Why and how to request for link building opportunities

 Link building is a complex issue.

 Within the online marketing industry one of the most difficult issues to accomplish with any  degree of success is #LinkBuilding

This blog post will help you to have a deeper understanding of the complexities around link building and offer you some advice on what you need to do to prepare your online marketing team for the rather controversial task of requesting other online information providers to place links to your content within articles, stories, blog posts, web pages or other online content which they own or manage.

I answer SEO questions in Quora 

So we need to start with what links are and where search engines use links. 

Every link has two ends. The origin and the destination. All search engines use both sides in different ways, and treat every link with the same due diligence. There are a large number of semantic tools. These Semantic Tools are basically very large data bases that are used in conjunction with other data bases to evaluate your online content

.  

Some of these semantic tools are listed below. The links in your online content connect both the origin and destination pages to each other, allowing search engines to  build these semantic  tools into rather devious and mind twisting tools that investigate so many  different issues that impact on your online discoverability. 

#LinkMaps

#KnowledgeMaps

#EntityMaps

#TrustMaps

#KnowledgeTrustGraphs

#EntityLinkMaps

#KnowledgeLinkGraphs

This above list is extremely limited and search engines use many hundreds more.  The links in your online content connect your content to these semantic tools and allow search engines to better interpret the 

1) Aims 

2) Objectives

3 ) Purpose

4) Intent

5) Keywords  and 

6) other related search engine optimisation Value Indicators or SEOVI 

This means that each link within your entire online asset base (link origin)  is used many times over to develop an understanding of your content. The destination side gets treated the same in the early stages of developing these first line semantic tools. Both ends are needed to connect things together. The information in each link is added to these many data bases and expands the data in each database by including the content, and context,  in your online content and linking this to the already existing online content allowing these semantic tools to have access to your online content for very strange and devious search algorithms to use at their discretion.

Thinking of the above issues, your internal linking strategies need to be well planned and keep the focus of the page in which they originate in mind, ensuring that the conversation is expanded in meaningful ways.

You do need to update old posts and articles to link to new content. This is usually neglected, and can be very powerful in a number of ways, especially when quality is thought about and considered as important. (Page quality) 

Link building does have two sections after all. One is internal link building and the other is external link building.

Your content does need both internal and external links. So think long and hard about your internal link building tactics before looking at inbound and external links.

Before you start asking for external in bound links (#BackLinks) be sure to have some external out bound links in place within your own content, which you can use asd a tool to entice others to link to your content.

Link building is not an easy thing to do, and you do need all the help you can get. Very few folks understand how and where links are used by search engine algorithms. So having external outbound links in your content can help, when you try to explain to potential link partners what the value of external out bound links is, and how it has helped you. 

Describing your own experiences is always easier than describing other folks experiences. Having done this yourself, it allows you to demonstrate your own Expertise. If you have other folks who have already linked to your page in question,  that is also helpful. If your content uses internal book marks, getting your link partners to link to the book mark in question can be easier and more helpful to the scores at both ends of the semantic link.

Explaining this to others may not be very easy, but link building as a whole is not easy anyways.  When you do research around link building you will discover that there is many areas where folks provide SNAKE OIL and say that one should not place external links in your online content because it gives the end user an opportunity to leave your page and go else where for the information that they are looking for. If this is true or not is one issue, but getting the end user to your site in the first place, is also an issue that needs to be considered. Now your SEO TACTICS are what will get your content discovered in the search engine in the first place. If the end user does not find your information (near the top of the SERP)  he / she will never have been on your site in the first place. Out bound links in your content is a very big quality signal for all search engines. Out bound links in your content demonstrates to search engines that you have confidence in your own content and are not into  "LOCK IN MODE"  where you will try every trick to ensure that the end user stays locked into your content.  Placing external links in your pages shows that you have pride and trust in your own content. This is a very strange but rather important quality signal that few folks grasp. The new EEAT variable plays a very big role here.

The LOCK IN MODE issue was in the past a very powerful, but stupid approach to ensuring an end user never leaves your pages. This is still advocated by many, but most folks these days understand this a bit better. They also understand the SEO VALUE of out bound external links a bit better. You may come across the bad thinking of lock in mode when doing link building, so take the time and effort to prepare documentation around this, so that you may give good advise to potential content owners who are reluctant to enter into some kind of link swap or similar deal when linking to your content. Difficult stuff! But needs your personal efforts.

The name #BackLinks comes a long way back and is an indication of the link swap idea that was initially in place. Ie if you place a link to my content in your content I will LINK BACK to your content. This comes from the very early stages of link building way back in 1998 / 1999 before Google became famous, when Yahoo and ask Jeeves were the bigger search tools available.  

Link building has come a long way since then and unsolicited back links are quite common for good online content that answers common questions within any specific online niche space. High Quality pages generate their own influx of links. So answer questions InPage, and share other folks answers willingly.

So link building is getting more attention and folks are beginning to grasp the concepts around link building, but they do still need a little gentle persuasion of some kind.  So you do need to prepare a document of some sort, a PFD or fan page, by explaining the purpose of placing external out bound links and the benifits of placing links directly to specified bookmarks in your own content.

If you do not already have bookmarks within your own content I suggest you evaluate the SEO VALUE of book marks and placing your own internal links to the book marks you add to your own content.  Think of the parragraff and block Content issues ..  BUT BTHIS DOES NEED AN HTML EXPERT!! 

Online marketing is truly full of SEMANTIC SUPPRISES!!

Hope this helps

#Frankie2Socks

#BunduBasher 

The power of Twitter within the SEO space

Last night I was in a Twitter discussion where SEO issues were discussed, and the issue of social signals came up.  

Many  SEO PRACTITIONERS will tell you that social signals have no influence on your search engine optimisation strategies in any shape manner or form, and personally I believe they are right.  How ever the power of  individual tweets is a whole other animal, and some tweets can have a truly astounding impact on your individual online assets in strange and devious ways that at first glance seem unrealistic.

To understand the power of an individual tweet there are many different things that need to be understood, with the two main issues bring

• Duplicate content
• Website architecture

The first thing that one must clearly come to grips with is that each tweet must be annalized and dissected as a stand alone web page.  In every social media platform, your individual posts  are actually deemed to be stand alone web pages, and most folks have great difficulty in digesting this

Now the questions start to pop into your thinking patterns and thought process.... What does the website architecture of your social media activity look like.  In this post we will deal exclusively with Twitter and how your posts on twitter carry #SEOJUICES to the rest of the internet. The SEO juices of a single tweet can be very powerful and carry a great deal of influence in ensuring that individual digital entities recieve rather serious boosts within the Search Engine Results pages

So in Twitter your user name or Twitter handle has a host of different activities, and different uses, some are easy to understand, and others are exceptionally difficult to grasp untill you realise that web site architecture can be, and is indeed used in two distinct and different ways within the twittersphere.

The first one is simple and uses a flat structure where all your tweets are chronologically placed one under the other in the space.  Twitter.com/username/tweet, most folks understand this, as that is what they see within their twitter profiles when they look online?

Think domain/folder/subfolder

The second set of twitter architecture is where all the fun and games take place. This is an exceptionally complicated space where sub domains and nested  drop down folders that can be multiple layers deep, with  rather wide sub level bases. These are found hidden in structures, much like an organisation staff organogogram 

At the top is your original tweet which lives at http://username.twitter.com/tweet

Think subdomain.domain/folder where each tweet is considered as a folder within the subdomain 


Think USER.TWITTER.COM 

Next are the first level replies / comments on this individual tweet.  This level can be very wide, as each comment / reply to your original tweet will sit in this space.

Think USER.TWITTER.COM/ORIGINAL TWEET/ REPLY

Next level down is the replies / comments to the first level of comments / replies.   Then there may be more levels going deeper down the list as each new comment / reply slots into its appropriate position within the developing nested web site architecture, leaving a mass of sub folders containing each new comment / reply in a structured drop-down set of sub folders.

 This will look very much like a company staff chart, with a single boss and a number of workers who are directly responsible to him / her.  Where each first level reply / comment will sit on this level, spreading the first level base as far as there are new replies / comments on the original tweet in question.

This is now where things get rather sneaky and very interesting, coz replies / comments to sepperate posts at this level will drop down into the second tier of the resulting website architecture. Just like the boss in the company has workers who report to him directly, So each reply / comment will have its own list of second responders.

Think   USER.TWITTER.COM/FOLDER/SUBFOLDER

Each first level response will have its own second tier, and the second tier may have its own set of responses in a third tier. These third tier responses may have their own responders who will form the next tier within that individual drop down list.

This can and does get out of hand on long twitter conversations.  So be warned that this is very complicated, and rather messy, making it difficult to put into proper perspective.

Each of these individual tweets may also have likes and shares, then also reshares of shares complicating things even further. The likes do not carry any true SEO VALUE, as they are deemed to be social signals, which most search engines tend to ignore, or give little value within the SEO environment. That being said, the share factor is some what different, with each share bring treated in much the same fashion as the original tweet

So this website architecture is looking like a simple drop-down structure that has an easy to follow make up, with the sharesand reshares taking the same structure, but being placed adjacent to the original tweet

Now that we have the website architecture under control, and can see the flow of tweets in a business staff type organogram we can get into the real meaty part of the discussion

The content of each tweet is now evaluated from a Semantic perspective, starting at the top spot, and flowing steadily through each level with all of the sepperate sublevels bring indexed and evaluated.

Standard SEO evaluation by search engines is applied to each comment in the comment stream, taking into account this list and MANY OTHER ISSUES

• where in the nested loops the comment resides
• What the semantic context of the tweet consists of
• are there any out bound links to pages that expand the conversation
• What is the site authority and page authority level of any such linked to page
• are there any inbound links to individual comments
• Is this comment stream part of an embedded twitter post
• Who are the folks commenting
• How fresh are the comments
• Are the comments relevant to the conversation
• Should the comment get spam treatment
• What was the purpose and intent of each tweet in the comment stream

Because each comment is seen by the search engine as a stand alone web page, the interlinking between each comment is evaluated, where the level within the site architecture is used as a link referral base and out bound links add tremendous value to the SEO link juice of those tweets which contain them, adding SEO value within the entire conversation chain.

This can thus add true value within the Search engine optimisation flow patterns to all the out bound links, with any out bound links in the original tweet getting the lions share of this link juice. The closer to the top of the conversation an out bound link is found, the more link juice it should carry, but this is not always true, as there are many different factors that influence the flow of link juice from a social media conversation.

It can thus be seen that the SEO value of a Twitter conversation can become a very powerful and much appreciated boost to the individual online assets which may be linked to from within the comment streams of a tweet

By on line assets I mean web pages, blog post,  social media profiles or any online content such as images, videos or PDF documents

 Twitter is thus an extremely powerful link building tool
 

Do you buy your back links?

The purchasing of back links is frowned upon by most SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) and when they detect it, your web site may be punished and removed from the organic SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

This is serious, and may impact on you, or if you do SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for a company your clients web sites.

the case of Interflora (those guys that sell flowers) www.interflora.com is quite a wake up call, and all those invloved in the SEO Industry should take heed.

read about the story 

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2013/03/01/interflora-suffers-seo-setback-as-mothers-day-approaches/ 

http://www.websearchseo.co.uk/the-interflora-seo-saga-what-can-we-learn-from-it/

 and the solutions / guide lines to prevention 

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-reminder-about-selling-links.html

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/why-did-my-pagerank-go-down/

http://www.seowix.com/could-your-seo-strategy-be-as-pointless-as-a-pigeons-life/ 

A video on the back link issue by Matt Cutts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Cutts



The moral of the story is that you reap what you sow, and if you sow weeds and problem plants, you will get weeds which you are unable to eradicate, as their seeds will continue to grow every season, and problem plants that mess your garden and spoil the experience of your visitors.

Think about where you advertise, and what your call to action message is, advertise in relevant places and be clear with your message. SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) are getting bigger, and are looking at an awful lot more variables that they did a few years back.

User experience, and finding exactly what you have searched for are becoming more important to search engines and their controlling SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms), so your adverts need to be more explicit and closer to home. adverts that discuss off page / site topics and use words that are not on your landing page may cause your site some harm, so think clearly of where your adverts are placed and what exactly is the message and call to action statement in your advert.

Remember to use FUFISM and include your whole marketing teams experience as well as keeping the rest of your social media partners in the loop.

Always keep tabs on your stats and when they start taking a detour down south, find out why fast. the longer you take the worse the impact gets, and the harder it will be to recover.

Ensure that everybody in your marketing team knows the rules about SPAM MARKETING , and ensure that your entire team is given a lecture on the impact of SPAM MARKETING at least once a month, with a reminder of the trip down south of your bottom line when they neglect the rules.