All too often we can get bogged down with day-to-day tasks, and when we’re given an SEO project it’s then very easy to follow a set checklist for SEO. Research, proposal, on page, off page, link building, copywriting etc. etc. But as there are so many SEOs and dedicated SEO agencies out there, it helps to think a little ‘outside the box’ to achieve not just good results, but great results that set you apart from the crowd.
Here’s a list of some pointers that I’m going to share with you that I find useful when considering a link building strategy for a SEO campaign:
1. Copywriting for forums
Don’t just jump straight into a forum thread or even a relevant Yahoo! Answers page simply to insert a link back. Actually hire a copywriter who knows about your/your client’s industry so that you actively participate and add value and insight into the topic. The copywriter doesn’t have to be an addition to your team – why not send an email round the office asking if anyone has any specialist knowledge about the topic? You’d be surprised what hobbies and interests your colleagues have outside work and how they could help!
2. Bartering for links back
So you’ve explored your competitors’ sites and found their backlinks, and tried to request or add a link back to your site from those sources too. Great. But how about actually pursuading the website owners to link to you instead of your competitor? It’d be doubley successful as you’d gain a link, plus your competitor would lose one! Sneaky…
3. Content distribution
As we all know, duplicate content is an issue in search engines. We also know that including an RSS feed for your site’s content is a great way to get people to link back to your site. So how can you: a) stop people from using your exact content and creating duplicate content issues, and b) ensure they link back after greedily stealing your content? Here’s what I’d suggest:
a) First off, provide only snippets or slightly different content if possible. Any change in the content will help, it doesn’t have to involve a complete article rewrite.
b) Always try to include an internal link (but with full URL path) in the first paragraph of your content. This way, when the article is scraped, there’s a pretty good chance that the link will stay in tact and although you’ve had your content stolen, you’ve actually gained a link back that’s set within context and got great anchor text too.
4. Credit where credit’s due
As part of standard reputation management you should be checking search engines, forums and social media sites etc. for mentions of your company’s name. That way you can spot issues and respond. But also, you may notice that a website has mentioned you, perhaps even quoted you or used your content, but is not providing a link back. So request one. This is also relevant to those sites that include your domain name but do not format it as an actual link back, i.e. www.searchenginechocolate.com
4 ½. Affiliates
This is actually a tough one! Hence it only being worth half a link building tip! You’ll need to be tactful. If you have an affiliate campaing running and some of your affiliates have sites with high PageRank and traffic, you could try approaching them for a direct link to your site. You’ll need to approach this on an affiliate-by-affiliate basis as this will obviously not help their commissions. But if you made it worth their while (giving them a bonus or more commission perhaps?) to add that link back, then you’d have a great ready-made network of people to approach for link building.
June 5th, 2009 on 10:15 AM
very good article with lots of infromation. I will try your rules and hope I got some links more
July 22nd, 2009 on 2:53 PM
Of course the additional one is to comment on loads of articles with “very good article, lots of information” … and hope it isn’t no followed.
(tongue in cheek response)