Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search a2z. If you?’ve been following this series than your already aware that we?’re reaching out to those that specialize in Search to better understand best practices of the day for both organic and paid search methodologies and for those that work for the enterprise and small business.
To assist us in better understanding this topic from a small business SEO perspective, I placed a call to interview Daria Goetsch, Principle at Search Innovation.com from Northern California.
Daria recently published an article entitled “Creative Link Building Techniques and whether you?’ve been in this space for a while or just starting out, Daria provides some outstanding tips on Creative Link Building Techniques that you can use today.
Check out the four minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.
Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProtraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training website
Transcript of Link Building with Daria Goetsch
Length – 5:19
BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search a2z. If you?’ve been following this series than you?’re already aware that we?’re reaching out to those that specialize in Search to better understand best practices of the day for both organic and paid search methodologies and for those that work for the enterprise and small business.
To assist us in better understanding this topic from a small business SEO perspective, I?’m on the phone with Daria Goetsch. She?’s the principle at Search Innovation.com. Good afternoon and thanks for agreeing to this interview.
DARIA GOETSCH: Oh, thanks Bill. I?’m happy to talk to you.
BILL: You recently published an article entitled “Creative Link Building Techniques.” Can you provide us with a summary of that article and can you also provide us with a couple of walk-away tips that we can use today?
DARIA: Sure. Basically, we work with small businesses in particular and since small businesses a lot of times have a limited budget we do have to get creative on how you link build. I think link building is probably the hardest thing to do, in search engine marketing, beyond pay per click, beyond optimization, and to do it well. So my article basically goes through some steps that you can take to do quality link building but take your time. In other words, look for really good sites that are going to benefit you. Sometimes it?’s easy to get the concept of “I?’m just going to reciprocal link with everybody and that will fit my link problem.” That?’s not necessarily the best way to go about it.
So my technique is one-way linking, which can involve business profiles, places like [indecipherable], LinkedIn.com, where you?’re really publicizing your business and you?’re also getting a few links in there. You carefully look at these type of sites and say, “OK I can join the community. I can get involved. I can put up some information about my business and I can also obtain a few links.” That way you?’re doing a couple of different things at the same time.
Business directories are a great way to look at maybe joining an association. We have a business owner that he sells chocolate and so I would look for a confectionary directory of the United States, that type of thing. Then you just make sure that the membership has a directory online that you can add a link to in your membership information, your business information.
Other ways to go about links are Flickr, a photo tool that you can upload product photos and you also have a profile and you can add some information in there. Now the other thing with Flickr is besides having the photos there on Flickr those are picked up by Yahoo search engine. So if you search for your business and you added your photos to Flickr then you can search in Yahoo for your business name and photo and you can find a link that will take you to Yahoo search engine to show you those photos. So you?’re doing a couple of things at the same time. Again, you?’re promoting your site with a profile, you?’ve got pictures of your product, which is always enticing to somebody. With this particular customer a lot of people click through on those links and go to the product site, so they?’re looking at the candies that are available to buy. So that?’s a good way to do things.
Something that I think is a very important tool to use is Google Analytics and Google webmaster tools. When you sign up for those tools in Google webmaster tools there is a section about links and in that link section are the external links that show up from your link building. If you just search straight in Google for “link” and your domain name, your url of your website, you?’re going to get a very limited number of what the true backlinks or links pointing back to the webpages, are. So when you sign up for this free analytics program you can see, you can have a better idea of the actual links that are showing up in Google webmaster tools.
Once you start link building then you can keep track of how many links are coming in. Typically if I start link building, even for our business or anybody else?’s business, a keep a word doc, or you can use an excel spreadsheet, and you can keep track of every link. You can track that through your analytic program and see how many of those links are showing up. And that gives you a much better idea of how you?’re link building is working.
I?’d say the most important thing is to think of quality not quantity. There are a lot of free opportunities out there and then you also have to look at, “OK, maybe it?’s worth paying for being listed in a human-edited directory like Yahoo because Google likes that link.” Google also likes links from Open Directory Project, which is free.
Then from that point you can look at your competitors?’ links, through Yahoo Site Explorer, you can search from links and from there you may be able to find some other links that you can look at and see the quality of the site, which I think is very important. Quality of the site means there needs to be some very good content on the site. A lot of times you can tell when the site is generated automatically and there?’s not much to it. So think in terms of quality and content when you want to link.
BILL: Excellent summary Daria, I certainly appreciate your time. Great stuff.
DARIA: You’re welcome.