Because I’m a link builder, I haven’t paid too much attention to the whole mobile marketing thing, there’s no algorithmic value there so I’ve simply ignored the space. 

Silly me. 

For a marketer, ignoring anything people are doing en mass isn’t smart.  Mobile links may not have any algorithmic value but there sure as hell is value in mass messaging. 

People want promotional offers sent to their phones.  Of 160 people surveyed in North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois and Kansas, 18% said they wanted special offers texted to them.  It may not be a big number (the survey wasn’t huge) but it’s potentially significant  if you consider people want  the messages, and the propensity most texters have for pushing fun/promotional content along is pretty strong.  Can you say mobile linkbait?

So how can any of this help with link building?  For starters…

1.  Consider adding an opt-in for cell phone numbers on all sign up forms

2.  Create alerts, text customers when new content has been added to your site

3.  Text new coupons/discount offers and then…

4.  Sweeten the offer by texting a second time saying you’ll double the discount if they link to you!

Anything you snail or email you can text.  (just make it shorter)    Use all communication streams to ask for links and promote content, take advantage of anything that may drive link juice and revenues.   If you’ve been asleep at the text wheel, it’s time to jump in and start using this popular communication vehicle to promote your website and ask for links.

Do you favor one search engine over another when building links? I have a favorite for general searching, but when it comes to link building, I don’t use just one. Ask, Bing, Google and Yahoo! each offers a unique set of search options, I use all of them for a wide range of results. Here’s a handful of linking techniques from each engine I’ve had luck using!   I’m going to use the term “CFL light bulbs” in all my examples, let’s start with Ask…

Ask.com

After doing a general search, take a look at the “Related Questions” listed on the right side of the results page.  The questions listed  provide great ideas for new content topics and resources in submitting content. Take a look at what they’re showing for “CFL light bulbs”:

Since people are actively asking these questions, creating content in response and posting it on your site is great link bait and smart marketing. 

For the rest of the article, please visit  http://searchengineland.com/four-engines-four-ways-to-generate-links-44711  And if you like it, Sphinn it here!

 Both Read Write Web and Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type Blog  featured articles today on the pros and cons of on page linking.  Read Write Web asked if links were

     a net negative for readers online

and wondered if 

      Placing links at the end of articles is more respectful of a person’s intentions and concentration. 

Hmmm.  Nicholas Carr was a bit more entertaining  and explained his views on why links shouldn’t be in content:

Links are wonderful conveniences, as we all know (from clicking on them compulsively day in and day out). But they’re also distractions. Sometimes, they’re big distractions – we click on a link, then another, then another, and pretty soon we’ve forgotten what we’d started out to do or to read. Other times, they’re tiny distractions, little textual gnats buzzing around your head. Even if you don’t click on a link, your eyes notice it, and your frontal cortex has to fire up a bunch of neurons to decide whether to click or not. You may not notice the little extra cognitive load placed on your brain, but it’s there and it matters. People who read hypertext comprehend and learn less, studies show, than those who read the same material in printed form. The more links in a piece of writing, the bigger the hit on comprehension.

Bold mine for emphasis.  In case you can’t comprehend what he’s saying, there’s a study out there saying your concentration is diminished when you click a link because you’ve clicked a link.  We’ll have to take his word for it since he didn’t offer us the study link and I can’t figure out which one it is from the list he left at the bottom of his post. 

Read Write Web offers multiple takes on why you should leave links in content.  They say:

I like to add links out to other sources at every opportunity in order to enrich what I’m writing, to broaden the conversation, and frankly because I think linking to other blogs is a good faith way to encourage other blogs to link to us. To act as if our blog is the only place online to learn about what’s important is the height of arrogance and a real disservice to readers. Internal linking is good business practice, but I think a balance is best

Bold is mine ‘cuz I like the arrogance angle but…then they have to go and mess things up with this:

Search indexing is largely powered by links, and the words linked inline are key. That’s a tough one. Links between documents are the foundation of much of the most innovative analysis being done online, but maybe those links could just be placed well away from a body of text.

Shades of 1999!!!  I’m not really sure what “innovative analysis”  is since there’s no link or description to help educate poor-confused-me  but I do know webpages rank based on the concept of link popularity which has been around since the dawn of the engines and uses both links and content in it’s calculations.   Hope that’s clear and you’ve not lost your train of thought.

If you think all this sounds a little far fetched, don’t.  There’s a number of people who feel putting links at the end of the page is a better way to do it, check out my link and the comments on the ReadWriteWeb article.  I’m thinking they’ll be early adopters of a warning label like this one:

SURGEON GENERAL LINK BUILDER WARNING:  Outbound links can cause confusion, loss of comprehension and may complicate your pregnancy and life”

Here at the Link Spiel we’re going to stick with linking out from the body of the copy, we know our readers can handle clicking, reading, and returning to our blog.    We feel the whole link clicking thing is akin to walking and talking or eating and reading, it’s possible to do it without getting distracted.   Hopefully we’re in the majority with this line of thinking, I’d hate to see people change what’s natural, helpful and algorthimally efficient.  Nobody puts our link baby in a corner.  

Power to the people and links!

As a link builder I’m not enamoured with YouTube and do not recommend using it as a primary way to build links or as an integral part of your SEO program. 

 Why?

• Videos on YouTube are on YouTube so any optimization effort you implement helps YouTube and not your website/pages.     

• YouTube contributes to the pinking of the ‘Net/Web (uses nofollow) so any link you insert to guide people back to your site passes no link popularity. 
   
• While traffic from YouTube can be beneficial, you have to optimize the content on YouTube like any other in order for people to find it.  This is time better spent elsewhere.
   
• Efforts to make a video go viral begin with the webmaster, not YouTube
    
•  It’s doubtful you’ll build a brand following on YouTube unless the public is already aware of your brand.      

•  By-n-large people look  for information on a search engine first, they don’t search on YT for a place to buy baseball cards.  There is a reason Google has become a verb and YouTube a pastime.

But the number one reason?

• YouTube results bump web pages down in the general search results and web pages make sales , videos don’t!

Want to see what I mean?  Look here, here, and here  and notice how the videos are all ranking in the top five but the sites they represent – don’t.    Yes the exposure is nice but where is there opportunity to make a sale??    Throw in local search results and images showing up and it can take a while to get to a static search result.   If your goal is to make your website an authority in your industry/niche, you should house and promote the videos on your site, not YouTube.  This will help with algorithmic authority, branding and traffic.

So is using YouTube to build SEO  links a wasted effort?   Pretty much which is why I don’t recommend using it to increase your link popularity but I wouldn’t totally discount using the number two search engine on the Net to build awareness.  Consider doing this: 

• Make shorter versions of your video’s and insert on YouTube, longer vid stays on your site

• Create those shorter versions as teasers and as a lead-in to promotions/information on your site

• Be sure the start and ending frame of the vid include the URL to your website

• Optimize your YouTube listing with your keywords

• Be the first one to leave a comment/review under your vid, include the URL to your website and explain a longer more detailed version of the vid exists on your website

• Encourage everyone you know to drop a comment/review on the video  (re/views help push your vid to the top for your keywords)

• Create a video area on your site just as you would a media room and promote it to the media, your customers, vendors etc.

• Make the vid’s on your website available through Creative Commons, make full descriptions embedded with kw rich links part of your attribution.

You need to decide what’s best for your site and if having YouTube video’s come up in the serps for your keywords is your goal, power to you.  But if you’re in business to make a profit and plan to use video to attract links, know the links you point at YouTube will have little to no effect on your overall rankings. 

Use YouTube or any image/audio hosting site wisely and they can be your greatest ally  and not a ranking enemy.

(photo taken from Zazzle.  Buy a tee shirt!)

My column today on Search Engine Land is a case study of a link building contest we ran a while back for a client in a very competitive niche.  The article gives you a step-by-step outline of what we did, the results and some insight on what it cost to run.  If you’re looking for a fresh tactic, this might be something to consider.

———————————————————–

It’s common knowledge certain markets are harder to build links for than others. For the most, part highly competitive industries are tough because they’ve been worked to death, but less competitive markets can also be difficult because of the demographic behind them. Such was the case for a client we took on awhile back in the financial services industry. He sold a very niche product in a very competitive industry, known to be populated by busy corporate executives. He came to us with a new website which needed back links to support ongoing SEO, build his company brand and drive traffic to the site. No small feat considering the market he was in.

Today’s edition of Resource Shelf  listed a report from PEW on how Americans were using the Internet to cope with the recession.  This bit caught my eye and got the link brain going:

Some 69% of all Americans have used the internet to cope with the recession as they hunt for bargains, jobs, ways to upgrade their skills, better investment strategies, housing options, and government benefits. That amounts to 88% of internet users.

First off, the numbers the article references are huge, 88% of American users are turning to the Internet to find certain types of information.  If that doesn’t scream “CONTENT and LINKS” to the enterprising webmaster I don’t know what does.

For newbies with no clue what I’m talking about, let me explain.

There are a bunch of Americans using the Internet to find solutions to problems.  If you have content that’s good and will help them, they may link to it and/or pass it along to others they know will benefit.  The excerpt above is pretty specific in what they’re looking for so your job is now a little easier in trying to figure out what to write.  To refresh your memory the specifics the article showcased were:

they hunt for bargains, jobs, ways to upgrade their skills, better investment strategies, housing options, and government benefits

Is there a way you can write content on any of these subjects as it relates to what you offer?  I bet there is.  If people are actively looking for it, why not write about it  instead of another stupid top ten list ?

Here are a handful of  promotion ideas to get the link ball rolling:

1.  Email your mother, brother,  sister and your current and past customers with a link to the article.  Encourage linking and ask they pass it on to others who may benefit.  (these people already like you so they’re prone to respond positively.  This is why it pays to be nice to siblings

2.  Write a press release announcing the new article, be specific in describing what problem/issue your article will discuss and provide solutions for.

3.  Be sure to include a quote/link to the PEW report as a credibility builder in the release.

4.  Be sure to include a quote/link to the PEW report in your article as well.

5.  Take a shorter version of the article and pimp it to a handful of bloggers in your niche. 

6.  Include social media buttons like “share this” under the article on your site.  Encourage your mother, brother, sister and past/current customers to socialize the material.

7.  Tweet the link, encourage RT’s (RT = retweets.  Here’s a how-to RT article)

There’s more you can do but this should get you started.  With 88% of Americans searching for a specific type of information be the one they link to for answers. 

Added:

Please read the comments with this post, someone brought up an article written on Search Engine Watch yesterday and I’ve responded since I think the article was a piece of crap.   Thanks ~  debra.

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If you’ve been doing business online for any length of time chances are you have a database of opt-in email addresses from customers, vendors, newsletter signups etc.  Here’s a way to use those email addresses to increase your inbound links and take your campaign viral.

The Set Up.

I get a copy of the Washington Post delivered to the house every Sunday.  I’ve been getting it for several years and renew my subscription via their website each January to ensure uninterrupted service.

Last week they sent  an email asking me to become a  Facebook Fan so I could connect with Washington no matter where I was.  Here’s what the ad looked like:

I  like the Washington Post but not enough to take the time  to become a Facebook Fan so I ignored the message and went back to work.  Too bad for them, not only did they lose an opportunity to gain a new Fan but they also missed the opportunity to use that ad as a viral magnet for links and traffic.

Strike One.  A Fan I Am – Not.

Keep in mind I’m a long-time subscriber to the paper which means they have my full contact information on file as well as my subscription history.   If that email had been incentivized with an extension on my subscription or discount on classifieds I probably would have taken the time to become a Facebook Fan.  But, the “incentive” to “connect to Washington” wasn’t enough to motivate me since I’m already connected through my subscription.  They should have come up with something better for current customers.

Strike Two.  Just Bad Links For You.

If I had designed that ad I would have offered an incentive to link as a way to stimulate the Facebook sign ups and increase my inbound links.  I doubt the Washington Post is concerned with their inbound link counts but since this is a link building blog and we’re learning what NOT to do , user bin, I’ll add this lesson to the mix:  if you’re going to email your customer base and ask for something, ask for a link while you’re at it.

People link when there’s something in it for them so think about what you can offer in exchange for a link.  It would have been nothing for the Post to give me a 60 day extension on my subscription or a discount on classifieds in return for a link.   Granted, a lot of their customers don’t have websites but  I’m betting there are a good number that do.  To add a simple link request line and a small incentive to an opt-in mailing list  just makes sense and is smart marketing.

Viral Opportunity Lost

Of the three strikes, I think this was their biggest.  The Washington Post  lost an opportunity to attract links, build brand and drive traffic  when they didn’t add a viral element to the email.   Adding a simple line like “pass this along to friends and family”  and including  a small incentive is often all the encouragement people need.

Use What You Have To Build Links

If you search on the term “email flyers” you’ll see a number of companies offering tools to create email ads like the one pictured above.  But unlike the Washington Post ad, be sure you include

• A  benefit statement.  Tell your prospects what’s in it for them
• An incentive.  Give them something special for doing what you ask
• Ask for the sale.  Ask for the link and suggest they pass the ad along
• Use loyalty.  Use your email list or partner with another company in your niche and use theirs.

Keep the ad short, dangle an incentive to link and ask people to pass along the offer.   If you do, the links will come leaving you more time to read the paper.

I sat at my desk for the longest time today trying to write a link building post  that used  the storyline from the TV show  ”The New Adventures of Old Christine“.  I love the show and wanted to draw a correlation between it and link building but it wasn’t meant to be. So I decided to forget about the show, tweak the title a bit and blog about how using old fashion offline advertising tricks could help in your link building efforts.

The more I thought about it, I decided my tweaked title might also be good for a piece on how using popular titles and catch phrases can draw attention to content and in turn, lead to links.  I mean, weren’t you just a little curious what I might spiel on after reading that title?  Just a little?

Then I thought about it even more and decided why only tweak  and use titles?  Why not use TV, movie or news  content and capitalize on their entertainment buzz?  “The New Adventure of Old Christine” is about a neurotic single mom who owns a weight loss gym and fights with her ex-husband about his much younger girlfriend.  That story line touches on a lot of niches, such as

• weight loss
• exercise studio
• dating sites
• marriage counseling
• mommy blogs
• parenting sites/blog

If you owned a site/blog in one of those industries you could create fun on-topic content and reference a scene  from the show to make a point or add sizzle.  Like this or this guy  or what I’m doing here. 

Even the acerbic American poet  Dorothy Parker  tweaked a line from William Shakespeare to make a little noise for herself:

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

Cute eh? 

Now, if you’re reading this and thinking “No thanks old Debra, don’t want to get into copyright trouble” -  relax,  try it, you’ll like it.   I’m not suggesting you steal pictures or quote the show verbatim, merely use something from the show to complement a point you’re making.  It’s not necessary to come up with original, serious, fact-busting content for everything you write, injecting a light note, current event or reference to a popular television show is fine.  

 Heck it’s so easy a caveman can do it.