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 

Do you use the social media as a link building tool within your SEO strategies?

Link building as an SEO tool

Well I advise everybody to document everything they do, but *UNFORTUNATELY* I do not practice what I preach...

I do need to start doing this myself, as when the smelly stuff collides with the wind making machine, and your rankings go south at a great rate of knots, and you have not been keeping good records of what is done, what is not done, and who is responsible for the different pieces of your SEO then you have *REALLY BIG PROBLEMS*

Keeping checklists for tasks, and who is responsible to ensure that the task is integrated into your total marketing plan can be a real pain in the wrong spot, but it sure helps when problems decide to show their true colours and your online rankings take a tumble.

Most marketing managers, and especially those within the *SOCIAL MEDIA ARENA* do not fully comprehend the needs to integrate all your marketing both online and off line into a single marketing plan, where SEO and related\matters take the steering wheel and control many of the marketing issues in a well managed and efficient manner, that pushes your online content closer to the top of the SERP's  (Search engine Results ages) in many strange and devious ways.

Social media is the biggest and (currently) most powerful link building platform that we have ever experienced.  How you use the social media to create powerful link building opportunities for your online work is not well understood, and then there are them folks that tell you *LINK BUILDING IS DEAD* who confuse many, and cause a vast array of different problems within the SEO Industry.

Links are still one of the most  vital parts of your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) efforts and their value must not be underestimated.

That being said, one must also not underestimate the damage that can be caused by link farms and other bad link building tactics.  How you conduct your link-building practices does need to be  clearly defined  and documented as part of your SEO policy.  Then you also need to keep records of all social media posts that are part and parcel of your  link building activities.

Your company link building policy document, which is a sub-document in your SEO policy  must be shared across all marketing platforms, both online and off line, as every marketing effort has some impact on your SEO.  This could be in the way that you influence your target market audience to use specific key words in their search queries or how you influence your copy writer to frame certain issues, or any number of other seemingly UN-important issues.

Social media managers need to be on top of the issues that impact on your SEO, and use these intelligently when passing  instructions to  others  like, but not limited to the list below. :

• what to promote, 
• how to promote specific issues,
• where and when to promote your other online efforts.
• what links to use within specific social media posts
• how to frame social media posts that link to other social media profiles
• how to ensure that the author of specific articles gets credits for their online works

 If you are not using the social media as a link building tool for your bog and your web site, then you are loosing out an a great opportunity.  From a #FUFISM based\perspective the social media is the powerhouse of you link building strategy, and this needs great care and lots of *SPECIAL ATTENTION* to details as supplied by your SEO team.

Those who tell you that link building is dead, need to be viewed as suspect, and their intentions need to be evaluated carefully.  You need to have an honest discussion with them about the value of social media in general, and what impacts the social media has on your SERP's. (Search Engine Results Pages)  If they tell you that the use of SOCIAL MEDIA improves your SERP's, then you need to ask them to explain exactly how this is done, and if this can be achieved without linking to your online content from your social media posts at all.

listen carefully to their explanations, and ask questions!!!!

Evaluate and then decide which way, because many have been ill advised that link building is dead, and these people may be acting on that advice, which is very dangerous.

Remember that there is plenty of bad advice online, so take your time and evaluate all advice carefully,  before accepting or rejecting any advice.

See these links to expand the conversation on the value of link building...

http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/2014/04/social-media-issues-and-serps.html (Social media and SERP's)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/2012/09/is-seo-dead.html  (Is SEO DEAD?)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4.html    (Issues with Link building)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/2014/07/what-is-value-of-link-in-2014.html  (what is the value of a link)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-link-building-tactics-do-you-use.html (what link building tactics do you use)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html  (what is SEO)

Just in case you need to know more specifics about any component of your SEO policy,  remember that you can use our internal search tool to search for specific subjects within the SEO field.   Look in the top right of the screen when using a laptop or PC...  If you do not find what you are looking for when using our search tool, then leave a comment and our team will try and help you out as best we can.  If we can not help you directly we will refer you to and expert who can.

What link building tactics do you use?

Is link building  dead?

in short link building is not dead, and will not die any time soon!

That being said we do need to understand the many issues that surround link building, and the implications of your personal link building strategies.  In the past when things in search first started out links were the primary SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicator) and links were gamed to the extent that Google and other search engines started showing very distorted and poor SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

see previous post discussing the value of a link in 2014

The search engines thus introduced algorithms that started to look for patterns that these so called BLACK HAT search engine optimisation practitioners were using, and started penalizing those who they thought were cheating or gaming the system.  Google now has a number of NAMED ALGORITHMS , as well as many un-named algorithms,  that look into these matters and related matters where Search Engine Optimisation Technical staff and online marketing practitioners SPAM the search engines in a variety of different ways using many different techniques.

Some of these named algorithms include :

>>  PANDA

>>  PENGUIN

>>  HUMMING BIRD

>>  PIGEON

These algorithms help to improve the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and some are punitive, while others add value to the work of those who apply recommended tactics that are rather technical and difficult to implement, such as Google's author and publisher programs that are connected to Google plus.

This short video below will help you understand why I say that link building will not die any time soon, but link building has changed and it is now necessary to selectively screen out bad links and focus exclusively on high quality links from reputable sources when ever possible.  The question asked was does Google have a version of search where back links are excluded.  listen to what  +Matt Cutts had to say then evaluate your own situation.

The question thus becomes  What is link building and why is it important?

In short links, some times called HYPERLINKS are the tools that you use to allow  the end user, or your audience to move from one place on the internet to another, and are the only tool that search engines have of locating your online content.  If there are no links pointing to your page, then a search engine has no means of locating your page, and it will thus never be found in search.  In the past the more inbound links a page had the better it did in search results.

Link building is the process that you follow to ensure that your web pages or blog posts acquire in bound links, be they internally from   pages within your own web site /  blog or externally from some other online resource.

Today, due to the amount of SPAM generated by so called BLACK HAT SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION this is no longer true, and Google as well as all other search engines now use the quality of links more than the quantity of links.  Then  within Google search there is the issue of PANDA and PENGUIN  which both have negative or punitive tools that tackle SPAM and bad quality web pages

It is thus important that you understand the  need to have a link building policy in place, and that this link building policy needs to be well documented and shared with every person who has anything to do with your total marketing plan.  Bad links can come from a number of sources, and those who do not know about these issues can very inadvertently make use of a link building farm or some other bad tactic, thinking that they are helping your marketing efforts.   New employees or  junior marketers who have not been exposed to the impacts of bad links may not understand what a link farm is, and believe they are being helpful in getting traffic to your pages.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF BAD LINKS TO SINK YOUR ONLINE MARKETING EFFORTS,  BE CAREFUL WHEN DEVELOPING YOUR LINK BUILDING POLICY

The social media is currently a very big source of links to your online content, and as such you do need to have a social media policy in place to deal with these issues. Once again Your social media policy needs to be well documented and shared with everybody who has anything to do with your marketing, be it online or not.  You need to remember that all your offline marketing has a very big impact on your online marketing in many ways, especially when it comes to issues around search. You will need to include your link building policy within your social media marketing policy,as they are very interconnected.

Off line marketing has strange impacts on your intended target audience, and this is where you should use terminology and language that is specific to your business interests.  Your target audience will be induced to use the words and language in your off line marketing to search online to discover more about your company, your products or your services, and you need to be aware of this in your online marketing, especially in your social media marketing, as this is where you will have direct one on one conversations with your target audience as well as many others who may or may not have a direct interest in your product, service or business proposition.

The people who you have conversations with online within the social media space, may or may not decide to place links within their posts to your web pages or blogs, and as such you need to influence these OUT SIDERS in a positive manner so that any links that they may place within their social media posts are positive and  relevant to pages within your web site or blog.

These issues are also confounded and confused when marketers say that you should not be doing any link building at all.  Link building as a term is also a very difficult term to come to grips with in the current scenario where past link building practices have destroyed web sites through their spam attacks and the use of link farms.  Link building has definitely changed a great deal over the last few years, and is now a very delicate art that is not properly understood.  On the one hand an online resource must have inbound links, these links need to be of high quality and carry some authority to have any success in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and on the other hand excessive links as well as links of low quality can cause a web site or blog some serious damage within the SERP's.

The guys at +Moz recently published an article called The beginners guide to link building   which I have found very helpful, and shared with my audience in other places.  The G+ post embedded below is actually what inspired this post, as I commented there  and had an interesting conversation with both  +Mike Gracia and +William Rock   Take some time and read the comments as I believe they will help you to understand the great difficulties that we as online marketers have in dealing with the changes in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) issues as well as how different people interpret the terminology within the  search engine optimisation world.  Please remember that these are sensitive issues, and need great care, so ask for second and third opinions, then apply your own mind and be aware of those who are willing to game the system.
  

THERE IS LOTS OF BAD ADVICE OUT THERE 

Social media issues and SERP's

 I was following this conversation https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RandFishkin/posts/4keiQ5C4BF4 started by +Rand Fishkin of +Moz and replied to a comment, then thoght   hey this is almost a full blog post, so coppied it and pasted that comment here.

 I have made a few adjustments so that the information flow within my comment makes sense without reading the whole conversation, which evolved around SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and related marketing issues, where a big brand's SERP's were discussed, with the question being

Why did their face book page appear above their web site in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) 

My response....

These are very tricky issues, and great care needs to be taken when creating content to ensure that links are functional, and that you do not always link to the same page within your blog or web site.

Linking to a home page only does not do very much good, as any single page within a single domain, can only carry so much domain value value, and the page rank value of any page is limited through an algorithm, so that it can not exceed any page within the entire domain by more than a fixed percentage difference of the domain value.  This keeps very small web sites out of the picture, and rewards the big brands with big sites considerably, as they can build a sizable domain rank value an awful lot easier than a small web site would, how ever there are other issues at play which mitigate this a little or considerably depending on who you talk to..

Getting the inbound links is one issue, but getting inbound links to a number of different pages is a lot more difficult, and this takes some serious effort on the part of your management team to ensure that all parties are on the same page in the company marketing strategy book.

In theory your social media  posts should link to different pages of your web site or blog, and discuss the content of that page, or at least be semantically linked to the page that the post links to.  Your web site should be set up so that a brand page on G+ is the registered publisher, and your authors should also have G+ profiles that are accredited as authors of specified pages within your web site or blog.

If you use the Google author and Google publisher methods to gain trust from Google your online work will do better in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

Problem is that people have got a *FRIGHT ATTACK* and now fear using links due to the associated penalties of *PANDA and PENGUIN* because they have not been properly informed by their SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) team on the issues related to PANDA and PENGUIN.  

These two Google Search Algorithms carry punitive SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) and distribute them out to sites that they deem are cheating or pushing their luck in some way.

The fact that a disavow tool even exists has caused some panic in the ranks of marketing folks, and they have spread the word that links can be poisonous to your site or blog.

This misconception needs to be put to rest, but I will not be doing that, as this creates work for me.  Links are still the most important part of Google's algorithms, and they will be for some time to come.  Social signals are also links, but they carry different information than a standard hyperlink, and also have a hook that drags information about the source of the social signal (you when you clicked the like button) along for the ride, with instructions on how to get back home, and where to deliver the parcels that they are carrying when getting back home, so that counters can be updated and verified.

Inbound links to a page are the most vital SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) and carry the most weight of any signals for Google to determine  your SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)  It is for this exact reason that you need to link to your blog posts and web pages from within your social media posts.





If your face book page has more inbound links than your web site, it may appear above your web site in the SERP's (Search Engine  Results Pages).  to solve this issue, be sure to link out to your web site or blog from your social media profile in post that you make an a regular basis.  Be sure to link to relevant landing pages where the content is semantically linked to your posts, and do this often. This will or at least should generate enough links to your web site, as these are carried along in the shares, and re-shares of your faceBook posts








hope you understood this and found this useful.  for more see http://4ubrand.blogspot.com

enjoy you day further

other links on this blog that are recomended reading for this issue
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html  (what is SEO)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4.html  (links and link building)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/p/fufism-functional-user-firendly.html  (What is #FUFISM)

link building help

 Link building is an important part of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) that is very often over looked and usually not considered as part of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

this post in www.searchengineland.com is relevant to link building and really worth a read 

Link building is one of the most important parts of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and great care should be taken to ensure that it has success.  You should apply FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media tactics for best results.

The social media arena is a great source of links and all your social media campaigns should link to specific pages within your company website and carry links to the main landing pages as well.

Social signals are just fancy words for talking about special types of links, and these social signals carry a lot more weight than standard links from normal web sites. It is thus very important that your social media campaign generate some social signals for your website, and that you have reciprocal links from your web site and blog with your social media campaigns.

Every social media platform has a special section where you can develop specialised links that come with branded images 4u2 (for you to) place in your other online platforms like blogs, websites or forums. it is important for your SEOV (Search Engine Optimisation Value) that you do this, as out bound links also add considerable SEOV (Search Engine Optimisation Value) to your online efforts in every platform.


Good content and well managed user interfaces where your online customer base can communicate with you in a manner that pleases them will also result in many organic (natural) links to your pages placed by your information users (customers) within their preferred user platforms such as

a) their own web sites
b) their own blogs
c) their own social media platforms
d) user forums
e) comments in your blogs or other social media

If your customers talk about you in a positive way your will be shocked at the online coverage this generates. So give them a reason to say positive things about you by having good feed back mechanisms in place then monitor these with great care and enthusiasm. Remember to be social on social media platforms and not to push the marketing as this is a social turn off, keep the conversations going as long as possible, placing links to relevant areas of your web sites and blogs within the conversations, as this is a major source of inbound links to your other online information.

Link exchange programs with your suppliers and your resellers is also a very good idea, though this can be a very tedious and extremely time consuming affair, the effort is really worth while. Take the time and you will not be sorry.

for more info send email to seo@info4u.co.za or visit www.info4u.co.za/fufism