The importance of linking
It’s amazing - no matter how much I try to learn about internet marketing I am continually impressed with how little I really know.
OK, I am overstating my ignorance a little bit. I do know most of the basics and quite a bit beyond that. This past week, however, I was reminded how important building inbound links is to an effective search engine marketing campaign.
Here’s the background: a couple of months ago I met a guy at a show who owns a very successful internet retail site. In talking to him (and researching his company a bit on the internet) I realized that he spends very little on cost-per-click ads but he has a ton of traffic to his site.
His secret is very effectively building quality links - now this is not a magic, overnight silver bullet - it takes a lot of time and money to launch a full link-building campaign. What he has done is basically built a ton of inbound links with anchor text for competitive terms he wants to show up high on in the search engine results page.
And it works - it works REALLY well. He is number one on Google for terms that he could easily spend a few hundred thousand on with only a PPC campaign. I don’t know how much he’s spending but I’m guessing it’s a whole lot less than that.
I know I am oversimplifying the issue (there are obviously other things that he has done with his site to optimize it), but I wanted to remind everybody just how important quality inbound links are.
If you are looking for a reference for link-building feel free to email me.
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Is there any literature you would suggest to help a company, (such as www.somethinglocal.com) establish a good strategy for building inbound links?
Comment by johnny — October 18, 2005 @ 10:08 pm
Johnny,
There are quite a few sites that discuss linking strategies, but you are safest to stick with the experts - I highly recommend Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.
As far as linking goes the first thing I would do is check out high-quality directories. Check out DMOZ - this should always be your first submission.
If you are considering renting links (paying per month), give me a call and I can give you some good recommendations on brokers.
Preston
Comment by admin — October 19, 2005 @ 8:38 am
[…] That being said, there is nothing wrong with understanding how the engines work and optimizing your site for them. Just make sure that what you are doing is not excessive and that it is something that you would do in the normal development of a site. I suggest that you check out some good SEO websites, build a decent link campaign and write natural, flowing copy (check out Sewell Direct - we have some awesome copywriters that know how to make it flow). […]
Pingback by The Preston Blog - An internet marketing blog for internet retailers » Don’t overoptimize — October 21, 2005 @ 10:04 am
[…] I was going to do a post on my feelings on renting links as a follow up to my post on the importance of linking. However, I think that Greg Boser, aka WebGuerrilla, pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about the issue of paid links. […]
Pingback by The Preston Blog - An internet marketing blog for internet retailers » Renting links and Jeremy Zawodny — December 17, 2005 @ 5:36 pm
[…] BackLink updates don’t get as much press as PR updates, but backlinks determine PR so they can give you a good idea of how you’ll be looking in the next PR update. […]
Pingback by The Preston Blog - An internet marketing blog for internet retailers » Google BackLink Update — December 20, 2005 @ 3:53 pm