Linking Strategies video

Integrating Linkbuilding with the Rest of Your Business (7:23) Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Jan 18, 2010

In this video interview, SEO expert Eric Enge discusses linkbuilding techniques, and the importance of integrating an ongoing linkbuilding effort into the rest of a business's marketing campaigns.

He comments briefly on various linkbuilding approaches, such as doing a backlink analysis of a competitor's links, then contacting the best linking sites for a link to your site as well. Another approach is to try to get an article on the hompage of social news sites like Digg and Reddit. He explains the value of issuing targeted, well-structured news releases, as well as implementing a quality news feed on your own site that will help your site be viewed as a source for those reporting in the field.

The real questions, says Enge, is: Why people are going to link to your site? Don't buy links, he cautions. A better approach might be to syndicate your content on other sites.

One very fruitful approach might be to imagine who has the very best links to your site that you might possibly want. Then find a way to create content for them that they will use -- and link back to you.

Unfortunately, SEO is often seen as a geeky step-child off in a corner. It is much more effective to integrate SEO (and link building in particular) into the entire marketing strategy, so that you can tweak existing marketing campaigns so they have a strong linkbuilding impact. For example, get your CEO interviewed -- and arrange to get links back from magazines in which the interview appears. Linkbuilding is a basic part of marketing. Therefore, it must be ongoing. You never stop.

Eric Enge is president of Stone Temple Consulting, offering search engine optimization (SEO) services for seven years, for companies ranging from the Fortune 25 to new online start-ups. He is also a co-author of The Art of SEO (O'Reilly, 2010). This video was taped at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in Chicago, December 8, 2009.