25 August 2010

Link Backs - Link building Techiniques

Whether links or content is King, we see enough questions on forums about link building techniques to know that backlinks are central to success in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

Link Bait. The most powerful technique, hands down, is to create content that will attract links. The rest of the "self service" links - those that you can create yourself - have some value, but there is nothing like the "citation links" that come from other webmasters. Where to start with link bait:

* Freebies - Give away an e-book or a tutorial or?
* Review products in your industry
* Write about news in your niche
* Develop a tool and share it (another freebie, yes)
* Interview someone famous in your industry and publish the article on your own site
* Start a controversy
* A Contest or Award Program
* Create a Resource: lists of the best the books in your industry, a glossary of terms for your niche
* Report on Statistical or Financial trends in your industry.

Social Media. Not all links are created equal. Some links from social media are followed, some are not. But as in many things in life, you get what you "pay" for. Twitter links may not be followed, but if you put in the effort and post useful information, the traffic will come. With the right information in your Tweets and on your website, you will attract more links from your visitors.

What is the motivation for one web site owner to link to another web site? The fundamental principle of the web is to allow any document to link to and to be linked from any other document. This is how Tim Berners-Lee intended it when he first proposed the hypertext protocol in 1989, before most of us had ever heard of the Internet.  Initially developed as a way to help researchers interlink related documents from computers all over the world, the web was soon discovered by those more interested in commerce, and several years later, here we are. 
It's interesting to me that nearly every commercially related web development since its founding has been in some way related to the link (that is, an attempt to find new ways for one site to be linked to another). Banner ads are, at their core just a link from one site to another. So are text ads, whether on web sites or in newsletters, or in an email message.  And buttons, badges, icons, etc., are all just another form of link. A PPC listing or a Twitter tweeted URL or a list of search results are nothing more than links. Your Yahoo! directory listing, BBB member page listing, even that cool widget you created -- no matter how you spin it -- are all links. 
Anything to be clicked on that shuttles people from one place to another while online constitutes a link. 
The development of all form and fashion of linking types has never improved upon the original, and no amount of cleverness will ever change one universal truth: the less useful your content, the less likely you are to ever receive a link to it.  
"The less useful your content, the less likely you are to ever receive a link to it"
If we think of the word "useful" as a continuum, then the most useful sites are those that provide rich, quality content on a specific subject on which the editor or provider is an authority. Think of the U.S. Government's CancerNet site aka The National Cancer Institute. Now there's the ultimate example of content on the right side of the continuum -- tens of thousands of pages on every facet of cancer, all free, all generated by experts in the field. 
In fact, with no marketing department, the CancerNet site has tens of thousands of links pointing to it from other sites around the world. It's one of my standard sermons: Useful content gets linked.
 
But...the reality is we can't all be CancerNet. Most sites simply do not have the kind of content that engenders tens of thousands of links. So what do you?  What if you are simply trying to sell a few widgets and don't have any reference to quality content? If your site lands on the left side of the useful continuum, you accept that you are not going to get many links. And those links you do get, you will probably have to pay for. And those links you pay for are not likely to help your rankings, and might even hurt them.
If you don't want to accept this reality and truly want to earn links to your site, you have one (and only one) other option available to you. Make it link-worthy. 
 
What is a linkworthy site? Let's imagine you have an online magic store that caters to professional and amateur magicians. On your site, you sell tricks, supplies, hats, capes, and wands, even the saw-the-person-in-half gag. 
If your content were nothing more than an online store, why would anyone link to it? You might get a few links on any magic-site web guides and link lists. But then what? If you are an online store with nothing but products as your content, then you MUST look to associate/affiliate programs as a means of generating links. Basically, paying for them. 
But maybe there is something more you CAN do, if you are willing to roll up your sleeves. 
What if, along with your products, you create a searchable database of information on magic. What if you had complete biographies of more than 700 magicians? What if you had a section devoted to magical world records, or a glossary of magical terms, or a directory of magicians on the Internet? 
This would then be an excellent example of how a store site can add rich, relevant content, value, interest, and community to its web site, as well as sell merchandise. This site would be covered by just about any writer who writes about magic and/or reviews web sites. 


It's difficult to find high-trust online media outlets and curator/site reviewers willing to cover or link to marketing/sales sites. The more a site offers deep information on a certain subject, databases, community, guides, forums, reviews, etc., the more likely the editors are to want to cover it. Whether it's a business or consumer site, the more content-rich the better, especially if the site's mission is sales. A site designed to sell a product is far different than a true reference site with hundreds and hundreds of pages of free information on a particular subject. 

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