I’m sorry that this post is somewhat short notice, but the Charlotte SEO Meetup organizers are planning a pretty cool free meeting for Thursday, July 9 at 6:30 PM.
Last month the organizers got together and tried to plan out the next several months worth of meetings. We try to do 4 free meetups every year in order to let everyone in on what we are doing. We were due to do one specifically on Link Building.
One of the organizers had the idea of organizing a “link swap meet” of sorts. His idea was that there are several website owners and marketers in the room. Why not find a way for them to meet each other and determine if there is a legitimate way for them to naturally link to each other?
We all sort of laughed at the idea and even compared it to “speed dating”.
Yet, the idea of meeting the other members and finding out if there were good, natural ways for us to legitimately link to each other was a great idea.
So we’re doing it.
Here’s what I’m thinking. We’ll start with some basic explanation of linking. Then, move on to open discussion about link building so everyone gets a chance to express opinions and debate stuff.
Then we’ll move on to a “structured link swap meet”. I’m thinking of using cards to make this work. Here’s my idea…
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1. INDEX CARDS – Hand one out to everyone attending. Ask them all to write on one side the names of sites they would like others to link to. On the other side, they should list how they could link to others.
2. PLAYING CARDS – Give everyone one. Then, ask all spades to meet in one part of the room, hearts another, diamond another, etc. Within each group, each person will have the opportunity to explain what they wrote on their card to the others.
After 10 or 15 minutes, ask everyone to switch. Each Ace would meet in one area, Jacks, Queens, and Kings each in another. That way everyone gets to meet a completely different group of people.
After 15 more minutes, just break. People can then talk to whoever they want.
3. BUSINESS CARDS – If anyone finds someone else that might be a good match for link building, they should swap business cards and work out the details after the meeting.
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What do you think? Will that work? Please comment below.
Corey
PS: I’m really running late on getting the word out about this event. So please spread the word via Twitter, Facebook, etc. I would really appreciate it. It’s a free event, so let anyone know.
POSTSCRIPT: Sorry guys, but I had to go through and delete some of the back and forth comments we had going on below. It was a bit excessive. I’m trying to keep some of the good ideas, though. Please continue to post any ideas you may have in the comments below.
One of the hardest parts of building a new website or working with a new client is knowing where to start with link building.
In our SEO Class, we spend an entire day on linking. We start with teaching the fundamentals of linking. We then list where to get them.
I always recommend starting by looking at your own sites, your colleagues, friends, and family. Certainly, you must know SOMEONE that owns a website that could link to you.
Lately, people have been discussing in our Hippo discussion group how to determine who links to your competitors. So I want to show you the tool I use.
But first, why is important to know who links to your competitors?
In case you have not heard, a major part of the Google algorithm is based off of off-page factors. In other words, they look at links from other sites to determine if they should rank your site.
So how many links do you need to rank well? The correct answer is “More than your competitors”. Remember, as I wrote earlier, don’t chase Google. Chase your competitors.
Given those two points, you need to go build links. Conversely, you could actually remove links from your competitor and it would have a similar effect. In other words, you can go get six links, or take three links from your competitor and have them link to you. Same effect.
This is easier said than done. However, if you can figure out who is linking to your competitors and why, you may be able to not only get some ideas, but you could actually call or reach out to the owners of those links and explain why they should link to you instead.
So how do we do it? In the discussion group, a couple of online tools were listed, namely Link Diagnosis and Backlink Watch. Both were recommended by Ty and are online web-based tools. They work good, especially for the price – free!
But I prefer SEO Elite. Here’s how it works…
(The screenshots are small, but you can click on them to see more.)
You can choose the site you want to review links for. Then choose which search engines to use to find the links. Lastly, you choose what additional information you want on the report (Google PR, Age, Whois info, etc)
Then, you can review the results…
I tend to sort by Google PageRank and investigate the top ones to see if I can imitate (or steal) the link.
The only bad part is that it is not free. The price for SEO Elite is $167 and you can buy it here. Please don’t be turned off by the long scrolling copy. (I hate that too.) It really is a good product.
Last week I had a very enjoyable lunch with a local Charlotte SEO expert. David Brooks of Zeno Blue eMarketing is a very interesting person that has a rich background in different forms of Internet Marketing and business development.
We originally met through the local Charlotte SEO Meetup. But after eating for lunch, it will be very interesting to see how we might work together more in the future.
David has an excellent ability in link building and on-page SEO. I think he’ll be successful in future endeavors. I just hope he keeps in touch so I can “enjoy the ride”.
Many of you may know that Hippo Inc does not just do Internet Marketing. We actually sell Glaro Products on an ecommerce site. In doing so, we are much like our customers in that we are trying to get quality links to the site that are on-topic.
I’m happy to say that we finally built a Glaro Squidoo page for our products and we are hoping to see how well that works as a quality link. We’ll keep you posted. Jason made it earlier today and I think it looks great.
For about a year now, one of the best links to get to your website was a link from Wikipedia. If you are not familiar with Wikipedia, it is simply a user-generated encyclopedia. In other words, anyone can add, delete, or edit any information they want to.
Why did site owners want a link? The traffic is good, but the link is even better. The pages in Wikipedia are on-topic and carry a lot of weight (PageRank) with Google, in particular.
But Barry Schwartz at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land is now reporting that they have put the nofollow tag on those links. In other words, although the link still works, you do not gain the added benefit of increasing your Google PageRank.
Tonight I spent some time working on my new book. In fact, I just finished a great chapter on how to build links to your website.
The next chapter is on how to handle press releases on a website. As many of you know, PR Web is the industry leader on syndicating optimized press releases so that they will show up around the Internet.
But in my research, I found a bunch of other websites that will distribute press releases. So I decided to build a list and post it on Hippo Sent Me. Here is the link to the exact page that lists how to distribute press releases. I hope you find it useful.
