Saturday, September 29, 2007

Help! I'm New, I Need Links, What Can I Do?

I took a telephone call last week from a woman who was looking to hire a link builder for a new site in a very competitive niche. I'm under contract to a business in the same industry so I passed but we had a nice chat before I sent her along with my standard list of link building referrals.

Several days went by and I heard from her again, this time in a state of panic. Seems everyone she contacted was unavailable, and she was convinced it was because her industry was a competitive one. Could I please give her an honest assessment of her website and tell her if that was indeed the case?

Competitive industries tend to be established industries so it stands to reason they have linking staffs in place and link builders tied up. If that's the case, what can new sites in a competitive niche do to attract links?

To begin, do all the "foundational" link building every other site starts out doing before branching into the more indepth promotional linking:


- Apply to the Yahoo! directory (cost - moderate)

- Submit to solid directories such as Joe Ant, GoGuides, BOTW, Ezilon, Rubberstamped and Massive Links. (cost -moderate)

- Join a Chamber, your industry Association, and clubs. (cost - low to moderate)

- Issue a press release announcing the new site (cost - low)


- Buy a list of high-profile journalists and contact directly for one-on-one interviews (cost -moderate)

- Backlink your competitors and those ranking ahead of you for link and advertising leads. (free)

- Develop a "how to" video for your site and it's products. Submit to the video and HowTo sites (cost - low)

- Buy ad space in offline publications annoucing your new site (cost -moderate to high)

- Find an established business in a complementary industry to host a co-promotion or buy their mailing list to send out link incentives. (cost - low)

- Find out who's podcasting in your niche and buy space, offer to be a guest or donate products to be given away in exchange for either of the above. Look for high visibility podcasts to advertise in, sweeten the deal with incentives. (cost - free to low)

- Locate the prominent bloggers in your niche and start adding to the industry by commenting on their views. Don't be obnoxious and don't do it everyday. Join their community and they'll join yours. (cost - free)

- Be sure to incorporate an incentive-to-link program in all your external correspondence such as autoresponders, confirmation emails, reminders etc. (cost free)

- Create a corporate blog and invite bloggers, journalists, and your customers to contribute. Continually promote the site and it's writers and in turn, they'll support your site by linking to it. Don't forget to add an RSS feed as well. (cost free to low)

- Be sure to add the blog to all the blog directories as well as the RSS feeds to RSS directories. (Cost - free)

I could go on but you get the picture. While most of these tactics have a small to moderate cost associated with them, others are free. Not only will you gain links but you'll also gain the much-needed influx of traffic competitive sites need to break into the race.

So what happened to the woman looking for a link builder? Well she's still looking. If you're available and like a challenge, holler. I'll send along her name ( added - she found someone!)
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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

What The Best Dressed Babies Wear


Emmitt Laycock wearing his best tee-shirt! Go Tribe!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Shana Tova!


Peace and happiness to my family and friends.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Giving And Getting Birthday Links

Yesterday was my 49th birthday and as luck would have it, it was also the day my interview on SEOBook ran. I didn't know when Aaron would run it but he ended up giving one of the best gifts a chick link builder could get - a link from SEOBook.

Aaron and I have been friends for a long time. If you know me and know Aaron, you might find that funny. We're about as different as two people can get not to mention I'm old enough to be his mother. I'm thrilled Aaron's gotten married and doing so well, I love it when good things happen to great people.

Another shout out (sorry no link stuff in this post, it's ok to move along if you want)

Thank you to Robert and Jennifer for the beautiful flowers and all the birthday comments on Facebook from everyone, I had a lovely birthday made that much better by all your wishes.

Today is my friend Scottie Claiborne's birthday, drop her a birthday wish at info at rightclickwebs .com Scottie is way older than me in case you're wondering. ;)

And to round out this lovefest I wanted to share the cartoon Simon sent me in a birthday card yesterday (thanks for the card Simon:) that expresses EXACTLY how Joe and I feel right about now:

Our kitchen project is coming along slowly, fixing meals is a real challenge and cleaning up even worse. We've torn out two of the three bathrooms so in addition to no kitchen sink, we're down to one bathroom sink. It's true what they say - that which does not kill you makes you stronger. I could pull a freight train right about now.

Ok, enough syrup for today, just wanted to say thank you and share that cartoon. I hope you all have a great weekend.

For more hilarious cartoons, visit Bizarro.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Turn "Boring" Into Links Link Links

Link building is like anything else in life, if you approach it with blinders on you'll miss all the good stuff - and look pretty silly to boot. Sometimes you just have to think outside the box and take a risk even if you're in an industry that's not known for producing punchlines...

This post has moved to http://www.linkspiel.com/2007/09/turn-boring-into-links-link-links/