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.)

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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Power play Linking - Link Building that Boosts Traffic Without being Manipulative

John Alexander

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