Link Week
Link Week looks at one of the most fundamental and yet challenging aspects of search marketing: Building and nurturing those all-important inbound links to your web site. Columnists offer insights and tips for effective link building and discuss controversial techniques like linkbaiting and buying links. The Link Week column appears on Mondays at Search Engine Land.
To get this column via email or feed, visit our columns page.
Oct 7, 2008 at 9:38pm by Julie Joyce
Personalize Your Link Building
The ethnographic method is an approach of studying a person or group of people by participating in the culture of interest while still remaining a bit of an outsider. At its core is the focus on cultural relativism, which is seeing something through the eyes of the involved. Thus, to get to know someone or a group of people, you have to lose your own set of beliefs and views and start from scratch as you seek out the functional reasons why things happen.
This method is critical for successfully connecting to people, especially online when you have no physical cues to tell you about a person. In essence, you have to lose your own identity at first, in order to get a better idea of how to best connect to someone new. When you approach a potential link partner, you know very little about that person except for a few clues picked up in the analysis of the site that he or she controls. Your best bet is to pick up that information as quickly as possible, because you have a very limited amount of time to make or break that connection.
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Sep 30, 2008 at 4:47pm by Eric Ward
Linked, Tagged, Tweeted, and Feeded - Three Real Time Link Trackers
As link builders, one challenge we all have is showing our clients evidence that our work is having the effect we said it would. What would make this part of the process easier is if there was one single universal tool that could identify every single instance when a site is mentioned, linked, tagged, tweeted, or feeded. The sheer size of the web and the volume of new content every day make such a tool impossible, but a few weeks ago Delicious unveiled a relaunch, and what was once really a pain is now a breeze.
Delicious will show the which users are linking to (bookmarking) which URLs, sorted by most recently bookmarked. Go here:
Enter your company URL, or whatever URL you want. Click the arrow to get your results.
Here’s where it gets fun. Delicious feedifies that results page, so you can subscribe to a feed for any URL, and by doing so, whenever someone bookmarks your site at delicious, your feed will have that new link at the top of your feed.
See Related Stories In How To: SEO, Link Week
Sep 23, 2008 at 8:49am by Debra Mastaler
5 Ways to Target Media Outlets For Links
Knowing where key decision-makers go for information and what type of digital media outlets influence their actions can give you a competitive edge in marketing your products, developing content and securing links. Recently, Forrester Research conducted a survey to determine the value of various publications and how key decision-makers were using them. Almost 1700 business-to-business (B2B) decision-makers and marketers from 21 industries were interviewed and asked to identify which digital publications they used to do their jobs.
According to the survey, industry specific magazines and electronic newsletters were the top e-media outlets B2B decision makers read and/or interacted with to do their jobs. Knowing this, how can you use these digital media outlets in your link building efforts? Let’s look at the link potential of each and how integrating messages across multiple platforms helps reach customers you might not otherwise reach.
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Sep 16, 2008 at 10:52am by Eric Ward
Link Building for Big Old Sites
I love big sites. They are like sprawling mansions in a state of renewal
and dilapidation at the same time. New kitchen, old bath. Sub-zero inside,
rotten wood outside.
The longer a site has been around, and the bigger that site is, the more
likely it is that site will have already attracted hundreds if not thousands
of links. Many of these existing links will have come about without anyone
actively pursuing them. For example, I’ll bet Coca Cola’s web site has a
section for
employment, and I’ll bet that employment section and the pages within it are
deep linked to by
other sites. I’ll further bet that Coca Cola likely does not know how
many other sites are linking to their employment section pages, nor have
they checked.
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Sep 9, 2008 at 2:49pm by Julie Joyce
Milk Those Links For Rankings & Clickthrough!
Old school media people are increasingly vilified by those of us who wear
skinny jeans and throw out references to social media as casually as we
breathe, but I’m quickly discovering that they really have their heads on
straight with one major point about links: they’re also good for traffic
(ahem).
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Sep 2, 2008 at 5:55pm by Eric Ward
Moving Away from SEO Link Building
My last two Link Week columns have touched on communication between link builder and client. In Link Development Realities Versus What We Tell Our Clients I discussed how, as strategists and link builders, part of what we do involves a degree of selection of tactic, and what to do when confronted with clients who are using tactics and investing budgets for link building services that have no value, but the client doesn’t know it.
Then in What If It Isn’t Linkworthy?, I focused on the uncomfortable client scenario where a client has worked hard to create content they feel is linkworthy, but you, as the person who has to go get those links, don’t agree. In this next installment, let’s discuss the client who views link building as a purely SEO function, that is, they are interested in adding or creating content just to appeal to search engines.
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Aug 26, 2008 at 4:12pm by Debra Mastaler
Sir, Would You Like Fries With Those Links?
Recently in several SEO forums I noticed a number of threads discussing ways to find and build “economical” links. The forum participants wanted to know how they could initiate “safe” reciprocal linking as well as “fast” submissions to free article directories. They reasoned these tactics were worth doing because both linking methods were “economical” and “easy” to use.
I understand some linking techniques can be expensive, tedious to implement and extremely time consuming, but tying your online business success to linking tactics deemed “easy,” “fast” and “cheap” seems counter-productive. If you limit your linking to low-cost tactics or look at the practice as “link building” instead of “marketing for links” you’re almost guaranteed to fail.
See Related Stories In How To: SEO, Link Building: General, Link Week
Aug 20, 2008 at 6:53pm by Eric Ward
What If It Isn’t Linkworthy?
Some client scenarios can be uncomfortable. Among them is when the client has worked especially hard to create a content area that they feel is linkworthy, and thus should attract links, but you, as the person who has to go get those links, aren’t quite as enthusiastic about the potential for success.
The Scenario:
A client comes to you with content they are certain is worthy of links from certain class of web sites. Let’s say the client has specifically asked for a quote for a link building project to target and obtain 25+ new inbound links from qualified and logical target .edu’s to their new content which they designed specifically to be of value to college students.
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Aug 12, 2008 at 5:16pm by Eric Ward
Link Development Realities Versus What We Tell Our Clients
This week I’m seeking some feedback for a future column with a working title of
“Link Development Realities Versus What We Tell Our Clients”
The idea for this column came from a client conference call I participated in this past week. As the call progressed, it became more and more evident that several of the participants in the call did not, to put this gently, have a clue what they were doing. I was in a situation where refuting what the call participants were telling everyone could easily make them look bad in front of co-workers, managers, etc.
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Jul 22, 2008 at 3:41pm by Eric Ward
The Link Building Kiss Of Death
If you are an experienced link builder, you might be tempted to read something other than today’s column, which on first glance may appear a bit to rudimentary for your skills. If you do stick around, and I hope you do, I’ll share with you what I consider to be one of the tragic mistakes that even sophisticated link builders often make when contacting a site to request a review/link: Using the wrong contact method.
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Jun 24, 2008 at 2:42pm by Rae Hoffman
What’s A 404 To Do?
Have you ever written a blog post or an article and after publishing it, gotten an email telling you that one of your links is broken? It happens to all of us once in a while. But what happens to the links that slip through the cracks and remain broken? They become unused link juice to the site they’re aimed at, and in an algorithmic era that treats links as its largest form of currency, unused link juice is like throwing money on the ground.
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Jun 10, 2008 at 2:54pm by Eric Ward
Trust The Linkers, Not The Links
As much as I hate to pile on, run it into the ground, or beat a dead horse, when the topic is link bait I can’t resist; thus this week’s Link Week column.
The recent fake-news-story-as-successful-link-bait event and the
surrounding
firestorm has bugged me and had me thinking, which is dangerous when I’m supposed to
be on vacation. Yet here I am with my laptop. The concept I can’t get off my mind is this notion of “trusted links” and “truthiness.” Is one fake news story any different than the thousands of press releases put out daily that are that are filled with hype masquerading as news? Is a fake news story any different than any marketing driven web site? Any different than any other content with an agenda?
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May 27, 2008 at 11:31am by Rae Hoffman
Don’t Call Me Linkbait
When use of the phrase “linkbait” first started to achieve critical mass, some dismissed it as nothing more than a fad that would be dead in a year. Some truly understood linkbait and tried to explain it while some of those who grasped it ran with it and went on to profit from it (and still do). Below, what linkbait really is and where its value lies.
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May 13, 2008 at 10:40am by Eric Ward
An Embarrassment Of Dead Link Riches
Sometimes link building is more difficult and painful than a root canal, and sometimes it’s so easy it happens in spite of us. It can be especially frustrating when you are trying to build links for a site that is perfectly deserving of the links you are requesting, yet your link requests are not answered or even acknowledged.
See Related Stories In Link Building, Link Week, SEO: Redirects & Moving Sites
May 6, 2008 at 10:30am by Debra Mastaler
It’s Hip To Be Link Square
We recently had a great turn out at our quarterly lunch meeting of the Virginia SEO MeetUp. The afternoon flew by as the group talked and shared ideas on everything connected to SEO. There were lots of questions on things like which conference should they budget to attend and what new tools were out there. It seems all the talk of recession has a lot of SEO/SEM shops budgeting for only one show this year and only investing in tools with a clear ROI. That conversation alone was noteworthy, but overall the one topic that sparked the most debate centered around link building and which tactics were working.
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Apr 29, 2008 at 9:27am by Eric Ward
The Art Of Opportunistic Linking
A couple weeks back I wrote a LinkWeek column here titled “Your Site’s Manifest Linking Destiny“. At the end of that column I closed with the following thoughts…
See Related Stories In Business Issues: General, Google: General, Link Building, Link Building: General, Link Week
Apr 23, 2008 at 6:04pm by Rae Hoffman
Link Development Tool Shortcuts For Firefox
A few weeks back I did a post on my blog about creating Firefox quick search bookmarks. I was surprised at how well received it was, though I think people were most pleased with the fact that I had created a download of a very small selection of the large list of SEO related Firefox quick searches that I use.
See Related Stories In Link Building: General, Link Week, Search Features: Commands
Apr 15, 2008 at 10:46am by Eric Ward
Your Site’s Manifest Linking Destiny
One of the challenges link builders face is pursuing links that will differentiate one site from competing sites in a way that still produces a natural ILP (inbound link profile). Backlink forensics is a method I use to see who already links to who, and part of that process, perhaps the most important part, is determining why.
See Related Stories In Link Building: General, Link Week
Apr 8, 2008 at 11:00am by Debra Mastaler
Holiday Links Come In Lots Of Different Packages
Did you know there’s only 261 shopping days left before Christmas? That might seem like a crazy thing to worry about in April but you know what they say, the early bird gets the link.
Using the holidays to attract links is fun, good for trend watching, and an excellent opportunity to generate positive publicity. Between now and December there are at least ten (non-religious) major holidays and special event seasons to take advantage of, not to mention hundreds of “National Cause Month” celebrations.
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Apr 1, 2008 at 10:46am by Eric Ward
Defining Link Building Best Practices
There
are plenty of business processes where the development of a set or list
of “Best Practices” makes really good sense. But what about link
building? Is/are there a core set of link building best practices that
really work? Fourteen years of link building for 1,000+ clients
indicate to me that the answer is…nope.
