Sir, Would You Like Fries With Those Links?

Recently in several SEO forums I noticed a number of threads discussing ways to find and build "economical" links. The forum participants wanted to know how they could initiate "safe" reciprocal linking as well as "fast" submissions to free article directories. They reasoned these tactics were worth doing because both linking methods were "economical" and "easy" to use.

I understand some linking techniques can be expensive, tedious to implement and extremely time consuming, but tying your online business success to linking tactics deemed "easy", "fast" and "cheap" seems counter-productive. If you limit your linking to low-cost tactics or look at the practice as "link building" instead of "marketing for links" you're almost guaranteed to fail.

Linking In Earnest

I watched an amazing video last night - “Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” on YouTube.

This vid has been online a bit (has over 2.3 million views) so you’ve probably know about this guy but in case you don’t, Randy Pausch is a Professor from Carnegie Mellon who is dying of pancreatic cancer. He’s blogging and recording his final days as a way to leave a legacy for his very young children and draw awareness to this deadly disease.

The lecture on the video is part of an old academic tradition known as “The Last Lecture”. Professors are asked to pass on to their students all their worldly wisdom as if the next day would be their last. In an ironic twist, Professor Pausch was asked to do the lecture the same time he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.

As I watched and listened to this remarkable 76 minute video, four things he recommended stood out for me:

1. “… be good at something, it makes you valuable”

2. “How do you get people to help you? By telling the truth. Being earnest. I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day because hip is short-term.”

3. (Shows slide of Jackie Robinson) “Don’t complain, just work harder. That’s a picture of Jackie Robinson. It was in his contract not to complain, even when the fans spit on him. You can spend it complaining or playing the game hard. The latter is likely to be more effective.

4. "Work hard. I got tenure a year early. Junior faculty members used to say to me, 'What's your secret?' I said, 'it’s pretty simple: call me any Friday night in my office at ten o'clock and I'll tell you."

Professor Pausch wants us to take what he’s learned and use it to enrich our personal and professional lives. I see no better tribute than to apply his sage advice to my link building business and life in general:

1. Be good, it makes you invaluable. Attracting links is about setting yourself apart and/or creating a niche. Spend time developing your business and marketing your reputation rather than coming up with silly linking schemes.

2. Be earnest. Cutesy link bait may attract a handful of links, but content in demand is there for the long haul. The number one online activity after email is product search. Write content that answers your customer’s questions and provides value.

3. Work harder. Don't succumb to the mediocrity of your competitors. Look to offline promotions for inspiration and ways to set you apart. Don’t use linking tactics that can jeopardize your business.

4. Work hard. You can’t build quality links in a day. Or a week, or even a month. It takes time and energy to create the right content and/or find and approach sites that will do you the most good. Develop your content, your image and your reputation and you’ll become the authority site everyone wants links from.

If you’d like to see the PowerPoint slides Dr. Pausch’s used in the lecture, click here.

When Does It Cease to Be Link Marketing And Become Link Spam?

This little blog gets a fair amount of traffic and its share of spammy comments. I turned comments off a while ago when my irritation surpassed the novelty factor but brought them back when I decided to be a good blogging neighbor and embrace posting, linking out and comments even though they could be a pain to manage.

I get the usual "great info, thanks for sharing" or "very useful post" type comments that are not only unimaginative, but also a dead giveaway you’ve been hit by drive-by blog spammers. They almost always come from off-topic sites which I just delete.

But lately I've been noticing a number of comments pop up on posts I made 18 to 24 months ago sitting on URL's with a bit of PageRank showing. Even though I know these comments are being strategically placed, they're so well written I can't help but be impressed. These aren't the moronic "very useful post" type comments you see brought in by the auto bots but thoughtful well written pieces of marketing prose. They're longer, detailed and use shared keyword phrases found in my blog posts and in the Title or content of the site the link points to! Someone's been thinking here.

And like their spammy cousins, these link drops are from businesses in unrelated industries sharing keywords. For example, someone recently submitted comments on a post I did in early 2006 titled Nascar Links . The guy left a well written paragraph which incorporated keyword terminology from my blog post plus a couple of his own. The link he left pointed to a strategically optimized site for Nascar products.

My post had nothing to do with Nascar, it just used terminology and people associated with the sport. I feel fairly certain this was a human generated link drop and not something done by an auto-bot given the tone and depth of the comment. Someone had to read the post and figure out a way to incorporate what I said with their keywords. Really, it was pretty slick. (I'm taking notes ;)

And while I thought the post was savvy from a SEO perspective, I reluctantly acknowledge the link drop wasn't made as a good blogging neighbor. It was a calculated move done to affect rank. If I had left the comment up there, could someone have reported me under the new snitch rules? After all, the link was purposely put in place to manipulate Page Rank.

So I wonder... for all those bloggers out there who have open comments on aged sites with Page Rank showing, are they unknowingly setting themselves up to be reported as a link scheme? Does the fact this tactic was done through blog comments make it less a marketing tactic than cold-calling for links from blogs and websites?

When does it cease being a marketing tactic and move into link spam?

Piggly Diggly Links

Got a note from Jennifer this morning with a link to her blog updating us on her situation with the National Pork Board. Seems the milk has settled and everyone is happy with the final outcome. Smart smart way to handle things Jennifer, good for you.

I walked away with two impressions after all this was over; the first was a ‘huh?’ head scratch and the other was an observation on how to get 'targeted' link juice out of Digg when you don’t create the bait.

Did anyone else think it was interesting given the HUGE amount of information/sites on the Web that the National Pork Board found the "other white milk" tee-shirt on the CafePress site? Because what they found was an image. I couldn’t find any descriptive text around those tee shirts so I wonder, are there alert bots out there reading images? (don't think so!) Hmmmm

After Li dugg Jennifer’s story, it was fascinating to watch people react and how the story grew. From those observations I concluded people involved in digging tend to fall into two camps:

• Those that comment using descriptive keyword text, drop URL's and add the Digg story to their blogs (promoters)
  
  and



• Those just happy to comment (happypeople).

IMO, if you want to use Digg to accumulate links and attract traffic without dropping 'bait', you need to become proficient at being a promoter (with emphasis on the marketing your URL’s bit.)

True, you’ll get more attention and more links if you start the ruckus but it’s not always possible or time efficient to do so. It’s easy to say “launch some link bait” but the reality is – it can be hard and the results aren't always that great.

Digg encourages comments so comment away – but be smart about it like Danny and Ian were, they both blogged about the situation first and then went to Digg to add comments AND links back to their blogs:

Danny said: ...“I know Jennifer well and did a write-up of my own on her situation:http://searchengineland.com/070201-154333.php” ...

Ian wrote: ...“And to think they just spend $60 Million buying this trademark, only to make themselves look stupid. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. http://mcanerin.blogspot.com/2007/02/pork-porn-and-shirtless-moms.html”...

Whether you call it link baiting or spin marketing or capitalizing on a good/bad situation, learn how to take full marketing advantage of the vehicles people are using to propel their stories into cyberland. You’ll broaden your reach and link counts by doing so.

The difference between men and boys is the smart way they play with Digg toys!

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