Some of us remember the days when all you had to do to get a decent link was send out an email asking for it. It was about 5 days in 2000 that this tactic worked like gangbusters.
What is amazing is that people still send out those lousy link letters from time to time. In 2009!
That’s what I call phoning it in. In case you didn’t already know, that’s not how the pros do their link building. A link is a valuable thing. The right link can turn the most obscure little site on the web into a bastion of chatter, followers, sales, ad clicks, and bright prospects for the future. Namely, never having to ask for a link again!
Here are 4 of the most coveted types of links you can get for your site in order of importance:
- The biggest guy or gal in your niche links to you from their site in the context of a great post they’ve made. And they used your best keyword in the link.
- The biggest site in your niche includes you in a list of links they thought were great that day.
- Someone with a big following links to your latest post on a social site like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed or StumbleUpon and sends you scads of traffic. (And Google picks it up from FriendFeed and other places their mention gets syndicated to.)
- Authority links from news sites, big interviews, or other “respected” media.
Some links are truly life-changing. Or at least business-changing.
There are countless stories of people getting their products or sites written about, just by TechCrunch, who went from obscurity to big time overnight. I read in an interview with Michael Arrington last year that two guys fly to his hometown from another country, knocked on his door unannounced, and had as their only goal of the whole trip to get him to write about their product!
Those guys knew the value of a well-placed link.
So how far would you go to win the link lottery?
Who is on your short list of sites that would be the most important to get a contextual link from?
To what lengths would you go to get links from them?
Would you fly across the country or to another continent to attend a conference just to meet those people?
Would you become their biggest fan and support them by giving great comments on their posts regularly?
Would you make “traffic sacrifices” for them? (Be an evangelist for their site and send tons of people to them through social media and your own blog.)
How about, once you know they know who you are through your support above, you develop a product inspired by them, give them the credit, then try to get them to get behind it with their sphere of influence?
The developer of the little plugin called “What would Seth Godin Do?” did a fine job with this tactic. He even put his target in the name of the product! It’s one of the more popular plugins for Wordpress to this day.
Stack The Odds In Your Favor
Once you know the true value of high-level links and what they could do for your visibility, you can plan on the sacrifices you need to make to get those links to become a reality. You might spend months on a campaign to grab the attention of a key link target in your niche. If the outcome would be very profitable for you, you could budget that into your ongoing marketing campaign and justify the effort with the expected outcome.
And here’s the kicker:
Landing a major link makes all the work everyone else does (sometimes for years) to work their way up to the same link disappear for you. I call it “leap frog” link building. All the other links you would have worked for over a long period of time by working your way step-by-step up the ladder will backfill after you get a link from one or two of the biggest players.
Once the big dogs in your niche start linking to you, all the others will fall in line.
People you’ve seen burst onto the scene in any niche with a big review or even a soft mention from a big player – they did the leap frog method. Most of the time without ever knowing how big what they did was and how much time and effort they saved themselves.
One or two key links can change everything.
Having a strategy to capture the attention of a big player, impress them, and make them want to link to you is important. It should have its own timeline and plan right along side your daily marketing activities so you never lose sight of your goal of winning the link lottery.
Every little thing you do in this regard is like buying another entry in a lottery with far better odds than Power Ball. Because a good plan will stack the odds in your favor!
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
Good article!
I would also add links to your blog from a guest post you have written on one of the biggest blogs in your niche. I believe it is easier getting somebody to publish your guest post than getting somebody to notice what you have written, and to get them to link to it from their future post. Especially if you run a small blog it is very hard.
Marko
HowToMakeMyBlog.coms last blog post..How I got my blog from Google PageRank 0 to PR4 in two months
Great Article about the massive value of the right kind of links. I have never had somebody explain it so well. thanks a bunch Jack !! You always over deliver
John Gregory
True. I once read a post about how a blogger was linked to by Lifehacker, and saw quite a significant boost as a result. I guess the problem is that the authority sites whose links would prove so valuable, are aware of the value of their links so they’re very prudent about choosing who to link to. I find that asking for links still works in those niches where a majority of the bloggers really are just maintaining online journals, and aren’t yet familiar with link building or monetization.
Yes the good old days. LOL
Do you feel that the new way is driving people away from working on linking? They are not willing to do the pain for the gain.
I have found that the majority of people don’t understand the importance of linking. All it takes is 1 big dog eh.
Sonny – yes I do think people have slacked a bit on the core rules of internet marketing. Link building just through social networks is a shaky foundation to build on all alone. Everything that’s easy is less valuable than anything that’s harder.
Marko – great point. I left that out of the list – big omission on my part!
Great topic, but in reality unless you’re in the business of selling “how to grow your online business” products, I just don’t see how this applies to the rest of the online world.
If my goal (on my site) is to sell more bicycles and I want to attract traffic that will buy bicycles, how in the world am I going to talk the biggest guy or gal in my niche (likely a competitor), to link back to my site? What am I missing here?
Oh yes, I do remember the “good old days” of being able to just ask for a link and get it. I built up some impressive rankings for highly competitive keywords by doing that. It would be great if it still worked!
I would do a lot to win the link lottery. Pretty much everything you asked, I would do. Except maybe flying to another continent unless I was definitely going to get the link for flying there and I knew it would work wonders for my site.
On that note…
Would you like to link to my site, Jack?
Hey it was worth a try!
Trent Brownriggs last blog post..How to Make Money Fast Online
anim8tr – Darren Rowse is a pretty direct competitor of mine, but he links to me. In the blog sphere, we are all competing for many of the same visitors. That competitor has to gain something by linking to you. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find out what they value and get them to act against the knee-jerk reaction to smother you with indifference. You aren’t protecting your business by not acknowledging your competition. You are isolating it. And after awhile, you can become irrelevant in the discussions going on in the niche by being a protectionist.
All the A-List bloggers in every conceivable niche link to each other. That should be a sign.
Jack, I just think it’s a different world outside of the blog or seo worlds when it comes to your suggestion of getting the biggest guy or gal in your niche to link to you . Fellow bloggers have no qualm doing this. In fact many times they promote one another’s products or services.
In the traditional business world though, you would never refer a customer to a competitor unless that competitor was really not threat to your survival. I just think that so much advice coming out of bloggers or seo experts relates just a little too much to those two worlds and much of the time it doesn’t relate to reality in the non-blogger or seo market places.
I’m not trying to be contrarian here. It’s definitly something we can all learn more about, but it’s gotten to the point where many of these reccomendations do not necessarily translate to ALL online market places.
Another great post! Thanks Jack!
I love the advice you give on link building and Marko’s suggestion was great as well – and to add on to jack’s response in regards to anim8tr’s question…Jack has a point, find something and develop a relationship and you will get a link…also remember that there are ton of popular blogs out there in the bicycle niche that are not trying to sell bicycles they just talk about them – perhaps its your job to find them and find a way to get a link….
Some folks are in it for the love of the Niche, some are in it for the love and the money – i’m sure with research you can find a valuable link.
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Jack-
Is there any usefulness of getting links to your site from unrelated sites? Or, if my site is about baseball and I get links to my free mortgage calculator, is that useless?
Augies last blog post..Lower Real Estate Investment Tax with the Right Accountant
anim8tr – Maybe it would help to think of it as publicity. How would a bike shop get publicity offline? They hold events, raise money for charity with bike-a-thons, put tricked-out bikes in local parades – they pull stunts and good deeds in their community.
Now, what’s the equivalent of that online? Getting connected and plugged in socially and raising money in an exciting way to get 30 poor kids new bikes for this coming summer.
Don’t let the technology blind you from good old fashioned marketing. It’s the same online as off. It’s just a different medium.
So if you can’t get competitors to link to you no matter what, you can get a lot of other people to link to you and talking about you for standing out and doing something neat. Some of those links could be bigger media sites wanting to do a story on you. But they can’t find you unless you’re out there mixing it up and building buzz enough to get the attention of big sites who are non competitors.
Augie – all links from legit sites are important. Google is the only thing that got people thinking they absolutely must have 100% niche relevant links to their sites. Today that’s just not a webmaster’s only concern. Big portals and social sites get links from every corner of the web on every imaginable topic. Taking those links away and leaving only what Google thinks is relevant would do massive damage to those sites.
So you need both to accomplish different tasks. Relevant for Google and more fired up, targeted direct traffic, and less “keyword relevant” nods from any other site you can get. It’s still a vote and it still has value in direct traffic and even the engines, though they won’t cop to that.
Jack, now that’s an idea that I can use.
I think the difference is that I look at link building from a product sales and marketing perspective and you’re looking at this more from a traffic building and social networking perspective.
I think it’s going to be hard for product marketeers to find a use for social networking in general, but I do like your idea of having companies reach out to others and then building lines of communication on a more personal level.
anim8tr – I wasn’t going to stop until I got you something you could use!
Would love to hear what you come up with!
@Trent – DONE!
Awesome post Jack! As a member of Blog Success, I am making my way through your 60 day plan. I completed one month (lots of work – but so worth it) and received my first Google pagerank – a 3!
I identify with this post so much as I took December to go back over the first 30 days and try to catch up and get everything done that I skimmed or missed. The social sites get overwhelming, and it’s so easy to find yourself spending way too much time joining new social site after new social site.
As a newbie, I would honestly be lost without your help and the SPL/Blog Success group. I am currently integrating a sales funnel and then I am off to complete next 30 days.
Thank you so much for all the info you so freely share.
Erins last blog post..Do Brain Games Really Make You Smarter?
@Erin – thanks so much for reporting in! Glad you are so fired up and willing to do the work. The rewards are very much worth it.
Oops! That comment was for the post, “There Are No Social Marketing Experts.” It will hopefully look a little less like babbling now. LOL
Thanks for the very informative information. I am working on building links and your site provided some excellent suggestions. If you have an opportunity to review my site your comments would be most appreciated.
Wishing you the best in the New Year.
Hi Jack,
This is another fantastic post!!!
Funny that I had followed you some last year and then stopped (don’t know why). Then about 2 weeks ago picked up your blog again and WOW – what a wealth of info I have gotten in the last two weeks. Like the Twitter stuff that I had blown off – it is cool stuff!
Thank’s Jack – and about a week ago I made you a permanent link under “Marketing Insiders” and there you will stay with only one or two others.
Mucha Gracias from NM
Joe
This is a great breakdown of how important focusing your link building efforts on important sites can be. Getting good links does not happen overnight so don’t get discouraged if you don’t land a great link right away.
Thanks Joe! Just makes me want to keep going, hearing that stuff.
Thanks for this great post, Jack. You’ve done an excellent job debunking the myths of getting good links. So many people still spend so much time on unproductive tasks. The key is not to work harder; the key is to work smarter. I’m determined to do my part to cut through the clutter to help fellow online marketers too. I appreciate your information.
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I really identified with this post Jack. I think that I have always been a bit in isolation online and used to be a little intimidated to reach out to the “big guys” in my niches. But it clearly is the more direct route, because aren’t we all trying to build those types of lucrative relationships anyway? I guess other than the Wordpress example you gave, I’m looking for some other ways to grab my very busy and successful competitors attention? Is it simply all about the content?
Lisa Angeletties last blog post..How To Focus Your Business In 2009
Content won’t take you the whole way. In many niches people have caught on to the obvious and are now developing fairly good to really good content. Now we take it up one more level through social media and have good content PLUS the distinction of “being present.” Almost everyone is phoning it in with social media, so having the pedigree of great content on your blog and the name recognition from being on Twitter and other sites doing great things often will tip the balance.
Hi Jack. Been checking you out for quite a long time. I have been in internet marketing for 5 years and i’m now 21. A mere junior in terms of internet marketing however funny enough, i still get more subscribers than the “experienced” marketing guru’s.
I do feel that I know a substantial amount about internet marketing but every now and then you come up with these great, amazing, excellent posts.
About a year ago I think I bumped into you on a marketing forum (not sure what forum though) and we had this long conversation about social marketing and we both discussed the possibilities that it could entail for us. You were still skeptical about my age when we met but later said “Not bad for a 20 year old” Im from South Africa if that helps you.
Anyway Jack good luck and i’ll inform you of my next product launch and send you a free copy. Keep well lost friend. (Not necessary to post in comments)
The learning curve never stops and this blog keeps it finger on the pulse.
Thanks.
When you talk about the right link Jack, is the permanency of the link the factor or the traffic it brings,. the reward for getting it? Or is it a SERPs thing.
Hope you can understand what I am trying to ask.
Millionairemumma
Permanency is a good thing in link building. That has a lot to do with the valuation of a good link. But short-lived links, like some social links, can bring a lot of traffic in a short time while ALSO catching the attention of people who can send you those more permanent links. A good link always affects the search engines in some positive way.