Brilliant advice on link building…

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I rarely run articles from others in this section of the Friday Traffic Report, but this one needs to be read by all of my subscribers and visitors.

Not only is the article below, by Jennifer Laycock, Editor of Search Engine Guide, one of the best WRITTEN articles I have seen in the internet marketing community in a long time, it is also laden with profoundly powerful advice on link building.

How to Win Links and Influence People
By Jennifer Laycock (c) 2006

If the title of this article sounds familiar, don’t be surprised. It’s been more than 70 years since it was originally published, and in that time Dale Carnegie’s mega-best seller How to Win Friends and Influence People has earned a spot on the shelf of some 16 million individuals and spent more than a decade on the New York Times best-seller list. While Carnegie’s book was written as one of the original “self-help” books, I’d propose that the tenets found within can play a valuable role in building successful strategies when it comes to marketing techniques like link building, viral marketing and even online reputation management.

Link Building

While there’s no argument about the value of building quality
links to your web site in order to help increase both traffic and
search engine rankings, there is often some confusion about the
best way to go about doing that link building. Reciprocal or
incoming? Buying links or earning them? Using software to manage
the process or doing it by hand?

What would happen if small business owners started to think about
link building in another way? What if they started to think like
Carnegie and to apply his theories to their link building and
baiting efforts. With that in mind, let’s take a few key points
from Carnegie’s book and see how they might be applied to a link
building campaign.

Tenet #1: Talk in Terms of Other People’s Interests

This is a key point that many people miss when it comes to
building links. Web site owners aren’t going to link to your site
just because you want them to, they’re going to link to your site
because there is something to be gained for them. That may mean
that you’ve made a purchase or a trade in exchange for the link,
or it may mean that you’ve simply offered up content that is of
enough interest to make them want to share it with their readers.

Any time that you contact a site owner on your own to ask about a
link, you need to figure out what you have to offer that will
benefit that site owner. If the most compelling argument you can
come up with is “you linking to me will help me out” then you
likely need to do a little more thinking before sending off that
request.

Tenet #2: Make the Other Person Feel Important

This is basic common sense, but it can be difficult to do without
taking too far. No one likes a brown-noser but everyone likes to
feel special. Even the briefest of compliments about a specific
article or resource available on someone’s site can set the stage
for a polite link request. If you enjoyed a recent blog post
about a topic related to the link that you are requesting, take
the time to say so. Doing this also shows that you’ve spent
enough time on the site to actually KNOW that there’s a good
match. Knowing that someone reads and enjoys their site is a
great way for a site owner to “feel important.”

Tenet #3: Use Names Whenever Possible

This is one of the most simple, yet crucial steps to link
building. Whenever possible, take the time to find out who you
are addressing and then make sure that you use their name.

Here at Search Engine Guide we get an enormous amount of press
releases, article submissions and requests to talk about or
feature a specific product or service. Nearly three-quarters of
these requests come in to a generic address like webmaster@ or
info@. The reality is that it would take a visitor about two
minutes to figure out that the editor of this site is named
Jennifer and that her email address is
jennifer@searchengineguide.com. The requests that come in from
people that can’t be bothered to find that information out
usually get treated with the same level of “respect” and quickly
find their way into the circular file.

Tenet #4: Try Honestly to See Things from the Other Person’s
Point of View

While this point ties in pretty closely with tenet #1, it’s still
one that needs to be considered separately. It’s very easy to
think of link building in terms of what it’s going to do for your
site, but it’s also important to remember that any time you are
asking for someone else’s time and energy, you need to take the
time to see things from their perspective.

Before you send or even begin to craft any type of link request,
picture yourself on the receiving end. What are the chances that
you’re going to jump up and do the dance of joy simply because
someone has asked you to take the time to put a link on your
site? On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to realize that you
might feel differently if someone took the time to politely and
personally contact you to share something that you would be
excited to be able to share with your readers.

Finally, I’ll close this section with a reminder of my own
personal philosophy of link building. We’ll call it…Jen’s
Tenet.

Jen’s Tenet: Link building is really relationship building

Keep in mind that linking is a form of endorsement. One site
linking to another is the same as one individual telling a friend
about a store, service or book that they recently enjoyed. Just
as you wouldn’t run into a cocktail party, throw your business
cards in the air and scream “tell your friends to buy their next
house with XYZ Realtors!” you cannot send out dozens of emails in
a single shot asking anyone and everyone to link to your real
estate web site.

To build good links, you need to build good will. Take the time
to craft relationships via email, blogs and discussion forums.
Ask for links when they are relevant and respect their time and
opinions when you make your request.

It may take a little longer to build good links this way, but
you’ll find yourself racking up better quality links with less
overall work and frustration than you would if you simply relied
on the “email everyone you know” techniques.

In part two, we’ll explore some more of Carnegie’s principles and
the way that they can be applied to a good viral marketing
campaign (http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/007985.html).


Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, an educational web site aimed at translating the search marketing world into something that small business owners can understand. A former search marketing consultant and in-house trainer, Jennifer’s clients have included companies like Verizon and Highlights for Children. Her primary client now is a little girl named Elnora that
happens to be her daughter.

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Tags

link building, linking, links, non reciprocal linking, reciprocal linking, Website Promotion


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