Link Building in the Age of Panda and Penguin
August 13, 2012
One of the themes at this years Affiliate Summit East is the role of link building in light of algorithm changes recently implemented by Google (known as Panda and Penguin). These notes are from the Link Building presentation given by Loren Baker, VP of Business Development, BlueGrass Interactive. His focus was on how to build a web presence via quality links.
Tips:
1. Do you deserve the links? If you don't, you shouldn't have them.
2. Are the correct social signals available. Is Google+ linked to your site?
3. Evaluate link targets. Old link evaluation metrics are less important. Think audience potential over domain age. If the link can't send you traffic, you probably don't want ot. Is the site a bug? Do people rely on it to get their news?
4. Look for metrics related to engagement when evaluating link targets. Check overall traffic, number of comments per post, social sharing per post and average links generated per post.
5. Link building cannot be seen as a separate strategy any longer. Links should be seen as a byproduct of creating remarkable content.
6. The best way to get your brand out in front of consumers is via a content marketing solution. Great content builds your brand and your audience. Great content drives traffic and brand exposure in tandem with high value links. Great content is highly shareable.
7. Links generated from content marketing initiatives are nearly always freely given, contextual and relevant, long lasting and diverse.
8. Content and Topic relevance is key.
9. It's all about relationships. Great content marketing relies on great exposure. The bigger the initial seed for content, the better the result. The larger and broader the reach, the better. Don't get too niche.
10. Make your content valuable. Create content in tandem with publishers. Work together and involve them as partners. Thank about the audiences of potential publishers. They may differ from your target audience. Find commonalities. Add value for publishers. Make them look good. Give them ore than they give you.
11. Embeddable infographics are highly effective as generating traffic and direct links. Find something topical such as the "content explosion" infographic used by BlueGlass. Thank every site that embeds the infographic and request attribution where none is provided.