Link
Building Lore...
In
1993 nobody cared about link building
There
were just a few crawler based search engines, like Wandex and ALIWEB, 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", no link popularity
and no Pagerank, because there was no Google. Search Engine
Optimization had nothing to do with link building, and link building was
practiced by just a handful of folks like myself. On 286's with modems.
Link
Building In 2009 - Everybody cares, but why?
Link Building =
Pagerank = Search Rank, Right?
We have hundreds
of tools and tactics for building links, search rank, publicity, and "buzz".
Aside
from the typical links page, we have blogs, social bookmarking, social
networks, tagging sites, collaborative popularity sites (digg, newsvine),
toolbars and plugins (StumbleUpon), press release services, web directories,
link buying services, linking management tools.
We also
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.
The
Big Change:
PageRank - http://www.google.com/technology/
Links
have become the online "currency of the realm",
and
now serve multiple purposes and audiences
What
Is Link Popularity?
Links
as Citations
Audiences
for your links:
You have
two
audiences for your links:
1). People
who click them
2). Search Engines
that
judge them
Currently,
most people are seeking 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.
Link
Type and Link Value:
Links can
accomplish four
things:
1). Direct click
traffic
Links that help with direct
click traffic often generate temporary buzz, like
Yahoo
New and Notable or links from social venues like Twitter,
or Digg, or paid even links and email.
Sometimes these links can help search rank as well, which makes people
do some pretty silly things.
A
couple additional comments about Twitter and link building. 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".
This is what I mean when I refer to a link as a citation. Here's
a great
example of a citation based merit earned link. Your niche's trusted
sources are different than the person sitting next to you.
3). Both
A link that can help rank
and
send direct click traffic is a rare and beautiful thing. I'd
show you a few hundred of these but I've worked 14 years to identify and
build rapport with them. I'm old, not stupid.
4). Neither
A link that can neither help
rank or send direct click traffic is a common and useless thing,and
in my opinion, 99% of the web is just this, due to the low cost of entry
onto the web.
•
Links
can help direct click traffic but not
affect search rank
•
Links
can affect search rank (higher or
lower)
•
Links
can do both
•
Links
can do neither
Effective
link building involves multiple strategies, including
Low hanging
fruit - the links anyone can get
Merit based from
link "curators" - links only you can get
Online public relations
Non-sensationalist
linkbait
Click traffic driven
link buying aka advertising
On-site link optimization
However...
The link
building approach used for any given web site should be different based
on each site's focus, content, and intended audience
Target site value..."That
which is different"
What is a high value
link target for this site?
http://www.stormwaterauthority.org
Would it be a link from some
web directory like this?
Would it be links (citation)
from topically relevant and editorially vetted sites like
http://www.mass.gov/dep/service/others02.htm
http://erf.org/links.html
These
last two link targets make sense for the above site, but...
What is a high value
link target for this site?
Is it
a link from a site that's devoted to upcoming movie releases, like
this ?
Is it
a link from a site like digg
that then points to an "offical" site
?
Is it
a link from a Yahoo
fan/discussion list for Tim Burton ?
Is it
a link from a Wikipedia
Article ?
The point bears restating
The most
effective link building aka "citation seeking" strategies for any web site
must be based on that site's unique features, focus, function, intent,
and merit.
Tools - A
Big Roundup Of Link Building Tools By Debra
