January 11, 2011 – EngineWorks’ Scott Fish began the evening by providing ways to get your company to buy into the culture of link building. Get your PR team involved and have them treat articles as information hubs. You should also educate your sales team to understand that your search position can equal a sales proposition. Finally, track link building activity. Make a list of employees who can help influence your link building strategy and distribute a company-wide strategy document outlining action items.
Blu Drobushevich, from Amplify Interactive, talked about the link relationship between SEO and social. Though content is still king, it takes many forms as search engines are trying to present the most timely and relevant content. With social signals becoming a link type factor, it’s essential to combine SEO and social efforts as much as possible. Identify hot topics via social research tools, then latch on to those current issues and find a tie in. Blu also emphasized knowing the playing field and creating timely content to increase the likelihood of sharing. Learn to listen, and engage.
The night ended with a look at ethical versus unethical link building. Search Commander’s Scott Hendison discussed why so many link building tools are often seen as evil, and posed several ethically-related questions for us to think about as we each consider our own link building efforts. He looked at four of the most effective content areas: blog commenting, guest profiling, guest blogging and forum posting. Ultimately, Scott says, you need to make decisions based on your moral compass.
Sarah is a search marketing consultant, helping clients improve ROI through paid search, SEO and social media initiatives. She is also the Official SEMpdx Event Blogger and can be found at all of the monthly events.
To clarify, I had not intended to imply that your “moral compass” was the only deciding factor, and meant to include 1. Use your own interpretation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, 2. Examine what your competition is doing, and 3. Consider your own tolerance for the risk vs. the reward of higher rankings.