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Oh my god; another presentation about link building.
What? From a white hat guy too?
Who the heck am I?
• Andrew Girdwood
• Head of Search at bigmouthmedia
• … but also an affiliate • Supposed to put soft sales text in here
• Talk about how capable we are
• Talk about how large our European footprint is
• Talk about how we’ve never lost a football match to an affiliate network
Types of Links
Types of links
• The ones you make– Some count– Some don’t
• The ones you get given– Some count– Some don’t
• The ones Google hates– Some count until Google catches them– Others count against from you the outset
Oh Google, what are you doing
now?
Goodbye directory links?
• On the 2nd of October Google made an important change to their webmaster guidelines. Google stopped recommending directory submissions.
• A single line of text was removed. It read; “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.”
JohnMu to the rescue! Again.
• Google’s JohnMu helps frame the situation for us. Writing in Google Groups he said;
– “I wouldn't necessarily assume that we're devaluing Yahoo's links, I just think it's not one of the things we really need to recommend. If people think that a directory is going to bring them lots of visitors (I had a visitor from the DMOZ once), then it's obviously fine to get listed there. It's not something that people have to do though :-).”
John Who? What did Matt Cutts say?
• Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
• What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn't speak well to the quality of the directory.
• If there is a fee, what's the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.
Do I think directories are dead?
• I think easy directories are dead.
• Quality directories will still be beneficial.
• What does this mean to affiliates?
• Most directories prefer to link to homepages.
• This makes it easier for a small site about a specific product to benefit from directory links than it for a large retailer to directory link to product pages.
He’s going to talk about paid links!
Report Paid Links!
• Level the playing field
• Earn kudos for your Webmaster Console login
• Help underline the value of affiliate marketing and commissions
Spotting Paid Links
Yahoo Pipes – Link Watch
Making your own Link
Should it work?
Articles and PRs
Submission to editorially controlled sites
Crash Course• Social profile pages
• Activity stream sites
• Syndicated RSS feeds
• Comments and forum citations
• HTML gadgets and widgets
• Memes and virals
• Bios and profile pages for conferences and expos
• Press interviews
Can you make other people link
to you?
Be a suck up (virtual networking)
• Many of the most popular affiliate and search blogs became popular because the author is a good networker;
– Leave comments
– Ask questions via Twitter, etc
– Give you reason to get involved in their blog
• You don’t need a blog to do this;– Shop sites have reviews and editorials
– Travel and Finance sites can cite resources
Offer soft incentives
Become hated (virtual networking)
Be quick. Have a target audience.
• Who’s most likely to blog about you?
• Write something that’ll interest them– More risky; contact them and see if you can get some friendly
communication going
Give your URL to the linkers
Twitter Credits!
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpwillis/283144228/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/pigstyave/367353091/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/restlessglobetrotter/2166068194/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/425231402/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/iainb/162799808/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhammza/1381101959/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlunar/298456969/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/lon/275039534/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/gustavog/4557105/
Thank you!
• Andrew Girdwood
• Twitter: AndrewGirdwood
• FriendFeed: AndrewGirdwood
• Blog: blog.arhg.net