60 Seconds of Link Building
History...
This
is the exact modem I used to announce Amazon.com Books debut
There Was a Time When
Nobody Cared About Link Building
There Wasn't Even A Category
for Web Promotion at Yahoo
I had to beg some college
kid named Jerry Yang to create it...
http://www.ericward.com/yahoo.html
There
were just a few crawler based search engines, like Lycos and Webcrawler
There
were Directories like Yahoo, and very
few places where people could announce and seek attention for web sites,
like Lycos' TOP
5%
There
was no "link analysis", no link popularity and no Pagerank, because there
was no Google
SEO
was on-page only, and had nothing to do with link building
Link
building was practiced by just a handful of people
Link
Building In 2011 - Everybody cares
The
Big Change?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
(original document) http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf
-
The connective
tissue of the web itself, links, will act as a proxy for content quality
-
In a spam
free world, this would be true. But we don't live in a spam free world
-
Links
have become the currency of the web. Beg, buy, borrow, trade or steal,
links seem to be the only thing that matters now, along with social counterparts
like likes, tweets, and plusses
-
The primary
reason for this is links now impact search rank, and everyone wants to
put on a link beauty show for the engines
-
The links
that point at your site tell a story about your site. Like a transcript.
Or a rap-sheet.
.
.
Has
link building become more complicated?
Yes
and No.
Let's
say you are trying to spot link targets for the site http://www.bankrate.com
Sometimes
it can be simple. URLs provide all you need to make a decision about quality.
1).
http://www.1askdirectory.info/Business/Accounting/
2).
http://www.csbsju.edu/Accounting/Useful-Links.htm
Which
of the above URLs shows signals of quality?
.
.
The
Link Building industry has complicated things
Usually
by creating services driven my the frenzy for links rather than by quality.
We
now have a wide variety of tool and tactics for building links, publicity,
and "buzz"
-
web directory links
- article
links
- links
pages
- press
releases
- blogs,
blogrolls
- paid
blog reviews
- link
swaps
- managed
link farms
- thin
content networks
- abandoned
site buys
- social
bookmarking
- toolbars
and plug ins (StumbleUpon)
- social
network link shares, likes, etc. (FB/TW/G+)
- collaborative
voting sites (digg)
- paid
links
We also
have many linking process management tools
Lastly,
we have companies all over the world claiming expertise and selling linking
related services which are 100% useless.
Example:
How can the same
link building package help two sites
about different subjects?
Answer: it can't
BecomeAMonk.com
.
.
BecomeAStripper.com
Let's
Simplify Things - Audiences for Your Links
You have
two
audiences for links you post, like, plus, tweet, and share:
1).
People...who
click them
2).
Search
Engines...that evaluate and make decisions
about them
.
Links
can accomplish four
things:
1).
Direct click traffic
Can be on obscure pages related
to your niche that send you a couple clicks a week, or from higher profile
venues like
Yahoo Upcoming or FWA,
or Kaboose,
or even paid links.
NOTE: 
I've
posted a case study on the positive effect of what I call Twitter
Link Waves. Also read Twitter:
Incredibly Valuable Or Utterly Useless As A Link Building Tool?
2).
Search rank
Links that help search rank
will be earned by content merit, originate from source sites engines trust,
and be put in place by people who could be described as "curators of quality".
Here's a great example
of a merit based link venue.
3).
Both
A link that can help rank
and
send direct click traffic is a rare and beautiful thing. I'll show
you a few thousand of these right now.
Sorry, just kidding.
Your niche's most trusted
sources are different than the person sitting next to you.
4).
Neither
A link that can neither
help rank or send direct click traffic. The majority of web content is
this.
Effective
link building involves multiple strategies, including
.
-
Ignoring the search engines sometimes
Your
overall linking strategy should not be dictated by search engines, because
all that does is create a dependence on search traffic. Look at these
two traffic stats
http://www.ericward.com/linkmosesprivate/lmp26b.jpg
http://www.ericward.com/linkmosesprivate/lmp26.jpg
- Learn
how link building and link marketing and public relations for web content
are all quite different but equally vital to your success
- The
links anyone can get - like directories
- Merit
based from link "curators" - links only
your content can get
- Online
public relations - press
releases
- Different
flavors of linkbait or content creation
and syndication
- Reciprocal
links
- Paid
links
***
Perhaps the most overlooked opportunity of all...
- On-site
link optimization. Example: The search term is
link
bait strategies
How
do I rank #1 when everyone below me has hundreds more links than I do?
-
A Few Things to Avoid
Leaping
before you look - do some research first. Just because you may not be penalized
is no reason to pollute the web with links just to see if it works.
Who ranks today? What is their link profile? How credible is it?
Make
some, but not all, of your linking strategy decisions based on search engines.
Tactics
which the engines have stated are against QG
Automation.
Any tool with the word incredible, instant, overnight, while you sleep,
it's just that simple, revolutionary, game changing, or unprecedented in
its advertising copy
- Remember
In
general, the easier any link is to obtain, the less useful that link is
likely to be (for a person or a search engine)
The
specific approach used for any given web site should be different based
on each site's focus, content, and intended audience
Examples
What
is a high value link target for this site?
http://www.beeculture.com
Would it be a link from some
web directory
like this?
Would it be a link from a
topically relevant and "curated" site like
this?
The paradox of trust - no
traffic can equal high trust
What is
a high value link target for this site?
http://www.theloraxmovie.com
Is
it a link from a site devoted to upcoming movie
releases?
Is
it a link from a Yahoo
fan/discussion group for Zac Efron ?
Is
it a link from a site devoted to Dr.
Seuss?
- The
Most Crucial Takeaway?
The
type of links that help one site reach its goals are not the same types
of links that will help another site reach its goals, and every site has
its own linking potential.
