Online Marketing Blog

The OG’s of link building like Eric Ward are full of reasons why acquiring inbound links without consideration of direct effect from search engines is a sustainable and worthwhile marketing tactic. The ongoing SEO services many search marketers offer is often short sighted with a narrow emphasis placed on link acquisition and not on the broader importance of ongoing web site promotion through multiple channels.

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Day 3 at SES San Jose found me assigned to cover the session “Link Baiting & Viral Search Success.”

Those who’ve read my previous posts should find it as no surprise that my level of excitement for this session superseded any residual aches and pains left over from last night’s “decadence based in relevance” superbash Google Dance.

(Personal Note: None of the stories you’ve heard regarding the TopRank team at this event are accurate. Except the one about how we met up with AC/DC’s tour bus afterwords and partied with them all night - that one’s true**)

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In this session on Day 3 of SES San Jose 2007, there were no presentations. The floor was open to all questions anyone had on links and link building and how they affect PageRank and their importance in organic SEO. There were many questions asked, and even more great answers from the panel consisting of Mike Grehan (”My name is Mike Grehan, and I do links.”), Debra O’Neil-Mastaler (Link Building Chick), Jim Boykin and Greg Boser (”The White Hat Link Builder”), with Danny Sullivan moderating. Below, I thought I’d highlight the some of the questions and answers I thought were most interesting.

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The floor was open for audience questions as representatives from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com addressed issues on the importance and value of inbound links.

One question seemed to resonate throughout the entire session. How can a search engine identify whether a link is paid or organic in nature? Shashi Thakur of Google replied that through both manual and algorithmic methods, the search engine is able to determine the nature of a link.

But why are paid links so bad? Thakur suggests that generally, purchased links are intended only to deceive search engines while adding little to no value to the user.

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Day Two coverage of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose:  The Popular Kids Have Good Content 

Tuesday morning was the morning to learn about link building. As a linking specialist at TopRank, I knew I would learn a lot, and review what I already know, in this session by listening to Mike Grehan and Christine Churchill.

The topics we focused on this morning were ways to increase a website’s ranking, such as link requests, paid links and reputable links from authority sites.

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Oh we love the links and then some here at TopRank. Today, old school online marketer Larry Chase published a few more link building tips and resources in his most recent Web Digest for Marketers newsletter. I’ve added a few of my own comments:

• Widget Linking - The RSS Buttons and Social Bookmark tools that TopRank’s Thomas McMahon created serve as excellent widget linking examples. Widgets were hot back in the late nineties when Angelfire and Geocities were the rage in personal web sites. What’s old has become new again.

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In the past I’ve written about the content versus links debate where SEOs seem to fall on one side or the other when assigning the majority of importance for search engine rankings. What’s missing from that conversation is the need for a distribution network.

There are many that believe the key to a successful link building campaign is to create content worth linking to. However, if you create great content and no one knows about it to send a link, then there’s a lot lost on the effort. “Build it and they will come” is not the reality with search marketing despite the hype from SEO nay-sayers.

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There’s a long standing debate in the search marketing industry about links versus content. Which is better?

On the one hand there’s the perspective that if you create great content, people will link to you naturally. That’s true, but it’s a bit misleading.

On the other hand there are those that say links are the answer. You can get pages to rank well based purely on links. Again, that’s entirely possible, but such a statement does not give you all the facts.

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Andy Beal comes over to the dark side and launches a new blog design using WordPress.

Rae posts an excellent interview with Brian Prince of BOTW.org.

Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro does it again with a great article on search marketing reaching critical mass in a follow-up to his previous “Cross the Chasm” article.

Aaron Wall posts “Trusted vs Untrusted Links” and follows up with another “vs” post, “Tactical SEO vs Strategic SEO“, which is excellent, but has more to do with SEO for sites/blogs whose business model is ad revenue than advice most business web sites can take advantage of. Great advice all the same though.

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The PG SEO (pre-Google) and master linker, Eric Ward has recently launched a new newsletter on link building called, The Ward Report.¬† I’ve seen the initial free-trial issue and it’s pretty good with topics including:

• Linking Fact, Fiction and Your Inbound Link Profile (INLP)
• Social Linking and Tagging
• Linking for Search Rank
• Linking and Publicity Opportunity Watch
• RSS To The Rescue

It’s a paid subscription and well worth it. Subscribers will have access to discounted training, how-to Podcasts, video training modules and other resources as well.¬† You can sign up for the Ward Report here or request the trial version.

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Unless there’s any doubt, I am a linking fanatic. I appreciate links like they’re gold. When I talk about link building with our team, I can never stress enough the importance of linking for traffic and SEO. To me, the best way to learn about link building is to get out there and do it.

However, if you’re new, you can save quite a bit of time learning from the wisdom of others’ experience. Here are three recent posts and one bonus link on link building I highly recommend:

Rand Fishkin presents his thoughts on why email is still king for link building.

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Eric Ward, the mac daddy link master or as Debra likes to call him, “LinkMoses” has published his Linking Commandments (part one). These inspired, toungue in cheek linking tips include pearls of wisdom including:

• II - “Thee who linketh in exchange for gold is Link Whore” *
  (linking in exchange for a return link may be marginally slutty)
• III - “Thou shall not social linketh thyne own site” *
  (nor send a memo to all employees telling them to digg it, or ask your children to link to your site from their MySpace space)

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