as those of your competitors. You can easily see which links you have in common and which sites’ backlink profiles are most like your own.
Broken Links?
Most easily accessed through Google’s Webmaster Tools, the Broken Links tool is helpful for figuring out which links need immediate attention. A broken link is a useless link and should either be nixed or fixed.
SEOmoz Labs Tools
These tools are helpful for identifying opportunities with new clients as well as existing ones. It can help congregate existing links, developing links, and link opportunities which are always useful for an SEO hosting company to know.
Replacing Data Lost in the Yahoo!/Bing Merger
Rand Fishkin addresses the loss to SEO data that came from the big Yahoo! and Bing search results merge last year. Yahoo! provided mounds of useful data, and the industry now faces the challenge of replacing it with something else.
Yahoo currently still retains its SiteExplorer service, but advanced commands or modified query searches no longer return results leaving webmasters unable to use advanced parameters and the data that came with them. There are lots of good replacement services, though, and we’re here to describe them.
- LinkScape Advanced Reports
Now users are able to apply filters through the UI on Linkscape and get many of the same results they could previously get from Yahoo.
- Open Site Explorer CSVs and Exporting Tools
Open Site Explorer aims for speed, so unlike LinkScape you can’t mess with filters right in the interface, rather you must import your data ready to go through an API. Conversely, when you export the data out of Open Site Explorer into an Excel or CSV, you can easily filter from there.
- Majestic SEO
Based in the UK, Majestic offers a function for backlink research through its MJ-12 tool. With the same filtering available as from LinkScape, the data here may not be as fresh as it’s tapped from different indexes, but a lot of people in the SEO hosting industry really like this tool.
- Yahoo! Site Explorer Exporter
Just like with the Open Site Explorer tool, Yahoo! offers its own export function. The major limitation is the 1000 link limit, but SEOs can get around this by requesting a search of sites with multiple pages on the same link.
- SEOmoz API
This is a really powerful tool at a reasonable price and it offers link data for up to 1 million calls per month. Open Site Exlporer, Conductor, and Hubspot are all run off this basic functionality.
- Yahoo! In Other Regions (for now)
Yahoo India and Yahoo Italy still currently serve the same search results that Yahoo US used to serve, so happy searching while the good data lasts! This won’t be around forever though as Yahoo plans a full roll out over the next 2 years.
- Other Options
Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, Exalead, Blekko, and Alexa all offer some means of tracking data previously held by Yahoo. Good luck finding what you need and let us know if you come up with other solutions!
How to Invest in a Link Building Campaign
MikeCP’s first post over at SEOmoz is rich with information about building a successful link campaign and the cost associated. We’ve summarized it for you here, so leave feedback in the comments.
Free links just don’t exist. Some cost money, some cost opportunity lost and some just cost time, but it’s important to know how to valuate any given link, especially for a small business looking to create a link building portfolio. Hypothetically, let’s say we have $2000 and 60 hours to start our link building…
Budget Set
If your boss or firm has agreed to spend money on SEO or class c hosting upfront, you’re already ahead of the game. Many people don’t understand the value, so it’s hard to get over this first hurdle in some cases. It’s important to spend this investment well so you’re gifted with more to play with in the future.
How to Spend It
The way to spend the money greatly depends on what kind of business you’re working with and what the site’s existing link profile looks like. The following questions should be answered honestly before you go about creating any kind of new link campaign:
- What have we done in the past? Exactly what are our easy opportunities to go after?
- What’s the realistic goal? Increasing conversion or rankings in the SERP results?
- What does the competition look like? What will we have to do to outrank them?
Directory Submissions:
Wasting all $2000 on spammy directory submissions would not be smart, so weigh your options here. Invest in the big guys like Yahoo.com, Best of the Web, Business.com, and JoeAnt should all be submitted to as they actually pass juice and have value. Once this is done you’ll have only about $1200 left for the remainder of your initial efforts. You should submit here if you’re not already in any of the top directories, but make sure your site is top quality so it won’t be declined. Try to submit slowly so as not to set off a link spike alarm bell…
Asking for Links:
This method is inexpensive but costs time. Having interns call or email potential sites that may provide links is a good idea, but you’ll have to train them. Give them an SEO 101 lesson and teach them the difference between a good site and a spammy one. Costs can rise if you decide to offer samples or product, so be careful. Tracking this time and money is going to be fuzzy, so keep good calculations.
Buy Links:
Tricky, but worth it in the short term. It’s likely that purchasing a few, high quality links will garner higher search rankings at least in the short term so if you have the cash and the site equity, consider it. Long term, though, this is not a good strategy.
Viral Marketing:
Garnering links the natural way, through content that’s passed around for its value is the best way to get links, bar none. It’s only going to cost as much money as you spend to create the content, and the links will be wonderfully natural and long lasting. Remember to report your results when all is said and done in the initial stages of your linkbuilding campaign!
This is not Heather Hendrick’s first article, but she summarized it for us…
PR Sculpting in Conjunctions with the First Link Counts Rule and Hash Signs
Rand Fishkin originally posted on SEOmoz about how link consolidation is the “new PR Sculpting.” We’ve summarized the response articles here and highlighted a few of Rand’s best points.
To quote Rand, “Put simply, consolidation is the practice of minimizing the number of pages that are linked to by consolidating content onto fewer pages.”
The hash tag works around the idea that a site can reduce the number of links it outputs exponentially. The hope is that Google will ignore everything that comes after the hash tag and instead assume several links are attributed to the same URL.
Googles “first link counts rule” says that it will count the anchor text of the first link but ignore all the rest. We know there to be at least two exceptions to this rule:
- if you place 2 links to the same page and one of them is the text link but the other – the graphic one, Google will count the anchor text of the text link regardless of their order;
- if you place 2 text links to the same page and the first one is nofollowed link, there may occur some problems with indexation of such a page.
The original author set up a test to see if Google in fact implies the first link counts rule when using hash tags and the results were surprising. After placing two links up on an seo server and waiting for Google to find them, Google appears to now be showing anchor text for both links, not just the first one.
Repeating the test, this time using three links, produced the same results so the question is…are hash tags the newest way to PR sculpt?
Heather Hendrick summarized this article
Make Your Own Linkbuilding Team
Rob Ousbey at SEOmoz has some thoughts about creating an internal linkbuilding team for your organization, and we’re happy to share them here with you.
Oftentimes, small to medium sized businesses rely on a very small team or even individual person to do all of their SEO work. Being on this team means part of the challenge is finding the time to linkbuild and manage a campaign effectively and often the solution is to draw from other resources within the organization rather than hire someone totally new.
People with different specialties can offer a lot to an SEO campaign, so learn how to manage their strengths in a way that benefits the goal – to build links and handle an increase in visitors to the site. In the example below, the business in question sells software to dentists’ offices and have a great deal of incoming traffic to the website.
Sales – Don’t forget that it’s possible to get links from satisfied customers and that word of mouth is some of the most effective marketing out there. Say the customer fills out a lead gen form, takes a product demo, then either buys the product or turns it down based on need or cost. Try to solicit the people who like the product but can’t buy now to put up a small review and link to the product on their company blog. Even if only 20% follow through, that’s a lot of valuable links!
Conferences – Try to get the people who attend the conferences to hear about your product (and others) to do a write up for you. Make it easier by creating a journalist and PR pack that has a wealth of information for these types of people as they often post high quality links on blogs or traditional media sites that go to your products.
PR – People in this team are already great at getting coverage so you’ll just need to teach them how to use this skill in the online arena. Have them reach out to influential sites in your industry with articles to publish or to bloggers who may want to write about your product themselves. These are high quality, natural links that do a great deal to bolster rankings.
Writers – People who write for your company are already a goldmine, so teach them the basics of SEO and set them loose. See what they can do in terms of linkbait…you may be pleasantly surprised!
HR – If you’re actively recruiting new people, include links to your site wherever you contact them. Even if they’re nofollowed, a great deal are clicked on which passes lots of linkjuice through SEO servers.
Design/Creative – If you’ve got a creative staff with time on their hands, see what they can do to create linkworthy content for you. After your company website is up to date, have them create templates to place on Design Float (with a link, of course) that could potentially be downloaded endlessly.
Outreach – If your company is involved in philanthropy or community efforts, get links where you can. If you donate to a cause, ask them to mention it and link to you on your site and likewise, if you’re hosting a charitable event, see how many links to can get from news sources reporting it.
Heather Hendrick, writer
Link Building And Dangerous Heights
Verticals may be the place to be for a particular business, but Eric Ward warned attendees at a WebmasterWorld PubCon Boston session to beware of flying too close to the Sun.
Link Building And Dangerous Heights
Editor’s Note: When it comes to SEO and SEM, one subject is almost guaranteed to draw a nice amount of conversation: link building. Many of you understand the importance of such a task and it’s always good to hear what the experts are saying. Take a look at what Mike and Dave offer and share your thoughts at WebProWorld.
Mike McDonald shared The Fear webmasters should have when it comes to building quality links for a site. Those were the topic of the session, Link Building Campaigns.
When building, beware the dizzying heights of verticals. Ward observed that the more vertical one goes when linking, the less likely the site will have a significant PageRank.
Ultimately, Ward does not worry about search engines when link building, and does not let them dictate his linking strategy. “People focus too much on what the engines think about their link,” he said.
Mike Grehan of Smart Interactive referenced Jon Kleinberg’s study on ” Hubs, Authorities, and Communities” while discussing link building. He noted as others have that link building relies on quality, not quantity.
Anchor text still matters; search engines look at that as they attempt to discern what a destination may be about. Since search engines already “know” what they think is important, Grehan thinks it’s important to use them to find authoritative link partners.
Bill Hartzer of Marketnet, Inc said the first order of business is to take care of internal links. Webmasters must use crawlable links with descriptive anchor text.
He also made note of a link to a particularly informative thread at WebmasterWorld, the sponsor for PubCon. That thread discusses link development and highlighted several tips Hartzer found useful.
The main point of link building should be to build connections with readers, not algorithms. By building an authoritative, quality site, the links will come. But they require work and commitment to get those sites to that state.
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
Link Developers and the Link Building Cycle
Better. Stronger. Faster. It’s important to constantly redefine link training techniques.
Understand the full value of links. Simplify the link value technique. After you have the fundamental understanding of placing a value on a link (which you should constantly revisit) – here’s some information to simplify it even further. I knew someday I’d have the opportunity to reference Edward Deming’s quality management ideas from my business school days.
The Quality Management Link Building Cycle
1. Build a list of potential link request sites
I’m making the assumption you know about “link building starting points” – you’ve figured out how to identify potential places to buy, borrow, beg, or barter for links (comptetitor backlinks, google directory, hubfinder, linkharvester etc. etc.) Build a list of potential candidates to audit with the rest of the cycle.
2. Pick a site from the list.
Pick your first site, and start the cycle by clicking on the site.
3. Is it a scraper site?
Yes, it is slathered with ads, and offers no real value – Return to step 2
No – Move to step 3
4. Check their backlinks – Are they legit?
**A lot of additional training time should be spent on this evaluation
1. Yahoo site explorer – handy extension
Yes, their backlinks are mainly on-topic, and there are more than a dozen decent sites linking to them. See step 4.
No, the site is brand new, has no links, or is a part of a ring of mortgage, real estate, or poker sites despite being about baby clothes. Return to step 2.
5. Outbound link evaluation.
Tool – Outbound link bookmarklet -
Installation – drag this to your browser toolbar.
Are there more than 150ish links?
Yes – Back to step 2 buddy
No – Next question
Are the outbound links on-topic?
Yes – Proceed to step 5
No – They’re all payday loans, viagra, and bankruptcy collectors – Back to step 2 chief.
6. Determine the value of the request – How much time is it worth for your e-mail?
Very strong link – take your time these are few and far between, and quite valuable. Do whatever you can to increase the likelyhood of a response, and/or successful link. Offer cash.
Strong link – Spend a little time on the site and personalize the message. Offer a donation.
Good link – Spend time on the site and personalize the message.
Meh’ link – You got this far, break out your link request draft and customize it for a quick send.
Send mail -
Back to step 2 buck-o.
Don’t Beat Your Employees
Now – if you’re an employer, please don’t expect your employees can keep up the 3 minute cycle for longer than an hour without jumping out of a 13th story window after a week. Teach them the process and reward smart people who pick it up with flex time – if you don’t, your young grasshopper will be jumping along quite shortly. There’s no shortage of jobs for good link builder/ SEO types at this point.
Let your employees spend A LOT of time reading about links and how to understand them better. The process is mundane, but the success rates improve if they understand the intracacies. Each of the six steps in the process can be studied with a level of detail that Deming would truly appreciate to improve the results of the process.
Todd Malicoat aka Stuntdubl made his first horrible looking website full of animated .gifs in 1997, and after fours years of failure and experimentation ended up in the world of SEO and internet marketing in early 2001. He is currently an independent marketing consultant from the SEO school of thought. Todd earned a bachelors of business adminstration from Northwood University in 2003 while running an web design and consulting firm Meta4creations, LLC. Todd is a speaker at both Webmasterworld and Search Engine Strategies conferences.
The Link Building – A Baker’s Dozen
We all know that one-way links from authority web sites are essential if your link building efforts are to be successful. But what does it take to get those authority sites to link to you? Well, you’ll probably guess that it is not easy – quality links don’t materialize from feeble or automated requests. To get those ever so valuable links you’ve got to adopt the right mindset – the principles that show link targets you mean business and that you’re worth linking to. Here’s my baker’s dozen…
1. Know your marketplace The majority if not all of your potential quality links will come from the online marketplace around your industry. They will be made up of information web sites, forums, associations, logs and email newsletters specializing in your industry. You really must get to know this marketplace and you must establish your position within it. To do that you must devour information: you must know the best news sites, the most popular newsletters, the busiest forums and the most popular blogs. Sign up for the newsletters, get yourself a news reader and sign up for as many useful RSS feeds as you can. These will deliver news to your desktop rather than you having to go and search for it – used well they can be a huge timesaver.
2. Obsess about your customers Get to know them inside out. Understand their stories. Statistics about customers on their own are not enough – statistics don’t give you much to use in link building. Customer stories on the other hand provide wonderful material. People are interested in other people and if you write web copy that highlights interesting stories, you’re sure to attract links. So find about your customers. What are their needs? How did they arrive at your website? What did they do when they arrived? And most importantly what did they do when they left? Did they find the answer to their problem? How did your site help them? You can start this process simply by looking at the emails you receive – reply people’s queries, enter into email conversations, probe a little deeper to find out more. Ask your customers directly to share their stories – direct requests can give you some terrific insights. You might even put a formal story gathering project in place. Whatever you decide to do, the main objective should be to add detail, opinion, examples and ‘color’ to your web copy.
3. Understand the language that your customers use Keywords are just ‘the words people use when they search’. It goes without saying that using keywords is fundamental to successful link building: there is nothing better than getting keyword rich links coming back to your site. Keyword rich links are easy when you’re buying directory listings or text link ads, or indeed when you have relationships with other sites and can ask them to link to you using your chosen keyword phrases. But there are other ways to get keyword rich backlinks. When people link, they often use the name of a product, a publication or the title of an article or blog post, as the linking text. So use keywords wherever you can in names and titles – it’s a great way to influence the words people use when they link.
4. Be wary of automation There are many link building schemes that claim to be able to build you inbound links automatically. Avoid them like the plague – they invariably involve some variation on search engine spam. Don’t waste time trying to fake an inbound link network: rather, invest your time and money in building real links from quality sites.
5. Be generous with your outbound links Giving outbound links to quality content is one of the best ways of establishing yourself in your online marketplace. But be selective with the sites you link to – don’t just link to any relevant sites you find, choose sites that have exceptional or useful content. Add some comments and descriptions as you link. The readers of your website will appreciate it and your generosity will encourage some valuable word of mouth marketing for your site. And of course, the publisher of the site that you’ve linked to will appreciate it. Think how badly you want links – other webmasters are the same and they will pay attention to sites that link to them. Your outbound links could be the start of a beautiful relationship.
6. Watch out for great content, no matter where it comes from There’s an old technique that comedy writers use. It’s called ‘switching’. The idea is to create a new joke from the basic elements of another, successful joke by switching the situation. So the basic elements of a joke about salesmen could be switched to a joke about teachers. You can do the same switching for content ideas. Take a close look at any piece of content that catches your eye – an article, a contest, a survey. Isolate the basic elements and then transfer the idea to your own industry. So Pointsec, experts in security for mobile devices does research to find the safest place to lose a cell phone. They surveyed nine major cities and found that a taxi is the safest place to lose your cell phone. The basic element of this story is to pick a fear that customers have, and conduct some research to find when the consequences are minimized. Could you adapt that to your own industry?
7. Get your message out Great content on your site is wonderful to have. But if people don’t know about it and if search engines have not indexed it, then you’ll not be getting the payback that your hard work deserves. You need to take steps to get your message out and make sure people know about it. Journalists, editors and popular bloggers get inundated with tons of information – most of it has not been edited well and contains irrelevant information. So take care when you contact them. The big mistake is to put in too much – to try to tell people everything. That will only overwhelm them: instead, stick to a single aspect of the story you have to tell. Write the absolute minimum that you need to get their attention: include a link that will take them to more information if they are interested.
8. Incorporate writing into your daily routine The more you practice the better you’ll become. The web is a text based medium. Even if you’re creating a software application or interactive content, you’ve still got to write about it, to tell people of its existence. And since it is a text based medium, you’ve got to learn how to write, clearly and briefly without waffle. Learn how to write great copy: even better learn how to write great copy that contains important keywords. And the best way to learn is to write a little bit every day – build time for writing into your daily routine. Start simply – a 100 word blog post once a day should not be beyond any of us.
9. Obsess about quality It’s not the number of links you get, or the number of articles you write or the number of pages that you publish. It’s about getting links from quality sites in your industry. Remember:
- In deciding the importance of your site and your search rankings, search engines put emphasis on the quality of sites that link to you. What could be a better source of unbiased information than a link from an article that a journalist has written and an editor approved?
- Just as important if not more so, is that quality sites will have high levels of traffic and as a result, you’ll get a lot of interested people visiting your site.
- Quality links attract other links. People see a link to your site on BBC.com. NYTimes.com, Digg.com and many others and they’ll be more likely to link to you. There is a power law at work, the strong get stronger – people with good inbound links get more inbound links without asking.
- You can also get some pretty neat testimonials – being able to write, ‘as featured on the BBC’ on your website is a valuable endorsement.
10. Build links offline It’s people who decide to give you links and the great thing about most people is that if they get to know you, they’re more than happy to help. Through comments on forums, on blog posts and the email conversations that follow, you can quickly build up contacts with people all over the world. That’s one of the great strengths of the internet. But don’t stop with just online communication – follow up and build personal relationships wherever you can – those relationships can bring you many future links. So make sure that you:
- Pick up the phone and talk to some of the people you’ve made email contact with. And with the quality of Skype calls now so good, it costs next to nothing to do.
- Attend local business meetings, whether web specific or more general from the local chamber of commerce. Funnily enough, the people who attend these meetings have websites – and if they have websites, they can give you a link.
- Attend national events – these are not only great places to learn but they are tremendous networking events. You’ll easily build contacts among fellow delegates and even among some of the speakers.
11. Monitor your results The number of links pointing to your site is not a good measure of the success of your link building efforts. A website with 100 quality inbound links will outperform a website with thousands of links from mediocre websites. And the situation is further complicated by the fact that Google does not report all the links that it knows about. So what should you do? Here are the main things I would look at:
- Appearance on the top blogs and blog search engines
- Appearance in Google news
- The sites that already link to you and drive traffic
- New sites that link to you – check your log files regularly.
12. Anticipate – be prepared for the unexpected Things are always happening in your marketplace. Sometimes a sudden development or change will catch you out and cause some real problems. Other times, changes in the marketplace can present you will a sudden opportunity. If you just react to such events, you’ll be in the mix with everyone else. If on the other hand, you anticipate events and do some basic preparation, you’ll be in a powerful position when serendipity throws you a great opportunity. So how about introducing a ‘What if?’ brainstorming session into your monthly routine? Pull your team together and ask them to imagine what might happen in your market in the next twelve months: have some fun, be as wild and imaginative as you can. Draw up a list of people’s ideas and pick the top five or so. Then ask the question, “What would we do if this actually happened?” Such an exercise will get your team focused on your marketplace and who knows how you might take advantage if one of them turns out to happen?
13. Be relentless and determined Of course, the thing about quality links is that they’re hard to get – you have to really make a concentrated effort, but the results will be well worth it. Building quality links is rarely an overnight success but there are exceptions. Sites can make a tremendous impact in a short time if they have an exceptional story to tell. But for most of us, immediate success is not usually the case. Sure, go for the spectacular if you can but treat it as a bonus. Don’t forget to stick to the task and build up quality links over time. If you start with content that is genuinely useful, and if you target sites that are real sources of information for sizable numbers of readers in your marketplace, then you will succeed and start to see powerful and sustained results in a matter of months. Tag: Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark WebProNews: About the author Ken McGaffin is Chief Marketing Officer with Wordtracker.com. He writes regularly on link building and online public relations. He is the author of the highly acclaimed ‘Linking Matters Report’. You can claim your free copy at http://www.linkingmatters.com.
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