Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Link building is really like you're a serial entrepreneur trying to launch a ton of successful businesses.
An entrepreneur c reates a business and hopes to get paid for his work with money.
A link builder creates a piece of content and hopes to get paid for his work/content with links.
And links are nothing but the currency of the web.
Might sound like a strange analogy, but I think if you look at it many other rules of business/investing basics apply...such as keeping in mind the cost / potential benefit, etc. (I could go a lot further, now).
Anyone thinking of link building in a similar way? To me launching link baits seems to be nothing but launching many successful "micro-businesses" for which - if they're successful - you're paid with Links..instead of Money.
Million dollar businesses were made by earning those millions and not just building links alone.
Nevertheless nobody gives links away for "free" anymore. Thus you have to pay people (create great content they want to show to their users, feed into their ego/make them look smart, etc.)...and links are basically the currency that are used to make those small business deals on the www.
create great content they want to show to their users
My site exists to promote an underlying business. I only do things with the site that promote that business.
And guess what. All the new stuff we're discovering about marketing online AND link development? It's nothing other than rebranded marketing and sales you can find in any 1970's book. I continually see 'new' discoveries that are nothing other than what any vintage salesperson knows intuitively and has a term for.
For link building, it's not soo much entrepreneurial. It's marketing. I explain it thusly: "It's not a computer problem with a computer solution, it's a marketing problem, with a marketing solution. Would you call your web hosting company with questions on direct mail? Then why are you calling them to figure out how to build links?".
Because link building isn't 'link building'. Link building is marketing yourself to someone else. You have to explain to them why it's in their best interests to put a link on their website. Just like you can buy a ford anywhere - but why are they buying a ford from *you*.
And when I tell that to old school salespeople, they all get it. And I've seen some of those oldschool salesfolks crank out some reasonably good links with no training, once they got the idea and a push in the right direction.
About the only "technical" stuff they need to understand is how to identify which page on the other site would be the best and hopefully most relevant placement, hopefully how to request a contextual link, what link text would be best to use, and to which URL on their own site the other site should link... and of course to make sure its a followed clickable link.
How can you consider link building a technical/IT problem? I mean the HTML code is pretty easy...?
I hope those who dont get that part are only people who are not selling SEO services (but clients, etc.)?
Link building an IT/tech problem...........?
ut are there really people out there who do not understand that link building is marketing/sales/business,
But how could anyone familiar with this stuff not get it. What kind of code are you gonna pull out of your sleeve in order to get other websites to point links at your site?lol
sorry if Im sounding cynical (not trying to offend anyone who doesn't grasp it), but it just seems so strange to me.
wow. I must really say I'm surprised at that...
I'd say about 1 out of every 20,000 link begging emails I receive is from someone who gets it. The other 19,999 people who email me don't.
I would say they apparently don't understand that it's about sales/business as in...that they have to deliver some kind of value/incentive to get you to link to it. So they might not understand it's a business/sales/marketing problem (and has to be approached like one).
But then again they probably don't consider it a "technical" or an "IT" problem - they just don't consider it a problem, at all?:-)
I was speaking with a lady today who was considering buying one of my ranking, but dormant sites. When discussing SEO for the site going forward her response was "I don't understand the technical aspects of ranking, I'll have to get someone to do that". This is from someone who's an expert marketer.
She thinks ranking in tough subjects involves some secret technical knowledge on the inner workings of Google and websites. As do most webmasters.
But it does seem to be a case of "people don't know what they don't know" to me (of course, it's totally possible that I'm wrong, I'm just making guesses without knowing those kind of people well).
As in...they're webmasters or expert marketers, but they don't understand how SEO & the search engines work well enough, to understand that the tech-stuff can only get you so far, and that link building/attracting great links is the main difference-maker that separates okay sites from those that rank near the top
When I didnt know much about SEO, yet and was just getting into it I was thinking that it's probably rather technical, too.
but once I had learned enough about SEO specifically, it was pretty clear that links were the big difference-maker in the algo at the time (and now)...
So what I meant I would find shocking/close to impossible to understand was that - if someone who has been practicing SEO (and has thus a grasp of how the algorithms work), would still consider link building a technical problem :-).
Of course one might expect webmasters & marketers to understand that part, too..and I can see that it might be a bit frustrating trying to explain that to them hehe (but what I'd find *really* strange is if someone who truly understands the technical workings of the algorithm, would still insist that getting links is a computer problem).
People who practice SEO do not necessarily grasp or have a single clue about how the algorithm works. There are thousands of so-called SEO's today who don't know a thing about what they are doing. They're only doing what their boss told them to do. These are the kind of young people who leave me with the impression their last job was behind a counter wearing a paper hat.
Then there are the well known SEO bloggers who are great at blogging about the search industry but have next to no actual experience. You should attend a few conferences some time and you'll know what I mean.
