Link Building Campaigns & Strategies
Jane already touched on the first part of this presentation, which was actually fairly standard issue: Jim Boykin offered a very 101 approach to grind-it-out link building (a directory here, some forum participation there, then a long slog of begging for links), which certainly wasn’t sexy, but the guy is successful so it’d be foolish to discount his methods as ineffective, if dull.
Greg Hartnett gave an entertaining spiel about the value of directory links. Rand caught a lot of flack awhile ago for saying that most directories were crap, so it was nice to hear El Capitan from Best of The Web agree in large part: most directories are crap. If you want effective directory links, you have to find editorially reviewed directories with good history and good editorial management. Don’t expect any bait-like traffic from directories, but the low flow you do get will be minimal, though it tends to be targeted and high-converting. Greg finished off with a shout out to DMOZ, suggesting that, despite corruption issues at times, it’s still a valuable resource and a good operation in general. At which point Open Directory Project founder and session moderator Chris Tolles chimed in with perhaps my favorite quote of the day: “The ODP is now run by a fiercely anti-commercial cabal of former East German Communist Librarians, that’s the problem.” And no, he wasn’t joking! So if you ever feel like you’re being thrown out of the blimp for having “no ticket” when you submit to DMOZ, that’s why.
Rae Hoffman then fired off an awesome and very valuable presentation on the does and don’ts of outsourcing or hiring for link development. Her presentation will be up at her blog, and I suggest anyone who wants to bring in new folks to handle link building for them read her incredible questions to ask contractors and/or prospective hires–they’ll save you a lot of headaches. Rae did suggest looking to recurring conference sponsors as good indicators for good link building/buying contractors. While I won’t say that all conference sponsors are problematic, I couldn’t help but think of perennial conference imprint Text Link Ads who, along with Text Link Brokers, were unanimously slammed by the entire panel as doing more harm than good due to their large footprints and semi-public link inventories.
Roger Montti finished out with “Alternative Link Building,” which amounted to a link buying 101 course, particularly for negotiating one-to-one link buys from relevant sites (tip: negotiate a reasonable annual payment, avoid monthly). Most of the panel, particularly moderator Chris, seemed to cringe a bit at Roger’s open talk about the oft-maligned practice of link buying, with Chris outright saying, “The methods Roger’s talking about will get you penalized.” Yeah, well, maybe. But more about that below when I discuss the Link Buying session.
Rae did shoot in with an excellent point about “site relevance.” Roger mentioned the industry-standard example that a travel site shouldn’t look for links on a cooking site. Rae countered that if your site does travel to Thailand, offering up some content about authentic Thai cooking to a strong cooking site could be very complimentary. You’ve got to think outside the box when it comes to relevance.
The overall takeaway from this session: Link building is dull, tedious, NOT instantaneous, but incredibly important in the life of most webmasters and SEOs, so approach it carefully, thoughtfully, and patiently.
Email Marketing with Dr. Ralph Wilson
There ain’t much controversy in Email Marketing folks. Dr. Ralph is among the most respected dudes around on this topic and he was speaking by himself, so don’t expect fireworks. Email still offers among the highest ROI of any ad approach, so the big tricks all lie in formatting and delivery issues.
To nobody’s surprise, HTML email has a 2-3x higher click through than text, but multi-part MIME is the way to go in order to get past certain spam filters and corporate mailbox controls. Images should be used sparingly and content should be tight and brief, with links to full versions of articles if necessary.
The big topic in this session was permission. There was some debate from the sparse audience about whether opt-in checkboxes should be checked or unchecked by default, especially in the face of CAN-SPAM easy opt-out requirements. Unchecked provides a more respectful user experience, while checked is obviously better for building a larger (but possibly lower quality) subscriber list.
I wish there was something more exciting to offer here, but alas. So let’s move on to something that was a bit more exciting…
Link Buying
We all know that link buying has been the BIG NEWS for some time now, what with PageRank shuffling SERPrise Parties courtesy of Google, and a general McCarthy-like fog of fear, uncertainty, and doubt haunting the search-scape. So, with the spectre of Matt Cutts holding court in the back of the room like a bespectacled, cat-loving Don Corleone, Rand, Jim Boykin, John Lessnau, and Aaron Wall led a spirited discussion on link buying.
LinkXL’s John Lessnau led off with a brief presentation that amounted to the all-too-obvious link buying caveat: If it seems obvious, it’s crap. Don’t get caught if you can help it…next.
The ever brilliant Aaron Wall disappointed with a cop-out presentation presenting “alternatives” to straight-out link buying….aka organic link building. It was basically the Bizarro-world flip-side of Roger Montti’s buying presentation in the building panel. Aaron did suggest a few interesting tactics though, such as buying AdWords for your high quality content pieces in an effort to become an expert resource on that topic, especially in the eyes of the media.
Jim Boykin, who during the earlier Link Building panel had told the audience (with full-on slacker braggadocio) that he hadn’t bothered to put his presentation together until the morning of the session, showed up to this panel with a beautiful, fully fleshed-out, and sublimely useful dissertation on the perils of link buying. Of course by, “beautiful, fully fleshed-out, and sublimely useful dissertation on the perils of link buying,” what I mean is “45 seconds of insinuating loosely that most built links are paid and absolutely no presentation materials.” Benefit of the doubt, maybe he was placed on this panel at the last minute (doubt it, he’s listed in the published conference guide), but this kind of performance is insulting. People pay a lot of money to come to these shows and see these presentations. I know speakers don’t get paid, but agreeing to do a session and then showing up with nothing is bullshit, in my humble opinion. Jim’s a smart guy and I like him plenty, but come on.
Maybe the previous presenters were a little slim on materials because they knew what I didn’t: this panel would default to The Rand Fishkin Show. Yes, I work with the guy, so this may seem like sucking-up, but Rand’s presentation was great. Opening with some great illustrations depicting the ideal web versus the real, cash-influenced web, Rand attempted to dissect why the engines are so concerned with cracking down on paid links (they think it’ll provide a better search experience and, thus, increase market share) and what could be considered acceptable (or at least invisible) based on conversations he had with Matt Cutts and Eytan Seidman. The takeaway here: avoid above-the-radar brokers with public or easily accessible link inventory, use sneaky brokers, one-to-one link buys, and links that result as secondary assets of business relationships.
Rand finished out by suggesting the need for an above-board, editorially controlled link marketplace, similar in nature to current paid review and blog services, but more transparent and keeping to Mr. Cutts’ oft-quoted permission of editorially reviewed paid links such as the Yahoo! Directory.
The Q&A got pretty interesting, with moderator Detlev Johnson obviously having something to say on the topic (and clearly getting a little annoyed when Rand repeatedly called on audience members, usurping Detlev’s mod duties). Detlev vehemently asserted that buying links is not a crime. Google is not the law, and they shouldn’t have this much power over linking practices. An audience member named Jason (perhaps Rand can add his last name) countered that Detlev was correct: Google is not the government, or the law, or regulated in any way; they’re just a website and they can run their website however the hell they choose to. He added that suggestions of FCC regulation and such were ridiculous because the FCC is an American institution and Google is an American company, but it serves and is used by a global community.
There was a lot of discussion about how young sites may need to buy links as a springboard to visibility, after which they can build natural links and coast on reputation, much like old sites that may be incredibly stale but have the link pop to stay atop the SERPs. While Detlev stated that he doesn’t think link buying will work in a few years, Stephan Spencer asserted that he feels links bought now will hurt sites five years from now. Listening to the discussion, I couldn’t help but think that the engines are going to have to move to a much stronger level of temporal link analysis and ranking if they plan to keep results timely, relevant, and “legitimate.”
One audience member inquired about whether or not link buying was only a problem because of who was buying links. Would it be an issue if only quality sites were buying? Are P.P.C. sites killing the practice for everyone else? It may indeed be a factor, which is why LinkExperts CEO, Seth Besmertnik, suggested the need for a standards and practices authority on link buying, which would help to set policy on quality control and acceptable practices, perhaps in conjunction with the engines. I have a feeling this is probably an inevitability in the not too distant future.
All in all, this was a very spirited panel, even if Rand was a bit over-the-top in dominating the conversation (he gets a little excited sometimes). There were some good conversation and great ideas about where this is all heading. Of course, we’re all at the mercy of Google, but one would hope eventually they’ll come around and just acknowledge what everyone else already has: as long as they’re serving up link-based results, the web will be a link-based economy and what’s of value is worth buying and selling.
That’s it for my PubCon coverage for now. Sarah and Jeff will have coverage of Wednesday’s sessions, and Rebecca and Mel will chime in on Thursday. The conference has been great so far, and I expect these next two days will be just as valuable and entertaining. Cheers!
