Add Value to Your Website with Links

We usually talk about inbound links -- the links other websites give to your site. Getting links from other sites shows that your site is valuable, since the people who give you links believe that their readers will get something worthwhile from your site.

But there are times when you want to give links to other sites as well. Obviously, you'll link to other sites that you believe are valuable to your readers. But you'll also occasionally want to provide a reciprocal link to a high-value directory, or to do a favor for a colleague.

Here are some good rules of thumb for making sure that your outbound links are useful to your readers and therefore also to your site:

• Be choosy about the links you give. Don't link to poor-quality sites that aren't relevant to yours, even for a reciprocal link or for friendship. If you feel that you must link your golf course to your friend's restaurant, then you must manufacture some kind of connection: places to eat after a game, perhaps, or local resources. Remember that, while this can make links of that type more palatable to your readers, it doesn't fool search engines. It may confuse them, by making it less clear what your site actually offers.
• Be thoughtful about your link anchor text. Anchor text is the word or words that your readers click on. In the early days of the internet, it was common to use things like, "click here" to make sure that visitors understood where to click. Now that we all know about hypertext, it's more useful to visitors to let them know where the link goes. It's also good for you and for the site you're linking to when you use relevant keywords. So your golf course could link to that friend's restaurant with the words "Golfer's Special Lunches" or "restaurant near the golf course."
• Be aware of design. A link sitting all by itself in your footer or sidebar or, worse yet, in the middle of your content, looks odd. Your links should look as though they belong where they are. This happens naturally when you use a text link to send readers to a source of additional information. When you've got a high-value directory demanding a reciprocal link, though, you can end up with their link sitting somewhere pointless. Instead, include them on a resource page or in a list of links. Make all the links consistent, not a higgledy-piggledy group of assorted banners and links with different fonts or margins. If you need to follow someone's rules, pick the most valuable link and follow their rules. Most worthwhile link partners will recognize that your site needs to look good for their benefit as well as yours, and will be flexible.

Linkbuilding: Quality or Quantity?

I was doing some foundational linkbuilding for LynneClaire Lawn Care,  checking out their competitors' linkbuilding strategies, when I got a surprise.There on the search engine results page, directly below a site with 17 inlinks, was a site with over 44,000.

Frankly, I was a little surprised to see a local lawn care site with more than 44,000 links in the first place. This would mean that every man, woman, and child in town had given the company a link -- an unlikely eventuality. Or possibly that this company had established itself as an authority on something, drawing links from sites nationwide or even globally.

In which case, I'd have expected to see them well before the site with 17 links.

In fact, there were a few paid directory links, a fair number of worthless free directory links and link swaps, and a bunch of links from comments at forums and sites which were mostly unrelated to lawn care.

This company put a lot of time into the effort to gain all those links -- or they paid someone fairly incompetent to do so. Unfortunately, they've wasted their time or their money. A large number of poor-quality links will actually damage your position for search, as this example shows.

Do your linkbuilding or hire a linkbuilder, but be sure to do it right. It's sad to see someone's efforts be so unsuccessful.

Here are some posts on how to do effective linkbuilding:

• Commenting for Links
• Linkbuilding Strategies
• Building Links with Reviews

Fastest Linkbuilding Around

Normally, linkbuilding isn't fast. Getting good quality links at a natural pace -- and that's what works best -- takes time.

But an old business can get great new links very quickly.

Bill West Roofing, whose new site design we launched last month, has been in business for thirty years. In that time, they've gotten themselves listed at a whole lot of places. Directories, local lists of various kinds, phone books.

Over the years, many of these listings have gone online and started linking to the businesses on their lists. So all we have to do is contact them, point out that our boys have a website, and ask for an update. Fast, good, high quality links in no time.

Not everyone is in this position, but if you are you must be sure to take advantage. Google your business name, search minutely at all your listings to find how to contact the webmaster, and make your request.

If you don't have the time, the skill, or the inclination to do this, give us a call and we'll get you fixed up.

Really Getting the Most Out of Your Linkbuilding

Recently I did a few hours of linkbuilding for motivational speaker Paul Vitale. When I do foundational linkbuilding, I like to work fast. Quality is essential, that goes without saying, but the name of the game is getting as many good links as possible in the time available.

Accordingly, I set him up at Brownbook.net with basic information. When I went back a couple of days later to make sure all was well, Paul and his associates had claimed the listing and added a photograph, a link to his YouTube channel with a video sample and a "subscribe" button, a map, a place for people to add reviews...

I was startled. I do encourage clients to build on their directory listings, of course, both here at this blog and when I speak with them individually, but I've never seen anyone jump to it like this before anyone had even suggested it. Paul has a Google Alert set, so he knows when his name turns up somewhere, and he took immediate action.

He speaks and writes about success. He also follows his own advice. Folks, this is a good example.

When Your Website Doesn't Have the Rank It Deserves

Yesterday I had a simple project for a web design firm I work with. It was quite an ordinary project: a client wants a higher rank for their chosen keywords, and we need a strategy for accomplishing that. I do this all the time.

This case turned out to be particularly interesting, though, because the company in question so clearly deserved the rankings they wanted.

Let's be honest: if you sell gears, you don't necessarily deserve the top ranking on the search engines any more than any other seller of gears. In this case, though, we're talking about the company that makes the gears, the company whose name is on the gears, the company that has been selling those gears for fifty years. And yet this company isn't even on the first page for most of the keywords they want.

Let's say they're the Acme Gear Company. And let's say that the company that's eating their lunch is the Apex Hardware Group. In fact, there are plenty of companies ahead of Acme on most searches, but Apex is consistently ahead of Acme on searches for Acme gears.

Now, Apex has been a little bit hostile to Acme. Acme has acme.com, but Apex has registered acmegears.com, acme.net, acmegears.biz, acmegearcompany.com -- everything they could think of. They've also done nice pages on their site about the high quality of Acme gears, the traditions of the company, and why Apex gears make good substitutes for Acme gears.

But Acme hasn't been minding their virtual store the way they should.

If your company is behind some strong competitors, what steps can you take?

• Strengthen your content. The search engines look at Apex, with its keyword-rich content about Acme gears, and at Acme.com which doesn't even have an "About Us" page, and they draw reasonable conclusions about who is the best choice for people seeking Acme gears. Compare your site honestly with your competitors, and make sure you're communicating well with the search engines.
• Watch your titles and meta descriptions. When a human visitor looks at the search results page for "Acme gears," she sees something like this:

Acme
acme.com/ - Cached - Similar -

Acme gears of all sizes
Acme gears for home and business use. Best prices, free shipping!
www.apexhardware.com Cached - Similar

Acme gears

Acme gears are the preferred gear style for many uses. We offer the best selection of Acme style gears. Use our handy comparison chart to order with confidence. Free shipping!
www.apexhardware.com/acmegears.html - Cached - Similar -

What will the searcher choose? Not the first one on the list. When their minimalist entry shows up lower down on the page, which is the case for most of the possible searches, Acme.com has no chance. Make sure that your meta language does its job.

• Do your linkbuilding. Acme hasn't done any linkbuilding. As an established company, they have some natural links they've gained over time as people were moved to link to them, but it's surprising to see how many missed opportunities they have -- they're not represented in the industrial directories, they're not present at the forums discussing gears, and they just generally don't have online visibility. Fixing that -- with some attention to their anchor text --would help the search engines understand what they're all about.

Notice that we're not talking here about gaming the system or duping the search engines. Acme should be the first choice when people search for Acme gears. The search engines want to give people what they're looking for. Acme -- and possibly your company, too -- just needs to cooperate.

Efficient Linkbuilding

Derek Edmond at CapeCodSEO is hosting a conversation about the number of links that can realistically be gained in a month.

A lot of important points have arisen, including the fact that good linkbuilding efforts won't show all their value within the month, the difference between linkbuilding for new sites and for established ones, and the importance of quality links.

But as I was reading, I couldn't help comparing two linkbuilding situations I've participated in recently -- not, in either case, as the linkbuilder.

First, I have a rash of spammy comments at a blog I write for a client. Someone presumably has paid some unfortunate creature to post this graffiti, and then of course my client has to pay me to find and remove it.




There are no lasting benefits to this for anyone. It's a complete waste of time and money.

And yet, at the same time, I'm currently writing for a prestigious PR7 .org site. The team I'm on will be doing 300 pages in the next month, and each page has four or five links to other sites. I'm putting plenty of time into finding the most valuable websites to link to -- not necessarily the first ones that come up at the search engines result pages, but the best and most useful sites. Not only will those sites get a PR7 link, but they can expect to gain traffic not only from the original site, but from hundreds of other high-quality sites that will link to it. Some of the people who visit will be inspired to link to the resources, too.

In other words, we've got about 1500 seriously juicy links to give out. This afternoon, I'll be looking for excellent sites on the physics of sound.

If I had a client who made violins, I could write a page that would meet the needs of the page I'm writing perfectly, and thereby get that link. Since I don't have such a client, I will instead be searching all over the internet for the perfect resource. If it happens to be at a violin shop, I won't care; I'm just looking at the quality of the resource.

Now let's compare those two options.

Comment spam comes cheap -- maybe a dollar a link. It's easy come, easy go, though, and won't bring any lasting value. So a company that chooses this strategy can expect to pay repeatedly for something essentially worthless.

Valuable content doesn't come that cheap. You have to hire someone, or take your own time and expertise, and create useful pages at your site. But a company that pays $100 for an excellent resource and gets just one really valuable link to begin with can expect to gain more links and traffic over a period of years -- as long as they keep their resource valuable and up to date, it will continue to deliver.

What's the efficient method here?

Diary of a Website: Linkbuilding

Myra's site, GraysLlandAcres.com, has been live for about a month now, and her basic linkbuilding was completed a couple of weeks ago. This timing is right. Jumping in with a lot of links all at once looks (and often is) unnatural, so we like to do regular linkbuilding over a period of time.

Ideally, you'll do regular linkbuilding on an ongoing basis, but we're talking about that initial campaign.

Spreading linkbuilding out also offers the benefit of allowing us to see what kind of link is bringing traffic. All good quality links are good for search and for establishing visibility on the web. The kind that brings traffic, though, will be what you want to focus on for ongoing linkbuilding.

Myra's site currently gets traffic primarily from her blog (which is how it's supposed to work), my blog, and her social media. It therefore makes sense for her to focus on social media.

However, her presence in business directories, lists about llamas and goats, and such will all help her site to gain visibility.

Myra will be ready to sell products next month, so her next project is to add e-commerce capability to her site. We'll tell you about that next time.

Previous posts in the Diary of A Website:

• A Cartoon Guide to the Web Design Process
  
• Waiting
  
• Communicating About Your Website
• Decisions
• Launch Day
  
• Getting the Hang of Google Analytics
  
• Discovering Your Traffic Sources
  

Following Up on Your Linkbuilding Campaign

We've discussed what a linkbuilding campaign is, how to plan a linkbuilding campaign, how to ask for links, and how to keep track of your linkbuilding campaign.

Now that you've finished your linkbuilding campaign, what do you do?

• Respond to the people who gave you links. This can just be a "thank you" if they've sent you a simple announcement letting you know they've added your link, it can be a link back to them if that's appropriate, or it can be the beginning of a worthwhile online networking effort. Negotiations, such as offers to provide a link if some condition is met, also deserve a response, even if it's just "I don't have authority to do this, but I'll pass it on to the owner. Thank you for your response." If I'm linkbuilding for a really valuable site, though, I'll usually respond initially with why I think my client should have the fee or reciprocal requirement or whatever it is waived, and sometimes I get that for them.
  
• Respond -- sometimes -- to the people who didn't give you links. You can always thank people for considering you if they email to tell you that you're not getting a link. If you don't hear from them at all, you could sometimes ask again. I would do this only if I really think that the link I'm suggesting would be good for both sites, and that it might be possible that they've overlooked or forgotten my request. I wouldn't send the identical thing over again. This is a case where I might say something like,

"I noticed that your list of companies offering baby equipment rentals doesn't include Baby Smart Travel. We'd love to be listed. If you've decided against listing us, we'd like to know why so we can correct the problem. Thank you so much for your time, both in reading my emails and in keeping up your very useful parenting site. I know that it's hard work, and your readers appreciate it."

I've also sometimes responded with things like,

"Thank you for your response to my link request. It's true that our company does sell things, and is therefore a commercial site, but I hope you noticed our knowledge base. It includes 84 pages of free information that I think your readers would find valuable. if you've already seen it and decided that we're not for you, then thank you very much for considering our site."

You'll notice that these responses are really obviously written by a human being. That's essential. We all hate spam, and people who get lots of link requests really hate spam. One last point here: if you get hurt and offended by rejections, give this task to someone else. I love it when I get responses saying how valuable the site I suggested is, and thanking me for recommending it, but I'm not going to pretend that's the most frequent reaction.

• Ask for updates or changes when appropriate. If someone is giving you a link, then they agree that your site is worth linking to. If your phone number or URL changes, it's completely appropriate to let them know. If they've linked to you with an image, which doesn't do you nearly as much good, it doesn't hurt to ask if they'd mind using a snippet of code which you conveniently send to them. I've even been asked to change the anchor text I've used in links -- a request like that is a little over the top for me, but I made the change, and I didn't mind, so if you're more aggressive than I, you might try it.

There you go: a successful linkbuilding campaign concluded. You should see some results in a couple of weeks, in the form of improved ranking and traffic.

Keeping Track of Your Linkbuilding Campaign

Links are important for online marketing. Search engines consider people's linking to your website a vote of confidence, and use the number, type, and quality of your links to gauge your value to visitors -- and therefore to decide where and when to offer you to searchers. Whether your site is brand new or well-established, adding links is a good thing to do.

If you're doing it yourself or having someone in-house work on it in their spare time, you may not be thinking much about keeping track. After all, only 25-40% of your requests will result in links (assuming you're being as bold as you should be), many of them won't be active for weeks or even months, and linkbuilding is already so time-consuming that adding a lot of paperwork to the process threatens to make the return on your investment marginal.

Over time, though, you'll be glad you kept track. Here's why:

• By next year, no one in the office will remember who you requested links from, and you'll have too many (if you're doing it right) just to have a quick look at your incoming links and see. Webmasters who've already given you a link, or refused you one, will be miffed when they get a communication from you that makes it obvious that you don't remember having communicated with them before. Directories won't be miffed (dmoz is an exception), but you'll have wasted your precious linkbuilding time.
• Comparing the sites that send you traffic with the list of sites you've gotten links from will give you important insights into the kind of linkbuilding that works best for you. Just seeing where you get the traffic from tells you something useful, of course, but adding the linkbuilding data adds more. For example, when I see that Google groups is sending traffic for a client, I might think I should add more links in Google groups. If I saw that they had lots of links there and only one sends traffic, I'd know that this link was a member of a different group of links for them -- links, perhaps, within a particular community, or with a particular landing page or anchor text.
• You can more easily go back and change, correct, or try again.
• You can tell how you're doing. If you get only one or two good links per hour, then linkbuilding isn't a good use of your time, and you should hire someone more effective to do it for you. Ditto for any staff member you set to the task. If you don't keep track, you'll have no idea how effective you're being.
  

How to keep track?

• A spreadsheet is the most obvious choice. Your SEO Plan has a template, if you'd find that helpful, but you can easily build yourself a form. Using a spreadsheet has the advantage of allowing you to sort the data. You can also decide for yourself what kind of data you want to track.
  
• There are software programs for the task. Raven is one of the most popular. I don't use it myself, so I'm not recommending it, but it might be a starting point if you want to go this route.
• You can use paper, too. There aren't really any great advantages to doing it this way, but if you find spreadsheets slow or difficult, don't let that keep you from keeping records.
  

How to Link Out Effectively

Why is the internet called a Web?

It's because it's a collection of links, a bunch of pages that are hooked up with one another, as the strands of the web are in this picture. A fly over at the edge of the web will move and its movements will travel through all the interconnections, alerting the spider in the middle.

At this point the story become unsavory, so we'll drop the metaphor.

The point is that your website is not supposed to be there all by itself like this not-a-web-page. The pages of your site should be linked to one another in ways that let visitors travel easily from one to another, and they should also be linked up to other sites and pages on the internet.

It's important to do this in ways that are valuable to your visitors, and it's also good to do it in ways that are valuable to your business.

One obvious way to do this is to have a links or partners page at your website. Pages of this kind can be great, as long as a couple of basic characteristics hold true.

• The links should have a purpose. Sydney Painters Courtney & Wise have a links page that serves to increase visitors' confidence in them. Showing their certifications for fair trade and ecological responsibility, their membership in prestigious groups like the Master painters, and so on helps people feel comfortable inviting them into their homes -- very important for painters. Many of the companies linked on this page have also given links to Courtney & Wise. Nothing wrong with that. A page of random links that have no other purpose than to get reciprocal links is pointless, and will look that way, too.
  


• The links should have value to visitors. The Retreat at Sky Ridge has a page of links to information about Eureka Springs, their nearest town. People planning a trip to this popular tourist destination can go to that info page and find links to lots of useful stuff, so it's an extra service to customers, and adds value to the site. It's also likely to bring people back repeatedly, a benefit to the website. FileReplicationPro, a remote backup software company, has a page of links to articles that go into more detail on things like real time file replication for Mac Os with mixed servers, which you might care about if you were one of their customers. Helping visitors find information they need is a valuable service.
  

You don't have to have your outgoing links on their own separate page. I include links to pages I'm describing so you can go look and see them if you want more details. EnviroSolutions describes its product, the Ozonator NG-1000, at its website, and links in that description to scientific papers on the use of ozone as a microbiocide and other things that people who need an Ozonator NG-1000 will want to know about. Again, this is valuable to visitors. It also increases the likelihood that people will understand and want the Ozonator, since they'll be able to find the information they need. In such cases, it makes sense to have the link right there where the question comes to your visitor's mind.

When you create links at your website, it's important that they should give enough information that your readers can decide whether to visit that link. The anchor text (that is, the words people click on to visit the link) should tell your readers where they'll end up if they click. Words like "click here" don't do that. Neither should you have deceptive links that take people to ads when that wasn't what they had planned on seeing.

Following these principles will give you and your visitors a positive linking experience. And yet people often hesitate to link out to other pages, for fear of losing their visitors. Don't worry about that. Just make sure your website is interesting and valuable enough that your visitors will want to return, and you'll never have to hesitate to link to other sites.

What's a Linking Campaign?

Links are good, from the point of view of search, and you want your business website to have them. Specifically, you want inlinks -- other websites having a link to your website.

Ideally, you get these by having great content. I like it when I discover that someone has linked to my content. It's a nice beginning to the day to see a new referral source at Google Analytics.

But the truth is that most sites need a little help in the linking department. There's so much stuff on the internet that other sites may not notice your wonderful site unless you point it out to them.

When I was an inhouse SEO, I spent Tuesdays working on linkbuilding. Tuesdays were my day to be in the shop, so I was going to be interrupted a lot, which made it a less perfect day for creating wonderful content, but a great day for linkbuilding.

Now, I do routine linkbuilding for a number of sites, once a week. I wish I could say that I did the same for my own site. The cobbler's children, as you know, go barefoot. I have to pick between working on my own site and those of my clients, and you know who wins.

So I need a linkbuilding campaign: five hours of linkbuilding.

Two questions spring to mind, I'm sure. First, "Why five hours?" The answer is simple; I've discovered, over the past year, that it takes five hours to get results. A couple of weeks after a linkbuilding campaign we expect to see an increase in rankings and a rise in traffic. We're fast, but we really don't see that rise after two or three hours. Ten hours is even better, but five hours gets results pretty consistently, so we've defined that as the size of a linkbuilding campaign.

The second question has to be, "What's a linking campaign?" This is an intensive effort at linkbuilding, with a specific goal. Here are some examples of linkbuilding campaigns:

• A foundational linkbuilding campaign when you first launch your site, or re-launch a redesigned site, draws the search engines' attention to your new website.
• A campaign to update listings fixes online errors when you change your phone number or move your blog, both of which I've done this summer. Any new information, including a shift in your business model or changes in key staff, calls for a linkbuilding campaign.
  
• A directory campaign is in order when you notice, as a colleague mentioned to me last night that she had, that you're not included in the directories your customers use.
• A campaign directed at the influential bloggers in your field gives a new product a boost.
• A new linkbuilding campaign is required when you enter a new field, perhaps with a new product or service, but possibly just as a gradual shift in your business or in the business environment. Some of my clients, for example, have offered green business services for a long time, but hadn't positioned themselves in that way. Now that there are new green business directories and sites celebrating sustainability, they have new pastures for linkbuilding.
  
• A catch-up linkbuilding campaign is wise when, like me, you haven't gotten around to routine linkbuilding in a long time.
  

Before you start your linkbuilding campaign, get your house in order. Make sure your content is appealing enough that other webmasters and web owners will accept your link requests. Make sure, while you're at it, that's it's all up to date and reflects the current reality of your business. Then get yourself linked up.

What do Good SEO Results Look Like?

When I first started doing online marketing as an in-house SEO, one of the most difficult things for me to determine was what success would look like. What kind of results could we realistically expect? How would we know when we had succeeded?

I think this is one of the reasons that we get so focused on being #1 at Google, or on increasing traffic to a certain point (both good things, but not always the best primary goals): those things are measurable, and you can tell when you've won.

Still, it's a fair question. And a hard one to answer. Some companies get better results than others. Some companies have better products than others, or better follow-through, or perhaps even better luck. What part of your results can definitely be attributed to SEO?

Recently I had a rare opportunity to do a direct comparison of two directly comparable websites.

I've been working with A Plus Educational Supply for a full year now. When I started working with them, they had two websites: one each from the two main stock catalog companies for educational supply dealers. The two sites were comparable in importance and usefulness, similar in traffic and overall quality, and neither of them got many orders.

A Plus hired me to work on one of the sites. I found out about the other one in the course of my initial research, but they asked me to concentrate just on one of the sites, so I ignored the other.

The fortunate site got an SEO makeoever, a blog, linkbuilding, and regular monitoring and response to analytics. The unfortunate one just continued as it had been.

How do the two compare after a year?

The unfortunate one had no PageRank at all. It didn't get crawled by Google. It had no links, except one from the company that hosted it. No orders arrived through it. The domain name is still registered, but the owners let their hosting lapse at the end of the school year and it is no longer online.

The fortunate one has thousands of links and a PageRank of 3. Their sales over the past year are 600% higher than the previous year, even though this has been a very difficult year for their industry as a whole.

Interestingly enough, their traffic is not much higher than it was. Their rankings are better, and their traffic is better focused -- it's their customers rather than random visitors -- but their conversion rate is enormously improved.

The same company, the same people, the same products, the same location, the same economic conditions -- the only difference between the two websites is that one got ongoing web marketing efforts and the other didn't.

One is very successful, and the other is dead.

Outbound Links, Abundance, and Cake

Recently I was talking with a client about plans for his website. He caters to the tourist trade, and we were discussing a page of links to local information.

"I know you don't want to have links that take people off your website..." he said uncertainly.

It made me think about a book called How to Be a Complete and Utter Failure in Life, Work, and Everything by Steve McDermott. In it, McDermott says that people who fail "believe in scarcity... They believe that things, including money, are like a cake -- there are only so many pieces, and if I give some away to you, there's going to be less for me. Successful people believe in the exact opposite -- abundance. That there is too much to go around, and the more I give away, the more comes back to me."

Now, the client I was discussing this with is a successful person, and clearly a generous, abundance-minded person.

Somewhere, though, he's heard that you don't want to put outbound links into your website for fear that people will leave and never return.

There are two things you need to think about when you're deciding this issue. First, how good is your website?

I wrote materials for a client's presentation a while back. "I don't want people looking at the materials while I'm speaking, " the client cautioned me. I think he was warning me not to make his handouts too thrilling.

There was really only one thing to say: "If you're a good presenter, you won't have that problem." If you're a bad presenter, of course, you might as well have really thrilling handouts, so they'll ask you back anyway.

So if it seems to you that people will follow your links and never come back, then you should probably work on that website.

The second thing to think about is your reason for having outbound links. There may be occasions when you're doing it as a favor, or for a really valuable link swap, but usually, the links ought to be for the sake of your visitors. Like everything else on your website.

In this case, the client wants people from far away looking at his website and dreaming of taking a vacation with him. Having a page of useful links for people planning a vacation in his area will encourage those dreams and move them closer to reality.

Having such a page will also cause people to think of his website as the logical starting point for their vacation plans. "We went to the Ozarks," they'll say to their friends, "and it was wonderful! Go to the Sky Ridge website -- they have links to all the information you'll need."

He'll be adding value to his website, making it more appealing to visitors. There'll be linking opportunities and good word of mouth, and lots of return visits. He'll also be able to swap links with local businesses, benefiting them as well as his own business.

He's not going to list his competitors -- but he could. I recently added a link for a client to a competitors' page. They are so confident of their product that they're willing to list all their competitors, improving their search results and traffic in the process. I think my clients have the best product, but I admire that company's audacity, not to mention their generosity.

Even if you don't go that far, you may find that you can benefit a lot from well-planned outbound links. You may not be able to have your cake and eat it, but you can certainly share it and still have plenty for yourself.

Stumble It!

Linkbuilding for Challenging Subjects

I've been linkbuilding today for two different web sites. Two very different websites.

First, there's this free teaching unit on environmental education. This is a very useful page, and I think people will be excited to have access to it. I'm sending off requests to .edu and .gov sites with a fairly high degree of confidence that I'll get those highly desirable links. I'm hanging out with environmentalists and teachers and people promoting social responsibility. I'm adding the URL to green directories and teachers' communities to which I belong.

It's just so wholesome, you can't believe it.

The other website is selling bruise treatment medication. This is also a useful thing. People have been clamoring to try it out for me. It's perfectly wholesome, harmless, and the folks who make it are nice, respectable people.

But in my linkbuilding efforts for these nice people, I'm finding myself in low places. Sites that seem to revel in revolting pictures of bruises. Sites on child and wife abuse. Sites touting quackery and snake oil.

I'm getting different responses, too. I got a notice that Squidoo lenses about pharmaceuticals will be shut down. I got scolded by Wikipedia. I'm being treated like -- gasp -- some kind of sleazy gray hat marketer.

The things I'm doing in the two cases are no different. In both cases, we're offering useful information and in both cases we're selling something. Both respectable activities. It's just that the second example is, unfortunately, in a subject area that has some rough history. Hotels are in that category, too. Nothing wrong with hotels. It's just that their industry has gotten infested by shady activity, and that makes everyone more careful.

What can you do if you find yourself in this position?

• Take the high road. It's certainly easy to follow the common paths, but it's not beneficial in this case. While you do want your environmental lesson plans to be with the other environmental lesson plans, you may not want your herbal remedies to be with the other herbal remedies.
  
• Consider other approaches. With the bruise medication, we may need to focus on cheerleaders, athletes, and dancers rather than on bruises. Doing this will get the product into the awareness of people who need it, without raising so many red flags.
• Expect the process to take longer. It's probably going to take more time and more effort to succeed with a product facing those challenges. There's no point in being unrealistic about that.
  

Every product, and every company, faces some challenges. The lesson plan, for example, is going to be easy to link and is already getting nice traffic. But the company that's offering the lesson plan, SmartPay, shares its business name with a couple of different government programs (U.S. and overseas), a Microsoft division, and a service "powered by Amazon." Talk about challenges!

Just know what you're dealing with and plan your strategy accordingly.

Stumble It!

Is Squidoo for You?

You know you need links. If you have good stuff to offer, you'll gain links naturally because people will link to you -- that's how it's supposed to work, and why the number of links you have is used by search engines to help determine how good your website is, and how worthy of being offered to searchers.

Still, you'll probably need to make some efforts at linkbuilding. Once you've done basic directories and asked the people who will say, "Oh, yeah, how could I have missed you?" though, gaining quality links becomes time-consuming. Analyzing the market to target websites, analyzing each website to determine how best to approach the webmaster, finding the webmaster, crafting that perfect request -- a really good linkbuilder can do maybe three in an hour, and even then you have a 25-40% success rate..

It's natural to wish there were good, ethical ways to create links yourself without having to persuade other people that your site is worth linking to.

There are such ways. One of the most fun is Squidoo.

At Squidoo, you can make lenses, which are organized directories, as the folks over there put it, of good stuff on the web.

You have a choice of modules, which are easy little forms for adding information and links. If you have a video at YouTube, or some good articles, or a useful page at your website, you can add them in and link them up. You can arrange for your Squidoo lenses to be announced automatically at your Twitter or Facebook page.

Here are some initial questions to consider when you're using Squidoo for marketing:

• What should your topic be? You can make a lens about your company or organization. Nothing wrong with that. You can also make lenses about the topics you'd like to be associated with. So my new client BruiseMD, a bruise treatment, should have its own lens, plus lenses on bruising, bruise treatments, natural remedies, sports medicine, cheerleading, last-minute wedding emergencies (they thought of that -- possibly they've actually known some groom who got a black eye at the bachelor party), fruit enzymes, and care of the elderly. There may be more, too. I'll have a look at what's already there on these and related topics and make sure that the new lenses complement rather than duplicating the available information.
• What should you include? Lenses have to be useful to be successful. I re-made a client's lens last month and increased the traffic by 333.33%, with a conversion rate six times as high as they're getting from their paid ads. How? By taking what was there -- essentially an ad -- and making it into a useful source of information. People avoid ads, but are avid for useful information, inlcuding useful information about goods and services that they need. So include your products, but also make sure there's value to the reader. If that means including links to other information sources, so much the better.
• What next? Tell people about the lens and link to it at your social media sites, and perhaps at your website, too. You can continue making more and more lenses if you want, giving your site more and more links, but you can also keep your lenses up to date and tweak them to maximize traffic. You can keep track of visitors to the lens at the Squidoo site, and you can see whether the lens visitors click through to your site with your Google Analytics. In this way, you'll have data on which to base your strategic decisions.
  

One of the great things about Squidoo is that there is a lot of help available there. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned lensmaster, you can find suggestions and support.

Stumble It!

How to Ask for Links

Your website will benefit by having links from other websites. Read more about this concept at my earlier post, "Linkbuilding: Getting That Natural Look."

You can get links naturally by having great content. You can buy links honestly, in the form of advertising. You can place links yourself, in a variety of ways. Still, if you're doing serious linkbuilding, you will have to ask people for them at some point.

How can you do this successfully?

Let's take a moment to define "success." Getting 25% of the links you ask for is considered a success in the industry. This is just speaking generally, though. If you only ask for links when you're really sure you deserve a yes, your success rate will be higher. If you send out mass emails asking for links from everyone whose address you were able to get by any means, your rate will be lower.

Today, I'm thinking about that middle ground. We're going to suppose that you've gotten links from all the really obvious people, and are moving on to the ones who might not have thought of linking to you. You need to persuade them a little.

Here's how:

• Remember it's not about you. Here's a link request I received:

"Dear Webmaster, We have visited your site http://www.rebeccahaden.com and found it quite impressive. We are dealing with a site which is based on the same theme of yours and looking for high quality related sites who can give me link backs. My site is having a PR of 3 and if you will give me a link back then definitely our site will also get benefited.This would be a win situation for both of us and I would really appreciate if you add my site with this information: Computer Technician / IT Support / IT Services. The TechServicesGuide is a completely free services that requires no obligation. A strategic provider of IT services is hard to find. There are no comprehensive IT directories available. We have the tools to help you on your way and the experience working with tech providers.Thanks & Regards, Administrator."



If this were a friend of mine saying, "Hey, I have a new site and I really need links. It's kind of related to yours, so can you give me a hand and link to me?" I'd do my best to help out. This is not a friend. This is someone who decided not to use my name or even his or her own name, and yet the focus of the request is definitely on my doing this person a favor.

Instead, focus your request on how a link would benefit the visitors to the site you want a link from. I'm not convinced by this email that my visitors are panting to have an introduction to a computer tech guy in Australia, so I didn't give this person a link. I did go look at the site, and I did respond, but that's just in case there was a human being involved in this email -- by no means a sure thing.



• Visit the website you want a link from. I'm sort of embarrassed to say this, because it should be obvious, but it's clearly not, based on the kinds of requests I get. A recent example was directed toward one of my clients (on my email address for their company). It came from a direct competitor, and opened with a description of their services in terms suggesting that my clients would be unfamiliar with the services the writer provided, but might care to pass along any of their customers who needed these arcane things done. That kind of thing is actually insulting.

Instead, visit the website, get to know it, and mention in your email the specific things you noticed about the site that make you think that their visitors would find your link useful and beneficial.


• Follow normal rules of courtesy. Make the effort to find the name of the person you're writing to. Share your own name. If they respond to you, thank them. You know, the kinds of things that distinguish real emails from spam.

If you know a little bit about linkbuilding, you may be thinking that this is a time-consuming way to go about it. Yes, it is. However, if you know a lot about linkbuilding, you know that this is the way to get valuable links.

Cultivating Natural Text Links

"In the golden chain of friendship," this Victorian card says, "regard me as a link."

The writer probably wasn't talking about hyperlinks, but her words apply. Links to your website are a friendly thing, and they're golden as far as your search rankings go.

People will link to your website just because it has good stuff and they like it. I have links like that in this blog -- just stuff I think might be useful and interesting to you.

You can get links of that kind by having good stuff at your website, and having the good fortune to have people drop by who like your stuff. Nearly all the links to my educational blog are of that kind: somebody wanted to share a lesson plan on wolves, and there I was. Most of the links from my educational blog are like that, too. Those are natural links.

You can get those natural links by having good stuff and pointing it out to people, and asking for links from them. That's definitely a place where friendship comes in. We see good stuff at the websites of people we know and like, and we link to them in a friendly way. We can even ask our friends for links for friendship's sake. We can ask total strangers for links, too, by pointing out how valuable our website could be to their readers. I do that for clients, and often have responses thanking me for pointing out that valuable resource.

But you can also sometimes put links someplace yourself. If you have a blog, or make a website someplace, you can create links which -- while natural in appearance -- are not entirely natural. You might think of them as cultivated links, or maybe cultured links, like cultured pearls.

I'll tell you frankly that I put links to my clients in this blog.

But there is a difference between a cultured pearl and a plastic bead. There's a difference between golden links of friendship, or even gold-plated ones, and base metal. Allow me to share some simple rules for getting that natural look with your text links.

• You still need good content. When I first became responsible for making an employer's online store profitable, I had a terrible time finding the kind of information I needed. It's not that information about online marketing wasn't on the web, but it was not written for people like me. It required special vocabulary to read it, and it wasn't about the things that I needed to know. That's why I write this blog -- now that I know these things, I want to share them with people in the position I used to be in. I do put links for my clients into my blog posts, but only as useful examples in useful posts. You're facing the same kinds of issues that they are, after all. You might even be one of my clients yourself. When you decide to place links in your text, don't forget the main reason you're writing.
• You still need natural language. I sometimes find myself looking at those "articles" composed of links. "Need a wedding planner?" they say, "Solve all your wedding planner needs with the best wedding planner in Grand Falls and the Grand Falls area!" Nobody's going to read that stuff. Readers say to themselves, "Ah, this is one of those articles composed of links." Then they go somewhere else. If you can't put links into your writing without sounding like that, then you should hire someone like me to do it for you.
• You need honest, worthwhile links. This point may seem like an odd one. You're linking to something for which you want links, right? Probably your own website. Naturally it's worth linking to! But think about your reader. If I'm reading your blog post or article and I click off to a link you've offered me and it turns out to be a useful addition to what I've read, I'll appreciate you. I'll come back and read some more. So, when I write blogs for people, I like to add links to other pages on their websites. But I make sure that these are useful links, and clearly identified.
  
  Here, for example, we have a link in Part II of a series to Part I of that series. Someone who has come to Part II via search might want to read Part I, and they can tell from my link's anchor text that this is where they'll end up. I also have a link to the section of the client's website that discusses how they build successful websites. That link saying "successful web sites" isn't going to take my reader to a pitch for cheap web hosting or a get-rich-quick scheme; it's an honest link. I've linked the phrase "anchor text" to one of my earlier posts on the subject, too, because I think there may be people reading this who don't know what that means, and who will find an explanation helpful. If I were going to link to a site with cheap web hosting, because sometimes that's what you want, I'd link with the phrase "cheap web hosting," so my readers would know where they were going to end up if they clicked the link.
  

If you're in a position to place links for your website, good for you. Do it. Just make sure you do it right. Then your links will be part of that golden chain of friendship, not an irritation to your readers.

Linkbuilding Strategies: What Works for You

When I develop SEO strategies for people, I often suggest a linkbuilding component. Actually, I probably always suggest a linkbuilding component. One of my first clients when I left in-house SEO and became a freelance had a couple million links, and a new linkbuilding campaign was a good move for him, so why wouldn't it be for you?

That doesn't mean that everyone should conduct precisely the same linkbuilding campaign. I was reminded of that while getting a campaign started for BrassMusicOnline.com. The talented people over there will arrange your favorite song to suit your tuba quintet or your one hundred piece orchestra or -- in my case -- a sax, a singer, and a couple of flutes. As anyone who has ever burnt up a few hours seeking out an arrangement that will suit the particular instruments you have on hand knows, this is a useful service.

So I went straightaway to musicians' forums and trombone associations' link pages and so forth and started writing persuasive letters to the humans who take care of those pages. They wrote back to me in gratitude for putting them on to this great thing.

It would be wonderful if basic linkbuilding were always like that. Unfortunately, it's not. If you're a jeweler, for example, you're going to find that the typical response to your forays into early linkbuilding is an automatic notice telling you that you'll have to pay a fee for the directory to go to the trouble of looking at your website and deciding whether or not to link to you. Your industry, your product, your particular website, your competition and even your own social skills play a part in determining what kind of linkbuilding will work best for you.

How can you determine the best strategy for your website?

• Use your special knowledge. I knew where to start for BrassMusicOnline.com because I'm a musician who downloads sheet music, I'm in contact with plenty of others, and I know where we go for such things and how we search for them. I'm also an SEO professional, so I know what to do with that information. But you have special knowledge about your business, don't you? Or you know who you should ask to find out. Where do your customers hang out online? What do they type into the search box when they look for someone like you, and what do they find when they do so? It's worth taking some time to find out.


• Check your competitors' links. This is a slightly technical thing to do, but not that hard. You can find good software that will speed the process up for you, or you can do it for free at Yahoo Site Explorer. Marketleap.com and Searchbliss.com also have good free tools for this purpose. Once you've got a list of that competitor's backlinks to examine, you can get an idea of their overall strategy, and see whether you could benefit from it or not. Sometimes I see that a client's competitor is paying for most links (honestly, through advertising, I mean) or swapping links, so I just make a note of that so I know what we're up against. Sometimes, though, I find great sites I wasn't already aware of this way. You might even see a clever strategy that's new to you. When you find yourself thinking, "Wow! How did they get that link?" you know it's worth further exploration.


• Get help. Anyone can do linkbuilding. A good linkbuilder has an analytical turn of mind, good communication skills, a persuasive writing style, speed at the keyboard, and a sincere belief in the value of your website. That might describe the receptionist in your front office who has time on his or her hands in the afternoon, or your student intern, or you. But linkbuilding is time-consuming even if you do it well, and it's really time-consuming if you do it badly. What's more, if you make the wrong choices, it can do you harm. If you make the right choices, it can be the mainstay of your marketing. It's worth hiring an expert for a campaign now and then if you don't have the skills in-house.

BrassMusicOnline.com had me do a strategy for them and kick off the campaign. I was able to introduce them to a good offshore linkbuilder to continue the project. I'm feeling optimistic about them. Remember them when you need a euphonium arrangement for your next party, too.

Using Local Search When the World is Your Oyster

Yesterday I was placing press releases for Visual Cart, an extremely cool new ecommerce solution (I was tempted to use the slogan "The ecommerce solution you won't hate!" I resisted that, but my online merchant readers will know exactly what I mean). I'm a speed demon on PRs. I craft an excellent press release first, of course, and then I crank out a few variations on the theme, and plug it in to all the respectable online PR services, to get the name and the links out there on the web. This is basic stuff, it drives some traffic, and the links last a long time if you do a good job.

But I also sent the press releases to local media outlets, online and print. I took extra time, too, and wrote letters sharing the story of the company that developed Visual Cart. I pointed out good news hooks related to local events and concerns. I gave them my phone number. Why would I do that when the target market is the world?

Because there are some real advantages to local search.

• First, let's not forget the truth that there are plenty of people who prefer a local business, whether for philosophical reasons or because they like to deal with human beings face to face. Many of your potential customers will start their search with local search terms, even if they're prepared to go to the ends of the earth for the item they need. If you don't do your local search marketing, you're not going to pop up just because you happen to live there.
• Second, it's quicker and easier to show up for your regional keywords, because you have less competition. This is obvious, but a surprising number of people overlook the fact. I have visitors from 21 different countries, and clients from three continents, but I did a good job on local search marketing, so I'm the first choice at Google for "online marketing Fayetteville Arkansas" and "internet marketing Fayetteville Arkansas," even though I'm also the newest in town. How long do you think it'll take me to hit #1 for "online marketing" without listing the town I'm in?
• Third, a strong local showing is a good base to build on. I've taken small businesses to the front page for general terms. The best way to do it is to start with the local area and work your way up. Along the way, you'll add links and increase PageRank, and you'll also be making money.

So how do you do your local search marketing? Make an effort with local press, submit your website to local business directories, and make sure your page is optimized for local search.

There are also special local opportunities. For example, where I live, there's Northwest Arkansas Information, an actual local directory.

I say "actual" because there are fake local directories. Northwest Arkansas Information is a real one. It's the brainchild of Ron Enderland, a tech guy who lives in Bentonville, and the businesses listed are actually local ones. This makes it much more likely that people will use the website to find businesses, and that you might have some traffic from it. The site has lists of the schools and newspapers and help-wanted links, which gives it a greater feeling of trustworthiness, and more likelihood of getting repeat visits. Ron (AKA The Bald Guy) will even get you online for $100 a year and no set-up fee. (If you want to do that, you should read the previous post on working within limitations, because it's do-it-yourself. It's taking some real discipline for me not to go to all those websites and give them unwanted design advice.)

Most of the special local sites are easy to get links to -- if you live and work where they do. Otherwise, they're not available to you at all, thus effectively limiting the competition for the page you're on. This makes them excellent linking opportunities.

Find the ones in your area by typing your region or neighborhood name in at Google. The ones on the front page are the ones most likely to bring you traffic, and the ones on later pages can give you links whether they bring traffic or not. Go on and look at Yahoo and MSN, too, while you're at it. Let this be your linkbuilding for the day, and then knock off early and get the champagne ready for tonight.

Happy New Year!

Stumble It!

Bookmarking Services

I had an interesting conversation over the weekend with David Almodavar of DNA Vertical. Among other things, his company offers a social bookmarking service. That is, his staff will submit your press release or web page to sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. I had an immediate negative reaction to his service, but he has made me think twice about that reaction.

I always get a kick out of having one of my sites Dugg or turning up at one of the aggregates of that type, and some clients of mine who've ended up on StumbleUpon or Boing Boing have found that it gave them terrific traffic.

Now, these sites are there so that people who are sincerely impressed with something they see online can share that excitement with others. I think we all know that many of the recommendations aren't arising from that sincere desire to share. Many are from "you Digg me, I'll Digg you" arrangements, emails saying, "I just posted something. Will you post it on Twitter for me?" going out to 500 of your closest friends, and -- as in DNA Vertical's case -- paid submissions.

To me, this is part of the grayhat stuff that messes up search engine results. If people are continually messing with the search engines, then people who search for information will not be offered the things they need, but just the things we've arranged for them to be offered. The internet will become less useful as a source of information.

Consider the hotel industry. At this point, a person searching for straightforward information about hotels online will have a hard time finding it. That industry has messed around with their search so thoroughly that most people must now turn to phone books to find needed information.

Another example is pharmaceuticals. While researching an article on prescription drug abuse for a client last week, I found that most search terms you'd use if you sought help for this problem actually lead you to ads for cheap Vicodin.

We could, by using grayhat and blackhat techniques, lessen the value of our medium. Do you consider TV ads a good source of information, or do you leave the room when they come on? I think most of us leave the room. And yet there was a time when people actually got information from those advertisements that helped them make decisions.

The internet could be next. We're already teaching our students how to recognize and bypass commercial websites when doing research; grayhat SEO could lead to consumers' doing the same.

And there is a whole lot of grayhatting going on out there. Every day, I pass over ads seeking writers to post fake reviews, to comment at blogs about the wonderful results they've had with something, and the like.

Yet I don't think there is anything wrong with submitting to directories. Nor with asking people whose sites are relevant to those of my clients to consider adding a link. It seems to me that these are ways of letting people who might find it useful know that your website exists. (I've written about this more generally in "The Fairy Godmother Effect.")

Is paid submission to social bookmarking services grayhat, or is it more like submitting to directories? David says, "I don't consider a bookmark a review in the majority of cases. We bookmark a url and 3 keywords to each site. If the users on each of these websites are interested in the keywords they will find them through search or rss and will be able to offer their own opinion... It is really up to the readers/members of the social network to form their own opinion on the content, as we are not a review service, but a submission service. "

I see his point. He's not having people go say, "I tried this product and it changed my life." He's having them say, "Here's a website you might not have seen." For those who are in the early stages where they just need lots of links to establish their presence on the web (and I have a new website myself, so I know how that is), this could be a very useful service.

What do you think?

Stumble It!