Last night I had the pleasure of being a part of a panel at a Networx Marketers Meeting entitled – How to Win Links & Influence People. Also on the panel were Peter Newsome and Matt Burgess. Networx is a fun, relaxed, but professional monthly event aimed at professionals in the marketing and communications industries, with the Brisbane events being coordinated by Iceberg Events.
This was my first Networx event, but not (I expect) my last. All of the panelists agreed that it was a very well coordinated and enjoyable evening, and I hope, entertaining and educational for the nearly 80 participants. Networx marketing meetings have a reputation for being informal and fairly interactive, and we were certainly not disappointed – with plenty of great questions from the crowd. We were also pleasantly surprised by the general level of awareness of the audience. All three panelists have a largely technical/Search Engine Optimisation background, and are well used to blank looks when we start to talk about what we do, however, the overall interest in the topic and the type, and level of questions raised was excellent.
A little over an hour is of course not a lot of time to cover such a broad topic as Link Building, but I believe that we did manage to provide a reasonable overview of the most important topics, and give those site owners in the audience a taste of the types of issues they should be looking at when considering Link Building. Certainly, I believe, the main point of just how critical link building really is – in raising the profile of a website and improving rankings – was suitably highlighted. Saying that, we really only got to scratch the surface on many other related topics.
Content is King (especially for Link Building)
As far as I am concerned Win is the most important part of the title for this event - “How to Win Links and Influence people” – is much more specific than the usual exercise of going out looking (and asking) for links. To me, winning links, suggests a situation where other site owners are taking an active role in wanting to link to your site. This is a scenario that every site owner hopes for – and content is the key.
“Content is King” is an often used mantra for Search Engines and SEOs alike – and is particularly relevant if you are trying to win unsolicited links to your site.
To achieve good search rankings it is clearly important to have content on your site that includes keywords and has information that is relevant to the topics you hope or expect to be found for. It’s surprising how often I get asked by clients why they don’t get good rankings for a particular service or product that they offer, and then when I investigate we discover that they do not even mention that keyword or phrase anywhere on their site.
But by the same token, if you want someone to add a link to your site, in relation to a particular topic, you’d better make sure that you have plenty of useful, relevant and related information available on your site.
From a link building perspective “Good” Linkable Content – which can get links without you having to ask for it, is usually one or more of the following:
- Useful
- Topical
- Funny
- Controversial
- Ground Breaking
- Unusual
- Entertaining
- Bizarre
.. and needs to have a WOW Factor
To start the links flowing takes time and effort, but once the links start and you or your site develops a “reputation” for one of the above, or gains fame (or infamy) then links tend to come more readily.
About Darryl
