Mobile devices are impacting URL sharing

First and foremost among these factors is the “device effect.” The device effect means that a huge number of us are now consuming our content on a mobile device that fits in our hands, such as a smartphone or tablet.

A decade ago, if you wanted to go online, you generally had to do it on your laptop or desktop computer. Not today. The transition to a more mobile Internet has had a profound effect not only on the was people consume content, but also on the way people share and distribute it.

Not long ago, if you wanted to post or share a link with others, you had to know a bit of HTML, and you had to type the full URL out. The big shortcut back then was copy/paste.

The link graph of the mid- to late 90s had very little link spam compared to today, simply because it was too much of a hassle to actually create links. The idea of a link removal service in 1998 would have been laughable. (Actually, it’s just as laughable today — but that’s another story for another day.)

However, HTML editors evolved (early versions of Netscape had a “Composer” feature), FTP became popular and bingo – we were collaborating and creating webpages and link guides and felt like actual publishers.  (Anyone remember ZEAL?)

Blogs came next, and third-party services like AddThis and ShareThis made it simple for webmasters to encourage the sharing of website content. Such features allowed readers to share links with ease. This was all pre-mobile, and the exploding link graph of those days was a large part of why Google dominates the search landscape now – -they realized early on what all those links meant.

Now that mobile devices dominate our daily lives, true link authorship — meaning typing URLs out on a keyboard or copy/pasting them into an HTML document or blog post — has changed dramatically. There are statistics that describe the shocking migration to mobile devices by content consumers — one stat that amazes me is that mobile traffic in 2012 was 12 times as large as was all traffic on the Internet  in 2000!

Think about that for a moment. If someone had told you in 2000 that, by 2012, there would be 12 times more Internet content read or watched on phones (or things called “tablets”) than is currently consumed in total, you would not have believed it. In 2000, my cell phone didn’t have a screen at all — and it was still painful to watch online video on a desktop, even if you had a cable modem.

While I do not have hard statistics on the effect the migration to mobile devices has had on people’s ability to type in, post, and share URLs, I imagine it has to be profound. After all, how many links today originate via Facebook or Twitter sharing buttons that are embedded within content?

Add to the mix LinkedIn, Pinterest, and a few others that have managed to reach a relatively decent mass of button installs, and what we now have is a scenario where more URLs migrate from person to person via mobile device button sharing than by people actually opening up a laptop and posting a URL via a keyboard.

Even my own habits bear this out. On the weekends, I consume my email, Web content, etc., exclusively through my iPad and iPhone. I don’t go near my laptop. I used to bring my laptop in from the office to the house on weekends. I don’t have to do that anymore. I use an iPad almost exclusively when in the house, and iPhone when on the road.

How does this affect my link creation habits? Dramatically. I simply don’t “create” links anymore when I’m on those devices. I might share a link via the “Email a link to this page” option provided by the mobile Safari browser or click a “Tweet this” button via a mobile interface, but what I’m not doing is the bread and butter of the link builder’s daily activity: sitting at a desk, working on a large machine, entering link data into submission forms, inserting links into content via HTML code, emailing link requests, etc.

My actual link building work takes place with me sitting at a desk the same way as I did in 1994, and that is not likely to change for a long time. I honestly do not have any recollection of a time when I have performed the work of link building via my iPad, unless you count the sending of an email. And even that’s not an easy thing to do, as a properly crafted email link request is going to have to include elements that are not mobile device-friendly.

Try writing a blog post via a mobile interface and including a long URL to a cool page or video you found — it’s torture.  It would take less time to simply drive to your office, fire up the PC and write it that way. And, if you’re a link curator — meaning you seek out, evaluate and share topical links in clumps — you aren’t authoring your posts on a tablet. You have a mouse in hand and a 24-inch monitor in front of you. Friction is the enemy of link sharing.

Those of you who actually perform link building activities at the keyboard level likely understand what I’m talking about here. Heavy duty link building activities for clients still must take place predominantly on a machine that is not a tablet or phone.

Ease Of Sharing Means Ease Of Sharing Junk

With fewer people typing URLs and more people tapping “Tweet” and “Like” buttons, this means a great thinning of the link-creating herd must be taking place. As much as I love the social migration of URLs, there is simply no way you are going to convince me that URLs shared in this manner have the same signal salience as URLs shared by a curator on a keyboard.

Think about it this way: I have a librarian friend who is responsible for the library’s monthly “Best of the Web” feature. When he authors this feature, he’s on a computer with Safari open to a multitude of tabs. There’s no way he could author that column on a mobile device. He might come across a site or two on his tablet while doing research during the month, but when it’s time to actually produce the content of his newsletter, it’s back to the good old-fashioned keyboard and mouse.

This raises some interesting questions. Are links that require more time and effort to insert into content more credible than links shared by a one-second button tap on an iPhone? Put another way, does the ease of URL sharing on mobile devices reduce the credibility of those URLs shared because the share takes place via a button tap and thus may have been impulsive rather than carefully considered?

Is sharing URLs via mobile like playing Whack-A-Mole? Are these impulsive URL shares a bad thing? When examined in mass, does the method of sharing help surface the best the Web has to offer? If I’m in my car at a red light, and I read a headline and tap the “Tweet” button, have I just created a useful signal?

Ultimately, it seems to me that the URL share will be valued based on the sharer (hence why Google is pushing authorship and cross-device log-ins). Search engines must be able to take the billions of URLs ping-ponging across the Web and decide to what extent this noise contains useful signals. Links are not what is trusted — it’s the credibility of the person doing the sharing that’s trusted.

Beyond the mobile explosion, the main point or thesis I don’t want to stray too far from is that I believe we have entered a period where the manner and method in which we share URLs has changed forever; thus, the ability of search engines to determine intent and credibility based on manner, method, device and friction of the sharing process will be crucial to producing useful search results.

After all, which is likely to have more value: a share originating from an iPhone, or a share originating from a PC with a Library of Congress IP address?

In light of the explosion of links due to ease of sharing, I expect the value of the traditional curator/linker like my librarian friend to increase. These passionate subject specialists will become even more important to the search engines looking for intent and meaning.

Why? Take a look at a curated page of links, such as this page or this one. Someone had to make decisions about what to include on these pages — what to link to, how to link to it, and what to say about the sites being linked to. Time an effort were put into collecting and sharing these links — it was not done on mobile device with a one-second finger tap.

With Diversity Comes Strategic Opportunity

With so many ways to share and encounter URLs, it’s a very cool time to be a content publicist or link builder. There are more opportunities for URLs to be shared, discovered and surfaced. And good link marketers know how to get people to websites without Google — non-search traffic diversification has never been easier than it is right now if you’re willing to change your mindset and think like a publicist or traditional marketer.

What we perhaps didn’t see coming, however, was the possibility that the method used for sharing content could end up being a signal in and of itself. How will you adjust your strategy?

Public relations professionals have spent years perfecting their outreach strategies, building relationships and finding press opportunities for their clients. Search marketers have also spent years doing outreach and finding opportunities for our clients — we just called them “links.” They weren’t always the best opportunities, but we’re getting better — and that’s where we can take a cue from our communications-minded friends in the PR industry.

Here’s how:

1. Monitor Editorial Opportunities

By now, we’ve all heard of HARO, and hopefully everyone is using it to get their client mentions and maybe build a link or two. While HARO is extremely useful, it isn’t the end-all be-all when it comes to finding editorial opportunities.

Sites all over the Web (especially those with Web and print publications) have pages listing their upcoming editorial opportunities. Here’s an example from Direct Marketing News:

Editorial opportunities typically include the article subject matter, the author, the author’s contact information and the deadline. This is all extremely valuable information, and it’s all right there for you in one place! All you have to do is pitch it.

To find out if a site has their editorial opportunities listed, search the target site or use Google site: command for terms like:

• Editorial calendar
• Upcoming issues
• Editorial opportunities
• Guest opinion articles

You can also use EdCals from Cision. It’s a free tool that allows you to search editorial calendars across the globe and then download the information to your Outlook. Search by topic, submission deadline and the outlet name.

Once you’ve identified sites that publish this information, make sure to monitor them for future openings. Put them in your reader or subscribe to be alerted via email (if offered).

2. Set Up Event Interviews

Conferences and trade shows offer plenty of opportunities when it comes to links;  but, one of the best comes straight from the world of PR: interviews.

For both speakers and those attending the show, it seems there is always someone looking to interview attendees before, during and after the show. Some conferences will even go so far as to set up press interviews for you.

If you’re planning on attending a show or have a client attending a show, start looking for potential interviews:

• Sign up for event emails
• Visit the event press page
• Follow the event hashtag

Also, be sure to check out event sponsors, as they will often do promotions ahead of time. Take a look at their social media accounts or blog to identify any possible lead-ins.

3. Provide Daily Scan Recommendations

As a link builder, there’s no doubt that you’re already monitoring the Web for your company or client. Whether it’s through Google Alerts, Trackur, or another Web monitoring tool, we know this is a valuable source for links. Daily scans basically do the same thing.

The PR team will send the client a “daily scan” email featuring the top articles about the company, their competitors and overall industry news. It keeps the client and the agency informed of what’s happening.

The key is to take the scan a step further. Create action items.

Run the daily scan, but underneath each article, create an action item for the client (for in-house people, this can essentially act as a to-do list):

• Leave a comment on the post
• Write a response on the client’s/company blog
• Share the post via Twitter
• Email the author

The key to providing an action item is to give whomever you are sending it to as much information as possible. If you want your client to leave a comment, write the suggested comment. If you want the person to connect with the author via Twitter, give him/her the author’s Twitter handle. The less work a busy client has to do, the greater the chance the person will be able to get it done.

The daily scan recommendations are a great way to help drive brand awareness, create relationships with the people who matter and build links.

4. Create Segmented Reporter Lists

In June of last year, Oriella PR surveyed 600 reporters on their use of social media for sourcing stories. The results showed that 55% of the respondents used social networks to find stories from known sources, and 26% said they used social to find stories from sources they did not know.

The fact that reporters are using social media to source stories has given search marketers a huge window of opportunity for link building. That doesn’t mean you need to go follow every reporter on Twitter, though.

To increase your chances of being a source and acquiring a link, you must target reporters that are relevant to your company or client.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to create private Twitter lists segmented by client, industry and relationship. For example, if I have three clients in the high tech industry, I want to make sure I have the following lists set up:

• High tech reporters
• Client 1 reporters
• Client 2 reporters
• Client 3 reporters

I also want to make sure I know which reporters have written about my company/client before and which have not. It may seem like a lot of lists, but it’ll help you stay organized and ensure you don’t waste your time looking at the wrong people.

To find relevant reporters and start creating lists, check out some of these tools to help with the data gathering process (Muck Rack has some great lists). The easiest place to start, however, is your target publication. For example, The New York Times lists their reporters on Twitter, and even has them filtered by topic. The same thing applies to The Boston Globe and many of the other larger newspapers.

Also take a look at the authors of the articles listed in the daily scans mentioned above. These people are already writing about your industry and may need a source in the future.

Once you have your lists set up, be sure to keep an eye on them or set up alerts. When a reporter is sourcing a story on Twitter, it’s likely because he/she needs the information fast.

5. Use PR Focused Tools

One of the things that makes the search industry rock is the abundance of free or low cost tools we have at our disposal — tools that make our jobs easier and help us make better decisions every single day. Well, guess what? The PR industry has those, too.

I mentioned the Cision editorial tool above, but the company also offers a free tool called Seek or Shout that lets you find content, post pitches and seek those looking for sources. It’s a pretty cool way to make connections and discover potential link opportunities.

Search for a specific topic and then filter by “seek” and “date.” You’ll see who’s looking for information for a story and who has a question about the topic — you may even find potential content for your own site (i.e., interviews) that can result in a return link and social promotion.

Like any other social network, you get what you give — so start by finding people in your industry or your client’s industry that you can connect with. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but it’s all about relationship building.

Note: Seek and Shout is still growing; so, while you may not find something in there every day, keep it in your arsenal. If you’re looking for additional PR tools to use, RavenTools has a massive list worth taking a look at.

At the end of the day, link building has changed and will continue to change. Public relations professionals focus on getting their clients mentions that matter to their overall business, and so should we. Hopefully, the tips listed above will help you get started.

That’s right, folks: today we’re going to chat about internal linking.

Cue the communal groan.

It’s okay! I’m not going to talk about anchor text. Instead, we’ll dive into how to set up a logical internal linking strategy, as well as some of the more technical aspects to keep in mind when it comes to your internal linking.

Why An Internal Linking Strategy Important

SEO is a multifaceted endeavor comprised of many different parts of varying levels of importance. I’m not saying internal linking is the most important part, but it is up there.

Internal linking helps lay the foundation of your SEO efforts. It allows you to indicate to search engines which pages of content are the highest priority, as well as which pages are thematically related to one another. Such signals are incredibly helpful to search engines in ascribing value and meaning to your pages, and if you don’t take the time to manage these signals via strategic internal linking, you’ll be at the mercy of the search engines’ judgment call.

In the limited time that Google spends on my site, the last thing I want is for it to be confused about where I want to be ranked and which pages are high priorities.

Thinking Logically About Internal Linking

Most people see internal linking as something like this:

I know — I’m not a designer.

In this case, “The Hulk” is the most important page — the one they want Google to index and rank — so they link to that page from every other page on their site, regardless of whether or not it makes logical or contextual sense to do so.

The result is one hot mess. When internal linking is set up like this, it sends confusing signals to both search engines and your visitors, especially if you scale to hundreds or thousands of pages.

Instead — and I preach this on every aspect of SEO and link building — think more about how your users navigate websites, and consider which information they would find valuable based on their current location. Is the information on Page A related to Page B? Would someone reading Page A also want to read Page B?

In general, e-commerce sites do this really well. Let’s look at a ModCloth product page as an example. (No affiliation other than a deep love for their dresses.)

This page contains internal links pointing to similarly styled dresses, the site’s most popular dresses, and return/buying information. Customers also have the option to look at other products in the same fabric or category via tags. The one thing missing is a set of links to complementary accessories: matching shoes, jewelry, purses, etc.

As you can see, ModCloth’s internal linking strategy is designed to provide value to users rather than to game search engine results pages. The result is an internal linking structure that is intuitive to users and that naturally prioritizes the most important pages for the most relevant keywords.

As another example, we’re currently redesigning our website, and one of our goals is to better showcase our service offerings. To do this effectively, we started with a simple question: “If I’m a visitor, and I land on the service page for User Experience Design, what else would I want to see?” This question generated a number of great ideas for valuable, logical internal links, including:

• Our Portfolio: Here, visitors can easily view samples of  our User Experience Design work
• Case Studies: Visitors can discover the value of our work by reading recent client results
• Staff: Visitors can see experts on User Experience Design
• Related Blog Posts: In-depth pieces and industry news about User Experience Design is readily available for those who want to learn more
• Related Services: The page provides a list of accompanying/related services that visitors may want to consider

Not only do we get a clear idea of how our service pages relate to other sections of our website, but we now have a blueprint for the information we want on these pages, making our designers’ jobs much easier.

Once again, by considering what information users might find valuable rather than which pages we want search engines to rank, we can develop an internal linking strategy that accomplishes our SEO goals without being spammy.

Thinking Technically About Internal Linking

Many consider “technical SEO” to be a specific set of tasks done in isolation; but, the truth is a full internal linking strategy has to include many technical aspects, especially where potential duplicate content is concerned. In cases of duplicate content, it’s important to ensure that there’s consistency among the version of a page you’re linking to from other pages, the version you’re canonicalizing, the version in your sitemap, and the version that Google is indexing.

To illustrate this point, we experienced a canonicalization problem with our home page specifically — www.352media.com was the desired version of our home page, so we set up permanent 301 redirects from other versions of this page (352media.com, /default, /default.aspx, /Default, etc.) to eliminate any duplicate content.

After implementing the redirects, we assumed that we were fine — that is, until we noticed that these other versions were still appearing in search results. We discovered that this was the result of some funky canonical tags:

• “www.352media.com” to “www.352media.com/default.aspx”
• “www.352media.com/default.aspx” to “www.352media.com/Default”

The problem here was that we were giving Google mixed signals. We were pointing Google from various versions of our home page to www.352media.com — but once they got there, we were telling them  that the content was actually better read on the URL they just came from.

We had a similar problem on our blog that came to light when we noticed a discrepancy in our submitted/indexed ratio in Google Webmaster Tools. We noticed many instances where the indexed URL for a blog post was not the one we expected:

• Preferred URL:  http://www.352media.com/blog/Summing-Up-SEO-September.aspx
• Indexed URL: http://www.352media.com/blog/post.aspx?id=3d843bb3-76b9-41c3-91b9-c80f92ac75af

Upon further investigation, we discovered that, once again, we were sending Google mixed signals. Although we were using the preferred version of our URL in all of our internal and external linking, we were telling Google that the second URL was the canonical version — so that’s the one it indexed. Thus, no matter how well thought out your internal linking plan is, it won’t succeed if you fail to incorporate technical SEO into your strategy.

Conclusion

A solid internal linking strategy goes beyond simply linking to your most important pages often with keyword-rich anchor text. By considering the user’s needs and ensuring consistency from the technical side of things, you can create an internal linking strategy that is natural, intuitive and aligned with conversion goals.

At first, this may seem counter-intuitive to earning links for yourself — however, linking out to influential people while pumping out great content can be one of the best link building tactics out there, and here’s why:

1. Some people find it easier to promote themselves indirectly. By promoting what you write about them, they’re able to avoid feeling embarrassed or conceited about being in the spotlight. They’re essentially promoting you, the writer, which is much easier. (I know that many of you have no problems with direct self-promotion, and for that I sincerely am in awe.) Social pushes equal increased visibility, which always ups the chances for links as long as the content is good.

   

2. Unique content gets noticed in a sea of similar articles. Depending upon your industry, the existing content may already be little more than repeated and spun ideas. I’m not going to read one more post about how to tell if your website was hit by Panda or Penguin last year, but I will read almost every single interview post that crosses my social stream. I’m fascinated by the people in my industry, and I love reading what they have to say when it’s not necessarily written for a specific audience or to sell their services. Again: unique and interesting content equals increased visibility, which increases your chances of garnering links.
3. Interviewing someone forges a relationship that can help you down the road. Whether it’s through a link, a business referral, help on something you are struggling with, an invitation to speak at a conference, the opportunity for a guest post, etc., you’ll be building a valuable connection with someone within your industry when you create content around them based on an interview. Remember all the talk about how the links you really have to work for are the best links? Links that happen well after an interaction can also be great links.

How To Pitch An Interview

Pitch an interview just like you’d pitch guest blogging, broken link building, or anything else that isn’t going to happen without some work and a personal touch. If you’re going to ask to interview someone, make sure you have done enough digging to know specific details about the person.

You should obtain enough information to be able to say something like, “I’d love to ask you some questions about how you started a tech company after graduating with a degree in Comparative Religion! I think there are many people out there struggling with the question of whether they should keep forging ahead with what they went to college for or just chuck it and do something completely unexpected.”

That’s a heck of a lot better than saying, “I think my readers would like to know more about you.” Some people get interviewed constantly as they are big influencers in their field, so if you want to land the interview, you’re going to have to have a unique perspective that interests your subject. Otherwise, expect to be turned down or ignored.

In general, I’d say you should follow these steps when pursuing an interview candidate:

1. Select someone interesting, and (as mentioned above) do some digging in order to write a personalized email pitch for the interview.
2. Let the person know where the interview will be published.
3. Give a deadline for when you’d like to get the questions completed. Make sure it’s very reasonable.
4. Make it clear that you respect how busy your interviewee is. You can let the person know that it’s fine if he doesn’t have time right now, but that you’d be happy to hear from if him ever has time in the future and would like to talk again.
5. Don’t be a pest about it. If the person says she’s too busy, respect that and thank her for her time.

How To Make Your Interviews Stand Out

The key here is to formulate good questions that haven’t been asked a billion times before. A friend of mine recently said that he loved a specific interview someone did with me because it had more to do with me as a person than with what I do for a living. Most people get tired of talking solely about work. If you can figure out a good angle, your content will be more interesting and thus more shareable. Here are my tips:

1. Prepare some initial questions based on your research of that person’s history.
2. Search for “interview [person's name]” and see what’s already been covered — that way, you can avoid asking the same thing the last 10 interviewers have asked.
3. Ask a question or two about popular culture. In all the interviews I’ve conducted, I’ve only had one person say she didn’t listen to music.
4. Include something funny if it fits. Think about why people watch late-night talk shows: they’re funny.

   

5. Include photos of the subject.

How To Pitch A Crowdsourced Piece

Pitching a group project — as opposed to a one-on-one interview — is sometimes easier, as it requires less of a time commitment from each of your respondents. The basic guidelines are the same as those for pitching an individual interview, with one added tip: make sure each person you’re planning to contact is an appropriate fit for the piece.

For example, I was once asked to participate in a group piece about Google Adwords — and, while I do run some campaigns, it’s really only about 5% of what I do. The questions, however, were geared towards people who live and breathe paid ads, which was not me.

To help get the right people on board, consider including a list of the people who’ve agreed to participate in the piece so far — that can be a big selling point if the person you’re contacting is unfamiliar with you.

How To Make Your Crowdsourced Pieces Stand Out

Again, be original! If there are already 10 pieces out there in which a group of industry leaders have commented on a particular news story, don’t make it your mission to write the 11th.

If I’ve just answered questions about the latest Google update and someone contacts me asking to contribute to a piece about the same topic, I’ll probably opt out because I won’t have anything new to say. However, if someone asks for my opinion on what new functionality we’ll start seeing in the major link tools, I’ll gladly participate.

Last, But Not Least — Promotion

You’ll want to consider ways to promote your interview, both before and after you conduct it. Here are just a few of my recommendations for increasing your piece’s overall visibility:

1. Where appropriate, ask the interviewee questions about tools and services they like, and include that information in the interview. Those companies will generally promote what promotes them. If you have the time once the piece is published, send them a quick email or social shout-out to point them to it.

   

2. Once your piece is published and you’ve shared it across your social networks, be sure to contact the person/people you interviewed to let them know. Send them a link to the piece, and thank them for their time! With any luck, they’ll link to the interview in their own social channels
3. Ask for opinions and feedback on social media. If you target someone and ask if they have anything add to your post, it’s possible they’ll respond thus expose their followers to your work. If you just openly ask for advice, you may not get it — but many people will respond when they’re addressed personally.

What are your tips for using interviews as linkbait?

Matt Cutts has more in store for us webmasters….

Toxic Link Cleanup Phase

Over the past year or so, webmasters began getting bombarded with “unnatural link” warnings in Google Webmaster Tools. Understandably, this caused somewhat of a panic, and webmasters began making frantic efforts to clean toxic and suspicious links from their sites’ link profiles.

These “unnatural links” had become a much bigger problem than most webmasters even realized — after running more than 100k Link Detox reports (which are designed to help webmasters identify and disavow unnatural links), we were surprised by how many really bad links were out there. Google truly did need to implement some way to force us, the webmasters, to clean up the link graph mess.

Many webmasters have reported successfully revoked manual penalties after cleaning up their link profiles and submitting their sites for reconsideration (typically a month-long process). Some have even experienced penalties being lifted after simply disavowing or removing enough links; doing so lifted automatic filters without the need for a manual reconsideration process — which is great.

But what’s next?

Enter The SEO Risk Management Phase

Unfortunately, recovering from a Penguin penalty once doesn’t immunize your website against future penalties.

In fact, as I pointed out last year, many of the penalties imposed by Penguin were a long time coming — and this suggests that there’s a lot more to come. Thus, webmasters must be conscientious, actively monitoring their sites’ ongoing link growth for anything that might be construed as “spammy” or “unnatural.” While a suspicious inbound link may not trigger a warning now, that doesn’t mean it won’t in the future — all Google has to do is flip a switch.

Risk management for your links is both an ongoing process and a mindset. While there are programs out there that can help you identify “risky” links, running these programs and disavowing the suspicious links is by no means a “one and done” kind of deal. We’re not talking about a singular event where you clean up your old sins and are safe for the future — risk management for SEO and links entails assessing the risk of potential new links, as well. After all, if you have acquired “bad” links in the past through active link building efforts, you don’t want to risk additional harm to your site by continuing to build similarly “bad” links.

A Link Is A Link — Not

The big shift in mindset here is that the old saying, “a link is a link,” is simply no longer true. Search engines have increasingly put measures in place to evaluate not just the quantity, but the quality of inbound links, meaning that an inbound link profile consisting mostly or entirely of these “low-quality” links triggers a red flag. What’s more, a link that helps one website could hurt another one. Some examples of this include:

• The website being linked to already has inbound links from the same network or owner.
• The sites being linked are thematically unrelated — in other words, one website is linking to another website that is not thematically relevant. For example, a “Buy Viagra” link to a tax adviser website is problematic; whereas, it would be considered thematically appropriate if linking to a site where one could actually purchase Viagra. The same is often true for other verticals, but the “porn-pills-casino” (PPC) links are specifically bad for most sites.
• The link anchor text is too keyword-heavy. While it is acceptable to occasionally use keyword-rich anchor text to link to your site, it begins to look unnatural if the overwhelming majority of your backlinks are like this. A healthy backlink profile contains a wide variety of  links, including homepage links, subpage links, links with missing anchor text, links with “Click Here!” anchor text, links with keyword-rich anchor text, contextual links, links with the brand name as anchor text, etc. If your backlink profile leans too heavily toward keyword-rich anchor text links, this may trigger a red flag.

From these brief examples, you see that there’s one important thing that’s changed with the Google Penguin updates: you have to look at your link profile as a whole and review each new link in the context of your existing links.

Do You Overlook All Your Link Campaigns?

Julie Joyce wrote about the issues that occur when clients hire multiple link building companies; and I can confirm that dividing link building responsibilities in the name of diversification has the unwanted side effect of “diversifying” the responsibility for bad links.

For example, if client X hires three link builders — we’ll call them Tony, Fred and Susan — to build X links per month, s/he’s already in deep trouble if s/he doesn’t review their plans before they actually build those links. Chances are very high that each will secure link spots on websites that are somehow related (especially if we are talking paid links), because those are often sold from the same networks and/or same owners to many agencies.

Thus, the process in link building often goes something link this:

1. Client X tells Tony, Fred and Susan: “Get me 20 great links!”
2. Tony, Fred and Susan reach out to their network for quick/paid links for links that are thematically related to Client X’s website. Of course, those are often unnatural links because they are paid or swapped, but let’s assume for a moment that they would be so well camouflaged that Google could not detect it as such (rare, but possible).
3. These webmasters separately respond to Tony, Fred and Susan to present them with potential linking opportunities.
4. Tony, Fred and Susan each pursue the strongest links available and manage to get Client X linked there.
5. The result is something like this this Venn diagram:
   

   Risk for your SEO happens when link builders’ plans are not reviewed and controlled properly.

   As you can clearly see, these three link builders would inadvertently work to create a very unnatural backlink profile, due to a lack of communication and oversight. And, we haven’t even taken into account the thousands of links that Client X could already have! Can you imagine what further conflicts might exist?

   Performing What-If risk checks for new links

   The solution to the problem of overlapping link-building efforts would be to carefully review all link opportunities in advance, prior to actually building the links.

   Every webmaster should therefore do the following:

   1. Review all existing backlinks for toxic and suspicious links, and note any that you plan to disavow or have removed.
   2. Examine your link builders’ list(s) of potential link building opportunities.
   3. Check to see if the links your link builders have identified are coming from the same IP network, same domain owners, or same Class-C blocks as any of your existing back links. (This requires gathering domain information for every potential link from their respective data sources.)
   4. Create an overall SEO risk assessment for the potential links your link builders have identified.
   5. Decide if that link is worth getting based on its risk for your site.

   While gathering all those metrics for potential links and checking them against your existing links can be tedious, it’s mandatory in a post-Penguin world. Link Detox eases that process with a feature called “What If” Checks, and other products will likely offer similar functionality in the near future.

   When doing such a simulation, make sure you ignore those links that you potentially disavowed. Keeping track of previously disavowed links is another story and a crucial detail in an ongoing link risk management. You would have to remove all disavowed links from your profile, just as you assume Google does to not interfere with your audit results. We also call “Round-Trip Disavow” in Link Detox, and I’m looking forward to seeing other products adopt that crucial methodology.

   Better Safe Than Sorry — Conclusion & Proposal For SEOs

   The above example is just one of many issues that can arise from a lack of proper SEO risk management. Every webmaster must be engaged in the link building process, and they must understand that every potential new link poses a risk — be it today or tomorrow.

   I recommend the following solution:

   1. Review your backlink profile regularly for “risky” links. You can automate that with software that generates recurring reports; creating a manual process will work, as well.
   2. Perform ongoing link cleanup. If you find fishy links in your backlink profile, get rid of them ASAP — don’t wait until Google “asks you to” by slapping you with a penalty.
   3. Keep contact records of all link sources. Whenever you do receive a penalty or warning, you should be able to react just as quickly as Interflora.
   4. Keep your contacts “warm.”  In other words, ensure that you can easily reach out to any link sellers/traders you work with in the event that one of your backlinks needs to be removed urgently.

   Some of the above might sound like recommendations for link buying or unnatural link building. But in fact, these are just typical examples of what is (still) going on in the SEO industry — especially putting link building tasks into the hands of many companies.

   Having reliable risk management processes for SEO in place will go a long way in future proofing your site(s) against future Penguin updates. Be proactive and start putting your process together right away — don’t wait until it’s too late!

   (Disclosure: Link Detox is a product of CEMPER.COM)

Image via Shutterstock

For many years, email was one of just a few ways you could share a URL with another person. And, people were far less accepting of link request spam than they are today.

So, for today’s column, let’s talk about the ancient concept of net etiquette and link building. In many ways, it’s come full circle and is as relevant today (if not more so) as ever.

Net Etiquette & Link Building

There was a thing called “netiquette” back in the day, a concept that today seems almost quaint.

There were even online guides (still out there) explaining how to behave. Many of the emails I receive today would have cost you your ISP account back then. Seriously.

Who out there reading this has not received an email containing lines such as:

Dear webmaster… I was looking at your site…Please place a link to our site… We’ve already placed a link to your site… This email is not spam…

By the way, the first indication that an email is spam is when it tells you it is not spam.

Receiving an email like that was a rare thing once upon a time. Today, those types of emails hit my inbox every day.

Different Ways To Share URLs

While email is still the cornerstone used for link-building outreach, there are numerous other ways a URL can end up in front of someone today. This is very cool, but it also has led to some really unfortunate outreach behaviors that, in turn, have led to search engines going on the offensive — not just to identify the good, but to purge the bad, as well.

Besides email, the most obvious ways a URL can be shared is through these social networks:

• Twitter
• Google+
• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Linkedin

Add to the above: social bookmarking, voting and sharing services like Stumbleupon, Digg, Squidoo and a few hundred others. With so many ways to push URLs around the Web, it was inevitable that new services would appear that were designed to help make sure your URL was one of the URLs being pushed, consequences be damned. We all pretty much know where this got us. The battle between the search engines and the link pushers rages on.

But… there is still a place for etiquette when it comes to link building, often in subtle and nuanced ways.

Simple Etiquette Tips That Won’t Go Out Of Fashion

Here are several thoughts and tips that might be worth keeping in mind, particularly in the new age of social sharing. These have served me well over the past 19 years; and for me, they matter as much today as they ever did.

1. Stop The Outsourcing Madness!

Stop outsourcing your link building to people in other countries that can’t write proper sentences. Take a look at this email I received recently — it’s real:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: LINK BUILDING PROPOSAL
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:37:31 +0530
From: <********@gmail.com>
To: <eric@ericward.com>

Hi,

I am professional link builder with team 
of 20 link builder working under me, we have 
huge tie ups with USA and UK based web design 
firm and we provide 10000+ one way links per month.

I have a good solid on-going client base who 
welcome you to contact for reference with 110% 
positive feedback.

Please let me know if I can be any assistance 
to you in any of your existing/future projects.

One Way Link Building Package (Mix PR from PR1 to PR4)
PR 1 = $ 2
PR 2 = $ 4
PR 3 = $ 7
PR 4 = $ 12

Packages --
50 links = $200
100 links = $300
150 links = $400
200 links = $ 600

Looking forward for your reply !!

What an epic fail. Moving on…

2.  Put An End To Nameless Requests

Don’t send an unsolicited email link request unless you know the name of the person whom you are sending it to. Never. If you can’t find a name on the site, get on the phone. If you can’t find a name or a phone number, chances are it’s a poor target, anyway.  There is no possible way to build a credible link profile by sending out unsolicited email to no one in particular.

This seems so obvious; but apparently, it isn’t. “Dear Webmaster” = delete, every time.

3.  Please Don’t Tell Me How To Link To Your Site

Let me decide if I feel your site is something I want to link to. And, if it is, I’ll link to it in a manner that I feel most helps people visiting my site. Over the years, I have composed and sent thousands and thousands of emails where my objective was to introduce content to a person in hopes of earning a link. In all those emails, I have never once asked for anchor text. Not once.

If you take the time to study the site you are hoping to get a link from, chances are the site will have an obvious protocol it uses when giving links. Here’s an example:

If you happen to have a site that you feel is a fit for that curated link collection, why would you ask them for anchor text? They don’t do anchor text.

4.  Trim Your Twitter Stream

Regarding Twitter, the fastest way to make your streams useless in each direction is by feeling obligated to follow everyone who follows you. It may seem impolite to not follow back, but if you think it through, it’s the opposite. You follow 17,000 people and have 17,000 followers? Why? In what way is this firehose useful? Can you really, really read 510,000 tweets each month?

Take a look at the two Twitter Follower/Following profiles below.  One looks like they have something useful to share while the other looks like an exercise in futility. When you have 400 times followers than you follow back (assuming they are legit), you are tweeting good stuff.

5.  Google+

G+ circles are sneaky. They give you a way to make it appear you care when really, you don’t. You can add people to circles so they will know you’ve added them, but you put them in a circle you never check. Does that really help anyone?

6.  Stop Begging For Likes

Regarding Facebook, if “Likes are the new links” (hint: they aren’t), please stop asking me to Like things. Not just via email, but everywhere. Driving my son home from school, I see the Chick-fil-A sign that says “Like us on Facebook.” Why should I? I mean, I like your chicken and all, but seriously? And please, stop bribing me to Like you.

Add up the number of times you are prompted to Like something in a single day — I’ll bet it’s a lot. I really believe that if the Like button had its own Like button, nobody would click it.

7.  Not Everything Is Likable

Social inequality extends to the Web. People will “Like” Lucky Charms cereal all day long, but they aren’t going to sprint onto Facebook and “Like” that yeast infection cream or jock itch spray they just bought with the same zeal. Click and check the numbers. I feel bad for Tinactin, but I guess in this case, the key to Facebook success is to be magically delicious.

Social signals are an absolute train wreck, with marketers doing everything they can to game the signal, and that’s partly why, in my opinion, at SMX last month, Matt Cutts was quoted as saying, “Links still have many, many good years ahead of them.”

8.  Pin The Original Version (And URL) Of The Creator’s Content, Not A Re-Pinned Version

If you maintain Pinterest boards, when you pin something, please consider attributing it to the original creator’s URL. It may seem like nitpicking, and the links may be no-followed, but that’s not the point. Giving credit (and links) to the original creator of what it is you are pinning is just a polite thing to do.

Here’s one reason why: if you come across a great picture or product or photo or infographic on a site and you pin it, that pin brings along with it the URL of the site where you found the object, which may not be the person or site that created the original.

It often only takes a moment to identify the originating source; so, take that time and then pin from the originator’s site. Many people don’t take the time to verify the original source.

9.  Don’t Link Spam Me On Twitter

One last tip pertaining to Twitter: when someone follows you, you don’t have to auto-tweet them back a “thank you for following me” tweet. If you are one of those who do, fine; but please don’t include a link to try and sell me something in your very first thank you tweet. It’s rude.

Take a look at the below pair of tweets.  They aren’t that different from many I see every day.

Polite:

Joe Blow @JoeBlow

Thanks for following me on Twitter. I hope you find my tweets helpful!

Not Polite: 

Joe Blow @JoeBlow

Thanks for following me on Twitter. Follow this link for 25% off my new white paper titled “You are nothing but money to me.”  http://not-very-polite

Which one of those thank you tweets makes you feel like you matter?

The social sharing explosion has created many fantastic opportunities for link growth, but has also created many ethically ambiguous scenarios. I’ve only touched on a few examples of etiquette here today in the age of sharing.

I would love to hear yours.

A few years ago, I launched a website called FindHow, and we gave it a full-court press from a PR standpoint. In this series of articles, I’ll run through all the best practices we leveraged. Before we start, the results we garnered for our launch are shown below.

History: How Public Relations Resulted In 18,000+ Links

In the first month of FindHow’s existence, it surpassed 15,000 unique visitors and eventually grew to around the 100,000 uniques mark. After about five months, the Public Relations effort had resulted in a total of around 18,000 links to the site, primarily because of prominent media mentions that boosted the site’s credibility and aided word of mouth:

Figure 1 – Result: Prominent Media Mentions, Traffic, and Links

The six Major Public Relations Steps that we followed, which can improve your SEO rankings and increase conversions are listed below. This article will cover the first two, and subsequent articles will cover the rest.

1. Have Something To Say… About A Trend
2. Write Your Press Release
3. Pick A Strategy To Target Journalists
4. Schedule Your Announcement
5. Pitch Journalists
6. Work It Just Before, On, And After The Announcement

Have Something To Say… About A Trend

If you have not read “Positioning: The Battle for the Mind” by Ries & Trout, you should run, not walk, to your Kindle and download it.  They make the point that when positioning a product, service or company, the most important thing is not the company or the product name itself — it’s the category that it sits in and the trend that it relates to.

Unless you’re Dean Kamen with the Segway, the press is not going to want to talk about your product, service or website if it’s in a class by itself. It’s far better to convince them that there is a big trend going on, which you happen to be at the forefront of. You may (heaven forbid) even want to mention competitors to prove there is really a trend.

Be Newsworthy & “First” Where Possible

Ries and Trout point out that the best position to take in the mind is “first,” although it’s not the only position (you can position yourself as “the alternative,” for example, like 7-Up, the “UnCola”).

When planning the launch of FindHow, we decided that we would position it as a search engine, but clearly, it wasn’t the first one; it was 15 years too late for that.

How could we be first? Ries and Trout point out that markets fragment and become verticals over time; so, we decided to position it as the first “How-To” search engine (like the first “Lite” beer).

This allowed us to have our cake and eat it, too, because we could pitch it both in the context of the growth of the search engine market, and also, in the context of the crowded “How-To” website field. Also, new search engines aren’t announced every day, so clearly, such a thing must be newsworthy.

Ironically, several journalists pointed out to us during our effort that, since it uses a taxonomy as well as a search capability, FindHow could also be termed a “Directory” (we’ve since taken their advice and repositioned it as a paid directory).

You may not be launching something new or innovative, but almost any product or service can be tied into a trend, where the trend itself is current and newsworthy.

Write Your Press Release

What is a press release? Essentially, it’s a short document created by a company, talking about something newsworthy, and then distributed through a press release distribution service.

In the old, pre-Internet days, this usually meant the service would fax your release to hundreds of newspaper and magazine offices, or even directly to editors and journalists. The last 20 years or so have seen an evolution toward electronic distribution, with press release services also sending them out through online news venues such as Yahoo! News.

A second, more accurate definition of a press release might more properly be:

“An organization’s take on some (hopefully) newsworthy event, put together in such a way that busy journalists might just republish it, or paraphrase it, as their own article.”

Have A Topic For Your Announcement

There are numerous listings of ideas for press releases on the Web; here are examples of some I’ve been involved in over the last 15 years:

• Announcement of New Website (“New Website Helps (Customer Type) (Solve Some Kind of Problem)”)
• New Product or Service Announcement
• Executive Joins a Company as a New Hire
• Partnership Announcement

One that plays very well is survey announcements. The media loves to be able to quote surveys;  just make sure, if you do one, that it’s substantial. One that is a survey of 30 people is not going to fly; but a survey of 450 people that actually has information on accuracy of the survey will carry more weight.

Capture The Key Problem, Benefit & Audience In Your Headline & Subheading

Try to capture the problem, the benefit and the audience in the title. In FindHow’s launch release, the title and subheading were:

“Consumers Struggle to Find Reliable Information as Poor-Quality Instructional Content Floods the Internet”

“FindHow, the First How-To Search Engine, Brings Trust Back Into the Equation for Consumers Seeking Instructions for Accomplishing Everyday Tasks”

You may not be launching a search engine, but try to think of how your announcement is newsworthy. If you are a law firm putting out a new website that has some articles on bankruptcy, it may be as simple as announcing something like:

“Law Firm Announces New Resource for Homeowners Considering Bankruptcy.”

Always Include A Quote In The Release

Journalists love to use quotes. At a minimum, get a quote from an executive or the head of the company; even better, you might try obtaining quotes from third parties such as partners or customers of the company – this enhances credibility. My favorite verb, rarely obtained, is “delighted,” as in “We are delighted that….”

Incidentally, language in quotes can be a fascinating guide to how close two companies are. If the partner or customer is merely “pleased,” it usually means they’re merely humoring the other company with a quote. If they’re “delighted,” then there is usually a very strong relationship.

Don’t Go Overboard With That  Anchor Text!

Because a release can be copied dozens or even hundreds of times, you really have a great opportunity to shoot yourself in the foot if you try to get cute with anchor text in press releases. For the most part, I’d advise sticking with the brand or website name or a naked URL, and leave it at that.

If It’s A Major Announcement, Include A Media Kit

You want to make the journalist’s work as easy as possible. A press kit (media kit) can allow you to include many things that you can’t fit into a press release. For FindHow, we included sections on: Mission, Customer Problems, Quotes from Users, Quotes from the Founders, Company Background, Market Statistics, Competitor Overview, FindHow’s Strengths and Weaknesses, the Upcoming Launch Release itself, and Artwork.

I mention Artwork in particular, because to make the journalist’s job as simple as possible, you can make artwork available at a particular URL, making it much more likely that a product shot, logo or a screenshot will get included in an article.

Be sure to include multiple formats (preferably both .PNG and .TIF). If you aren’t investing time and resources in a media kit, consider at least including information on where to find artwork in emails that you send journalists. This proved key for us — and we got FindHow’s logo shown in several articles as a result :

Figure 2 – It’s Critical to Make Artwork Easily Available in Different Sizes and Formats

Which Wire Service Should You Select for Your Release?

The top wire services are PRNewswire, Businesswire, PRWeb, and Marketwire. I have personally issued press releases using Marketwire, PRWeb and PRNewswire.

Although I would not say I have enough activity or evidence to definitively recommend any over any others, I have had some good success recently with PRNewswire, which appears to be a pretty professional, respectable and effective newswire service.

Note that PRNewswire does have a low-cost option called iReach, I chose instead to join PRNewswire for the yearly $195 fee, which allows for more reach and media targeting options (in my opinion, the yearly fee also helps to keep the wrong crowd out, lending additional credibility to the service). The yearly membership option may only make sense for you if you are doing a number of releases; in my case I’ve found the added flexibility in targeting to be well worth it.

PRNewswire has a somewhat confusing variety of options and pricing, but my favorite is their state-targeting option where you can target all media outlets in one state very inexpensively — and that option comes with nationwide wire distribution, as well. This has proved an inexpensive and effective option for both getting the word out about important announcements and garnering some links in the process.

I have issued some recent press releases for clients over the last year via PRNewswire which typically resulted in over 300 links from over 100 unique domains (not that links are the point, but they are one useful measurement of effectiveness).

Yes, these links will decay over time as pages roll off of sites. But, for example, copies of FindHow’s original launch release, after four-and-a-half-years, still exists in 18 places with links back to the site.

Your mileage with these services may vary. When selecting one, I would be wary of anyone that leads with “SEO” in their marketing. They all mention it to some degree, but selecting someone who shouts it from the hilltops does not seem like a very wise strategy if you like to “future-proof” your SEO efforts.

A Very Important Post-Release Step: “Nofollow” Any Links!

Most marketers, once they have put out a press release, are eager to list it on their corporate website. Be careful how you do this (and not just with press releases; it applies to press mentions, as well). While I am not a believer that Google respects “nofollow” for PageRank flowing purposes (I think Google ignores it), I do believe that it is utilized for detecting and discounting paid links and “reciprocal links.”

Think about it — you’ve put together a press release that has a link to your website, and now your press release service has hosted it on their site. If you link to their page hosting your release, you just created a reciprocal link, so you’re unlikely to gain any PageRank or Anchor Text value from them. So, make sure your standard practice on your press page is to “nofollow” all links to any external pages.

Make Sure What You Are Actually Announcing Is Credible

This bears mentioning: if your company website does not have a privacy policy, terms of service, a phone number, or a list of executives, how credible is it going to be? Even a new company should try to present itself as credibly as possible. Journalists can smell a fake a mile away, so make sure to be authentic!  Also, it’s difficult to emphasize enough just how important “fit and finish” is.

In FindHow’s case, we spent a lot of time polishing its appearance in a thousand little ways, even to the extent of hunting over and over through iStockPhoto for just the right pictures to license, sharpening them and making ever so slight color corrections and so on…but as a result we had a site we could proudly pitch to journalists, and its look and feel really lent credibility to the story.

This concludes the first part of  Public Relations For SEO: The Complete Guide, where I told you how to convince journalists that your topic is newsworthy by properly “positioning” your product or service, and then delved into the basics of writing a press release.

Series Recap: 

• Part 1: Public Relations For SEO: The Complete Guide
• Part 2: Public Relations For SEO:  How To Target Journalists
• Part 3: Public Relations For SEO: How To Pitch Journalists

That’s no big deal if we’re talking about just 20 to 30 pages. But, when a site has 404 pages in the thousands, and you tell the developers to fix these pages, you’re going to look more than a little ridiculous. So, how can you find out which of those 404 pages are actually important?

Two of the most important metrics to look at are backlinks to make sure you don’t lose the most valuable links and total landing page visits in your analytics software. You may have others, like looking at social metrics. Whatever you decide those metrics to be, you want to export them all from your tools du jour and wed them in Excel.

Gather 404 Pages

There are several different sources you can use to find your site’s 404 pages. My two favorites are Screaming Frog and Google Webmaster Tools (GWT).

To find your site’s 404s with Screaming Frog, after running a scan of the site, go to Response Codes > Filter: Client Error (4xx) > Export.

Click for larger image

To flesh out your site’s 404 pages with Google Webmaster Tools, go to Health > Crawl Errors > URL Errors > Web or Mobile: Not found > Download.

Click for larger image

Strip your csv download of everything but the list of 404 URLs, and save the file as an xlsx file.

Pull Landing Page Data

If you’re only responsible for SEO, you may want to restrict your export to organic traffic. In Google Analytics (GA), you’d navigate to Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic > Primary Dimension: Landing Page.

But, I think that approach is a bit shortsighted. I much prefer looking for all important landing pages, which you get to by navigating to Content > Site Content  > Landing Pages.

To pull all of them, you need to look at the total number of landing pages in the bottom-right corner of the report (e.g., 1 – 10 of 441). If you have more than 5oo landing pages, you’ll need to use this trick to get them all.

To get the full URL of your landing pages, you’ll need to use this technique in the third section of the post, especially if your site uses subdomains and you’re not including hostname in your content reports.

Get Your Backlink Data

First, pull backlinks from your favorite tool. It’s outside of the scope of this post for how to do that; but, here are links to learn more about how to use each of the tools:

• Open Site Explorer
• Majestic
• Ahrefs
• Google Webmaster Tools (Traffic > Links to Your Site > Your Most Linked Content > More)

Pull It All Together

Once you know that all of your URLs follow the same syntax (by either having them all start with http:// or removing the http:// from all of the URLs), you’re ready to stitch all of these metrics together using VLOOKUPs in Excel. If you’re new to VLOOKUPs, check out this introduction on the Microsoft site.

Make sure you format your dataset as a table so that you can sort the data by the number of landing page visits, backlinks, or page authority — or whatever else you want to pull into the dataset.

By taking this kind of data-centric approach, you can fairly easily identify the backlinks you actually need to address and fix.

Here’s the most common thing that these guys have in common:

They have a link plan that is absolutely and completely unsustainable for more than a few months at best.

I occasionally get the urge to create a content calendar and get five posts a week up on my agency’s blog, but it just doesn’t happen. Maybe I can swing it for a week or two, but I can’t keep it up. My reasons for wanting to post more have more to do with making our blog better in general though, as I’m not going into it thinking “I need to build 100 links to this site so I’ll rank where I want to.”

These business owners that I’m talking about have one goal in mind, and that’s links (and lots of them.) Yes, still, even though we should all understand that building lots of links very quickly can be a red flag as those links aren’t always top notch.

Take this example idea, paraphrased:

“If I generate an average of 5 links per blog post and I write 10 blog posts a day for 6 months, that’s 1,800 posts and 9,000 links. They can even be really short posts, so I can get them all out there.”

Here’s One Problem

Every post won’t generate the same amount of links. Some may generate zero. Coming up with interesting content for these 1,800 blog posts is going to be incredibly difficult. Promoting 10 blog posts a day, and doing so without becoming an incredibly annoying Tweeter, is going to be very tough.

You may write these 1,800 blog posts and get a total of 10 links, and those could all be scraper trackbacks. Yes, I’m being negative, but being overly optimistic can cause you to lay out a link strategy that is just not going to turn out exactly as you predict.

An Even Bigger Problem

How on Earth are you going to find the time to do the research required to write 10 unique and link-worthy pieces of content every day? If you aren’t doing that then you’re just repeating what someone else has said or you’re talking about nothing that anyone wants to read.

The Biggest Problem

Let’s say that you actually succeed in writing all those posts over the course of 6 months, generating loads of links along the way. How long can you keep that up? After 6 months of that, your business could be in the toilet, anyway, as I can’t imagine you’ve been able to pay attention to much else.

I realize that the above example is outrageous, but it’s not that far off from some proposals that have come to me. Many people still assume that quantity is the key to building links. They forget about the time it takes to build up a community on social media, form relationships that are give and take, and actually generate content that attracts great links.

Let’s now look at three issues commonly faced by webmasters and go through some examples of sustainable link goals.

Getting A New Site Off The Ground

First of all, here’s something you do not ever want to do for a new site: buy links, or buy into a link network. Those types of links are risky, and a new site with no link padding usually cannot afford the risk. It’s tempting, I know, and while I do believe there’s a time for link buys, it’s not now.

Secondly, buying links is also not very sustainable unless you’re made of money. If you don’t expect to have the budget to renew those links in 12 months, you’re probably better off doing something else.

Ask yourself where you want your site to be this time next year, and map out a 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month plan alongside estimated costs. Double those costs and halve the amount of links you think you’ll gain. Double the amount of work it will actually take to get where you want to be.

Yes, I think that’s a negative way to approach it, but you don’t create anything sustainable by running out of steam and sitting around with no ideas, no money, and no manpower for 6 months out of the year.

Let’s say you have just started a site selling unroasted coffee beans. You do some competitive analysis on the sites ranking highly in your niche and find that on average, most have between 500 and 1,000 unique linking domains. You currently have zero. Below is an example plan.

1. Set up your social media signatures

I highly recommend Knowem for this, as they’ll do the work for you for a price, but it’s time well saved when you’re starting out and need to be doing other things. After you have this done (or after you’ve done it yourself), go and actually use the big ones that matter. For me, it’s Twitter, Facebook, and Google +. I’d recommend at least one of those for anyone, but if you’re going to be creating content under your name or brand, I think G+ is critical.

2. Get your site listed in the good directories

I don’t recommend that anyone solely focus on directories, and a lot of them are truly abysmal, but there are good directories out there. Since I wanted a second opinion on which ones are good for most businesses, I asked Debra Mastaler, and her top picks are Joe Ant, Yahoo!, Ezilon, Euroseek, Family Friendly Sites, and BOTW.

3. Craft a content plan

The mind burns with ideas for content creation for unroasted coffee beans, so have a brainstorm and create a content calendar that you can stick to. I like to have a list of evergreen topics and add to it with seasonal or popular topics. Evergreen pieces can take a lot of work, but they can also generate a lot of links, so aim for at least one of those every few months. Try and write something popular/seasonal at least every few weeks.

In this effort, I’d include a mix of maybe 75% content for your own site, and 25% content for use with guest posting. A year ago, I’d have advised doing more guest posting, but I do think that is becoming a riskier and spammier method of link building, sadly, so when you’re just starting out, I think you should be more careful.

4. Figure out how you’re going to get people to see your content

For most people starting out, social media is a great way to do this. Encourage people to subscribe to your blog. Tweet new content whether it’s on your site or elsewhere, but do more than just promote your latest piece… you need to interact and get involved. The more friends you make online, the more people you have who will socialize your content without even being asked.

5. Go ahead and start thinking of non-Google ways to market

Maybe you can do an emailed newsletter once a month or ask people to give you their email addresses so you can email them about product promotions and special coupons. Build up a few great social media profiles and use them regularly so people can find you there. Establish yourself on sites like Quora where people ask questions and you give them answers. See if you can secure a monthly column on a respected site in your niche.

6. Start actively building some links

Broken link building is always a good method. Go and find links to sites like yours that aren’t valid and live links, email the webmasters with your suggested link and you’ll get some great links. I think this is a tedious method, but it’s also a very effective one.

If you see a site where you want to be listed as a resource, contact them. If you see a post about an interesting and related topic but you have a different perspective, contact the webmaster and ask if you could do a followup piece that will link back to your site.

For example, let’s say you find someone talking about how horribly difficult it is to roast your own beans, a piece that’s full of bad experiences. You sell unroasted beans, so write a piece about the benefits.

Switching Gears On A Current Site

Let’s assume you do this for reasons other than that you’re trying to recover from a big problem. Maybe you’re taking over the marketing of a site from someone who did a poor job, or maybe you’re dealing with an established site that’s going to do a soft rebranding. You have a decent foundation to work with. Social media profiles are set up and actively being used. This is actually a pretty easy case.

Write up a new content plan, just like in the above example

You probably have some good contacts to utilize, so reach out and see if you can guest post on some sites. Since you’re more established now, see if you can secure a regular slot on a site that gets good traffic. If you don’t know of anything like this, start investigating sites that are related to your niche, but perhaps not so directly.

In the unroasted coffee beans example, maybe you could find a site about homesteading or urban mini-farms, and ask if you can create a column. Just make sure you can commit to the time it takes to write that often. If you can, it’s a great way to get leads.

Think about what you’ve done over the past year

Think about your plans for the next year. Compare them to make sure they’re realistic in terms of what you actually can accomplish. If you’ve been sending 100 outreach emails for guest posts or text links a month and this netted you 5 links a month, reexamine your approach.

Maybe you’re targeting out-of-reach people, or your emails are getting caught by spam filters. Maybe the emails aren’t personalized enough and you need to spend more time on fewer good prospects rather than casting such a wide net. Maybe you’ve been following the same 200 Twitter users forever and need to branch out and make some new connections so you can find more link opportunities.

Recovering From A Problem

Let’s say that you’ve been penalized or de-indexed and you need to fix things and get moving again.

Cleanup

There are tools to help you identify your worst offenders, so nail them down and pursue removal. If you have 5,000 awful links from spammy free sites, don’t think sustainable action there, just get them all removed as quickly as possible. (And please, note what types of sites these are and don’t go getting links on them again.)

Take Inventory

First and foremost, take stock of the good links that you have. Make sure you keep them and keep those relationships open.

Go through steps 2-6 in the first example

In many ways you’re starting over, but you (hopefully) should have some good existing links.

It’s good to dream big, certainly, and selling yourself short can lead to inaction, which leads to no links. However, I’ve seen so many projects take off like a rocket and then totally taper off, because clients don’t maintain that same drive and excitement. No matter what your plan is, think about these things:

1. How long can I keep doing this?

2. What are the potential reasons that I would have to stop this plan or alter it?

3. What are my backup methods when my current ones stop working or I can no longer use them?

Good luck!

I’m a firm believer in the idea that no one will care as much about your site as you will. I’ve also never been annoyed when a client suggests an idea or gives me feedback on my links. The more we all think about link building, the better.

That being said, whether you’re doing your own link building or you’re trusting someone else to do it, it’s never a bad idea to learn more about the tools available. You never know when one might come in handy.

I’ve divided these up into six main areas: discovery, outreach, analysis, technical, social media, and documentation. I’ll go over where to get the tool, tool prices, the basic information, and how we use it at work. If one is a paid tool, I’ll give you a free alternative, although some free tools (and free accounts for more robust paid tool suites) are limited.

Discovery

Solo SEO’s Link Search Tool: This handy little tool is what I run to when I’m under-caffeinated and have no more creativity left. Enter a keyword and bam, it leads you right to a list of clickable searches for Google, Bing, and Yahoo, complete with handy suggestions like “add site” and “guest blog writer.”

I know that I shouldn’t need to be reminded to include keywords like “guest blog poster” but sometimes that’s just the way it is… and the basics are always good.

 Google Alerts: even though it’s been working at a less-than-stellar rate lately, this is still something that I rely on. Usually, when we have a new client, I’ll use alerts to monitor mentions of their brand just so I can keep getting more information about them. The more we know, the better in our discovery.

I use this to monitor my personal mentions, our brand/URL mentions, clients, interesting topics, bloggers I want to follow, etc. I like that you can use advanced queries here, as well and restrict your notifications in several ways. This is a particularly good way to start a week of linking: set up alerts to send you an email once a week with some more general keywords.

Set up some for “as it happens” and some to hit your inbox daily, and you’ll probably find that you’ll be able to tone it down a bit and fine tune your results so that you’re seeing the listings you truly want to see.

Zite: Zite is my absolute favorite mobile tool, something I use every day on my iPad and iPhone. It’s also available for Android and is definitely a fun app. You can configure it to show you stories according to your interests, so it’s a perfect way to generate ideas for content creation.

Zite can use your Google Reader and Twitter information to better understand how you interact with different bits of content, so it’s always adapting to show you the best stuff out there. You thumb content up or down, and the more you do this, the more well-honed your shown articles. I’ve found some amazing new bloggers here, and it’s something I rely heavily on when I’m trying to come up with a good topic for new content.

Million Short: This is a fantastic “discovery” engine that removes the top listings. Sounds crazy, right? It is, in a way that keeps my team from stepping all over the same sites in their discovery and lets them find some serious gems. You can also include and exclude sites, search by country, and set favorite sites to always show up near the top. Bottom line: this engine is awesome.

Google and Bing: of course, we still use these for discovery (like everyone else), and certain results seem better for specific industries from one to another. What our guys do is switch it up, mixing image searches in, too. Sometimes, I’ll even send a silly “don’t use Google today. Use Bing images only” email, just to remind them that they may find something unexpectedly cool and useful by not following the same path all the time.

Dogpile: Dogpile is a meta-search engine that pulls the best results from Google, Yahoo, and Yandex and displays them. You’ll see which engine each result came from (and if it came from more than one, they’ll all be listed). So, it can be very useful if you’re just starting to look around and aren’t quite sure which engine you prefer.

Outreach Tools

Buzzstream: They have a nice selection of free link building tools; but, I especially like the blogroll contact builder. If you do use blogrolls to find other good sites to approach (whether it’s to ask for a link, buy a link, submit a guest post, etc.), then this tool is quite handy as you can enter in the URLs of some sites and get a downloadable list of their blogrolls.

Note: I know this is the Outreach section, but their Link Building Query Generator is also very nice. Once you enter your information (which consists of keywords, your URL, competitor info, etc.), you’ll be given a list of queries alongside links to those queries in both Google and Bing.

**Note: Citation Labs: You can input a collection of URLs, and this tool will find the contact email addresses for you, but it is a paid tool. I’ve been lucky enough to do a test run before though, and I loved it, too.

Link Analysis

Quick note: I’m in love with free tools almost always, but when it comes to analysis, I am not afraid to pay for more robust options. My top three choices are all paid, but you can check them all out for free, and I list a limited free option below.

Majestic and their API: This is our first time using an API, and I’m thrilled. We have some internal tools that we’ve built, and we pull in API data and store it. It’s $399 a month, but that includes access to all of Majestic’s tools, which are top notch. The Backlink History is amazing and has been very useful when clients try and tell me that they absolutely know that a certain competitor isn’t doing much link building. However, for what we do at work, the API’s the main thing, and it’s brilliant. Majestic uses their own data, which I like.

Link Research Tools: I do the $269 Expert plan (monthly), and this is where I go to start all of my link audits. This is where I go when I want to dig into a profile and compare it against others, too. The reports are fantastic. (Note: They also have a nice Contact Finder.)

Ahrefs: This is another tool I use (agency plan is $179 a month), and I love the speed, so it’s quite useful in doing an audit or getting a quick picture of what’s going on in a profile. These guys also use their own data, so it’s nice to get a comparison for a domain from them and from Majestic.

Open Site Explorer free edition: Considering the fact that most of my office’s need for tools is related to my own work (usually analysis), I gave up the paid version of SEO Moz’s suite (although I did love it), but I highly recommend checking them out through this free edition. Their interface is very user-friendly, and their monthly prices are a bit cheaper than other options.

With the free account you can’t see much data or see social shares, unfortunately, but it’s enough of a taste.

 Technical

Rex Swain’s HTTP Header Check: I bet I’ve mentioned this tool in ten articles in the past year. I can’t live without it, and it’s the tool I’ve been using longer than any of the others. You should always check to make sure that a 301 redirect is in place for one version of a site (non-www or www.)

As I mentioned in a previous column, 301 problems are one of the most common issues I see with sites, and one of the easiest to fix. If I’m building links to a site, I check to make sure I’m building to the one that’s targeted as the main site. Otherwise, all my links have to go through a 301 redirect themselves.

Screaming Frog: This is a downloadable application that crawls a site and identifies loads of potentially problematic technical issues, ranging from duplicate title tags to internal 404s. I’m a firm believer in building links in conjunction with other forms of optimization, and Screaming Frog can easily identify problems that might make my job harder, and my efforts less effective.

Social Media

Icerocket: This lets you do real-time social searches; so, if you want to see what’s being said about a brand or topic, this is a great place to go. I usually head straight to the Big Buzz section so I can see which social platform to further dig into.

Crowdbooster: Previously free, this tool now begins at a charge of $8 per month, but if you heavily rely on social media, you can choose a more expensive version that gives you email/phone support. The data export functionality is pretty fantastic if you like to wade through information on your own time. You can also use this to schedule tweets. What I like best about this is the notification of Influential Followers. If you’re trying to really get your message across, knowing who these people are is a huge help.

Followerwonk: I use this tool to search for keywords mentioned in Twitter bios. If you’re starting a social campaign on Twitter and you have no real idea of who to follow and engage with yet, this can be a tremendous targeting tool for you.

Documentation

Open Office: Yes, I know that loads of people build incredibly helpful SEO tools that use Excel, but I cannot give up Open Office. I love the idea behind open source software, and I really haven’t run into any major problems using any of it. I’m also lucky to have clients who want to see an itemized list of our work, and this is a quick and easy way to show them what we do each month. I do occasionally look longingly at different reporting options, but for now, this works for us.

Evernote: I love Evernote so much… I’m about to cry just writing about it. Seriously, I cannot live without this one. If I had to choose one application to use, it would be Evernote. It synchs to my phone and iPad so everything matches up, and if I’m out running errands and a client emails to make sure that he did send me his latest work order, I can spend 30 seconds checking and answering him, thanks to Evernote. I have Notebooks for all sorts of things, but for link building, I organize them as follows:

• Overall agency (for anything from human resources to ideas for brainstorming)
• Content
• In-house IT work and internal tool ideas
• Current Clients
• Former Clients
• Proposals
• Budgets

If you’re a client and you email me, any relevant information that impacts how we work will immediately be put into your file, up at the top, along with the date.

If I am waiting for takeout and have some ideas for my upcoming blog posts, they go here. When we have a brainstorming session at work, it goes here. And yes, I know I’m spending too much time on Evernote for this article, but it really is where I keep everything organized. It’s also a very handy backup for when your hard drive dies and you haven’t been properly backing it up like your husband told you to, fifty times.

Last But Not Least

I truly think that every site needs to use an analytics tool, and my preference is Google Analytics. There are other good ones out there, of course, but it’s key to understanding your site.

In addition, I would highly recommend using both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, as these are invaluable ways to see how those engines see your site. You’ll definitely realize it was worth your time when something crazy happens and you’re panicking about what went wrong and how to fix it, trust me.

The beauty of tools is in how you use them personally, of course. Some people don’t need to scrape the email addresses of contacts or use an API. That doesn’t mean that they can’t find something awesome about a tool that offers those, though. I’ve also found that almost everyone who owns a set of tools will be willing to speak to you and answer questions, and in most cases, they’re happy to give you a free trial or demo the functionality. Don’t be afraid to ask for that, as you might get turned on to something you won’t be able to live without next month.