Laugh at the Link Building of Old
20:12, Tuesday, 01 December 2009
When I look at how the list of services we provide at Your SEO Consultant has changed in the past year, and how client demand has changed, too, it's hard to look past Link Building as the single area or service for which attitudes have changed for the better.
When I tell Clients that the best way to get other quality sites linking to their own is to create great quality content, it almost seems a little too simplistic (and also like a bit of a cop-out on my part!). The truth is though, that when we consider how a lot of SEO and Online Marketing “Experts” were using every underhand trick in the book to gain links for their Clients, the recommended alternative has a comparable air of authenticity and good old white hat'edness!
Google and the rest are now so good at matching relevance, and assessing trust in linking sites, that black hat no longer exists in the “Real World” of SEO. It should come as no surprise that the virtuous find their rewards in rankings!
So how can you do your bit for your own site, and “cause” links with great link bait? Here are a few tips for what rings bells with the online community:
-
The most important tip of all; Get into your target market's mindset. Ask your existing clients what information or tools would help them, that relate to your services or products.
-
Give them what they want – Author a free whitepaper or report, hosted on your site. If you're not a writer, then you will find some excellent copywriters on the web, such as on Elance or Guru.com.
-
Develop a tool or calculator, perhaps in Widget form, that can be hosted on other sites, and which link to your own.
-
Look at what others are doing, and put your own spin on it. There are very few truly original ideas out there, so why re-invent the wheel.
Going forward, our own strategy towards link building will no doubt change just as much, year on year, as it has in the past. For the time-being, though, we will continue to advocate the use of the very latest Social Media tools, putting your site content in front of people, not robots, and letting them decide for themselves whether you are worthy of their backlink gold!
Tags: link building,link bait,seo