I just read a series of blog posts at SEOMoz that are essential reading for anyone interested in link building. Here is a link to the last post so far in the series (I don’t know if there will be any more or not) - that page contains links to the other posts in the series. Let me take a moment and tell you why I think these posts are so important.

I’ll start with a question - when you produce content for your site, who do you produce it for? Until today, I would have said that we produce content for our customers - after all, they are the people who we ultimately have to please. And while I think that is still true, I no longer think that it is totally true. There is another group of people who you need to write content for, and they are the Link Masters (Rand Fish at SEOMoz calls them the linkerati, but I like link masters better).

The link masters are the people who control the links, and they often times are not your customers. In other words, they are the masters of the links - they decide who gets them and who doesn’t. Who are these people? Well, it depends, in part, on which industry you are in, but there are some generalities that we can mention. The link masters tend to belong to the following groups (this is, btw, Rand’s list):

• Bloggers
• Forum posters
• Web News Writers
• Content Creators
• Resource Editors
• Social Taggers
• Viral Connectors
• Journalists

This list definitely needs to be expanded upon, and Rand does a good initial job at his post entitled “Identifying the Linkerati” (I suggest you go check it out and then come back here).

The existence of this group of people has serious ramifications for your site in general and your link building goals in particular. It means that you are going to have to broaden the type of content that you write. Some content you will need to write for your customers, while other content you will have to write for the Link Masters. Of cousre, if you can make your content appeal to both groups, that’s great, but that’s not always the case.

This means that not only will you have to figure out who your target audience is in terms of your customers, but you also have to figure out who your target market is in terms of the Link Masters. In other words, it is important that you spend some time figuring out who are the Link Masters in your particular industry. And then, you have to figure out what they want to link to and create it. We’ll discuss those issues in future posts.

Technorati Tags: Linkerati, link building, link, links, linking, link building strategy, link-building, link-building-strategy, linking strategy, Link Masters, Link-Masters

Link Building Link Building Strategy Link Masters Linkerati Linking Strategy No comments

When you think of links what do you think of? Do you think of search engine rankings? How about direct traffic? Maybe profits come to mind? For me, I think of all of these things, and more. You see, links are just tools, and when used properly they can greatly help you to increase the success and profitability of your website. The key, though, is understanding what it means to use a link properly.

To properly use a link you have to take a second and understand your goals. After all, as I said above, a link is a tool and the point of a tool is to help you more efficiently accomplish your goals. Therefore, before we start talking about how to best use links, we need to understand what we want to accomplish in general. At that point we can start to ask how links can help us accomplish those goals.

When it comes to link building, your main focus should be driving potential customers to your site. There are three crucial words or phrases in this sentence: main, driving, and potential customer. Let’s understand the importance of each one.

The main focus of your link building campaign

As you noticed, I talk about your main focus. This means two things. First of all, it means that you will want to devote the bulk of your time, effort and resources (financial and other) to using links to drive qualified traffic to your site. On the other hand, this is only your main goal. There are other goals. For instance, links can help you build your reputation online (to learn more about using links to help improve your online reputation, check out the following article: http://sembasics.com/sem-blog/link-building/how-the-right-link-can-help-you-gain-loyal-customers). Links can also provide a useful service for your customers (like when you send them to a helpful resource that they wouldn’t know about otherwise). You will want to be aware of these other uses and take advantage of them.

Using links to drive traffic

Getting traffic using links isn’t really that hard. Economically and efficiently getting traffic using links is another story. You could easily spend thousands of dollars and countless number of hours building links, but that may not be the best use of your time, efforts, and resources. It’s best to get a sense of how you want to go about building links before you begin. How much time can you allocate to the process? What resources can you afford to spare? Remember, you are building links in order to help you build a business. As such, you should treat link building like any other aspect of your business.

Attracting potential customers using links

Remember, you aren’t just interested in how many people come to your website, but what types of people come to your website. Put differently, you aren’t looking for just any old sort of traffic, but rather high-quality, targeted traffic. That means that you want the type of people who will buy your product, click on your ad, take advantage of your services, etc. In short, customers! As such, when you start building links you need to think about how your links are going to help you bring in the type of traffic you want.

At the end of the day, the key to a successful link building campaign is figuring out how to economically and efficiently drive large numbers of targeted visitors to your website. Once you have that mastered you can then start to branch off and use links to accomplish other goals, such as improve your reputation online. The main thing to remember, is that link building is part of your overall business plan and needs to be related to as such. That’s the key to successfully using links to help build your online business.

Create a hugely successful link building program with Sem Basics Free Link Building Tips! 

Sign up today online or via email:

• Online:  http://www.sembasics.com/link-building-course
• Email:  linking@getresponse.com (send a blank email)

 Subscribe to SEM Basics using an RSS Reader or by Email

Technorati Tags: link, links, link building, link-building, internet marketing tips, internet-marketing-tips, linking, web, internet, marketing, google, yahoo, msn, seo, sem, search marketing, search engines, search engine, search engine optimization, search engine marketing

Driving Traffic Internet Marketing Internet Marketing Tips Link Building Link Building Strategies Link Building Tips Marketing Tips Search Engine Rankings Traffic No comments

We usually think of links in terms of traffic - either directly or indirectly through the search engines. However, there is another use for links, and one that you probably should be utilizing. You see, the right link can help you to establish yourself (or your company) as an expert in your field - and this is something that you should take seriously.

One of the keys to building a successful online business is developing a group of loyal customers who will return time and again to your website as well as recommend your site to their friends and family. As such, you need to think about what you can do to create those loyal customers. One ingredient (although not the only one) is to establish yourself as an expert in their eyes. You see, people trust experts and trust is one of the pillars of loyalty.

With that said, take a moment and ask yourself, how can you use links to help establish your credibility and expertise online? One idea is to link to online resources that put you in a good light. Have you ever been interviewed? Great, then link to it. Has anyone ever written a write-up of you or your company? Well, there’s another page you’ll want to link to. In short, you need a list of online resources which help establish your credibility and then you need to link to those source. And if those resources don’t exist - then create them!

By the way, there are many avenues available to link to these resources. In addition to linking to them on your own site, you can link to them from other peoples sites, whether it’s in a blog comment that you leave, a post on a forum or an article that you market online. In short, you’ll want to look for opportunities to link to valuable online resources which help put you in a good light.

Of course, you don’t want to lose sight of the may use of links - driving traffic to your site. But so long as you’ve got that solidly covered, you should make sure to take some time and use links to build up your reputation online. Your bottom line will thank you!

Technorati Tags: link, links, link building, link-building, internet marketing tips, internet-marketing-tips, linking, web, internet, marketing, google, yahoo, msn, seo, sem, search marketing, search engines, search engine, search engine optimization, search engine marketing

Customer Loyalty Establishing Your Ownling Reputation Internet Marketing Tips Internet Marketing Link Building Link Building Strategies Link Building Tips loyal customers marketing tips Online Reputation 1 comment

As I mentioned in my last post about web directories, Info Vilesilencer is a rather impressive list of web directories.  Nonetheless, I still want to check out some other lists of web directories which look interesting.  Here is a list of the directories which I wish to further investigate:

• SEO Kit list of Powerful Directories
• The Strongest Links
• List of Strongest Directories according to SEOMoz’s Page Strength tool
• Quanta’s List of the Cream of the Top Free Web Directories
• AddUrl.nu’s list of free SEO friendly web directories
• Top Directories 
• Best Web Directories
• Paid Directory List 
• Directory Critic 
• SEO Company’s list of web directories

These lists seem to me to be the most promising in terms of lists that contain valuable information.  Of course, the proof is in the pudding and we’ll have to see if these directories live up to their promise.  With that said, I’m going to start going through this list and see what these lists really have to offer.  Of course, when I find out, I’ll come back here and let you all know.  And, of course, I’d love to hear what other people think of these lists (or if there are any other lists that people want to recommend that I check out).

1 comment