Power
play Linking - Link Building that Boosts Traffic Without being
Manipulative
By John Alexander
Your average corner
Internet Marketer will likely tell you, there is only one
reason for building links and that is an attempt to
manipulate your search engine rankings. Whenever I talk
about this, I always gain a few readers. Of course I know
there are many people that think there is only one reason
for link building.
You say, "what?"
All of these SEO people talk about is link building as an
essential off-page influential factor.
Are you telling me that it's not?
No, but what I have been trying to show people is that link
building is not particularly a nightmare or not even that
stressful if you go about it the right way. I gave you one
very easy
way of building 100% white hat links last week. Now this
week, I want you to switch hats and get out of that
traditional SEO mode of the way you think about link
building. I am not talking about link building for the
purpose of manipulating rankings.
This is about what I call "power play link
building."
This about a type of linking that can produce hundreds or
thousands or even tens of thousands of visitors to your Web
site and it has very little to do with SEO. The first time I
experienced it, was about 8 or 9 years ago when the traffic
warning indicator (which I had purposely set extremely high,
so as to alert me when it was happening.)
What type of traffic spikes are we talking about here? I'll
give you a great example of power play link building. How
does one and a half million visitors in 48 hours sound to
you? If you think 1.5 million visitors in 48 hours sounds
good, you should have seen what it looked like in an
analytics program.
If you think the only value of link building is for the
search engines, you need to think again.
What are the requirements for power play link building?
This type of link building is all about strategic linking
for volumes of traffic, but not just traffic from search
results.
1. Stop following everybody else's strategies and put a
bit of original thinking into your work.
Many people just follow along after some marketers typical
advice which usually comes in the form of some money making
promise such as "if I can do it, you can do it
too." All you need to do is buy my "blueprint for
success." The problem of course is that if thousands of
people are all following the same blueprint, it means
everyone out there is doing the same thing.
However, when you put some original effort into a strategy
and even a piece of your heart and a piece of yourself into
your work, then it becomes original work and it gives you
some significant advantage. It greatly eliminates your
competition and causes you to stand apart (because the
competition will not be doing what you are doing or even
doing it in the same way.) In our local SEO
workshops at Search Engine Academy, we teach students
all of the skills, but never give them just one approach. We
endeavor to help each student discover their own niche
talents, as well. Without understanding this point about
being original in your work, your work just will never soar
to the heights it might have.
2. Link building for the right audience.
This type of link building is not so much about using your
keywords in the link text although that has definite SEO
advantages, so much as it is getting your links out to the
right audience. You may still be stuck thinking in terms of
putting out hundreds or thousands of links (thinking that
it's all about volume.) It is not or it does not have to be.
In fact, the earlier example of a million and a half
visitors, actually only came from 3 links altogether.
What were those links and how was this volume even possible?
Tip: each link was from an e-zine that had a subscribership
of 400,000 to 500,000 people per publication. The links were
simply included in the author's Bio and by the time each e-zine
had done their mailing we had a million and a half visitors
at the end of 48 hours. This from only 3 links.
What was the article content about. To tell you exactly,
would be where we go wrong, because then you'd try to
replicate it. It really does not matter but I will tell you
is that it was original, interesting, useful, information
that the audiences loved reading about.
3. Link building based on relationships
One of the best ways to build links is in a simple bio at
the end of an article. But work also on getting to know your
editor or publisher in a genuine relationship. Once you are
on a roll, it could very well be that the publisher comes
back to you once in a while to offer you a fresh original
assignment (once they get to know you.)
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In Summary:
Where is a great place to get started? Start with your own
topics of interest and with topics you are knowledgeable and
enjoy writing about. Look for article directories, e-zines
and publications that line up with your topic interests.
Some of my personal favorites are as follows:
Evan
Carmichael If you are writing about business or
for entrepreneurs
Ezine
Articles Wide variety of topics
Go
Articles
Wide variety of topics
Each of our local Search
Engine Academies also teaches Robin Nobles courses on
article marketing
Do you want to learn online?
Drop by the SEO
Workshop Resource Center for instructional Webinars on
all things SEO.
About John Alexander
John Alexander is Co-director of Training at Search
Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his
partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first
comprehensive online search engine marketing courses. John has
taught SEO skills to people from 87 different countries world
wide. John is also Director of Search
Engine Academy with localized Search Engine Academy
training centers where the Complete SEO Mastery Workshop and 6
Month Mentoring program is taught locally to business
owners and individuals in
communities across North America and
Internationally in Asia.
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