Omar Kattan

Archive for the ‘Link Building’ Category

Blogger Outreach is the process of connecting with bloggers for the purpose of  promoting a brand and increasing it’s visibility to a niche audience.  There are also SEO benefits from a well executed blogger outreach programme.  These lie primarily in the fact that when bloggers talk about your brand, they will most likely link to it.  These valuable links from trusted relevant sources improve the authority level of the site and reflect positively on the rankings.

So how do you go about planning and executing a blogger outreach programme?  Here are the steps to get you going:

 1)  Buzz monitoring:  You start by listening to the buzz around your brand and identifying the source of this buzz.  However not all buzz is equal.  Some sites are more influential than others.  You need to identify the influential sites that speak about your brand and keep a list.

 2) Contact.  Before you contact the bloggers, you need to have a story to tell.  What is your proposition?  Why should the said bloggers cooperate with you?  The best type of approach is one where you provide the blogger something in return for them writing about you.  For instance, if you have a new product launch, send a free sample to the blogger before launch and ask them to review it.

3) Monitor.  Once you’ve established the relationship with the bloggers, monitor the traffic you receive from each of them.  Delve deep into the analytics stats to try and get a feel about which bloggers have sent the most targeted traffic.  Once you have that piece of information, focus on these bloggers and build relationships with new ones. 

 Here are some more resources on blogger outreach:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18793026/Blogger-Outreach-101

http://www.prblogger.com/2008/03/the-seo-benefits-of-blogger-outreach/

http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-to-launch-successful-blogger.html

http://www.crayonville.com/blog/?p=345

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/116560

If your brand is mentioned on the web its very natural to want to tell your users about it. However doing so by linking to the stories that link to you might devalue these links that you’ve worked so hard to acquire.

In the video below, Matt Cutts sets the record straight on linking to press releases and brand mentions on the web.  Matt compares it to reciprocal linking (link exchange) which is frowned upon by search engines.

Here is what Matt says…

YouTube Direkt

While it’s very tempting to boast to your users about all the mentions of your brand on the net, don’t do it by linking to them! Alternatives to linking to press releases to show your users where your brand is mentiond include:

1) Scan/take screenshots of the press releases mentioning your brand
2) Link to the Google/Bing/Yahoo urls mentioning your brand (e.g. http://news.google.co.uk/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=%22dell%22 new)
3) Link to the Google search results of press releases mentioning your brand (e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2SNYK_en-GB&q=site%3Aprwebdirect.com+%22dell%22&meta=&aq=f&oq=)

The above are alternatives to linking to press releases mentioning your brand.

Can you think of other ways to tell your users about your brand’s mention in the press without actually linking to the press releases?

Once upon a time, Directories were the backbone of the internet.  Actually, Yahoo started it’s life out as a small human edited directory attempting to organise the millions of websites out their into logical categories. Then Google came along!

Another prominent directory on the net is DMOZ aka the Open Directory Project (ODP) is  an open source initiative hailing itself as the largest Human edited Directory on the Net.

The ODP data is used by thousands of other niche directories around the net including Google’s own directory which uses ODP data as it’s source.

Here is a list of my favourite directories on the net:

1.  DMOZ www.dmoz.org has 5.8 million inbound link (IBLs). DMOZ is a free directory established in 1999 with a pagerank of 8.

2. Yahoo Directory http://dir.yahoo.com was established in 1995, has 5.1 Million IBLs and a pagerank of seven. The Yahoo Directory charges $299 per year for a review.

3. Business.com www.business.comwas established in 1998 has 113,000 IBLs and a pagerank of seven. Business.com charge $299/yr for a review.

4. Librarians Internet Index www.lii.orgwas established in 1998, has 475,000 IBLs and a pagerank of seven.  LII is a free directory.

5. Starting Point www.stpt.comwas established in 1994, has 121,000 IBLs and a pagerank of four.  Starting Point charges $99/yr for a  review.

6. Ezilon www.ezilon.comwas established in 2002, has 123,745 IBLs and a pagerank of six. Ezilon charges $69 for inclusion.

7. Best of the Web www.botw.org was established in 1996 has 2,369 IBLs and a pagerank of seven.  Best of the Web costs $250.

8. Gimpsy www.gimpsy.com/was established in 2001 has 1,169 IBLs and a pagerank of five. Gimpsy charges  $49 for inclusion.

9. GoGuides www.goguides.org/ was established in 2001, has 1,110 IBLs and a pagerank of eight.  Go Guides charges $40 for inclusion.

10. Chiff www.chiff.comwas established in 1998 has 4,892 IBLs and a pagerank of 5. Chiff charges $60.

Linkbaiting (aka viral marketing) is the process of creating  content designed to attract loads of natural links from all around the web.  Most linkbait ideas are simple and some are not intended as you’ll see in this list.  The reason they become linkbait material is that they are fresh and someone managed to think them up before anyone else did.

Without further ado, here is my list of the top 10 linkbaits that I think have worked really well and managed to achieve great baclink results. 

 
1- Zillow House Price Estimator Tool
Zillo.com created a tool that allows you to “Zestimate”, an approximation of your home’s market value. It appears in a little pop-up superimposed on a photographic map of your neighborhood. According to a CNN article about the tool “The number might make you smile; it could make you angry”.  Either way, you will link to it!

Result: over 800 links including the one from CNN.com!

2- Top 10 watched videos on YouTube

A simple list of the top 10 most watched videos on YouTube.  Simple huh? Well as I said before, most linkbait ideas are, you just need to be the first to think them up!

Result: Over 900 links.

3- The Guardian Chalkboard

The idea behind this linkbait is simple.   The Guardian newspaper created a football widget designed to allow users to “analyse player performance the way top managers do for free”.  In a nutshell, it allows you to create your own chalk boards and send them to your mates or post online.

Result: Over 3,000 links.

4- Keyword Discovery Tool

Keyword discovery is one of the premiere keyword research tools in the SEM industry.  The owners of the product decided to offer a free version of the tool for anyone to use and as a result, managed to garner thousands of highly relevant links back to their site as a result of this. 

Result: Over 5,000 links.

5- Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Not sure if this was intended as a linkbait technique but it is a classic example of a website (great one btw) that specialises in a niche (SEO) and has written many best practice douments including this one that other websites want to link to.
Result: Over 11,000 links.

6- Lonelygirl15
This piece of linkbait is probably what brought on the phrase “Hoax marketing”. lonelygirl15 was an interactive web-based video series on YouTube which began in June 2006, and ended on August 1, 2008. The show focused on the life of a fictional teenage girl named Bree wirh the YouTube username “lonelygirl15″, the show did not reveal its ficticious nature and people linked to it because they thought it was real. Read more about this linkbait phenomena

Result: Over 12,000 links.

7- One Red Paper Clip

The owner of this site traded his way up from “one red paperclip” all the way to a house.  While the linkbait idea is genius, not sure many could replicate it!

Result: Approximately 25,000 links.

8- The Million Dollar Page

The owner of this website not only happened to create a linkbait masterpiece but also managed to make a million dollars along the way.  The idea was simple (most linkbaits are).  Create a page with one million pixels and sell ach pixel to advertisers for $1.  Genius!

Result: Over 40,000 links. 

9) Elf Yourself (by OfficeMax)

OFfice max created a gadget that lets you, well, “Elf yourself”.  Very simple idea but it was a smashhit!  Every Christmas season, you can log onto the site and using a very simple tool, upload a picture of yourself that is superimposed over an animation of a dancing elf!  Fantastic!

Result: Over 116,000 links.

10) Adobe Acrobat Reader

And, my favourite one of all, and one that inspired generations of SEO to be creative with link building, the Adobe Acrobat Reader.  Now this was not intended to be as a linkbait technique but I’ve placed it in this list because I needed to make a point.  The Adobe website is one of the most linked to sites on the web becasue they’ve created a product that requires a link back from any site that installs their product telling users to install Adobe flash if they do not have it.  Unfortunately for them, they’ve used the words “click here” in the anchor text hence why the Adobe site ranks #1 for the keywords “click here” 

Result: Over 20,000,000 links!

The above linkbait examples are the ones that inspired me.  I’m sure there are many other ones out there that deserve praise and more will be created in the future, hoepfully yours will be one of them!  If you know of any other great linkbait ideas please share…

One of the SEO arguments out there is the detrimental effect of outbound links on “link juice” and PageRank dilution. While not completely inaccurate this is somewhat of a myth that requires further explaination.

Outbound links are links pointing from your website to external sites. Over time, as your website becomes more popular (more and more sites linking to it) this popularity embodies itself in a term we call “Link Juice”.  How you distribute that juice within your site is crucial to the overall success of your ranking efforts.

Logic says, if you’ve worked hard to increase your link popularity (Link Juice) then why would you want to distribute your hard earned work to other sites for free?  The answer…You don’t unless…the sites you’re linking to are authoritative ones that add value to your user’s search needs.

One solution to stop leakage of  link juice to external sites is to add the “nofollow” attribute to your outbound link, however here is why I don’t recommend doing so for external sites relevant to your niche.

1) By adding nofollow to a relevant external link, you’re telling search engines that the page you’re referencing is not important and therefore do not follow it, this is in complete contradiction to what you should be telling search engines, and that is, I’m an authority on my niche and the links to external sites I reference on my site are important enough for me to link to and pass on my popularity.

2) Google’s algorythm (based around the concept of “PageRank”) was concieved around the idea that sites with more authoritative links pointing to them recieve more “PageRank” so by adding “nofollow” to authoritative sites related to your niche, you’re actually tampering with Google’s formula of ranking sites according to popularity and authority, do you really want to tamper?

3) If your site gets known for using nofollows on all it’s links, other sites will be less likely to link back to you. No one wants that, unless you’re the Wikipedia

Examples of links you should “nofollow”:

• a link to the analytics company embedded within your code and shows up across the entire site. 

• a link found in the footer of your site that shows up across the whole site (such as a link to a sister site)

• an internal  link to your t&c’s page or similar pages found in the footer and linked to from every page on your site. 

To sum up, and in a nutshell.. using the “nofollow” attribute on outbound links should be exercised with caution, and the basic rule of thumb, only nofollow links that are irrelevant to your niche.