Link building can be tough at the best of times, so if there are any ways to shorten this process and find some quick wins then I’m always happy to try them out. I thought I would share some methods that can be used to find relevant link targets for your website. This involves [...]]]>

Link building can be tough at the best of times, so if there are any ways to shorten this process and find some quick wins then I’m always happy to try them out. I thought I would share some methods that can be used to find relevant link targets for your website. This involves something that any link builder should be aware of: competitive link research.

Competitive link research essentially involves looking at the link profiles of your competitors in order to find opportunities for you to build links. In a nutshell, you’re looking at where your competitors have built links and then targeting these sites yourself whilst avoiding all the hard work that went into acquiring them. This could be through finding blogs  relevant to your niche that are taking on guest posts, identifying higher quality, relevant directories to submit your site to or by discovering some really original, unique link building ideas.

Analysing Your Competitors’ Back Links

There are a number of tools that you can use to scout out the links that are pointing to your competitors’ websites, but I am going to focus on Majestic SEO’s Site Explorer tool and SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer tool. Both of these tools need to be paid for in order to get the best out of them but they will definitely prove their worth over time.

Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO has to be my favourite link analysis tool and it has helped me to both identify new opportunities for links as well as finding potential issues with links coming into my sites. I have taken a snapshot of the links to the Wow Internet website that I have been working on through Majestic SEO’s Site Explorer, which we can look at in a bit more detail.

The first thing I always do is download this list to a .csv file so that I can filter through the list of URLs that are linking back to the Wow Internet website. What I’m looking for is some sites that are bringing in particularly powerful links and ways in which I could possibly take advantage of this.

Once the .csv file has been downloaded I will need to filter through a few parts of the results. Firstly, I’ll hide all of the links that have been flagged as deleted and then also hide the nofollow links so that I am only focusing on links that are passing PageRank through to the website. If I then filter the SourceCitationFlow (this is a metric used show the quality of the linking URL) column in descending order, I can see the higher quality links at the top of the list.

Instantly I can see some potential linking opportunities that competitors of Wow Internet could take advantage of. The top link is from a blog article on the SEOmoz website and then the next is from the profile link on my SEOmoz account that points back to the Wow Internet website.

A guest post on the SEOmoz blog can provide a website within my industry with one of the most valuable links possible. Now this is old news to many of you within the online marketing industry but when you look at the second link (the profile link on my SEOmoz account) you will see that the ‘nofollow’ has been removed from the link. The reason for this is that I have over 200 ‘MozPoints’ on my account, which I gained by simply answering questions on the forum and commenting on the blogs, etc. This could be a quick win toward your link building if you are already paying for your SEOmoz subscription. You will find that there are many instances of this in other niches among high profile community sites.

The third link is from a testimonial that I wrote on the WordStream website after using their product. This represents one of the best links going back to the Wow Internet website and can be a great strategy toward developing links to any website. At the end of the day, everyone wants to good PR for their business. Just from a quick couple of minutes of scanning through the linking profile of the site it is clear to see that there are many opportunities that can arise from carrying this research out.

Open Site Explorer

For those of you who prefer SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer then you are able to do a similar task. If I take a look at a competitor of the Wow Internet website then I can see this same type of analysis from a different point of view.

Open Site Explorer has some handy filtering options that mean you don’t always need to download to a .csv to get the best from the results; however, I would recommend doing so. Through the filtering options within OSE I’m able to drill down on only followed links from external sites and it’s also possible to group the links by domain, which is a particularly handy option. We can then sort the results by domain/page authority to see the highest quality links going to the site.

Taking an instant look at some of the links that this website has, I have noticed that the top result goes to an open source SEO tool project where you can donate money toward the project and receive a listing on the ‘donations’ page. This page has a page authority of 63 and a domain authority of 62 so it could be a quick and valuable link prospect that would only need me to donate a bit of cash toward a good project. Win!

Another link that I have noticed is an SEO/web design-specific online directory that I could add the Wow Internet website to in order to get an extra back link from a related website. Online directories shouldn’t be relied on for links, but if they are niche relevant then they can certainly be quite helpful.

What You Should Be Looking For

Having access to all of this data is invaluable toward building an effective link building campaign. It allows you to understand what your competitors are doing and gain some quick insights into how to build some extra links. Having said this, just because your competitors are flooding blogs with spammy comments, doesn’t mean you should be doing it as well. Try to look for guest blogging opportunities by finding links that your competitors have gained by doing all the initial outreach groundwork and you’re sure to reap the rewards. Also, try and look for some of the more original ideas for back links, such as the WordStream review that the Wow Internet site had and the donation page link that one of the competitors had. This is where you will find some real gold.

Also, keep in mind that your competitors may well be doing the same as you so keep ahead of the game and always be on the lookout for original link building ideas. On top of this, try to focus on building links that are hard to replicate by building social communities or taking advantage of offline relationships. Either way, always keep an eye on your competition!

I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how other people arrive at their purchasing decisions online, but I’ve never really scrutinised my own buying habits.

I figured then, it would be interesting to break down the steps of how I arrived at the checkout stage for my last purchase [...]]]>

I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how other people arrive at their purchasing decisions online, but I’ve never really scrutinised my own buying habits.

I figured then, it would be interesting to break down the steps of how I arrived at the checkout stage for my last purchase online.

The most recent occasion  was to buy a hard copy of Paul Roetzer’s The Marketing Agency Blueprint.

£13.99 is towards the upper echelon of what I’m prepared to pay for a book nowadays, so when I spend that much, it really has to be a considered decision.

It wasn’t an impulse buy; most book purchases I make tend to be quite considered (although I am prone to the occasional rash purchase in charity shops).

Anyway, here’s how I ended up parting with my hard card earned cash for Paul’s book and the various ‘moments of truth’ that happened along the journey.

N.B. Why I buy what I buy is probably a relatively inane blog post subject for most people, so I don’t blame you if you switch off here…

Awareness & Evaluation

The first time I can remember becoming consciously aware of Paul’s book was through Andria Sarachino’s blog post: Why Hybrid Marketing Agencies Rule the Consulting World (and How to Prepare Your Agency for Domination), which is a pretty glowing review of the book.

There’s quite a few factors at play here that made me sit up and take note:

• It’s on the Content Marketing Institute, which I’ve found to be a pretty reliable source of information
• It’s written by Andria Sarachino, who’s head of outreach at Distilled — so an authority figure from an authoritative agency
• The title suggest a unique take on a subject that’s very relevant to me

After that post though, I kind of forgot about it. I probably made a mental note that it sounded interesting but I didn’t dig any deeper.

Then a few weeks later, I stumbled across Paul Roetzer again, this time on Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation podcast and whilst I don’t think he was plugging the book, it prompted me to  make a conscious effort to follow him on Twitter.

Unusually, he followed me back. The guy’s follow/follower ratio is circa 90/100, so I’m guessing he follows most people back who aren’t spammers or robots. Still, most people of note don’t follow back.

Whether this had any bearing bearing on my future purchasing decision, I’m not sure. Either way, when I noticed the follow back it prompted me to think about the book again.

Decision

It’s difficult to remember when exactly it ended up in my Amazon basket, but all of what proceeded kept the book in mind for when I needed something new to read.

I tend to make an effort to ignore reviews on Amazon, as they’re usually too polarized. My basket is normally narrowed down to 3/4 books I’m interested in reading; one or two of these are bought, the others condemned to ‘Save for Later’.

This is the really critical stage of the process — I’m stood at the edge of the cliff, umming and aahing whether to complete the transaction. My ‘Save for Later’ is a graveyard of books that have tickled my interests before, but for whatever reason fallen short when it’s come to crunch-time.

What swung it then? It sounds relatively silly, but I really liked the graphic design and I liked the fact it was hardback. So much for not judging books by their covers.

I also spent a fair whack of time going through the reams of content on the book’s website, which reassured me it would be a worthwhile purchase.

All of what happened in the run up to this moment added to my perceived value of the book and convinced me to take the plunge.

Conclusions

On reflection, what’s interesting for me is what I didn’t do: I didn’t search ‘marketing books’ click on the top result and, oh hey, I’m at the checkout. Sounds obvious, but writing it down helps crystallise my own understanding of the funnel.

One thing I sometimes see and don’t like, is the tendency in online marketers to over simplify the sales process as a means getting people to invest in SEO. “If people are looking for x product and you rank #1 for it then $$$”

This isn’t really how buying anything on the internet — or anywhere else — works. Either way, it’s interesting to meditate on how you journey through the text-book marketing funnels and indeed, the whole ‘inbound’ thing..

I’m still waiting for the book to arrive, so I can’t comment on whether it was worth the money. If you work in marketing I think it’s as important to question and scrutinise your own buying decisions.

How unique these steps where to me, I’m not sure. Hopefully understanding what triggers my own purchase decisions will help me work out how to influence other people’s.

Preface: This post is purely about search rankings — not traffic or conversions or anything — just how Google orders her results.

When I set up this blog, I decided I would try to make it rank for the term ‘link building blog’.

It wasn’t because it had a particularly high search volume [...]]]>

Preface: This post is purely about search rankings — not traffic or conversions or anything — just how Google orders her results.

When I set up this blog, I decided I would try to make it rank for the term ‘link building blog’.

It wasn’t because it had a particularly high search volume or could be described as a ‘quick-win’, it was just because it’s a blog primarily about link building, so it made sense.

I just wanted to see where it ranked and try work out what was making it rank.

By seoMOZ’s Keyword Difficulty Tool, it was a relatively competitive term to go after:

Anyway, that didn’t really matter to me, I just wanted it to rank for what it was.

I’ve been pottering around the first page for about six months now, ranking from as high as 5 to as low as 11.

Then, all of a sudden, last week I jumped to 3 in the SERPs. (Which is where I am as I write this.)

If you look at seoMOZ’s ranking analysis of the first page, things really don’t add up:

(The columns are PA, Page Linking Root Domains, DA and Root Domain Link Root Domains — left to right.)

I know links are only part of the ranking factors, but c’mon, no one would put my blog third if they were just given these stats and asked to predict the SERPs.

Except for the exact match domain stats (ahem), my blog stands out like a sore thumb.

Link building strategy — or lack of

In the beginning all I did was add ‘link building blog’ to the  meta-title.

I got a link from the company I work for and asked my friends who blog to link to me. All in all that added up to about 10 links — two of which are from sites that are actually relevant.

Over the past few months I’ve picked up a couple of links relatively ‘naturally’, but it’s child’s play compared to the other sites here.

(I actually spammed a couple of forums in the outset, got my fingers burnt and learnt an important lesson.)

It is impossible to justify or explain why I’m now ranking ahead of sites like Point Blank SEO, who tirelessly creates good content, guest posts on credible sites and creates a stir on sites like Twitter.

Case in point — this complete list of link building strategies.

In terms of link building, I’ve done barely any in comparison. Maybe I update my blog a bit more regularly than the other sites ranking, but there’s nothing really to signal to Google that this content is any good.

I’ve never guest posted, never done any broken link building, never created a tool or resource.

All I do is write the occasional blog post, once every 3 to 4 weeks.

They rarely get many readers or social bookmarks, or shares on Twitter. (Actually, my link building books post got a few shares, but nothing to write home about.)

Why then am I currently ranking #3 for ‘link building blog’ ahead of sites like Point Blank SEO, Ontolo and Link Spiel? I shouldn’t be anywhere near them.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, I can’t really conclude anything here. Would be more interested to hear other people’s thoughts.

Aside from keeping it relatively fresh and small mix of links, the rankings don’t really add up.

At the end of the day, this is just one term. It doesn’t prove anything about how anything does or doesn’t work.

I’ve certainly found it interesting to observe what’s been happening and it has made me question a lot of assumptions I took as standard in terms of what it takes to rank.

I think I read Paddy Moogan say something about the importance of testing and observing for yourself in SEO. I kinda know what he means now.

Anyway, I thought I’d put this story down in writing. It’s baffling and I hope you appreciate my honesty in this post.

To Jon from Point Blank SEO and the other link building blogs who are putting out better content than me and getting better links, I hope Google gets her act together — although it’s all in vain really, the term ‘link building blog’ sends f-all visitors.

Creative commons image by tsuihin — TimoStudios Flikr

I have been blogging about link building and online marketing for approximately one year now.

Whilst my analytics don’t exactly tell the tale of the most successful website on the internet, they certainly don’t tell the whole story.

This snapshot of the last year’s weekly visits tells you pretty much everything you need [...]]]>

I have been blogging about link building and online marketing for approximately one year now.

Whilst my analytics don’t exactly tell the tale of the most successful website on the internet, they certainly don’t tell the whole story.

This snapshot of the last year’s weekly visits tells you pretty much everything you need to know:

(Obviously, weekly site visits isn’t my only metric for success here, but, you know, it’s an easy place to start.)

Even though we’re dealing with pretty modest figures here, the steady decline in visitors post-March is disconcerting.

Up until February time, everything was heading in the right direction.

Then, for whatever reason (busy, time, blah blah blah) the frequency of my blogs dropped.

Whilst the graph is still punctuated with spikes when I do publish, on average the weekly visitors has fallen.

I went from publishing three posts a month to just the one.

I fell out of my routine, telling myself it was in favour of quality over quantity.

At the same time though, I knew that as a fledgling blogger, the more you write the better you get.

I should have just kept on shipping. 

So, aside from knowing I need to write more, what else have I learned?

My content’s not great, but…

Understanding what it takes to consistently produce good blog posts has been a pretty steep learning curve.

When I read some of my earlier posts I cringe and ask what possessed me.

They’re a pretty good demonstration of how naive I was and how little I knew when I started.

At the end of the day, everybody has an opinion. If you’ve relatively little experience and you’re blog is predicated on giving industry comment, then it is unlikely your posts are going to offer value to anybody but yourself.

If you look at the most shared posts on this blog (sidebar —>) they all have one thing in common, in that they do offer useful information that you can take-away.

They’re useful, as opposed to thought provoking.

I know the whole ‘offer actionable advice’ is a bit of a platitude here and I’m not going to carry on regurgitating it. It is, however, interesting to see it play-out for yourself.

However…

All that said, whilst I do want to create content useful for others, it wasn’t the sole motivation for starting.

Originally, it was this Seth Godin video that kick-started the blogging thing for me:

I blog for myself as opposed to anybody else. It helps cement my own thought processes and opinions.

It forces me to describe why I do what I do, out-loud.

Whilst I’d like to be better at it, I know the readership figures are not the be all and end all.

Appearance counts

The second thing that’s really hit home over the past year is how important the appearance side of the web is.

Even with all the short-cuts that are available, I don’t think you can get around needing to understand the basics of HTML.

By no means am I saying this site is perfect, far from it. Nor am I saying I do understand the basics.

I definitely appreciate it a lot more now than I ever have done and want to know more.

Relative to how the blog used to look 12 months ago though, there is vast improvement.

Little things like consistent image formatting, use of header tags and font choice all add up in giving your blog more enjoyable to browse.

Less clutter is better. Let the content speak for itself. Make it easy to read and stop perennially trying to shift people’s attention.

Again though, I’ve been the primary benefactor of this. Yeah, it’s made my site look better but it’s been the best way for me to actually get my hands dirty.

Keep buggering on

The final point really just develops on the main theme introduced earlier in the post.

When all is said and done, the main thing is I’m still going.

Yes I could post more often and there is room for improvement. However, it is easy to get sucked into fads and then quit when the initial excitement recedes.

Motivating myself to write has been tough going at times over the past year and I’ve had my fair share of writer’s block.

I’m hanging on in there though. Each post gets a little easier and each week I learn a bit more about what works and what doesn’t.

Here’s to another year.

Even with your best disguise, it’s difficult to get away with being an imposter on a forum.

For some, link building with forums is setting up pseudo-profiles and starting conversation threads, perhaps dropping a subtle link to their website if and when the opportunity presents itself.

You might even to be to stick [...]]]>

Even with your best disguise, it’s difficult to get away with being an imposter on a forum.

For some, link building with forums is setting up pseudo-profiles and starting conversation threads, perhaps dropping a subtle link to their website if and when the opportunity presents itself.

You might even to be to stick around and inanely comment every time you can, hopefully hanging around long enough to stick a link in your forum signature.

Even when done with the best intentions, you’ll stands out like a sore thumb and rile a few of the locals. Whereas you might get away with it once or twice, it’s really not a sustainable tactic, nor does it do you any favours with communities you really could do with getting on your side.

It’s easy to spot imposters and the backlash you face when you’re caught out isn’t nice — believe me. Here are a few less-spammy tips for using forums in your online marketing efforts.

N.B. These tips assume you’re not already knowledgeable in the subject of the forum

Repurpose popular forum content

Forums are amazing places in terms of the expertise people share.

The lengths and detail at which people go to help each, debate problems and resolve issues is incredible, especially given the people have rarely connected in real life.

One thing you can do relatively easily is mine this knowledge for your own content.

Ross Hudgens, among others, has spoken about learing how to repurpose content.

Forums are the perfect place to start if you’re looking for content inspiration.

Try searching for your head terms and related terms in the forum. What you want is the posts that have had the most input and have provoked the most discussion. When you get your results then, refine the search by ‘Replies’.

(Most forums have the option to sort by replies and views. If not, you’ll have to scan the threads manually.)

It’s a good idea to cross reference the topic on a number of similar forums. Usually this gives you a breadth of opinions and tid-bits of advice to include in your created content.

If the topic hasn’t been mentioned on one forum, then there is scope for reaching out to the community armed with what you know so far and ask for advice.

Once you’ve finished your research, you can let  it guide your content.

Reach out to high profile members

If you’re working in a difficult niches, finding appropriate figures of authority to try build relationships can be a bit tricky.

High profile forum members are prime candidates here.

Whereas they might not have Hollywood-metrics in terms of Twitter followers etc, they’ll know the industry you’re working in better than anyone.

You might want to ask for their feedback on content you’re developing, interview them on your own site or simply pick their brains about the industry.

There’s no need for any smoke and mirrors here; just be honest about who you are.

Robert Kozinets has spoken at length is his book Netnography about the important of being completely honest when researching using online communities for market research or any other purposes.

If you decide to lie or mislead people about your intentions, you risk your own and, worse, your client’s reputation.

You’d be surprised how receptive people are when you’re upfront.

Encourage client use

The cop-out here is normally: (a) ‘Where am I going to find the time?’ and/or (b) ‘What am I paying you to do?’

The question is, why wouldn’t they want to get involved? If you really care about your business and industry, why not try invest you’re own time in one of its online communities.

This boils down to the vendor/consultancy question and the role you’re expected to perform.

Rhea Drysdale defines consultancy in her WBF:

 “A consultant is someone who receives the business goals from the client, but then they communicate the strategy back to the client, and say, “What we’re hearing from you is this is what you want to achieve, but in order to do that we’re recommending that you pursue these different methods, which we’re going to help you with or maybe we’re going to actually bring on different resources or we’re going to help manage resources within your own organization and staff this project.”

If your role is as a consultant and then you should encourage your client to grow their own presence wherever their market is online, not simply in forums.

You can hold their hand at first, with a view to letting them stand on their own two feet one day.

As I say, perhaps this obvious and dislocated from reality. Still, it would be nice…

One of the hardest things about link building is managing several spinning plates at the same time.

With so much going on, it’s easy to let opportunities slip off the radar. It might just be from not following opportunities up, not getting feedback or spreading yourself too thinly.

The fact is, getting links live [...]]]>

One of the hardest things about link building is managing several spinning plates at the same time.

With so much going on, it’s easy to let opportunities slip off the radar. It might just be from not following opportunities up, not getting feedback or spreading yourself too thinly.

The fact is, getting links live requires persistence. It needs the perfect blend of being both proactive and reactive.

Here are three techniques I have found have helped me have a more productive day’s link building.

Tomorrow’s to-do list, today

This is actually a sales technique I stole from Cold Calling for Chickens, which is effective for anyone who needs to get things done on a daily basis, not just salesmen and link builders.

It is impossible to get everything done you need to do everyday.

Often, just by proxy of completing one task, you immediately create at least one other.

Some people write their to-do lists first thing in the morning; I guess it serves as a nice, gentle introduction to the day.

I’ve found there is a problem with this though: tomorrow’s most pressing tasks look different in the morning.

I hate starting each day with a blank canvas. It’s easier to get in, know what needs doing and get on with it.

Writing down tomorrow’s most important tasks serves as a commitment to putting them into action.

Each day then, I work off two to-do lists. The first one:

• features the tasks I have identified as priorities from the previous day
• is allocated to parts of my schedule to my schedule and worked through systematically

The second list is for the next day and:

• is dynamic; I’m constantly adding to it as the day as a consequence of my work that day
• features tasks numbered by their priority and whether or not it has to be achieved the following day

Obviously, it requires a bit a discipline, but when you sit at your desk each morning knowing the bare minimum of what you want to achieve, it makes it a lot harder to procrastinate daunting phone calls, or whatever else you’d rather put-off.

Work out value and do more of it

Most people will be aware of the Pareto principle; that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Understanding this can help you be more effective and work at the things that really make a difference to your results.

In the words of Bob Etherington:

“There is a huge difference between being productive and being busy”

With link building, the value comes in the contact; the back and forth of e-mails, phone calls, and the work that needs doing off the back of this.

As soon as you start to overcomplicate things, you lose sight of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Personally, I’ve found the idea of link building being a numbers game as a bit of a myth. It’s a quality game. What matters is the number with which you have success.

Don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re engaging in productive behaviour, just because you are keeping yourself busy.

When you spend precious time putting together clever Excel tables, or sat in meetings, or completing other administrative busywork, then you are avoiding your most important function: talking to people.

Think about the work you do that actually provides value and moves the needle. Focus on this.

Separate proactive and reactive

I’ve already mentioned the importance of balancing time spent being proactive and time being reactive.

If you understand the difference here, you can actually separate the two when planning your daily or weekly schedule.

Proactivity is defined as:

As opposed to reactivity, which is defined as:

They’re both important. On one hand, you need to be constantly drumming

The difference between the two is that being reactive is the time spent dealing with the consequences of being proactive.

The better you get at being proactive, the more time you will have to spend being reactive.

You can define time spent being proactive as:

• Drumming up lists of potential leads
• Making fresh, cold contact with people
• Working old or inactive leads

• Responding to the consequences of proactivity
• Pushing it through to the next stage — content writer, designers, etc.
• Dealing with required byt non-value adding tasks

The reason you need to separate the two is that if you don’t there’s no focus to your approach; you’re not working as effectively or as efficiently.

You’ll end up sat waiting for e-mails to come in, desperately hitting F9, pausing whatever you were doing to respond to everything as and when it happens.

Personally, I don’t like to slog it out for hours and hours.  I like to work in spurts; short, sharp, forceful streams of energy.

There is not yet a definitive book on link building. There is a nice ebook by Garrett French and Eric Ward is set to publish one in the near future, which you can bet will be good.

This does not mean there aren’t books out there, however, that will indirectly help with your [...]]]>

There is not yet a definitive book on link building. There is a nice ebook by Garrett French and Eric Ward is set to publish one in the near future, which you can bet will be good.

This does not mean there aren’t books out there, however, that will indirectly help with your understanding and encourage you to become a better link builder.

Here are  three books that I’ve personally found useful that aren’t strictly about link building. I’d welcome any other suggestions people want to make
 

Cold Calling for Chickens
by Bob Etherington

If I could only recommend one book for link builders who are new to the industry it would be this one by sales expert Bob Etherington.

Although cold calling is traditionally perceived to be almost exclusively the domain of out-and-out sales roles, the principles are directly related and apply perfectly to link building.

What Etherington stresses in this book is that it is not just about that moment you pick up the phone and dial a number, but more about being able to effectively and regularly make cold contact with people is a lifestyle and attitude choice.

It is about being able to create effective habits and understanding how people make buying (or ‘linking’) decisions.

Selling is not telling

Perhaps the key point the book stressed and the best take-away for link builders is that selling is not telling. You can rarely persuade people to buy from you; people persuade themselves.

Just think about what understanding this can do for your link building. Making that first cold contact is the first step to the established order of flow in which you need to influence their thinking.

No one is saying you have to like cold calling. What you have to understand though, is that 85% of the business out there is won by the 5% of the sales people able to make cold calls.

I would wager that there are similar percentages for the best links that are won.

Trust Agents
by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

I really was torn between including this or Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. Both tackle the same idea, however, Brogan and Smith’s book edged it onto this list because it is a bit more online centric.

Its central theme is about maximising human connectivity and interaction online. You need to be able to understand the internet as a tool and be able to think strategically about building your own presence online.

Whilst a lot of the concepts introduced in the book will not nessessarily be ground breaking to most online marketers who already ‘get it’, what it does do is perfectly articulate the economy of building trust online, which comes as a useful reinforcement even to people with vast experience.

This is an especially good starting point for people completely new to online marketing and the book that, in an ideal world, all clients would read.

One thing that struck me from both this book and Godin’s Permission Marketing is that for a business to really thrive online, it requires a fundamental shift in its culture.

If its traditional ways of operating stay the same, throwing money at marketing agencies becomes like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole.

Bounce: How Champions are Made
by Matthew Syed

My last choice is motivated by the fact I think it’s important to understand that people aren’t born naturally good at link building, marketing, or any other discipline for that matter.

They may have been exposed to situations that have cultivated the basic skills needed to excel quickly in the profession, but it is not a god given talent.

That’s why I have included Matthew Syed’s Bounce on this list. Similar to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers in its theme, it looks at why and how people excel in certain subjects and sports.

Ultimately, it dispels the myth that people are born talented and reiterates how important positive practice is.

I guess this is important to grasp because even if your work isn’t at the place you want it to be today, you can have faith that through cultivating the right habits, you can get it there tomorrow.

That’s it then. As I say, I would love to hear other people’s suggestions. Other notable mentions that nearly made their way onto my list were:

Selling to Win by Richard Denney

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialadi

The Inner Game of Golf by Timothy Gallwey

If you are looking for other SEO-related books to sink your teeth into, check out Paul Rogers’ recommended digital marketing and user experience books.

One widely accepted and unquestioned ‘truth’ in SEO seems to be that being passionate about the subject of link building makes you a good link builder.

Knowing a lot about link building doesn’t make you an effective link builder. It helps, but it only takes you so far.

In fact, I’d say that, [...]]]>

One widely accepted and unquestioned ‘truth’ in SEO seems to be that being passionate about the subject of link building makes you a good link builder.

Knowing a lot about link building doesn’t make you an effective link builder. It helps, but it only takes you so far.

In fact, I’d say that, ironically, being passionate about link building really only makes you great at link building in the SEO industry.

What it really takes

Surely, the essence of link building is knowing  a lot about ‘link building’?

I guess, but, it takes a certain type of arrogance to claiming to be an expert in link building, given what a subjective task it is.

It’s impossible to be ‘good’ at link building for 5, 10, 20 different clients, trying to hit vanity targets at the end of each month. How can you understand each of them top-to-bottom, inside-out?

Being well knowledged and passionate about your subject is what allows you to truly build valuable links effectively.

To actually provide a valuable service to a client, you need to become a mouthpiece for their product, their company, their culture.

You need to be able to hold an intelligent conversation with someone in their industry, about its past, its present, its future.

A question I’d pose is that out of these two people, who would you rather employ:

• Someone with an expert knowledge of your industry, but with very basic
  link building skills

• An ‘expert’ link builder, with a very basic knowledge of the industry
  they’re building links in

Get out of the building

I know this post might be perceived as quite pessimistic, but that’s really not its intention. The sooner we wake up to the subjectivity of link building the sooner we can make real strides in improving the link building product offered by agencies.

David Ogilivy’s advice to young account executives was for them to set themselves on becoming the best-informed man in the agency on the account to which they are assigned.

If it is a gasoline account, read text books on the chemistry, geology and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field. Read all the research reports and marketing plans that your agency has ever written on the product.

He goes further:

Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, pumping gasoline and talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. Most young men in agencies are too lazy to do this kind of homework. They remain permanently superficial.

I appreciate this falls well out of the pragmatics of how most agencies operate today and absurd given the budgets companies allocate to link building and internet marketing in general.

But surely the way forward is to fuse advanced link building and marketing techniques with the expertise of the client’s industry.

The only way of doing this is to get inside the belly of the industry you’re working in.

John Doherty’s wrote a post recently about the benefits of working on-site for his client, which is part of what inspired this post and, I’d recommend heading there now.

It’s been a few weeks since I last posted, which, given everything that’s happened with regards to the ‘over optimisation’ penalties, is a bit unusual.

It’s not that I’ve not got an opinion or any observations on what has happened, it’s more that I’m unsure of my own position yet.

(Also, what do [...]]]>

It’s been a few weeks since I last posted, which, given everything that’s happened with regards to the ‘over optimisation’ penalties, is a bit unusual.

It’s not that I’ve not got an opinion or any observations on what has happened, it’s more that I’m unsure of my own position yet.

(Also, what do I know, I’ve only been in this game a couple of years and I’ve not earned the right to have an opinion on its future…)

There seems to be two schools of thought at the moment, each one emanating from the two most influential brands in the industry; Rand Fishkin’s SEOmoz and Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.

At the heart of the discussion is how the clampdown on some SEO practices is going to affect the future of how internet marketers define themselves and their role.

Here’s a very basic overview of the two positions:

Inbound

The Moz perspective rests very much on the redefinition of the job role from SEO to ‘inbound marketer’. Here, the role of SEO practitioners includes responsibilities far beyond just worrying about search rankings.

The argument goes that, to thrive in this new climate, you need to understand all the channels a website can use to earn attention online. Search is just a small slice of a pie that includes a larger emphasis on all the facets of a ‘digital strategy’, for example:

• Public relations
• Market research
• Social media listening and execution
• Content strategy

The cornerstone posts that outlines this thinking is Michael King’s The New SEO Process, which has been evangelised by several high profile industry figures.

Repackaging

On the contrary to this are the noises coming from Wall’s SEO Book, which suggest that the inbound concept is merely the repackaging of a product that hasn’t changed, spinning old concepts to appear new.

The idea of inbound marketing serves need for how SEOs want to percieve themselves and their roles, as opposed to commentating on a revolutionary redefinition of the job.

Essentially, pushing the inbound thing sells SEO as an idealised lifestyle, which strengthens the position of the seller to milk the newbies, the easiest money in any industry.

On the fence…kinda

Although I tend to side with the latter in this discussion, part of me still think there’s is a bit of value and truth in the former, which is why I’ve been so conflicted recently.

One thing I do know it is healthy to have such a juxtaposition of ideas and even better to have the debate played out in public.

Chances are that, as with most things, the truth lies someone in-between and we’ll only arrive somewhere near it by continuing to argue and counter, argue and counter, argue and counter.

Maybe the beauty of the job is that the role is open to interpretation and that there are several ways of doing it ‘right’ and providing value.

The bottom line is if people are forces to ask themselves a few uncomfortable questions about widely accepted truths then good. Better to be a human being dissatisfied than pig satisfied.

Anyway, there’s my two cents, might try post something a bit more useful next week…

The gift and the curse of SEO is its low barrier to entry.

On one hand, it encourages people with a diverse range of backgrounds into the profession, which contributes to a lot of the creative thought in the industry.

On the other, it paves the road for both advanced beginners and [...]]]>

The gift and the curse of SEO is its low barrier to entry.

On one hand, it encourages people with a diverse range of backgrounds into the profession, which contributes to a lot of the creative thought in the industry.

On the other, it paves the road for both advanced beginners and charlatans who can liberally apply themselves with the label of ‘expert’ and  exploit people who are certain they ‘need’ an SEO service.

Aside from the hypocricy that swirls around a lot of what Google says and does,  in general, any of the changes that it makes that increase the difficulty to game the algorithms should be embraced.

For there to be value in any industry there needs to be skill and expertise required for whatever task needs completing. (As well as demand for this knowledge.)

To get to this standard, you need to toil through what Seth Godin calls ‘the Dip’. The dip is the part where you are learning a skill where it feels like you’re getting nowhere fast.

In the words of Seth Godin:

“The Dip is the long stretch between beginner’s luck and real accomplishment. The Dip is the set of artificial screens set up to keep people like you out.”

It’s a place all have to get through to become accomplished in any skill. It’s the place where most people quit.

As search engines become harder to game, the dip you need to toil through to excel online widens. The screening process becomes more intense, the wheat is sorted from the chaff.

This can only be a good thing for those who are serious about online marketing. The Dip creates scarcity and scarcity creates value. 

The more refined the specialism of SEO is, the more demand there will be for those who perform it.

The thing with article marketing is, it’s easy. It’s easy to measure, it’s easy to churn out content. It used to be easy to make it work.

The same with link networks. They’re not that difficult to find and they’re not that difficult to join.

It’s probable that a lot of SEO companies will soon be stood at the cusp of the dip. It stands to reason that they won’t all toil through it.

This is why we should relish the updates that are going to make life trickier.

There is going to be a huge demand for SEOs who can thrive at growing businesses online in the new climate and a shortage of what can be supplied.

If you can thrive and know how to help others thrive, your knowledge becomes a lot more valuable.

How you decide to manipulate the rankings is irrelevant, be it what is labelled ‘black’ or ‘white’.

The point is that the scarcer the skill needed, the richer the pickings for those talented and hard working enough to possess it.

So the barrier to entry won’t change in the sense that anyone can call themselves an SEO and do business.

However, in the sense that the skill level needed to grow websites online is going to be higher than ever, the barrier to thriving as an SEO agency or consultant will be even harder to get past.

Do I fall into the category of  those who possess the skill required to excel in a climate that needs more advanced skills? Probably not, but I’m going to work through the dip to get there.