Visibility

The process of “doing business” is sometimes difficult to fully define.  Networking is one of those activities that can mean a lot of different things, depending on the person.  However, most successful business leaders can point to networking as having been important in helping them reach their goals.  For the complex online business program that is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), there are three primary tactical areas: technical optimization, content and digital asset optimization, and getting links pointed to your site’s pages (also known as offsite optimization).  The part that is often most difficult to fully explain is the linking part, and thus it often gets less attention from an organization than it should.  Building links is like networking, and doing it successfully will lead to increased targeted traffic to your Web site.

Building a strong network consists of many attempts to establish communication and relationships.  Some succeed and some fail, but usually a strong relationship ends up leading to a number of leads or some other form of business growth.  As a marketer, no matter what level you are, you should think about link building that way.  The best links that can be pointed to your site are from relevant sites that also have some authority from a search engine perspective.  Authority can be gained by having meaningful content about a topic, and getting links pointed to that content from other somehow related pages on the Internet.  Usually, the people that you do business with have Web sites of their own, and they may be able to offer you a link.

In the early part of 2000 decade, trading links became an obsession for many Web site owners, a process known as getting “reciprocal” links.  Search engine algorithms can typically see links that have been traded, and the worst way to do it is by using a “resources” page that links to whoever is linking back to you, no matter the subject of their site.  Some reciprocated links still make sense and will not be discounted in the search algorithm.  For example, it makes sense for the American Heart Association to link to Weightwatchers, and vice-versa. The semantic connectivity has to do with heart health and obesity, which is “connected” as a topic on thousands of pages that search engines have indexed.

The “trick” to successfully networking for links is to get the Web site owner to link to a page on your site without having to give up a link in return.  Some people will offer money for this, and if done so on a limited basis this can be a useful and effective tactic.  Others will demand a link in return.  The question to ask, both when considering whom to ask for links and considering whether or not to reciprocate, is “does it make sense for the users?”  If the page that is being linked-to will be useful for at least some of your users, then you should feel free to link to it.  Often, when asking for links, using the “it is information that will be useful to your users” line can make the deal happen.  You just have to believe it in order for the person being asked to believe it.

If in a situation where you are going to have to give a link to get a link, try to differentiate between the links.  For example, a category page on Web site “A” may be the best one to link to related content on Web site “B,” and a different page on site “B” may line up best with another page on site “A.”  If there is no small thread of relativity between the sites, don’t waste your time, even if the site owner is your best friend or most powerful networking acquaintance.  If you start building links that are not relevant to outside sites, or start to get links from unrelated sites, your authority on your subject will likely take a small ding.  Worse, if you get links on sites in “bad neighborhoods” (which includes prescription drugs, adult content, or gambling related sites, mostly) you could actually damage your site’s reputation significantly, depending on the scale of this effort.

So what is relevant?  In order to determine the less obvious relevant themes, I like to do an exercise I call the “degrees of separation.”  This also works for keyword research, in order to help find the types of keywords that people may be searching that are relevant to your site’s content.  The idea is to take a general keyword that you want to rank for, and start to find semantically connected themes.  For example, if you sell shoes online, you can also think about socks, outerwear, foot care, fashion, leather, and more related words.  Once you have this list, find businesses in your area or in your network that have this type of content, and look for an opportunity to get a link.

Many people forget about geography when talking about relevancy.  If you have a regional business, using local-focused sites to gain links can be very valuable.  In fact, with the continued improvement of the Google Universal and Personalized search algorithms, having a strong connection through links from geographically focused sites will help you gain relevance for searches conducted in your area.  It used to be that searchers would need to type in the city or state name in order to refine their searches, but now, thanks to Personalized Search, people are likely to be delivered results for broad searches such as “show store” from at least some local businesses, given proper optimization of those Web sites.  Getting regional links is a big part of helping the algorithm understand and trust the site to be relevant for that region.

From a Universal Search perspective, you have to consider the additional results that make their way into our searches these days, especially news, images, and videos.  In order to increase your exposure within these types of listings, you obviously have to have that type of content.  However, simply building it doesn’t mean they will come – links pointed to that content will help as well.  Thus, if you have an image that is particularly unique or a video: find ways to get links pointed to it.  In some tactical arsenals, using blogs for this is a good method.  Also, directories exist which focus on non-text content and should be leveraged.  For news, host the release on your site and link to it, but also find more authoritative domains that have picked up the release and link to those pages as well.

Social Media is another area which has gained a lot of steam over the past few years.  Sites such as Facebook and Twitter offer people the opportunity to link to Web pages that they find interesting, controversial, informational, or for a variety of other reasons.  It is fairly clear that Google and Bing count these links towards authority for a Web page, but it still isn’t certain how much strength is given to these links.  The bottom line is that you should be using your Facebook account to link to important content, and you should be Tweeting it as well.  There is no need to have a degree to be able to do this properly – just don’t overdo it!  Dropping a link here and there to your pages will lead others to “Like” or “Re-Tweet” it, and that will help increase the authority.

All of the tactics described above require actual human interaction!  The best networkers will likely get the best links pointed to their Web pages.  To be clear, you should spread the love and generate/influence links to be pointed to all valuable pages of your Web site, not just the home page.  If you don’t ask, you will never receive.