A 4-legged approach to link building.

March 21, 2008

The algorithms of search engines are constantly changing. The big 3 (Google, Yahoo and MSN) may love your links today and devalue them tomorrow. I think the largest evidence of this is what happened to reciprocal links. At one time they were all you needed to rank very well in Google. Now, though, they have a tiny fraction of their previous value.

The sudden, drastic change in reciprocal linking is evidence that you need to vary your link gathering methods. Putting all of your links in one basket will work for a while, but when it stops working every site you have will suffer greatly.

That's why I recommend a four-legged approach to link building:

Automated link building.
Links from article distribution, press releases and blog comments.
Social bookmarking.
"Natural" links resulting from great site content.

Let's go over each one of these methods in a little more detail.

Automated Link Building

To stay ahead of your biggest competition, many of whom often have a full time staff working to build links, you need to consider a proven automated linking method. Whether you use a semi-automated approach (such as SEO Elite), or a fully automated method (like 3WayLinks.net, you need to think seriously about the efficiency of automated link building. It helps you to keep pace with those who have a staff, especially if you're a one man (or woman) show.

Links From Article Distribution, Press Releases and Blog Comments

I'm grouping these three methods together because they're all part of what I consider "in-content linking" — where your links are surrounded by content related to your link and the subjects that you want to rank for. Since all three accomplish this in a similar way, I've put them all together under one "leg."

Gaining backlinks from articles will never go out of style. People have been building their brand and generating sales from article syndication for many, many years. Now, in the age of the Internet, in addition to the direct traffic generated from the links in the articles, you also help your ranking in the search engines.

Articles do more than help boost your ranking through link building. They also build your personal brand, establishing you as a knowledgeable authority in your subject area, and that builds trust that works to drive sales.

Now that articles are also used for search engine optimization, though, it's important that you understand the ins and outs of how best to write articles that are both informative and educational, while also being effective at drawing people to your site without sacrificing their SEO value. A great report that outlines a number of "best practice" methods from a proven article marketer is Josh Spaulding's Article Marketing Domination.

Press releases are less for building authority and more for generating buzz, but they still give you a great way to get a lot of low-cost links into your sites. Have a new product or service available? Create a great new concept or idea? Then write a press release and submit it to the top sites for quick traffic and link building.

Blog comments are a third great way to get high-quality links to your site from pages of content related to your site. Of course, spam commenting won't do. You want to make sure that you read the blog posts that you're going to comment on, and write a thoughtful comment that adds to the post.

A great way to automate your efforts is by using Fast Blog Finder. Click here to download and install the free version. The free version limits how many blogs it will find related to the keywords you provide, but it is not crippled beyond that. If you feel it's as great as I feel it is, you can go to the Help menu and buy the full version that has no limitations.

Social Bookmarking

If I need to get a site crawled and indexed fast, I usually post a few social bookmarks to it. The search engines quickly follow, and within a few days or a week, the site is almost always fully indexed.

But social bookmarking is also great for building backlinks. For automation, I like to use Social Bookmarking Demon. It makes it easy to submit to dozens of social bookmarking sites. Keep in mind, though, that if you submit to a lot of these sites at one time, and your site is pretty new, then Google will probably drop your ranking after a few days. Your ranking will stay down for a week to two weeks before those new links are calculated into Google's algorithm. When that happens, though, I always see a significant boost up from my original ranking.

So for new sites, social bookmarking is a definite must-have on your list of linking techniques.

"Natural" Links Resulting From Great Site Content

I use the word "natural" in quotes because I'm not completely in line with Google's notion of what constitutes a "natural" link — but that's a post for another day.

Regardless, though, if you want to have an army of people adding links to your pages without you having to pay them a salary to do so, then you need to have outstanding content on your web sites. Outstanding content is link bait! People will link to it like crazy and tout how wonderful your site is to other people, encouraging them to visit.

This works well for you in terms of direct traffic from those pages as well as increasing your link popularity and, thereby, your ranking in the search engines. However, because "natural" links don't always follow Google's prescribed method of including the keywords you want to rank for in the anchor text, it often takes a lot more of these kinds of links to rank well.

Four Legs Makes a Table Sturdy

Using multiple link building techniques can be likened to building a table. You can get a table with one leg to stand up if you're really careful, but any little bump or movement and it'll fall over. Two legs will hold up a little easier, but still, it's precarious. Three legs isn't bad. In fact, many a table is built with three legs. But four legs is by far the most sturdy, able to withstand all kinds of bumps, shoves and movement without falling over.

The same holds true with link building. Today the search engines may value automated links more than links from articles or press releases, or vice versa, but tomorrow that formula may change (and, based on past experience, it's likely to). So if you have your links spread out across many possible categories, your rankings are much more likely to survive the ebb and flow of search engine algorithms.

An added benefit of using techniques such as article writing and press releases is that they have their own innate traffic value. So even if your site disappeared from the rankings completely, if you have thousands content-based links in articles and press releases spread across the web, you won't lose all of your traffic. In fact, I've got one site that I worked hard to get quality links to from related niche sites that actually received 70-75% of its traffic from those links (to the tune of 15,000 visitors per month). Keep that in mind when planning your link building strategy as well.

Please post your thoughts and comments below.

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Traffic, Search Engine Optimization, Blog | 115 Comments

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Giving your business a shave with Occam's Razor.

March 13, 2008

Albert Einstein stated a principle in 1933 which is often paraphrased as "Theories should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." Occam's Razor is a similar principle of logic that can be summed up as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." Then there's the principle more people are probably familiar with: the KISS principle ("Keep It Simple, Stupid").

As a computer programmer and web developer, I've found all three principles to be very true. When an algorithm or piece of logic in my code starts getting too complex, I try to step back and see if my fundamentals are wrong. Almost inevitably, I find a simpler, faster, better way to solve the same problem. It's also taught me to be able to let go of hundreds (or thousands) of lines of code that took me hours (or days) to write. As painful as the wasted time may seem, I try to view it, not as a loss, but rather as simply the steps it took for me to find a better method.

This has helped me tremendously in my business, too. When things start getting too difficult to manage easily, I make the same kind of assumption I would make if the code I'm writing starts to get too muddled: I've got some fundamentals wrong. My willingness to make drastic changes for the sake of improving the way things work has been rewarded handsomely in this regard as well.

Unfortunately, it is not human nature to do this. By nature, we take the path of least resistance, and that means continually doing what we're doing, even if it will ultimately result in failure. Making drastic fundamental changes in our methods or routine is scary. What's behind the door of change is an unknown, and unknowns make most people very apprehensive.

To illustrate: let's say that you start a link building campaign, but after a few months you're still not seeing any good search engine rankings despite having the same number of links as your competitors. At this point you have two options: you can keep doing what you're doing in the hopes that getting more and more and more links will eventually get you ranked, or you can step back and examine what it is about the links you're getting, or the way you're getting them, that just isn't working very well.

In this particular case, if you choose to just keep doing the same thing, you might eventually see some results. That's what makes continuing with a flawed plan so dangerous. Because you did, in fact, see some results, you might continue going about your link campaigns in the wrong way, expending far too much time and too many resources on a flawed method over and over again. However, if you choose to step back and figure out where you went wrong, it might take longer to see good results this time, but going forward you've got a better method that will more than make up for the added time and expense.

I've never really agreed with the mantra "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Just because something is working does not mean it's working well, and it certainly doesn't mean it's giving you the best return on your investment. Where would technology be today if all of the great inventors took that stand? We'd still be driving Model-T cars and manually washing our clothes with a bucket and a bar of soap!

Thomas Edison first patented the idea of the electric light bulb in 1880. That light bulb lasted a whopping 13.5 hours before burning out. If he'd stopped his work then, we might be changing a lot more light bulbs around the house! But he didn't stop. After a few more months he created a filament that lasted 1,200 hours. A drastic improvement indeed, gained because he didn't believe that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

A better philosophy is, "If it's simple and works well, don't complicate it." The key here is that it has to "work well." Only you can judge what's working well for you and what isn't. You have your own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, and you need to be willing to assess them and make decisions based on that assessment. You also have your own unique goals, and no one else should dictate what you should and should not accomplish. Set your goals to meet your needs, and go from there.

I can't overemphasize the importance of changing your view of the "lost" work that comes with making changes, either. It's not lost work — it's gained knowledge and experience. The sum total of all of your failures is what fuels the success that will come, if only you keep at it.

Thomas Edison failed ten thousand times before finally making a light bulb that worked. It's true that, had he quit, somebody else would have eventually made the discovery, so the world probably would not have lost too much. Edison was not the first person to experiment with electric light, nor would he be the last (in 1994 General Electric created a light bulb that will burn for 60,000 hours). But think of what Edison would have lost! And think about what you will lose if you give up and stop working to improve your business.

So if you're finding your daily routine full of drudgery and difficulties, perhaps it's time to take out Occam's Razor and give your business a shave.

Please post your thoughts and ideas below.

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Blog | 74 Comments