By Eric Ward
April 2008

Regular readers know I've been building links since the launch of TheTitanicJustSank.com, or close to it.  This wasn't by design. I just had the bad/good luck to lose my advertising job at the right time; Early nineties.  I needed something new to do, I went to grad school, and the Internet fell into my lap.  The full story of the early years of ericward.com is yet to be written, but I hope to get to it this Summer.

The whole LinkMoses shtick was also an accident.  A few years ago someone at a conference made fun that I was still link building, like it was a disease. So I made lemonade out of the joke and turned it into a few thousand new inbound links. Don't mess with a link builder...

I've never intended to be an expert at anything, and the only reason I know so much about link building is that I had the sense or stupidity to stay focused on just that one skill as the web exploded around me.  I could have done a thousand different things, but I stayed the link building course.  I passed up a $1.5 million buyout offer from BCentral.  I ignored Overtures from Overture.  I didn't move to San Francisco, Seattle, or New York like everyone thought I should. I stayed right here in my garage office.  I didn't write a book when the publishing houses called.  Instead I kept doing what I liked. Studied web sites and links. Watched how content gets known, linked, found, by who, when, and where. I did a few industry shows back when just us geeks went. Back when real talent like Danny Sullivan was working his rear off at his kitchen table for just a couple hundred appreciative readers. Somehow my business strategy resulted in other authors writing about me in their books. Again, accidently successful. I was and remain to this day very happy doing what I do.   I hope to continue being a content publicist/link builder for many more years.   

For several reasons I'm a bit reflective right now.  I'm also worn down a bit due to criticism, some deserved and some not, from folks who have have taken issue with my contributions to several link building expert articles.  They say I don't give up any secrets.  I don't provide worthwhile advice.  My answers to link value factors questions are too vague. 

Fair enough.  This month I begin Link Building Best Practices - Q&A With Eric Ward.

I'll take questions from all comers and turn the best of them into posts where I provide my opinion on what the best practice should be for that particular topic. I don't pretend for one moment to believe that my best practices should be your best practices. I'm just using this avenue as a way to provide very specific advice and opinion developed over the course of building links for 1,000+ new and old sites from 1994 til today. Here's the link to the Link Building Best Practices RSS feed

Link well friends, 

Eric Ward