Effective Internet marketers already have the necessary skill set to improve the SEO of any blog. Yet, much of blogger outreach is focused only on hosting the client’s content and improving the client’s SEO. Instead, delivering value to the bloggers’ SEO will have bloggers knocking at the door for your content.

This post will show you ways SEO skills can help build mutually beneficial relationships with bloggers broken down into 5 different parts:

* Building .edu and .gov links
* Increasing reach and building authority in forums
* Directories: The perils of co-citation
* 8 guest post tips to increase mutual benefit and improve SEO

One of the main goals in SEO is developing inbound links from authoritative sources in a target industry. Often, the most authoritative links are .gov and .edu links.

What’s the added bonus to .edu links? You’re providing content to a generation that loves viral marketing. Give students something worth talking about, and your message will reach further than any SEO could have benefited.

How To Build .edu Links

If you’re trying to build an .edu link, one point of contact should be the College Career Center, since many career centers have a blog presence. Some colleges have ventured into YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. Choose which channel is best for your message.

Again, the focus should be mutual benefit marketing. What can you provide to a college that will be worthy of an .edu link? Mostly, this falls under educational videos or linkbaits.

Some pitch ideas:

• Apps That Will Help You Succeed in {Insert Major}
• Networking 101: Five Forums {Insert Major} Should Participate In
• How to Build a Career in {Insert Major}
• New Trends in {Insert Major} Industry

Important factor: the topic of your pitch has to be relevant to a major that is provided at that University. If you’re pitching a College of Nursing on, “How to Build a Career as a Stylist” chances are the recipient will fail to see the mutual benefit.

How To Build .gov Links

Do a search for “inurl:.gov keyword” and you’re likely to find an industry related to your blog.

Here’s the catch: college administrators are open to guest posts educating their students, government officials are not. You will rarely find an opportunity to guest post on a .gov. Guest posts on .gov are typically open only to other government officials.

So, is there a mutual benefit marketing approach to building a relationship with a  .gov site that may result in some link love? Certainly…

Focus your tactics on interviewing specific .gov professionals. In turn, they’ll love you for supporting the fact that they’re the “go to” in the industry. Post the interview on your site, and more often than not, that .gov will link back to your interview. After all, who doesn’t want to promote the fact that they were interviewed?

Examples of Agencies you can Interview:

• Visitors Bureaus
  • Ex. http://www.nyc.gov/
  • Industry: Travel and Tourism
• Healthcare
• Ex. http://www.healthcare.gov/blog/
• Industry: Doctors, Nurses, Healthcare
• Education
  • Ex. http://www.stopbullying.gov
  • Ex. http://www.choosemyplate.gov/
  • Industry: Mommy blogs, Foodie blogs

The key is to get far down into the website until you find a specific individual to reach out to. Instead of sending an email to about@florida.gov, try to find Kelsey@florida.gov. Otherwise, you’re taking a risk that your email will be lost in a flood.

Forums are one of the best channels for reaching out to people that are interested in your industry. Scoring a link is great, but combine it with reach and word of mouth, and it’s even better.

How to Build Authority in Forums

In order to prevent spammers from taking over forums, the forum administrators will have established measures to prevent linking. In forums, dofollow links need to be earned. This doesn’t mean they’re impossible to gain!

If you’re in blogger outreach for the long haul, you should register at several relevant forums. Most forums require you to be a member for 30-90 days and have an undefined number of comments in the threads before you are granted a dofollow conditios. SEO aside, you should be involved in forums to build a voice of authority in your industry.

Not all forums are created equal. There are a few conditions you want to check off your list before taking the time to build this relationship.

Checklist: Is this Forum Worth My Time?

Step 1: SEO ✓

Find a URL within one of the threads. Highlight the URL along with some surrounded text. Right click, and select “Source Code.”

Do a CTRL+F to find the condition “nofollow.” If it is present, it means you will not gain link juice from listing a URL. If it is not present, then the links will provide link juice. Check several links to determine whether signature links or comments links provide “dofollow.”

Step 2: Reach ✓

Even if links are “nofollow,” forum participation may be worth your time.

Check to see if the number of unique visitors is high through Compete. If the UV is over 10,000, then it may be worth posting because participation increases your reach. In this case, make your username your brand name, and post on topics that are related to your niche.

Directories are ready resources for building links. Similar to forums, some directories provide “dofollow” links where others don’t.

Directories also present a risk for bloggers, known as co-citation.

The Co-citation Equation:

What many bloggers overlook is is the fact that spiders also evaluates the other blogs listed in the fitness category.  If there are irrelevant, or worse inappropriate, blogs listed under the same category, you will be pegged as inappropriate.

3 Questions To Ask a Directory 

1. Does my website logically fit into any of these categories?

When you submit your blog to a top category, you risk being co-cited with an unrelated blog. Your goal is to submit your blog as deep into the categories as you can, thus improving the odds that your blog will only relate to other sites in your niche.

Example: Your website provides running shoes for women.  What category should you place your blog in?

• Good Answer: Top: Shopping/Clothing/Womens/Footwear/Athletic
• Bad Answer: Shopping

2. Is this directory big enough to attract viewers?

Some directories only have a few blogs listed in a few categories. Try to aim for directories that have at least 10 blogs listed in each category.

It’s also a  good idea to check the traffic a directory receives. A directory may appear to be stellar, but the unique visitors will tell the truth.

3. Is this directory going to provide me with dofollow links?

Again, do the source code CTRL+F to find if there is a “nofollow” condition. Measure the unique visitors against a nofollow condition to see if its worth your time.

1. Provide SEO Tips to the Blogger

Blogger outreach is a give and take. If you’re always pushing content, and never giving back, bloggers will be missing out on any mutual benefit.

Use your SEO knowledge and tools to help your blogger improve their site. For example, inform the blogger of:

• A broken link on their site
• A social media icon that points to the wrong account
• A misspelling within one of their articles

2. Use Keyword Focused Anchor Text

Incorporate your link within the content, not as a byline. When you incorporate the link, make sure the anchor text is a keyword phrase that relates to your industry.  This helps the blogger, the post and your client rank for the related keyword.

If you were a car insurance company, for example:

• Bad Example: “When you’re out driving in the rain.”
• Okay Example: “Guest post by Company Name”
• Best Example: “If you’re looking for cheap car insurance”

3. Make Your Comments Stand Out 

Commenting on posts is a great way to get the bloggers attention. Look for a post that isn’t flooded with comments, this will help you stand out. Bloggers also appreciate when there are more comments on a variety of their posts.

4. Stand Out to the Readers and the Editor

Try to comment on posts that were written by  the person you are going to reach out to. With larger blogs, there are usually multiple editors, so find your point of contact first. Bloggers always appreciate comments. Adding your name to the blogger’s comments will help establish a relationship, and enable you to stand out in a future conversation.

An even better objective is commenting on the blogger’s post that relates to a topic you’re going to pitch. This shows that you and the blogger have a mutual interest.

4. Comment Love That Builds SEO 

When commenting on a blog post, try to include related keywords. This improves the keyword density for the bloggers’ post. It validates to the search engines that this post is related to the keyword title.

Bloggers value SEO-ed comments more, and will remember it when you reach out. It may even inspire the blogger to comment back! Voilà, relationship established.

5. Instablogs Don’t Build SEO

A lot of larger blogs have set up “instablogs” where they give users a UN and PW to the site. This allows the guest bloggers to post related content whenever they like on their own instablog.

While the main blog provides dofollow links, many instablogs have the nofollow condition. Most large blogs will accept guest posts on their main blog, you just have to provide content that is up to par with the specific standards.

6. Sk.zip a Step, Make a Friend

The blogger approved your linkbait- congratulations! Now, save an extra step for both of you by separating the images out as separate .zip files. Trust me, most bloggers will ask for this anyway, so it’s better to do it from the get go.

Using Word, file save as “webpage, filtered.” This will create a separate folder on your desktop of all the images that were used within your article. Attach the separate images along with the article and everyone will be happy.

7. Reach Me, or Reach No One 

Reaching out to the wrong person will get your message nowhere, fast. To find the best person to reach out to, look at the “About Us” page, not the “Contact Us” page.

The “Contact Us” page usually has a general email. Instead, you want the email address of an editor or publisher. You also want a name to address the email to, not “Hello, Blank.”

8. Build a Mutually Beneficial Relationship 

Throughout this whole process it is important to remember the goal: establish a mutually beneficial relationship. Steps 1-8 will all help you succeed in your goal. You should also be establishing a relationship on as the social profiles that the blogger is on.

Comment on the bloggers posts, but also tweet their posts, give credit to bloggers Twitter account, like their Facebook page, and more. Help build the bloggers reputation, and they’ll be more likely to help you.

As Justin Sanger said, atomization, being seen everywhere, is the new SEO. In order to be seen everywhere, you need to start building valuable relationships. These relationships can’t just exist within our normal limits of .com’s and of Facebook pages, they need to exist with .edu’s and .gov’s, forums and social media.

We need to start stepping outside of the marketing box. It’s no longer just about pitching content, but also establishing a mutually beneficial relationship.

What new steps have you taken in your blogger outreach? Are there tactics that you find succeed, where others fail?

First up is Ross Hudgens, who will tell us how to build a link-building machine, a linkable asset that systematically and easily piles up links.

For the maximum effectiveness, the machine should have as many of these seven properties as possible.

Property 1: A giant target market. Linkable assets can only fail if you target a small portion of the entire community. Some examples of what appeals to a large target market include the following:

• holidays
• time-sensitive events
• viral content
• blockbuster movies
• miscellaneous subjects with a wide appeal
• interest groups

Property 2: Subject matter that is evergreen. For example, no longer post about Charlie Sheen or Hurricane Irene, but things like Halloween fun facts and how to make money online are still relevant.

Property 3: Ability to have incentivized placement with retained benefit in a no-follow state. One way you can incentivize would be to embed on high-traffic sites with no-follow allowance. You’ll receive tons of links this way.

Ask webmasters for an embed box, and make sure it’s clear that the content is still from you.

You want the ability to promote a piece of content to be viral multiple times.

Property 4: Unfortunately, I didn’t get everything he said and the slide flew by, so this will have to remain in the mysterious realm of the BlueGlass TPA conference tent. Cue Twilight Zone music. (Random: I am in love with this lighting.)

Property 5: Create additional links back to the website through passive discovery at a high link/view ratio. Create external hyperlinks that double as advertisements and have clear “calls to embed.”

Property 6: Asset is the leading value proposition for a target market pain point in an environment where zero-sum conditions exist. If we take away anything, this should be it. You want to build a piece of content that appeals to a pain point.

If you can be that first player, you can naturally get all of these passive links.

Multiple sources divide links. No pain points lower the likelihood they’ll ever appear. Great content isn’t enough; you have to build the best content in the industry for an area of pain.

Property 7: The asset is properly applied to the cyclical link building timeline.  Try to leverage the echo effect. Sometimes you don’t click what you first see on a stream unless you see it multiple times. That’s why you should target multiple people in a market so the links are more noticeable.

Use Google alerts, Twitter search and blog search to identify mentions because some people don’t cite properly, and you want to be keeping track.

After working with the social side, the second step is to do cold outreach. Contact all sites linking to comparable assets using broken link strategy. It’s really important to monitor link growth.

The next step is the repurpose. If you have something about Christmas one year, you can’t easily repurpose, so create layers when designing infographics so you can use it for another reason later.

He suggests doing a content audit after 6 to 9 months.

It’s pretty much impossible to have all of the properties exist at once, but try for at least 5 or 6.

Next up is Dave Snyder, who starts by applauding Chris, Loren and Mary from BlueGlass for planning this great conference — recognition that’s definitely deserved.

He starts with a newsflash: Brute force rankings came to an abrupt on June 9, 2010. Because Caffeine allows granular changes to the index, the Spam team can now monitor link data and make changes on an extremely granular level.

Based on this change, companies that continue to brute force anchor text optimization of links began being filtered.

The new link game needs to be based on a real-time view of your backlink portfolio, especially if you’re a large organization. A well-rounded deep link and branding campaign are the keys to success in the long-term.

When you start to get filtered, you’ll see things like individual pages being filtered, individual ranking drops and overall search traffic drops.

Some quick things that you really want to look at:

• Anchor text distribution of optimized links v. branded terms
• Anchor text distribution of optimized links v. total link count
• Total number of links v. total number of linking domains

The biggest things that Google is looking for is the ratio of anchor text saturation, known paid link signals, lack of deep links and the saturation of unnatural link placements.

“If everything’s going to your homepage, it’s a bad move,” Dave said.

He says you should be building natural, high-quality links outside of link networks. If you want to invest your money properly, you can do it well.

Monitor your analytics, rankings and backlink portfolio for major changes to the site.

What it all boils down to: More is less. It’s all about the quality. One concept that SteelCast has been working on micro-network creation: they build out smaller networks to drive search traffic to a certain point.

With Panda, Google devalued content that is not being utilized by searchers or users, which gives value to content that has social and user signals.

To construct a micro-network, break your website into topical themes. Break it thematically around your larger concept. Create sharable, high-quality content, not spam content.

Do not spam. Use common sense and build for the long-term play.

Jordan Kasteler concludes by emphasizing that what you do won’t necessarily cause Google to go after you, but it might be a waste of money, especially if Google’s de-valuing everything you’re doing.

And with that, we’ve concluded the last session of TPA Day 1. Tonight’s all about the Caribbean-style cuisine and music for our evening luau. I’ll be back bright and early for Day 2!

1. Quality Content/Linkbait

What does your content say about your product or service? Is it clear and concise? Keep in mind, linkbait is more than a press release. Blog posts, infographics and videos are just as, if not more, effective.

Is your linkbait relevant to your audience? You have a target audience. Cater to them. Give them something useful – something that will make their lives better. Teach them something they don’t already know. They will then rely on you for information and continue buying your product or service.

Is your content authentic? Give your audience a unique look at a current trend or topic that relates to your brand. What do they know that they didn’t know before? For example, if your brand is targeting working mothers, you want to choose language, images, and analogies that best relate to them.

Your content should, of course, be SEO- friendly. Not spammy, but showing Google your linkbait has value. This means your linkbait should be ripe with relevant, varied keywords. This requires keyword research.

Not only should your content be keyword rich, but it should also elicit quality links pointing to it. These should be relevant, valuable sources that also find value in your content, and send it on a viral hunt via Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, etc. This will increase the value of your content in the search engines, and also increase brand awareness and conversion rate.

Lastly, your linkbait should conclude with a call to action. It should encourage the reader to take action, including comments, tweets, shares, likes, join your social network, buy your product or service, etc. How do you encourage this? Simply ask. If your content is valuable to the reader, and you start building trust, they will eventually take what you have to offer.

2. Social Signals

It isn’t a new thing to know how important social media is to a brand. Whether you have a brick and mortar storefront, or you’re an online retailer, you need social media to help build your brand.

You should be actively engaging in social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with both current and potential customers. This includes more than auto-importing updates from your blog or other sources. Of course, promoting your linkbait piece is an important element of linkbuilding. Asking and answering questions, initiating and facilitating discussions, are just as vital to building a good reputation on the Web, and maintaining a strong linkbuilding campaign.

Utilizing social networks will also help you become an authority in your niche. Believe it or not, likes, retweets, and connections will boost confidence in your brand, and give you a bigger platform than other brands in your niche. Optimizing your social accounts is vital to your success.

3. Organic Traffic

Organic traffic has many benefits for your linkbait piece. Natural links not only keep you in good standing with Google, but also offer a good return on your investment. So, how do you achieve organic traffic from the search engines?

Optimized Content

Keywords are vital to your linkbait. You must include search terms that will help you rank high in the search engines. For example, if your brand sells brand name tablets, and your linkbait is about the future of tablet OS, you want to include a variety of key terms that people are already using to search for tablets (ie. branded terms, head terms, long tail, etc.). Of course, you will want to include exact match key terms as well.

Social News Aggregators

How do you build natural links to your linkbait/brand? Social news aggregators. If you aren’t familiar with them, you should get familiar–fast. Aggregators such as Digg and Reddit are taking social media by storm, and if optimized correctly, will earn you lots and lots of natural links.

Social Media Networks

Again, social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN must be effectively utilized to build natural links to your content. Not only will it build your customer base, but give your conversion rate a boost. This is the ideal way to know what your customers like and don’t like. It gives you a platform to test a new product or promote a campaign to gain new prospects. It is also one of the easiest ways to promote your linkbait piece, and solicit feedback and natural links to your brand.

Conclusion

In order for you to have a successful linkbuilding campaign, your plan must be strategic. Keep the following in mind when strategizing your campaign:

●     Collect data. You must do research–collect data, analyze it, and determine how you will use it to build your links.

●     Keyword research. This is a vital element to linkbuilding. You must know your target audience and how to reach them through keyword research.

●     Analyze competitors. This is another way to find prospects that you may not have reached yet. Find a competitor who is doing something you aren’t doing, and do it better.

●     Know your target market. This applies to who your target market is online. This may be different from your initial target market.

●     Your campaign should be both branded and conventional. There are countless ways that you can achieve this. However, keep in mind what your brand already has to offer. Try not to veer too far from your philosophy and what you want your brand to be known for.

●     Timely. Your campaign should be relevant to what people are currently talking about or doing. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

What are some techniques you have used for a successful linkbuilding campaign?

Over the past 2 or 3 months, it has become more evident than ever that linking shortcuts which were once simply frowned upon can now be detrimental to not only the rankings of a site, but also the brand itself; especially when link advertising methods are being thrust into the media spotlight.

For years we’ve all known that paid link acquisition on site footers, sidebars or other forms of on-site navigation have been on the way out.  Extremely disproportionate & inflated inbound link numbers from a handful of websites with heavy emphasis on exact match anchor text is just not natural.

The issue is, with more and more of a trend in search leaning towards socially enhanced linking and other influential and more organic signals, are brands and companies looking to take the long term strategic approach and make the change to linking efforts, or continue to play Russian roulette with the available forms of link advertising until the trigger is finally pulled.

How is your company being proactive about your link acquisition strategies?

New components and signals from social aggregation, diverse & natural linking portfolios, social sharing & Facebook Likes as wells as traffic and influence can absolutely differentiate your incoming links from that of a competitors. If a link in a relevant piece of content builds traffic to your site, or better yet residual traffic values, then that link is actually doing its job … it’s sending a user to your site.

That’s what links were originally intended to do; help a user navigate or find a new site from a site or published content that is relevant to the target site. Somewhere along the way, linking was misconstrued as a ranking manipulator.

So, how do we find the best of both worlds? Where is the common ground between realistic link acquisition and utopian link theory?

The first step is the ability to take anchor text off the table, and then deconstruct the other values that make a link helpful by digging into other signals. Let’s begin.

Social Signals & The Natural Aggregation of Content

Great links generally come from great content, and looking at the practice of linkbaiting, one thing to always keep in mind is that linkbait does not always have to be hosted on the domain of your site. In fact, by using a lot of the strategies behind linkbait, you can build incredibly valuable and sustainable links to your own site from highly relevant third party sites.

Social media content, also known as linkbait or viral content, is a form of content that people will generally notice and link to (or share with friends). By linking to your site, other sites are saying they value the content of your site and that they think other people will be interested in it, too.

I’m not going to turn this into a post on how to write for linkbait. But if you want to learn more, I highly recommend reading BlueGlass Managing Partner Jordan Kasteler’s article, The Anatomy of Linkbait.

When a link is earned, acquired or built; what is the value of that link from a sharability and social signals perspective. Does the site it is hosted on have its own syndication network of RSS affiliates, Google News, Alltop & other topical aggregators?

If that is the case, the content which hosts the link itself should obtain a very natural social media co-citation portfolio of authorative sites which elect to share and distribute the content to their audiences.

Furthermore, what is the mothership’s (the site that houses your link) probability of going viral within social networks such as Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Twitter, StumbleUpon …etc.

• Does the site’s content get natural Facebook Likes?  Is it getting Tweeted?
• Do readers of the site retweet content that they find? What is the average amount of tweets per natural blog post or content?
• What about LinkedIn or other social network sharing buttons? Is Tumblr part of the mix?

The more your host site is tuned into social sharing amongst the target market of the site, the more relevant the social signals will be in terms of sending value to your link.

In terms of Social Aggregation, how well does the parent site fare on channels like Reddit, Digg, Delicious or StumbleUpon? Is the audience at the site naturally sharing this content and are there any traffic signals that you can pick up?

What’s cool about sites that do well in social network sharing AND aggregation is that there is generally snowball effect.

• Great content is fed to RSS readers and site subscribers
• Content is shared and promoted and becomes popular and moves to other social networks
• Bloggers pick it up and write about it, reference it or share it (this happens less than it used to, but when it does it can be GOLDEN)
• Individuals use Facebook Like & Recommend buttons, Retweet Buttons, share on Tumblr …etc.
• The link to your site reaps the benefits of increased traffic, links, buzz and conversation surrounding your content and brand.

The inbound values of high quality content on quality sites with added social friendliness and sharing relevancy will bring traffic and enhanced SEO signals to the content you are hosting your links on. At the end of the day, those signals bring a sustainability that goes far beyond anchor text value alone. If anything, it’s a way to prepare for future changes within Google and also Bing, while adding a much more organic direction to link procurement & development.

I would like to open up this post to more conversation on the topic, and making links better, and far more beneficial than short term anchor text approaches. Please feel free to leave your ideas and comments below.

In my previous posts about block and link placement and visual page segmentation (VIPS), I mentioned that the main area content block is the most preferred area for links to be placed. Microsoft patented a system to recognize blocks of content in a basic template website in 2003, which allowed search engine crawlers to give links placed in the body of the website more importance than links placed in the header, footer, and sidebars. This is because the majority of links placed on the sides, top, and bottom of pages have a higher likelihood of being paid links, which isn’t desirable to the search engines, who want to promote links that are being shared organically and as a resource.

The Development of Innovative Design

However, because website design has evolved beyond the basic template above and may include organic links and information in all blocks of the website, search engines like Microsoft’s Bing need a better way to segment content and figure out how much weight to put on links. According to Bill Slawski of SEO By the Sea in February 2011, Microsoft patented another system that is described as follows:

“A classification system trains a classifier to classify blocks of the web page into various classifications of the function of the block. The classification system trains a classifier using training web pages.

To train a classifier, the classification system identifies the blocks of the training web pages, generates feature vectors for the blocks that include a linguistic feature, and inputs classification labels for each block. The classification system learns the coefficients of the classifier using any of a variety of machine learning techniques. The classification system can then use the classifier to classify blocks of web pages.”

This means that Microsoft is attempting the place classification labels on blocks of content on a website based on the actual “linguistic” content of the block. This becomes crucial because another part of today’s design and webpage blocks is how each block may affect the surrounding blocks, as information is sometimes spread against multiple blocks.

Content in Certain Blocks

Most web designer and CMS systems still follow the “basic” rules of web design, meaning that the footer usually contains links to other areas/sections of the site, as well as occasionally the address and contact information of the company the website is for.

In the header, the user will most likely find the company or website logo, an advertisement if it isn’t for a private company, and then a menu navigation system. Many websites also incorporate a search bar in the top left corner.

However, the most important block, the main page block, has now become more segmented, which separate boxes of content that surround the “main” content. The Microsoft patent is hoping to use linguistic patterns to decipher which, if any, of these blocks have more weight and contain organic and applicable links.

How Blocks Affect One Another

Because blocks are more segmented and folded into one another (meaning there are now several “sub-blocks” in each main content block), there is a greater likelihood that one block can affect another especially if it directly correlates to the central main block content. For example, if the central block contained a blog post about guitars, the affiliate text banner block placed below and above it would still have weight because it directly relates to the content. This is the same with sub-boxes in a normal blog post layout, summarizing key points or helpful links. Even though the box was separated from the main blog post content, it still holds relevancy and importance.

However, just how blocks can be positively relevant to one another, they can also negatively impact each other. Placing a block of links or content about Arizona on a blog post that mainly talks about vacations to Australia may lessen the overall value of links in all the content blocks, as varying subjects on a single page can hurt page rank and validity according to the search engines, as explained by Srinivas Vadrevu and Emre Velipasaoglu of Yahoo Labs: “If the retrieval function treats all blocks of the web page equally without attention to structure, it may lead to irrelevant query matches.”

Because of this, designers and content producers alike need to be aware of how blocks of content on a blog or website affect one another, especially when it comes to links. For now, search engines are still attempting to figure out how to improve their method of indexing pages and serving them in search results, but until search engines are perfect, making sure that all content is cohesive and applicable to the overall topic can help increase search result relevancy.

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Search rankings are based on a combination of signals from various locations. Successful link building means incorporating multiple efforts into the plan. There was a time when buying paid footer links, only using exact match anchors and spamming commenting on a few blogs would get you pretty decent results. Today, you would not want to do any of these things. Instead, modern link building requires less exact match anchor text, strategic social traffic/signals and fewer links overall.  Here is a look at one well thought out linking plan which entails fewer links….

Less exact match:

• Exact match anchors have been over used and abused for some time now.
  .
• Penalties, as opposed to rewards, are being reaped for too many exact match links.
  .
• Don’t be afraid to vary your anchor text. Incorporating branded terms is important.

An example of modifying anchor text:

Let’s pretend I own Joannasbakery.com. I want to rank for red velvet cupcakes. Instead of focusing on red velvet cupcakes, I would want to vary the anchors and methods for reaching my goals. Using methods like blogger outreach and viral marketing are going to be very important. Get people in the blogging communities to love your product and they will comment and share and provide positive feedback. In order for your content and product to be appreciated, it must be of valuable quality. I can’t stress that enough.

So I would shoot for a link graph that would look something like this:

• 20 % to internal page -> red velvet cupcakes
  
• 20 % to internal page -> red velvet cupcake
• 20 % to internal page -> cupcakes Red velvet
• 20 % to internal page -> Joanna’s velvet cupcakes
• 10 % to the homepage -> Joannasbakery.com
• 10% would be random

Importance of social traffic:

Viral promotions to high end content is key to obtaining quality linking these days. Having a strong presence on social communities is still a very important factor. Social news aggregators are becoming very strict as time passes and are allowing people to submit less and less spam-like content.  Don’t just submit anything, it has to be content that will be interesting & relevant to the community.

This is another indicator that Google is varying its methods for determining rankings. Social sites realize the penalties of poorly written content and are making adjustments to remain valuable. Niche forums also hold great significance. Links must be placed in forums that are relevant to the site you want to obtain back links and traffic for. These efforts are time consuming but they can have tremendous results.

More focus on quality over quantity:

• Google’s algorithms place more impact on ONE really high quality link opposed to hundreds of randomly placed links.
  .
• Links that are not strategically placed appear to be forced. It is very unnatural looking.
  .
• These outdated linking tactics hurt your rankings. In fact, many of these types of links will likely get removed from Google’s index over time.

Are your current link building methods bringing you more pain than joy?  Let us know in the comments or by contacting us here.

Granted the mainstream media picking up on a search update, and its tie to one of the first major tech IPOs in recent history are all the right ingredients for major commotion. However, the good SEO will stay calm, sit back, and collect data. The seasoned SEO knows how these things play out, a major change followed by adjustment, then the need to tweak a marketing plan.

But what are the tweaks?

Let’s looks at what information we have to date.

Google gave us our biggest clue, and Barry covered it over at SearchEngineRoundtable.com :

Hi All,

I wanted to update this thread with some additional guidance for those who have sites that may be affected by this update.

Our recent update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites, so the key thing for webmasters to do is make sure their sites are the highest quality possible. We looked at a variety of signals to detect low quality sites. Bear in mind that people searching on Google typically don’t want to see shallow or poorly written content, content thatâs copied from other websites, or information that are just not that useful. In addition, it’s important for webmasters to know that low quality content on part of a site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole. For this reason, if you believe you’ve been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content.

We’ve been reading this thread within the Googleplex and appreciate both the concrete feedback as well as the more general suggestions. This is an algorithmic change and it doesn’t have any manual exceptions applied to it, but this feedback will be useful as we work on future iterations of the algorithm.

Wysz

So how does a search company and a bunch of engineers define something as subjective as “quality writing.”

Vanessa Fox wrote over at SearchEngineLand.com :

This algorithm specifically targets sites (not necessarily content farms) that are low quality in a number of ways, such as:

• Shallow content (not enough content to be useful)
• Poorly written content
• Content copied from other sites
• Content that’s not useful

Low quality content on part of the site can impact the rankings of the entire site ….

…. A key phase is “information that [is] just not useful”.  It’s not enough that content is unique and verbose. Another key is that even high quality pages can lose rankings if poor quality pages tarnish the overall site.

It is pretty simple to figure out how they can algorithmically target “shallow content” and “content copied from other sites.” Content such as this is likely what led to the major drop in traffic of Mahalo.com and similar websites.

However, how are they gauging the “usefulness” of content beyond these points. Much of it likely has to do with the upstream, downstream, and onsite quality metrics they collect via toolbars and other Google products. Interaction with content is going to be a major signal for the big G.

What else?

Twitter of course.

Real time social data and links are going to give significant relevancy signals to content and sites as a whole. Google is paying for that data, and they will use it.

So what should a webmaster due to ride the Panda?

1) Find content on your site that may fall into the easily assessed areas of “shallow” and “copied.” There may be legitimate reasons for these such as the fact that portions of your site use directory style listings. You have to make a decision on these. Are they critical for your search traffic and monetization. No? Cut them out of your crawl. Are they significant for your visitor? If the answer is no here think about redirection and cleaning up the usability of your website. Quality over quantity is now the path in terms of content.

2) Create a style guide for your site to guide content creation in the future to assure its quality. We do this as one of the first steps at CopyPress.com , and our customers receive intriguing content the consumers interact with. High quality content is still a winner.

3) Build a strategy to get your content out in front of people, and allow for interaction. Social buttons, commenting, reviews, the ability to add more information to a directory page, all of this can help in terms of signals of quality. You may also want to look at how to turn your news section into a highly competitive news portal and optimize it for Google News inclusion. For queries where shallow content may be the standard, i.e. ecommerce , look to differentiate your content from others through fresh product descriptions. Most ecommerce sites utilize manufacturer descriptions aka “copied” content.

4) With an estimated 12% of queries effected by the Panda update, you can bet some portion of your link profile saw changes. Between this and the massive noise surrounding high publicity link penalties recently, it is a good time to look at your linkbuilding strategy. Natural is what is always going to work best. Stick to linkbuilding that Google recommends, and find a linkbuilding company that does the same. Guest blogging, blogger outreach, content relationships, and linkbait creation and syndication are all great strategies and obviously tactics that will prevail through this update.

In the end you will need to collect data and make smart decisions through this change. Reacting in an overly aggressive manner to this change in search may have permanent consequences.

Finding that niche list of blogs to target isn’t the hard part. The difficult part is how to approach these bloggers.  The key to approaching bloggers is to work backwards and answer these questions;

1. What are the Goals?

• Brand Awareness
• Product Announcement or Exposure
• Event invitations

2.  Why would the blogger care?

• Their audience is the main demographic
• The blogger has a specific outlook on campaign details
• Location centric
• The blogger will receive compensation  or be able to offer gifts to their audience

3. Why does the brand NEED the blogger?

• The blogger has a large targeted audience within the brand demographic
• The blogger has a valued presence on the blogosphere and ranks highly in the search engines
• The blogger has the potential to enhance the brand awareness
• The brand lacks organic presence and is new to the Social Arena
• The blogger has fans on Twitter, Facebook, and additional important Social Networks.

If you can check off many of these points, then you are ready to accept Blogger Outreach into your marketing strategy.

Learn from History and Avoid BAD Blogger Outreach:

• Keep it Personal
• Research the Blogger ahead of time
• Do not Solicit
• Play by the Blogger Rules (Many bloggers have specific outreach instructions on their site)
• Learn about their audience
• Make sure its blogworthy (give them a real reason to post about the brand)
• Give the blogger all the assets they will need. (Images, Video, Links, and content)
• Make sure to remind the Blogger of the new FCC Guidelines, play by the rules!

Here are some examples of Good Blogger Outreach Examples:

Secret of the Mountain DVD review and Giveaway on Dad-O-Matic:

Bacon Freak Gourmet Contest on Bacontoday.com:

Grasshopper Phone Systems example:

When done properly, the advantages to a GOOD blogger outreach campaign are endless.  But tread lightly, do research, and be transparent at all times.  Bloggers are real people and need to be treated with respect and delicacy.  When treated correctly they could help market your brand better than your VP of Marketing.

Hopefully these ideas can help you harness the momentum of a current hot topic and get more traction.  Here’s what will be hot this April in social media!

• 3-D in Movies
  People either love it or hate it, and the wars are heating up.  With 3-D TV’s arriving on the scene as well, many people think that it is just a distraction – while others can’t get enough.  How does it work? How is 2-D converted into 3-D? How do the glasses work?  ALL of these ideas would be great articles for social consumption this month.
• Baseball
  The baseball season has just started and this month will be a great time to talk about the various teams, contenders and those who are getting off to poor (or great) starts.  While the baseball season spans over a long time, it only is relevant to non-fanatics during the beginning of the season and at the end.
• iPad
  Now that the iPad is out, this is the month to capitalize on breaking the device down before the commentary becomes too saturated.  Write about what it is missing, what is amazing about it ..etc.  But hurry up and get this content moving ASAP.
• Arbor Day
  April 30th is arbor day here in the US and a great time to talk about environmental and tree-related linkbait.  From breaking down deforestation stats, to green tips to save trees, to the best trees for the environment .. there are so many ways to enlighten and enrich others with great statistical related content about trees!
• KickAss
  A movie about nerdy kids becoming superheros is Internet gold.  The new movie ”Kick Ass” will be released on the 16th and already has a great deal of hype.
• Deadliest  Catch
  The new season starts this month and one of the most well-known Captains, Phil Harris, passed away after the filming of the series.  This should be an emotional season and will have a lot of talk in the social sphere.
• Earth Day
  April 22nd is Earth Day and a great time to talk about environmental issues related to your field.   While green issues are consistently a hot topic, Earth Day allows everyone to participate in this one-day only event that has been going on for 40 years.

Good luck with your April  linkbaiting!

Have any other hot topics for the month of March?  Feel free to share examples below, and don’t forget to follow 10e20 on Twitter and subscribe to our RSS feed.

• March Madness
  This is hands down the biggest event of the month.  Productivity drops across the country when the NCAA tournament is on.  CBS has been streaming all games live over the web and there are so many angles to take with your linkbait on this topic.
• The Pacific
  Tom Hanks is producing this HBO WWII miniseries that premieres  Sunday March 14th.  This is a great opportunity to tie in with WWII linkbait, timelines, history and anything that is educational about WWII and “The Pacific” series.
• Hot Tub Time Machine
  A new movie that is in theatres on March 26th is called “Hot Tub Time Machine” and features some crazed party animals in an absurd premise.  The film features John Cusack, Craig Robinson and other cult stars like Chevy Chase.  There are many topics that can be related to this movie like” Worst Ideas for a Movie” “Stupidest Movie Premises [Where the Movie was Actually Good]“  “Time Machines in Movies  – The Master Guide”  .. the possibilities are endless.
• Spring
  March is the month where snow-dwellers see a glimpse of hope for better weather to come.  Dropping Spring related linkbait will be quite timely and well-received by users.  Putting facts and information on the wonderfully melty world of Spring is sure to perform well!
• NFL Free Agency
  Free agency just began, and there is a world of content that will appeal to NFL fanatics across the country.  Breaking down the best/worst moves , ideal matches for free agents still available are prime topics for social users.  Report cards, breakdowns and the winners/losers are always great angles to take.
• Brackets & Gambling In General
  These days it is hard to find an office without a NCAA bracket pool.  This is by far the largest gambling event of the year in America.  Last year even President Obama filled out his bracket.  Any analysis of gambling that ties in brackets will perform extremely well.  Also, stats around brackets, previous winners, best ways to choose ..etc will be hot topics in March.
• Taxes
  If there ever was a time that people would be receptive to tax information, March is that time!  Show how much people pay, the average return, how to save $$ and other tips and tricks as people definitely have taxes on their minds this month.
• Hockey
  On the heels of the Canada/US game, people are paying attention to hockey again.  Creating interesting lists that play off of Olympic athletes should be well received this month.  Comparing Crosby to Gretzky, breaking down the best goaltending of the season, doing follow-up on how the Americans NHL teams fared vs the Canadians teams – there are many possibilities to revisit this formerly frozen topic.

Happy March linkbaiting!

Have any other hot topics for the month of March?  Feel free to share examples below, and don’t forget to follow 10e20 on Twitter and subscribe to our RSS feed.