Building Links. Depending on the day, even for the ardent proponent of SEO, building links is either the best part of our jobs marketing online, or the worst. Writing a great piece of content doesn’t seem very important if you don’t gain a single link. When you write a great piece of content that starts to pull in links like crazy though, nothing else in online marketing feels quite as good.
Here’s a few ways to build links that will bring in a solid number of links, without any additional effort on your part.
Guest Blogging
I think anyone who has done literally any SEO work over the past few years can tell you at least a little bit about the value of guest blogging. Quite simply while so many people took to link networks to create quality links, smart networkers used networks like My Blog Guest to ethically build links that are bound to stand the test of time.
Blog Comments
In many ways, it is an oldie but a goodie. A ton of people have stated that they feel that blog comments are less valuable because Google no longer weights the number of domains which give a site a link quite as highly. That being said, links on a number of different domains is still something we’d all like to have right? Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts has said publicly that blog comments when done in moderation and by hand are completely white hat since they can lead to increases in traffic, but site owners should be using their own names to leave comments, instead of keywords or company names. The basic principle is that the person leaving the comment should be as transparent as possible, just like you would when talking to someone in person.
Reviews and Give Aways
Ok, if you want to know the easiest and most efficient way to move your site up the rankings, getting bloggers to write individual pieces about your company is the best way to be sure. That’s where reviews and give aways come in. The set up is pretty simple on most blogs, you either provide one of your products to the blogger, or you give away one of your products to their readers. It’s simple and I have been surprised, or even incredibly surprised at the wide level of understanding that many bloggers have about SEO and your goals with these type of promotions. As an example, check out the links found in this piece (plus her crazy awesome pictures) Let’s just be clear any sales that come from them are a bonus and you shouldn’t expect them.
Social Media’s Role is Increasing
I hate Google + as much as you do. Well, maybe “hate” is too strong, but I definitely don’t understand why any average consumer would use that social network instead of Facebook or Twitter. In any case, we know that Google is intensely interested in social and Google + is their attempt to have a social network that feeds their search algorithm all its available data. Now, for an online marketer, that sounds like a social platform worth of some attention right?
About the Author: Mark Aselstine is the owner of Uncorked Ventures, recently named one of the best online wine clubs by Forbes Magazine. As the owner of an online business, he follows changes at Google as closely as anyone and is happy to share some of his insights when the opportunity presents itself like it did here.