Show Me The Links: Real Life Link Building

Building links for BTB Sites - Roger Montti

1. Target Searching - target sites that link to relevant resources

ex: use allintitle: “relevant keyword” resources site:.org
tip: add search modifier if more than 1,000 results to find hidden opportunities

2. Backlink trolling - monitor other sites for links; better from related sites and NOT competitors. You want sites not linking to your competitors.

ex: linkdomain:relatedsite.com -site:relatedsite.com “sponsors”

3. Association Memberships - many member sites link to members.

tip: search for member lists, restrict to .org sometimes

4. Paid Links - Carries risk, evaluate risk tolerance and may create reputation managment issues if not discrete.

5. Broken Link campaign - find popular sites from the past that have died out and still have links

tip: go back in archive.org as far as you can

6. General sponsorship - use a search such as “sponsors” “your keywords” site:.edu

tip: use Yahoo for link discovery/research and switch out TLD extensions

7. Free links - cultivate alliances with bloggers and ask for them to do an interview or add to your resource.

Targeted Link Building by Arnie Kuenn - VerticalMeasures

Breakdown of link building work

• 50% content development
• 20% blog posts & article placement (guest blogs & articles, not free directories)
• 10% basic link development (directories, comments, etc…)
• 20% targeted link requests

1. Pirate Costume Link
#1 competitor back link in Open Site Explorer
Emailed site owner: Ahoy Webwench, I like yer site
Rejected: site owner says no thanks
Reply: if you change your mind there is rum
result: site owner changed mind

Tip: Have fun and reach out, reply even to rejection

2. Targeted Email Request
Researched site owner and found out he claims to predict Miss America pageant winners.

Link check on page you want a link to find broken links, contact site owner about broken links, tell them about your resource to add to link list

3. Content Dev & Promotion
Approached saycampuslife.com via twitter after finding blog
Use clients large twitter following as bargaining chip (we will tweet to our list)

4. April Fools Day Prank

Wrote a prank post on Google opening SEO agency
27 days later newswire associate editor writes a real story on prank.
SEO industry blogger investigates newswire article and writes a post
VM wrote a blog post clearing up the confusion/rumor
resulted in over 800 backlinks

tip: sometime it helps to follow your incoming backlinks to see what people are saying about you.

Infographics & Guest Virals/Blog Outreach - Chris Bennett, 97th Floor

Good for boring stuff, great for B2B and good to portray lots of data

What makes a good infographic?

• lots of detail info
• aesthetically pleasing
• complex ideas

ex: STDs Across America
Where does the money go (31k backlinks)
What is a Petabyte

How commercial sites can play in the viral link building game

• Setup viral content rich hubs, visualeconomics.com
• Guest virals - get guest bloggers to publish your viral content
• Put viral content up on behalf of your brand
• Skip the diggs and go straight to the links
• Offer to promote; big sites just want traffic for ad sales. it is all about pageviews for them.
• Use embed code that links back to your site but is on guest site

Create a rolodex of those that link to you. Say thanks and notify next time you create something good. Why start from scratch every time.

Relationship Building & Link Building - Gil Reich, Answers.com

Get your message on thier site

1. Make the first impression: You Rock (ie this guy rocks).
You Rock!: Badges
You Rock!: Testimonials
Have Chutzpah

2. Write on sites that want good content and can deliver an audience
Answered questions, added links
The person who asked the question
Other people who have the question and look at the site
People who search Google for the question
Leveraged Y!A’s SEO power

3. Be a part of the community
Blog commenting & Tweets
Common events - chase the community
become trusted in the community and you will likely be trusted search engines
Common Enemies
Worst of posts do better than best of posts

Final thoughts from Gil:
Help people
Make it easy to link to you

Pump up your existing content & links - Debra Mastaler, Alliance-Link

Use dapper.net
Create a custom RSS Feeds
Run through RSSmix to create unique feed
submit to RSS Directories

RSS Footer Tool - WP Plugin - Joost de Valk

Using RSS For Media Leads
ex: CNN RSS Alert Service

alert tools:
trackengine
watchthatpage

Got a name of a person who writes on CNN and is a travel writer

Content Syndication what’s hot:

• white papers
• living stories

The best right now:

• podcasts
• UGC/blogs - wikipedia is completely user generated

Search for “white paper syndication” “content syndication” “podcast

Podcasts:

• put on your site
• do a media release
• insert into podcast directories
• submit to itunes - #1 thing you can do for podcasts
• tell them how to link to your podcast at the end, give them the URL

soloseo.com/tools/linkSearch.html

site:somesite.com “guest post”

Widget Bait - Novelty Basic
widgetbox.com
news aggregator widgets are doing the best
always put the widget on your site first and encourage people to download

Micro-sites tip: buy old sites and use as micro sites