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This was started by an acquaintance I met on Facebook.  It is a community of social media experts. It is a young site, so it is still growing.  But if you have interest in seo or Social Media, it would be a good place to start your search for a qualified professional, or to join in discussions about web promotion.  It is a nice site because the aim is not for people to make sales pitches. But there are several qualified professionals on the site.

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…his name is Eric Ward and he’s a Link Building Expert.

I don’t know the guy.  I promise. Although I did know an Eric Ward in St. Louis/O’fallon who used to throw wicked cool warehouse parties.

Anyway, what can we learn from Eric Ward?  First of all, he has been a professional link builder since 1993. He was arguably one of the first “Web promoters” in the world. He charges $500 per hour for coaching and training.  Up to $50,000 a year for complete publicity campaign for a new site.  I am getting nothing in return for linking to his site; he is not paying me.  He obviously doesn’t NEED me to link to him, I mean the guy is pretty famous. I just think you should take notice of him, because he is THE authority on link building.

I was reading this page and laughed when I got to the end.  He says:

“Is an etiologic approach to link building and content publicity effective? Yes, but don’t take my word for it, read below, then see for yourself.”

I clicked that link that says see for yourself. I am convinced now.

So, he knows his stuff. But you say you don’t have $50,000 to spend on promoting your new site?  Don’t worry.  We can still learn something from his site, without shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars.

1. Make your content meritorius.
2. Make your linking strategy etiologic.
3. Focus on long-term results.
4. White hat.
5. Don’t waste time/effort on worthless links.

What do these mean?  I told you it would be fun, we are learning new words!  Meritorious content is content that has value.  Not fluff, not spam, not splogs, not script-generated (or any type of) nonsense.  Etiologic links are ones that are trustworthy, logical, and efficient. What is an example of a non-etiological link?  How about when you are on a forum and certain words are underlined, and when clicked lead to some sponsoring site.  I would not have a problem with this (Adbright allows any webmaster to add inline ads like this) , EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT 90% of the time these ad-links are irrelevant and UN-targeted.  A site about Dog Rescue ends up having inline ads for words like adopt, but the ads are not talking about adopting puppies!  Even worse is when your “Home” link in your navbar gets linked to a site about real estate.  These links are annoying and actually HURT you.

Let’s not confuse the issue by making this about inline ads, though; the point is, this is the WRONG way to give links, so it is also the wrong way to go about GETTING them. Link text should be relevant; the purpose for having a link there in the FIRST PLACE should be obvious.

When you write your content (or have it written for you), pick out something that is likely going to be considered USEFUL or IMPORTANT.  Ask yourself, who NEEDS to read this?  WHO DOES this HELP?  Choose that one sentence and figure out WHO would benefit from reading it.  Then figure out where that person hangs out online.  And go after THAT site for links.

Why are we doing it like this?  Because, signing up to be included in a zillion web directories will not ever get you any SUSTAINABLE traffic.  But if a friend of mine has a site about helping moms live beautifully, comfortably, and abundantly, then instead of adding her link to some crappy directory, an etiological linking strategy would make me choose instead to focus the effort on getting links back from places where her audience most likely hangs out:  Boudica.com or even EmpoweredAndFit.ning.com.

See how this starts to become fun?

We aren’t paying for links, we aren’t creating useless blogs with keyword-crammed SPUN articles, we aren’t employing any black hat techniques.

What we are doing is figuring out who needs to hear our message and then getting the most relevant, useful content that we have written for those people, into their field of view.  Whether that is a forum, a ning community, a popular blog, a news portal, bookmarking site, whatever… it depends on your content.  The fun part is that we will actually become involved with the people who we are targeting, by joining them where they go.  Instead of just shouting at people, “HEY! COME OVER HERE!  SEE WHAT I AM GOING TO SELL YOU AT MY PLACE!”

We will be better off saying, Hey, mind if I join you here for a bit?  I have something I would like to contribute, that you might like, and I would like to hang out with you here, on YOUR turf, thanks for having me as your guest.

But whatever your niche, it all starts with having QUALITY content that people will actually WANT to read.  Without that, you are just spinning your wheels.

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Step Two: Bookmark, bookmark, bookmark. If you don’t already have accounts on Digg, Fark, Furl, del.icio.us, Propeller, Mixx, Yigg, Reddit, and every other bookmarking site in existence, get them.  It will be incredibly tedious setting them all up, but after that four or five hour trek is complete, and you autosave your passwords, and drag your bookmarklets to the browser toolbar, you will be on the fast lane to success. There are at least a couple hundred bookmarking sites to choose from these days; for a few of the popular ones, look to the bottom of this article.

A quick note about social bookmarking: it used to be a great tool for seo.  The importance of bookmarking in terms of backlink building has decreased a little bit over the past two years, but it is still a good practice to get into, because you will get traffic.  Even though you might not get tons of diggs, if you just get a few, and one person likes your stuff enough to link to it from HIS or HER site, then you will get a backlink indirectly from a living breathing human, who liked your content.  And when you have a chance to network with other living humans, it is a good thing.

Bookmark other people’s content, link to them, leave them comments and shouts, and they will remember you.

Step three: leave comments on blogs that relate to your content. Yes, you have heard this idea before, and it’s time consuming.  And you have heard that a lot of blogs insert the rel=”nofollow” into all links to keep from passing along any PR juice to your site.  But now, remember that you want to write content for humans. You want to network on social bookmarking sites with humans.  And you want to get traffic from humans.  So who cares if the link has “nofollow” attached to it?  Over the long haul you will find plenty of “dofollow” links.  Don’t discriminate, grab them all.

Still not convinced? Ok, well here is a trick to find other blogs that are HUNGRY for your comments, and DOFOLLOW.  Use the “Do Follow Diver” search box over at our friends’ site, and just type in your niche keywords.  It’s easy, it’s fun.  Why is it fun?  Because the blog owners you will find here actually respond, they are waiting for you, and they are happy to link back to your site.

Just be respectful and make sure your comments are relevant, not spammy.

If you bookmark one of YOUR blog articles and one of someone else’s each day, AND leave a comment with your link on ONE blog each day, your traffic will pick up.  Make it fun, and don’t do too much at once.  You will see results faster than you think.

Steps 4 and 5: Forums and Article Directories, coming in the next entry.

Time for me to make some pasta.  See you soon.

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Just kidding, it’s pretty obvious.

But seriously, how do I make the jump from a PR3 to a PR4?  I have been sitting at PR3, not moving up or down, for what seems like forever.  Really it’s only been a couple of months, but we Americans are SO impatient, aren’t we? If I was cool I would have said Yanks, not Americans, but let’s get to the point:

BACKLINKS ARE THE NEW BLACK!

So it’s not a new trend, but the importance of it is huge.  You can’t compete unless you make link building an active  part of your seo Dance Moves repertoire.

Inbound links and backlinks are the same thing, if you weren’t sure.  It’s okay to ask questions, this blog is not aimed at the experts.  The experts don’t need seo blogs.

So although the practice of getting backlinks to increase your PageRank is not new, the importance of it is SO GREAT that it still merits being called the new black.

I would venture to say that IF your domain is young, and IF you do not have the luxury of having your primary keyword phrase in your domain, the fastest and best way to build your authority is by getting other sites to link to you.

Think of it this way: all other factors being equal, if two web pages are equal in terms of keyword density and onsite optimization, then the best tiebreaker is in OFFSITE optimization.

So although it can be tedious, although it is probably going to be your least favorite aspect of seo, it is still one of the smartest things to focus on.

The next article will be a list of creative ways to get those inbound links from high PR sites, and we aren’t going to send out a single desparate email to any webmaster, begging for a repicrocal link exchange!

I will make link building fun, if it kills me!

Comments are welcome, it’s getting lonely in this elevator shaft.

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1. Domain age. A 5 year old domain has an advantage over a domain name that you bought last week. It already carries some authority. But it’s not a HUGE deal. There are often sites in the top ten (coveted spot) that are new. They optimized well in other areas, obviously.
2. Keywords in domain name. This helps a great deal. For example, if my main keyword phrase is “pound dog rescue“, then the ideal domain name is pounddogrescue.com, with no hyphens.  Don’t waste your money on a .info domain.  Only buy the .org, .net, .us, .me names if 1) the .com version is not available, and 2) it makes sense for your site (as in, don’t get a .org if you are not an organization–it just doesn’t look good).
3. Keywords used in other strategic spots.  If you are using Firefox, go to your site and hit CTRL+U.  This will bring up your source code for the site.  You should notice <title> tags, <h1> and <h2> tags, <img> tags, <meta> tags, and each of these is a good spot to use your keyword phrase.  Don’t just use your primary keyword phrase, but switch things up every now and then, without being spammy.  For example, in the <img> tag, include some alt text, with the word “logo” or “graphic” at the end.  The reason for alt text is to tell someone who can’t see the picture, what it is a picture of!  This comes in handy for text-only browsers, as well as broken images (the text will appear if the image doesn’t load).  So use alt text to your advantage, but remember to create your site to be useful for people, don’t just stuff keywords everywhere tastelessly.
4. Inbound links.  Perhaps one of the most difficult parts of seo; link building campaigns can be costly and time consuming.  But the more inbound links you have (in other words, other websites who are linking TO your page), the better.  Again, this is not going to be the sole determining factor, as sometimes the number one site has less inbound links than the other top ten sites for your keyword, but it is still a HUGE help, when other sites link to yours.  It helps build your authority, in your chosen niche.
5. Relevant link TEXT. Just because you’ve got inbound links, doesn’t mean your work is done.  You need to make sure the anchor tags linking to you are also using your keywords.  Don’t use the same link text for every inbound link.  Use a variety, and again, don’t get spammy.  The fewer words, the more weight each word will carry.

Each of these points can be analyzed further.  This is meant as a rough starting point to open up questions and discussion.  For example, meta tags for description and keywords (SEE #3 above) have really become less important in Google’s eyes, but they are still used by many other search engines to determine how to rank your pages.  Or we could start an entire discussion on whether or not to waste your time with reciprocal linking.  My opinion: if you truly find a site to be valuable, then link to it.  If not, then don’t.   As long as your content is strong, you won’t have to beg people for links, they will link to you naturally.

What are YOUR thoughts?

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