Link Building
and Online Content Publicity In 1994...
We had a very
narrow set of tools and tactics, and venues. There were just a few
search engines and directories, like Yahoo,
and a few places where people could announce web sites, like the NCSA
What's New page and Open
Market's What's New. There was no "link analysis", link popularity
or Pagerank, because there was no Google. Online public relations
was only practiced then by a few like myself,
Larry Chase, MMG. On dail-up on 14.4 modems.
Link Building and Online
Content Publicity In 2007...
We have hundreds
of
different types of web based tools and tactics for building links, publicity,
and "buzz". Aside from the typical links page, we have blogs, social
bookmarking, social networks, tagging sites, collaborative popularity harvesters
(digg, newsvine), toolbars and plugins (stumble upon), press release
services, web directories, link buying services, reciprocal link management
tools. And, we have sites being penalized for linking tactics they didn't
realize were dangerous, and we have companies all over the world claiming
expertise and selling linking related services which are 100% useless.
What
tactics are effective? What should you believe?
1). You now have
two core audiences
for your links
•
People
who can click them
•
Search Engines that
count, analyze and judge them
Currently, most people
seek links hoping the search engines will reward them for those links with
higher rankings. While this is potentially true, not every
site should approach link building the same way, and the overwhelming majority
of sites are pursuing ineffective linking strategies.
2). There are really
only five things
any link can accomplish for your site
•
A link can help with direct click traffic
•
A link can help your search rank
•
A link can do both
•
A link can do neither
• A link
can anger the SE gods
Links that improve search engine rankings
will be links that the engines feel are a trustworthy indicator of quality.
These can/will be different for every site.
3). Effective link building
technique blurs the line between and blends SEO/SEM and Public Relations
•
SEO is a more technical and process oriented task involving coding
and algorithms
• Online
public relations is a human process
• Many
authoritative links can only be obtained via one to one person to person
communication, none of which has anything to do with SEO skills
Authoritative
Links
•
An authoritative
link can be different for different sites
What is an authoritative
link for a content site like
stormwaterauthority.org
?
Would it be a link from some
web directory like this, or would
it be links from topically relevant and editorially vetted sites like this?
http://www.epa.gov/ne/assistance/ceitts/stormwater/links.html
http://erf.org/links.html
What is an authoritative
link
for the swimming pool ecommerce store InTheSwim
?
Is it
a
paid link?
Is it a link from a
online
article ?
Is it
an editorial
link from a news site ? (notice lack of clikability)
Is it
a link from a themed pool
links page ?
What is an authoritative
link
for the web site for the movie
Shrek
The Third
Is it
a link in a Yahoo
fan/discussion list for Shrek ?
Wikipedia
Article ?
movie
fan site ?
In my opinion, authoritative
links...
• Come
from sites/sources that can be algorithmically validated as being trustworthy
• Are
most likely not reciprocated
• Will
not all have the same (or any) descriptive anchor text
• Will
appear to be passively obtained/organic
• Will
not come from 300 directories nobody has ever heard of
Don't let any search
engine dictate or rule over your linking strategy. Links can appear
in many venues that Google and other search engines will
never know about.
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