Links are crucial in lifting the status and visibility of your website in a search engine's eyes. But if you're new to the world of link development, check out these key tips.
Blue sky thinking
Yes, the old buzz words of bricks and mortar marketing meetings are still relevant in the online world. Thinking ‘outside the box' is a cliché, but something that is still crucial for marketers online. Thinking creatively will result in better quality, more thought-through links.
Bounce around ideas
As with traditional marketing, brainstorming is a vital internet marketing tool. Ideas can quickly develop into great marketing strategies, and brainstorming ensures all the niche knowledge in your company is collectively used.
Read the blogs
The internet is stuffed with SEO blogs where techniques, ideas and suggestions are shared and debated. Keeping up to date with trusted SEO blogs can help shape your internet marketing strategies, ensuring you're keeping up with the changes.
Sell, sell, sell
If you don't have sales experience, learn it. With some link building, you need strong negotiation techniques to sell your site and secure the link. If you have sales and publicity or marketing departments, it's crucial these interplay with your web developers and internet marketers. Internet marketing taps into many traditional sales and marketing techniques, and as a team, you could really help each other out with advice and guidance.
Just do it
The best way to find out what works when it comes to building links for effective internet marketing is to try it. Testing viral marketing techniques and a variety of methods is the best way to find out what is effective and what isn't.
Learn from the past
It's always worth remembering how valuable links can be – demonstrating to your trainee link developers sites that have risen through the ranks can show how effective link building is. By looking at how sites have become so successful is another way of understanding the power links can have and help trainees gain a broad understanding of what they are doing.
Looking at well documented case studies online such as Google Bombing (something that should be avoided) is also useful. Knowing what you shouldn't do is just as important as knowing what you should. And there's always something to be learnt from successful Google bombs.
Traditional marketing can inform online marketing
Once your link developer has grasped the basics, they need to think about how traditional marketing can benefit their online marketing strategies. Thinking of integral marketing campaigns will help create an authentic, genuine link building strategy. Just as in traditional marketing, it's crucial you build media contacts and influential bloggers. Major news sites and blogs drive traffic. Content that works as ‘link bait' is also crucial – link baiting is simply having content that is valuable and useful – such as articles, videos or online content - this can attract links and publicity. Finding out what your users need, want or value is one way of ensuring the content you have is effective link bait. This of course varies depending on what industry or service you are promoting. As with traditional marketing then, it's vital that you understand your product and your customers.