Internet Marketing Blog » link building

Blog controversially, but legitimately, to win traffic

Rory — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:13:23 +0000

Writing a blog post about a controversial issue is a sure-fire way to win traffic, however, blogging incorrectly can mean damaging brand reputation. There is a fine balance to strike between controversy and legitimacy, but for those that find that balance have a fantastic piece of linkbait on their hands. The reason controversy works this way is that people often want to share it with their friends, or with other industry experts so they can get other opinions about the subject matter. This sharing, be it on social networks or forums, equates to link building and the development of a more diverse and authoritative organic link profile. So, the question is, how do you go about striking this equilibrium without risking alienating a user-base or damaging a brand name.

1. Picking a topic

This can often be the most difficult piece of a linkbait article because it demands thorough research and it can often make-or-break how successful a blog post will be in attracting links. The most obvious point is to remain relevant to the niche that you are writing the blog post for, because obviously you would want it to spread within the relevant community. Also, remember that a controversial topic will generate a higher degree of emotional investment from the reader than a standard blog post – this is because you are dividing opinion. This means you need to have conducted accurate research that can support the standpoint you believe in and will stand-up to the scrutiny of those on the other side of the fence.

2. Writing controversially

One you have located and researched a topic of contention, the next process is to write the article or blog. The arguments you present in the text must be well constructed, informed and logical because the more cohesive your argument, the more likely the readers are to engage with you, comment and share. However, if there is an opportunity to leave an argument open, this is likely to generate more comments (which in turn generates more long-tail content) and therefore more traffic. This is because it encourages people to give their opinion, whether they disagree or not, and this will help create links across the web and generally improve online visibility for a brand.

3. Make people aware

If you dedicate a lot of time and resources to preparing and creating a controversial blog post, you need to start sharing it and making people aware of it if it is to reach its maximum potential. The best way to do this is to use social networking channels to spread the blog to a mass audience, and then begin discussing it in specific sector relevant forums where industry experts are active. If they pick up the link and begin sharing it, then it will gain credibility and perhaps gain more traction in terms of attracting links. It is important not to become fixated on repeatedly sharing the single piece of content through your social networks. This means that regular followers on your social accounts will realise that the posts you are sharing are particularly important and demand attention.

4. Be prepared to defend your point of view

If your posting something that represents a minority point of view then you should be prepared to defend that opinion when comments criticising you blog post. This will be helped if you have conducted thorough initial research and are passionate about your argument, but if you have done it purely for the sake of causing controversy then, again, you risk damaging brand reputation. Don’t start personally attacking others that have commented negatively on your post, instead take the time to consider the argument they are presenting then calmly respond by telling them why you are right. Simply make sure the replies you post on comments are respectful, informative and remain committed to your original argument.

Hopefully, if you follow the points that have been stated above then you can produce controversial blogging material that is legitimately informative and useful for the relevant online community. A blog can serve many search marketing purposes, including link development, but this particular tactic is highly effective at building brand awareness across the web. If you have any further questions about any copywriting, or any of our other services at Click Consult, then please feel free to contact us through our website.

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How a company profile page on LinkedIn can improve visibility

Susie — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:52:11 +0000

Social Media Marketing is perhaps a service that is now more sought after than ever. The influence of social media share data on the SERPs, the opportunity for reputation management and the ability to develop an organic link profile makes the service highly tempting for businesses looking to grow through internet marketing. As has previously been discussed on our SEO Consult blog, each of the three most well-known social networks has its pro’s and con’s; in the blog I’d like to focus on LinkedIn and how as a business social network, it has the ability to help B2B companies improve their organic visibility on the web. The first thing to do is:

Start a business profile page

This is obviously the most logical first step. Provide your business with a hub on LinkedIn, and then you can begin to expand by associating with employees, linking with business partners and displaying your industry expertise to exercise reputation management and brand growth.

Associate Employees with the company page

You can begin having employees associate with the company’s LinkedIn profile. This will help display to the public the kind of talent that is working for you and if your employee’s profiles are themselves optimised for LinkedIn, then there is a great opportunity to reveal your businesses expertise. Employees can also post important updates or announcements on their individual profiles to ensure that business updates get the maximum exposure.

The business information shared by the employee can reach potentially thousands of people depending on the scale of their outreach. Because of the way LinkedIn is structured (utilising business experience to develop new connections), it is likely that many of those who see the information in their live streams will have an active interest in it. The viral spreading of content provides a great chance for companies to win new links and build brand awareness.

If employees are encourages to use the LinkedIn groups, they can monitor in discussions and debates relating to the services that the company offers. This is another great way to display expertise to the relevant community and to potentially win new business partners.

Avoid Constant Auto-Updates

Auto-updates are an efficient way of updating a company’s RSS on LinkedIn and the other social networks. However, there is an inherent danger in ‘auto-updates’ that the RSS will become over saturated and the content you do post will lose its value. The content that is shared on LinkedIn should be valuable, industry relevant material that will boost your businesses reputation. Too many updates will cause the people who might view them to lose interest, so any valuable content that is produced will be undermined and might also possibly damage brand reputation.

What a company profile page can achieve

The end goal of the company profile page is to increase visibility both to other businesses and to people who might be interested in investing in your services. The potential to build this links this way can in turn generate higher rankings within the search engine results pages and increase the general online visibility as a company. Sharing content through a LinkedIn profile can help build brand awareness by displaying the expertise of the company to the relevant online community. In essence, an active business profile page on LinkedIn can really improve an important part in a search marketing campaign.

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Linking Strategies

Andrew S — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:15:09 +0000

Over the past three months I have been introduced to the vast world of internet marketing, but more specifically to the concept of link analysis and the importance and value of this in relation to search engine optimisation. So here, I am listing my top three linking strategies for utilising this methodology to its maximum.

Page Ranking

One of the best ways to determine the value of a given website can be achieved by using the keywords given on that particular page, a website which ranks well for particular keywords is the clearest indicator of how well a website is actually ranked and valued in the eyes of search engines. This simple piece of research can give you an idea of which websites and more specifically, selected pages would be the most suitable to be linked and associated with when building a link strategy.

Number of links

The value that a link holds is found to be in proportion to the actual amount of links that are actually placed on a webpage. In the eyes of todays search engines, the fewer external links that are live on a webpage – the higher the value each individual link actually holds. Therefore this analogy needs to be used in order to find the most worthwhile opportunities available in strategy building. With this in mind, it is always best to build a link portfolio based on high quality links that will inevitably give you the highest return in value directed back to your website, that in the end will result in increased web rankings.

Earn links with high quality content

Building a website with high quality content on its pages can formulate a solid base for an online marketing presence. Not only do visitors want it but search engines also want to see this form of data present on a site so that it can in turn, reward a site with greater rankings. However there is another area that can benefit from this content and that is the concept of building backlinks. This natural formulation of links will come together when visitors like and find a website full of quality, relevant content that is specific to the organisations niche.

I hope that you have found the information in this blog useful, but always remember that the world of search marketing is a constantly changing industry and it is always advised that to keep at the top of the market, you must continually adapt and amend strategies to meet the requirements of the World Wide Web.

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Step Four for a Successful SEO Campaign: Link Building

Rory — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:30:37 +0000

Link Building can be one of the most time consuming yet ultimately rewarding tasks in your SEO and internet marketing strategy. Links are one of the biggest factors in influencing how well your website ranks in the SERPs. A perfect link building campaign would win you links from authoritative directories and relevant websites, mass links posted in blogs, forums and shared on social networks. High ranking sites using the same keywords with you would give you a link and let you do some guest blogging for them to promote yourself within your industries online community. However, we don’t live in an SEO utopia and these things very rarely all come together.

Links are so important because they are the main way the search engines interpret which sites will rank higher in the search engine results pages after all the relevant content and keyword use has been taken into account. Links are votes or citations for your website. If someone likes a product, the service you have offered or something you have written then they can share that by putting a link to it on their website. This acts as a notification for the search engine spiders crawling the internet that your webpage has been vouched for – and the more authoritative the source sharing the link, the more that link is worth. But this is not the only influencing factor in determining the quality of a link, there are many. This is why a successful link building campaign can be a difficult process.

The first step of a link building campaign can often start at the directories. Directories are occasionally maligned by some of the SEO community despite the fact that they are a proven platform on which to build the rest of you link building strategy. It is true that some directories lack authority in the eyes of the search engine which can be down to a lack of authority – perhaps due to the quality of content they link to, or even how long they have been in existence. However, with a little research good directories can be found. This can be through looking at their T&Cs, the quality of the content they link to and if the directory itself has a good PageRank. Based on these factors you should begin approaching the directories with the proposition of gaining a link through them. Some directories require a fee, while others are free and some may even ask to exchange links. Whatever way you choose to approach these websites, it is important to keep in mind that they can play a big part in the success of your website, so if you submit content make sure it is as relevant and dynamic as possible.

Another possibility can be inspired by the analysis of competitors. Using the information garnered from the keyword searches done, you can personally contact each of the top ranking sites in an attempt to get a link from them. The best way to do this is usually to take a personable approach –a bespoke e-mail, or even a phone call can make the difference as supposed to a stock e-mail.

The final possibility for a link building campaign that I will discuss is probably the most difficult, but proves that link building is a process that needs to be on going. That is blogging, activity on forums, a social media presence – anything that will keep your company being spoken about in the online community relevant to your market. Link building can be a bit of a PR exercise. So, when approaching blogs and social media, if you take the time to comment about someone else’s product or link to their site they will, more often than not, link back to you. An important factor in this approach is that the quality of the content on your site needs to be relevant and original, as you don’t want to create a link to a site that will lose you lots of authority.

Link building is difficult. It’s hard work, and needs to be carefully monitored and constantly updated in order to achieve the best results. However, it is one of the most important processes that you will undertake during an SEO campaign and can yield big improvement in the SERPs.

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Step Three for a Successful SEO Campaign: Competitor Analysis

Rory — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:00:34 +0000

On the surface this may appear to be a relatively simple task. For the purposes of this exercise we will only be dealing with competitors on the search engines, so therefore it might seem that an easy solution is to search for relevant keywords in the search engines, see who appears in the results and try to mimc their tactics. While this is undoubtedly one element, there is a lot more you can do with this information other than defining a rival and replicating their SEO strategy.

Similar to the keyword research process of the campaign, there are a great number of tools available on the web to help you with competitor analysis. Again, it can simply be a matter of experimenting with the tools in order to find what you deem to be the most effective.

Using the competitor analysis tools available over the internet, you will be able to begin the process of dissecting a competitor’s strategy in order to improve your own. You could begin by looking at a rival’s keyword usage as this can influence your own keyword strategy. A possible tactic that can be used is to not simply look at the competitors who are right at the top of the SERPs. If, for example, you analyse those who are listed in the first, second, fifth and tenth positions of the results page as supposed to just the top three, you can gain a much broader set of results that will enable you to build a more effective strategy. Correlating patterns that crop up in terms of keyword usage should always trigger a reaction. Keywords that are predominant across all the results you have analysed are ones that you should be targeting yourself.

Also, examine where competitors are using their keywords. The location of a word; be it in the page title, the Meta text, or the anchor text, has an influence the search engine result. If a high ranking competitor is consistently using a keyword in their page titles, then that keyword is obviously an important part of their strategy because the page title is thought to have a big impact on the SERPs.

With this knowledge in place it is important to not simply replicate what your rivals are doing. Trying different combinations can lead to more success, or potentially less, either way it is an important factor of an internet marketing campaign. Now, time to begin the important process of link building.

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Directory Submissions – Helping You Avoid The Wrong Choices

Nick — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:00:37 +0000

Submitting to web directories is an invaluable aspect of gaining, and keeping, good search engine rankings. Yet how does the internet marketing professional know which directories it is wise to submit to, and which directories are best avoided? It is essential to put quality before quantity when considering internet directory listings. There are a number of factors that can help you spot a directory that may well be a waste of time. Each of these may not be an important issue when considered on their own, but a combination of them could seriously affect your ranking.

Reciprocal links – if a directory needs a link back from you to advertise itself, then you have to ask yourself whether it is putting your time to good use submitting in the first place. If the directory needs to do this to build its own links, then the chances are that it isn’t that useful.

Paying for enhanced positions in directories will certainly help you gain more noticeable listing on that site, but many directories that offer that option are not popular with Google.

If the directory you are joining takes submissions from anyone and everyone, do you really want to be included?

Directories that accept listings for subjects more specific to your particular product or service will earn a more respected place in Google rankings.

At web marketing company Click Consult, we can help find the directories that matter to you, your potential customers and the search engines they use.

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Can You Ever Have Enough Links?

Click Consult — Mon, 24 May 2010 01:33:35 +0000

Can You Ever Have Enough Links?

Are you of the opinion that you have plenty of links? Do you believe there is no need to worry about developing link building strategies into your online marketing as the site has enough already and there’s no need for link bait content?

If that’s the case perhaps your website is ranking well and you are sitting back. You seem to have all bases covered, your website is awash with links and you seem secure your website will continue to ride high in the search engine rankings without any further assistance…

However, you may perhaps be interested to know that although you may have thousands of links on your site this does not mean you can kick back and relax. Yes, you have a great site that is performing strongly at the moment and you should congratulate yourself for this. However in the same way we are being warned about the rising levels of sea water due to the ice caps melting, there is a constantly changing level of links required to stay afloat at the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in the internet marketing world.

If you have thousands of good links you can bet your competitors do also. Everyone is busily involved in implementing link building exercises, which has the knock on effect of increasing the amount of links required. If you are ahead of the game now, you won’t be tomorrow if you don’t continue to build your links – before you know it you could be sinking below sea level.

At Click Consult we can develop winning online marketing strategies.

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Be Clear When Using Keywords

Susie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:06:35 +0000

It is important to be careful when using viral articles to vary your anchor text (the clickable part of a link) so that you don't have the same keyword phrase repeated hundreds of times across the web.

It is vital that one uses just different versions of your keyword phrase and, if you can, get those keyword links in the body of the article, as near to the top of the page as you can.

This will make your link building look much more natural in the eyes of the search engines, especially Google. However, at Click Consult we always ensure that you get to pole position so that you stay there. It is advisable that as a business you have hundreds, if not thousands of keywords that you are targeting with your online marketing.

Keep on building links

It is also important that you constantly keep building links for those keywords from related sites on the web. These keywords should be industry related. Sometimes it is helpful to truly view your keywords as organic, something that keeps growing naturally on its own. But you must first build a solid foundation with high-quality content and then keep nurturing those keywords with good quality link bait so that others will bookmark, recommend and link to your keyword content.

This is the very first point in the endeavour to achieve pole position, and such a firm foundation assures a lengthy stay on the top. This stay on the top may further be consolidated by further development of keywords.

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Links or on-page SEO, which is more important?

Dan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:35:48 +0000

Within the subject of SEO there are always debates going on regarding how useful certain aspects and techniques are. The simple reason for this is that people have their own views and opinions. To make things worse, they all want their opinion to be king.

Unfortunately there is a right and a wrong way to go about things, no matter what your opinion actually is. It is also very important to get SEO right and not wrong, the future and prosperity of your online presence depends on it.

Breaking the concepts down

Clearing up one of the debates, links versus on-page SEO, is an important step towards understanding and successfully using Search Engine Optimisation. First and foremost, don’t think of neglecting your on-page SEO. You can look at on-page SEO tactics as the foundation on which you are building further SEO efforts. Both aspects; links and on-page SEO, are important and you cannot expect the one to be effective all by itself.

Think of SEO as a tripod that holds your business up. If you remove even one of the legs of SEO, your business will come crashing to the ground. This is true when trying to choose the better one between links and on-page optimisation.

They work hand in hand. Links are great for getting attention and building your reputation. However, if there is nothing valuable or attractive about your landing pages you can just as well kiss that attention goodbye. As the search engines are evolving, no one aspect of SEO can be considered the be all and end all, each of the aspects have to work together as a team.

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The connection between link building and press releases

Susie — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:30:46 +0000

Press releases are an increasingly popular way to get your name out there and draw attention to your company or your business. Press releases are also good for your search engine optimization, specifically for link building. In this way your online press release serves a double purpose.

It boosts your visibility through online press release distribution and keeps you in the public eye, but it also enhances your visibility in the search engines through careful optimization.

Keeping up appearances

Online press releases are distributed through online media centres and distribution websites. This means that your copy will end up on the pages of many other websites. If you include a link in your copy to your website, you are onto a winner. These back links will serve as a big SEO boost and as testament to the search engines that your website is trustworthy and popular.

The more links you build with reputable websites, the better your own reputation will become through press release distribution and your other search engine optimisation efforts combined. This is why it is also paramount that you only submit your online press releases to suitable websites.

If you submit one article to a website with a bad reputation, your own reputation could suffer as a result. Online press releases are a great way to generate publicity, attract web traffic and promote your business. It is becoming increasingly easy for you to spread the word about what you have to offer, just make sure that you go about it the right way to ensure success.

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