One of our long-time, valued Search Marketing Standard contributors, Garrett French, recently published an ebook together with Ben Wills entitled “The Ontolo Link Building Book.” Garrett has written articles for the print magazine and also for our website’s blog over the years. Most recently, he wrote a series of posts on link building – “Link Building Workshop 1: Rethinking the Link” and “Link Building Workshop 2: From Link Builder to Link Specialist” and he will...
Articles in Link Building
Link Building Workshop 2: From "Link Builder" to "Link Strategist"
In our first link building workshop, I proposed a shift for link building from an “anchor text” and SERP manipulation mentality towards link prospect engagement and content creation/promotion. Not only does this method (also outlined in our new link building book) improve your trust and authority with search engines, but it weaves you into the culture, conversation and commerce of your market. By building these mutually beneficial relationships you create a more defensible linking position...
Internal Linking: Recouping Your Site’s Hidden SEO Value
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become mainstream enough that most Internet marketers understand the primary tenets of a successful SEO initiative: address technical concerns blocking efficient and accurate spidering of the site, provide relevant and unique content, and improve inbound links to each important page on the site. A recent review of a number of websites, however, reveals that the proper handling of internal linking is still lacking in many game plans. Links to a...
Degrees of Trust — What a Link Can Tell a Search Engine
How do you define trust? TheFreeDictionary.com defines it many different ways. SEO professionals should pay particular attention to these two definitions: 1. “Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.” 2. “Reliance on something [or someone] in the future.” The reason these two definitions resonate with me is they both include a human component. Trust is a thing, sure, but this thing ultimately originates in the actions of people. On...
Linking Analysis – Making Sense of the Mess
Given the remarkable amount of emphasis placed on link building over the past five or so years, it’s not surprising that third-party linking analytics tools have proliferated as well. In fact, I’d call it a linking analysis frenzy that goes far beyond the simple link. Most of us have used results from Google Webmaster Tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html) and the Yahoo! Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) to find information about aspects of our site’s linking-related data. It’s fascinating to...
Living On the Edge: Link Buying In Today’s Marketplace
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) centers around three tactics: improving a site’s technical structure, providing valuable content, and obtaining authoritative links pointing to site pages. Insofar as linking is concerned, SEO practitioners have long been divided into two camps — those who follow the unwritten linking derived from guidelines provided by the search engines, and those who do not. Over time, have these “rules” and their stated penalties stopped people from participating in questionable link schemes?...
The Link Is Dead: Long Live the Link
I’m not against any particular web marketing tactic. To each his own – just please keep the spam down. What is troubling to me is that after nearly 14 years of doing online publicity and link building, I see people way too eager to embrace or abandon any given SEM tactic. Tactics that were once considered perfectly acceptable gradually (or suddenly) lose favor. New tactics are hailed as the greatest thing since the last greatest...
5 Strategies to Preserve Your Web Site’s Link Equity
Search marketers go through great pains to acquire links. Links, in general, improve the rankings of a web site. As a result, an entire industry has been created around them. Much to Google’s chagrin, links are bought and sold. Product reviews are contrived – with links embedded, of course, and links are still cleverly exchanged in moderation to the same end. One great relevant link could spell the difference between page one and page two...
Cultivating Dot Edu Backlinks
Many websites have the potential to profit from high-quality, one-way inbound links, such as those to “dot edu” websites, but are held back from success by factors not easily apparent to the site’s operators. A thorough evaluation of your website, especially if conducted by someone outside of the company who can cast an independent eye upon it, may be the first step towards unlocking a site’s potential to obtain more of these “quality” links. Create...
Linking Tips From The Trenches
I’ve spent over a decade building links and publicity for websites. Back when I started in 1993, search engines didn’t care about links, other than to follow them looking for new pages to crawl. Times change. Now links rule. Even job titles like “Linking Specialist” are becoming common. However, there’s an ugly downside when a search engine ranks pages based on linking analysis – link spam, link scams, the proliferation of incorrect information (“Reciprocal links...
