Links, Link-Building and Public Relations

Links, Link-Building and Public Relations Thursday, September 16, 2010 – 1 PM EDT Speaker: Eric Ward, ericward.com Q&A Panelist: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

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Eric Ward, ericward.com • Recognized as the web's foremost expert on content linking strategies. • Involved in online marketing since 1993, Eric founded the first Web-based public relations and web promotion services, NetPOST and URLwire, in 1994. Was the online publicist for Amazon.com Books debut. • In 2010 created Link Insight, web’s first merit based link building quality control tool. • Writes the LinkWeek column for Search Engine Land, and has written for Web Marketing Today, ClickZ, MarketingProfs, and Ad Age Magazine. • Frequent speaker at industry conferences such as SMX East, and his clients have included PBS.org, Warner Bros., The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, The New York Times, TVGuide.com, and Weather.com. • In 2009 he was one of 25 people profiled in Online Marketing Heroes (Wiley.)

Agenda for Today’s Webcast • A Brief History of Links • Types of Links and Their Value • Who's Responsible for Link-Building? • Best Practices for Building Quality Links • Links, press releases, and social media tips • Links Tell Your Story

A (very) Brief History of Links • As much as we take the Web for granted today, it was barely twenty years ago that the very first web site was created. No other sites linked to it because there were no other sites. And there were no search engines to find it.

A (very) Brief History of Links • http://Info.cern.ch was the address of the world's first-ever web site and web server, launched on August 6th, 1991, by the web’s creator, Tim Berners-Lee, an engineer, computer scientist and MIT professor. • The site still exists today, and there are over a half million other web sites that now link to it. A half a million links. That sounds like a lot of links doesn’t it? • Google.com also exists today. 432,000,000 sites link to Google.com, and over 1 billion searches are performed there every day.

2010 – Everyone Wants Links! • Link Building = Pagerank = Better Search Rank, Right? • And we have hundreds of services, tools, and tactics to choose from; links pages, blogs, social bookmarking, social networks, tagging, collaborative popularity sites (digg), StumbleUpon, press releases, directories, link buying • We also have companies claiming expertise and selling linking related services which are 100% useless.

What Happened? happened Google came along with the idea of using the very fabric of the web itself, links between sites, as a method for determining which web pages were most relevant for any given search. Links have become the online "currency of the realm"

Audiences for your links: • You have two very different audiences for your links: 1). People who click them 2). Search Engines that judge them

Link Types and Link Value Links can accomplish four things: 1). Direct click traffic Links that help with direct click traffic often generate temporary buzz, like Yahoo New and Notable or links from social venues like Twitter, or Digg, or paid even links and email. 2). Search rank Links that help search rank will be earned by content merit, originate from source sites engines trust, and be put in place by people who could be described as "curators of quality“. Here’s an example. 3). Both A link that can help rank and send direct click traffic is a rare and beautiful thing. I'd show you a few thousand of these but I've worked 15+ years to build rapport with them. I'm not stupid.  4). Neither 99% of the web is just this, due to the low cost of entry onto the web.

SMX Polling Question PR professionals have a sound understanding of SEO Yes/No

Example Quality Link – LOC.gov http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/beonline/subjectlist.php

How To Recognize a Valuable Link • The answer, in the words of the esteemed Chris Sherman, is • “It depends" • He is exactly right. A better question to ask would be “how do I know which links to go after for my business?” • The links that will help your site’s click traffic and/or search rank will be different than the links that help my site, but they will have common characteristics…

How To Recognize a Valuable Link • Characteristics of high quality links • Earned based on merit, not by negotiation • Obviously relevant to the subject matter of your web site. A web site devoted to Chinchilla breeding will require a different set of inbound links than a site about industrial lubricants.

How To Recognize a Valuable Link • For me, the real value of any link must be in reverse proportion to how much work I had to do to identify and evaluate its potential, combined with the vetting process the owner/editor of the target site must perform before granting the link • The corollary to this is any link you can get instantly and automatically with little to no human vetting is likely to be useless. Yes there are a handful of exceptions, but let’s keep it white hat for now. • To simplify the above, the easier a link is to get, the less it will help you • Generic link building activities like directory submissions and bulk article marketing have lost their impact, as they do not provide quality signals on their own

Link Popularity Defined for Today’s PR Pro • Link popularity = the sum total of all the links pointing at your site minus the number of those links that serve no purpose to any person or search engine • This means raw link counts are meaningless • If a link doesn’t bring click traffic or provide signal indicators to search engines, what use is it? None.

Who Should Be Responsible for Link Building? • Several different departments can claim responsibility for link building, i.e., I.T. SEO, Mktg., Corp Comm., PR • In house/outsource • Some departments/people are happy to absolve responsibility, because link building is a pain in the as* • Turf Wars Begin

Who Should Be Responsible for Link Building? • ALL link building strategy development and execution should originate and be managed by the public relations department or professional. Seek help from best of class vendors for specific strategies, like linking plans. • You will need to interface with multiple groups, including the I.T. folks (no grimacing) • Ultimately, if your website is designed for the public or clients, then it is no different than any other outbound communication, even though it requires an inbound action (mouse click) to see it. You own it.

Best Practices for Building Quality Links • There is great disagreement among link builders as to what constitutes “best practices”. Some would say any practice that gets you a #1 ranking is a best practice, even if that practice was a violation of search engine quality guidelines.

Best Practices for Building Quality Links Does it depend on the vertical?

Best Practices for Building Quality Links • The easiest best practice is the most unlikely to be followed, and would be… “All link building should adhere to every rule or guidelines set forth by each search engine” • Not only is this impractical, it assumes that the best links for search engines and for people would look the same, and this isn’t true.

Best Practices for Building Quality Links • The reality is there are at least thirty to forty different linking related topics for which you could define a “best practice”, from anchor text (having keywords in your links, like this) Watch this great link building webcast Watch this great link building webcast • to paid links to press releases to reciprocal links, and those are the easy ones. • Your definition of a best practice and my definition of a best practice could differ significantly based on our business, ethics, brand equity, even our “level of despereateness” • I am notoriously conservative, as I cannot have my client’s brands be seen in a negative linking light, but this does not mean I am right or wrong.

Best Practices for Building Quality Links • The best advice I can give you is to set your client’s expectations early on, and be an advocate for them regarding what the consequences are for any linking tactic. If you are a PR agency, representing multiple clients, the link building tactics you might need to use for one client could differ from another client. • Before recommending any tactic, research it online. The web is full of professionals who have written about their experiences. Know the pros and cons for any given tactic.

Resources To Learn More About Building Quality Links • Link Week - http://searchengineland.com/library/link-week/ • 15 Years and 186 Link Building Articles, Blog Posts, and Columns from Eric Ward - http://www.ericward.com/bestpractices/index.html • SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/37 • TopRank BIGLIST Search Marketing Blogs - http://www.toprankblog.com/search-marketing-blogs/ • Ontolo – 46 link building resources - http://ontolo.com/blog/46-new-link-building-resources-advanced-operator-edition-v14-86-812

SMX Polling Question SEO is increasingly important to PR Yes/No

What should a press release look like in 2010? • Your audience is threefold. The media you hope will cover the news, the search enginesthat will crawl your release, and the end user/consumerwho can find that release, often by accident, and can even help that release migrate around the web via social features and venues. • The inclusion of links within a paid press release will not, by themselves, impact rank. You cannot press release your way to the top. You have to have additional signal strength coming from other links

What should a press release look like in 2010? • A couple tactical tips I see people missing • Be sure your releases includes a full URL string and not just an anchor text link. In other words, use http://www.ericward.com, in addition to keywords linking strategy expert because anchor text in press releases isn't likely to help SEO. • Sharing functions such as twitter, bookmarking, and emailing • Have a version of the press release on your own site as well, at a permanent URL, and use that version for more aggressive optimization

Example Press Release http://www.prweb.com/releases/Gulf_Coast_Businesses/Unite_With_RelyLocal/prweb3717464.htm

Purposeful Social Linking Tips • Look for unique ways to involve a client in social media (Not everyone really cares about following the CEO) - http://www.Trendhunter.Com/Slideshow/Social-media-uses • Do not use any automated bookmarking or tweeting services. People can tell, and so can the engines. As appealing as it may look, it’s still spam • Nothing looks more unnatural to the search engines than 80 different bookmarking accounts, all with the same set of 10 sites bookmarked. We are not smarter than Google. They will catch you sooner or later • Tools exist for social media monitoring

Purposeful Social Linking Tips http://www.Trendhunter.Com/Slideshow/Social-media-uses

Linking Myths • Getting too many links too quickly is a red flag • You can buy links to a competitor site and get them banned by Google • A link must have anchor text or it will not help search rank • If a page has more than 100 links then pursuing a link for your site is not helpful.

Links Tell a Story About Your Site • Engines use that story to make decisions about your site • The link building approach used for any given web site should be different based on each site's focus, content, and intended audience • Effective link building involves multiple strategies, including “easy gets” like topical directories, as well as merit based from link "curators“, online public relations, non-sensationalist linkbait, click traffic driven link buying aka advertising, on-site link optimization • In general, the easier any link is to obtain, the less useful that link is likely to be (for a person or a search engine) • The difference theory

Thank You! • Reach me at urgent@ericward.com • I’ll be speaking at SMX East in New York next month

Questions? http:// www.prweb.com http:// www.vocus.com http:// www.searchmarketingexpo.com http://searchmarketingnow.com webcasts@searchmarketingnow.com http://twitter.com/SMNow Upcoming SMN webcast: Tuesday, September 21 - 11 AM EDT Managing PPC Campaigns in the UK and Europe: Tips for Success

Links, Link-Building and Public Relations