Link Building or 'Black Mailing' ?

A client of ours sent us the folllowing e-mail they received from a link building 'professional'.

It is a follow-up letter to his original solicitation.

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I have send you already a mail for link exchange if you want good links for your site than reply me fast..

I will place your link at our good site.

Send me mail for link exchange…. Here …

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It is obvious that this person is not a trained professional and doesn't have any sense that he is essentially trying to market his website. Most likely he is a freelancer trying to meet a set quota of links within a set time frame.

The more such e-mails go out, the more companies will be apprehensive of outsourcing link building. After all, their reputations are at stake.

On a slightly different note, notice the impatience and brashness in the tone of the e-mail? Unfortunately, I see a lot of it in the ITES/BPO generation in India. Arrogance is increasingly being mistaken for confidence. Of course, we want to see a self-confident society that can face the world on its own terms, but not an arrogant one that does not appreciate the value of humility.

Simple & effective link baits/ link building tactics

Jason Lee Miller at WebProNews wrote a piece today "Making Link Bait Work for You".

I liked the piece because it summarizes the three basic approaches that work when working on building link popularity. I like such categorization/grouping [let's say, the 50,000 feet view] because it often makes the problem/project at hand seem much simpler/ less daunting than when looking at the specific items. Undoubtedly, it is the latter that will ultimately get the results, but looking at the broad picture often lets us be creative and come up with "innovative" specifics.

Nevertheless, excerpts from Jason's article on link bait are included below- typically, most websites will need a good mix of all of these simple link building tactics for an effective campaign, but choose the one that suits your objectives and your website/ product/ service the most.

Long term success of any link building campaign or effort really depends on how scalable a particular approach is, how we can get "x" multiples in return (aka, links) of the effort we put in. This requires thought, time and effort (read, money)-- a fact that is not often appreciated/understood enough.

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The Resource Approach (Becoming the Expert In Your Field/Niche)
-- Create expert articles/lists/data sheets
-- Create practical or fun tools
-- Write How-To articles
-- Create a comprehensive blog roll (give link love, get link love)
-- Compile informative news stories and articles

The News Approach
- Get the scoop. Be first with industry news
-- Interview prominent people in your field
-- Investigate a hot topic
-- Do an exposé

The Humor/Novelty Approach
-- Post funny/interesting/amazing photos related to your industry
-- Create humorous/unique videos (Use Blendtec for inspiration)
-- Create lists; people love lists – Top 10 Ways to…; 10 Signs You're…

But whatever you create as link bait, don't just post and forget it. Send out emails to industry people, drop a link into Digg, post at YouTube. In short, take advantage of every medium at your disposal.

Google PageRank update-- PR losses for high-profile sites

The "hot" news and topic for discussion in the SEO community for the past two days is the Google PageRank loss for some very high profile sites, including www.Forbes.com and www.washingtonpost.com. For a bigger list, check out this blog post by Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz.

There are a number of very good reviews out there on why there has been a drastic drop in PR for some of these sites; the main thinking is that it is Google's penalty for selling text links. Rich Ord has categorized the reactions into four categories--including the "Google is Justified" scool of thought to the "Google is Out of Control". Read his post here.

A move like this from Google had been expected sooner rather than later, even since it came down heavily on several pay-for-inclusion directory sites in the recent past. If the intent is to prevent link selling and thus prevent artificial boosting of link popularity, it remains to be seen how successful Google will be.

My take on this is this: Irresspective of what happens with the contentious green bar on the Google toolbar [there is speculation that it could be a thing of the past soon], as long as "in-bound links" to a website or page is known to be a factor [and a key factor at that] affecting rankings in search results, there will continue to be link buying / link selling / link exchange / some form of "link popularity manipulation". There will be a demand for generating in-bound links; and there will be "creative" suppliers to meet that demand.

I believe the weightage that links have in determining relevance and consequently, rankings, has to come down / will come down at some stage; this change will have to come from the search engines, not users [I mention users broadly here--- marketers, publishers / link selllers, and searchers].

Using "link exchanges" in link building

Recently, I put up a question on LinkedIn on the use of link exchanges for link building purposes.

My main objective of putting up this question was to gauge what other folks in the SEO/ SEM community thought about these exchanges. I wasn't very surprised by the responses received either-- most folks were well meaning and suggested that I stay away from these exchanges. One person termed them as "glorified link farms" and many others advised against apparent artificial means to boost link popularity.

Fair enough. And pretty much in line with conventional wisdom on link building. Now, I haven't used these link exchanges yet to know them in full detail--- and I must admit, ignorance, fear and uncertainty about the potential consequences have prevented me from trying them out.

At the same time, prima facie I am not averse to the concept of these link exchanges, which I personally believe are different from the much abhorred "link farms" [not sure if there is a good definition for a link farm---- as far as I am concerned any page that has a lot of outbound links is a link "farm"; it is what "grows" there that should differentiate a good farm from a bad farm].

The reason why I like the concept is that such an exchange gives an opportunity for a webmaster to "advertise" his/ her website---- and whoever wants to provide a link to that website does so purely of his/her own accord. The choice of whether I want to provide a link to website XYZ rests with me, and I can make that decision based on whatever qualitative criteria I choose to apply to a particular site. From a web master's perspective, I think an opportunity to get in front of other webmasters who are open to evaluating your website and providing a link is an efficient way of creating visibility.

I don't know how many takers there would be for that arguement or perspective---- but I would certainly want to explore and experiment with the link exchanges to form a firm opinion one way or the other on their merits & value in SEO efforts.