Rand began his presentation by highlighting how bad Google’s SERPs have been lately. Take a look at the top results for credit card processing, discount pet supply store, and mba program reviews…
Rand was clearly frustrated with these results. I believe his exact words were that this was “very frustrating”, and “not exactly the best web has to offer…”
So why is this terrible crap filling up the SERPS? Because links rule, as do directories, anchor text, and exact-match domains. His least favorite tactic of the day: Article Marketing. Half because its so junky, and half because it works.
Google is trying to achieve perfect results. And so, we now start to see the rise in influence of social media citations & links. Bottom line: you don’t share crap on facebook. Think about that for a second.
Additionally, mentions (i.e. non-linked citations) and maybe some nofollow links too are beginning to make their way into the algorithm.
The Rise Of Social
Another major point in Rand’s presentation was the rise of social signals as ranking factors. My own experience has shown this to be true, at least for the time being as Google experiments with it. Look at this SERP when I search “Distilled Link Building Seminar”:
(Note: John Doherty is someone I respect and follow on Twitter. Google recognizes that in this case).
Rand made it painfully clear that he believes Google is looking for signals of “Community” and “Authenticity”, or in other words Brands vs. Generics. People prefer brands, not Google. Brands tend to have offline marketing, traffic from diverse sources, branded search query volume, authentic followed social accounts, and a physical address… Generics don’t.
34 Link Building Tips
So with that in mind here are Rand’s 34 unique link building recommendations:
- Earn authentic tweets to your content – tweets can seemingly overpower links.
- Become a content resource in your niche – unique research, informed opinions, news/trend analysis, multimedia content, expert contributors, quality discussion – (Q+A answers reference its resources, forum discussions link to its page, links are tweeted, etc.)
- A blog alone isn’t enough – Higher quality > higher quantity
- Invest in high quality video – (video xml sitemaps are, according to Rand, “like crack cocaine with carebears mating with transformers and having babies of awesomeness.”
- Build Awesome Infographics & Visual Media
- Widgets – Invest in calculators, Tools + Web based software that saves people time/effort.
- Publish reference-worthy research. (Ever thought “God I’m so frustrated with this *, I wish there was a ___ (answer that question
) - Leverage current events in content.
- Worry about usability & user experience. Find amazing designers & pay them (look for people who’ve only posted 1 or 2 things before, so they will probably be cheap and looking for clients)
- Compare how you format text blocks with those who lost out in Farmer/Panda
- Build Robust About Us Pages (we’ve been in business for over a decade, see 37signals.com (Highlight ‘major milestones’ of business). Provide real contact details for real humans
- Earn + Display Testimonials / Press Mentions (do this if you deserve to rank, deserve to get customers, deserve to be mentioned in press).
- Optimize your conversion funnel
- A process for testing searcher satisfaction – ask them to write 10 things they’d ideally want to see. Does your site have those? If not, shame.
- Getlisted.org – see what local listing places your missing out on.
- Go to each of the more about this place, go to the places mentioning your competitors, link OPP!!
- Build authentic social profiles. Not sure where to start? Try facebook, crunchbase, twitter, slideshare, reddit, quora, stumbleupon, linkedin, about.me, stackexchange, youtube, scribd, and Wikipedia.
- Earn branded search traffic. How? Either spend a fortune on TV or… tweet out your ranking in search that creates a ton of branded search.
- Diversify your visitor traffic sources – long-tail of the web (Direct traffic, referring sites, etc.).
- Get your brand name in the web’s headlines – news.google.com/archivesearch
- Earn citations in “hard-to-get” places –
- File patents, fund scholarly research + get papers published at academic/scientific places (google scholar)
- Create twitter/facebook/stumble/reddit centric content –
- Get your great design listed on all the design portals
- Discover where big brands get links (wetsuits #2 & #3)
- Investigate brand “mention” sources – “brand” –site:brand.com
- Find where relevant pages on edus, govs, orgs, ac.uks, etc. have earned their links!!
- Followerwonk to find key bloggers, connectors, and news sites aware of your brand + resources
- Host/Sponsor/Attend events, meetups + conferences = lanyrd.com to find conferences
- Earn citations on industry portal/forum/discussion sites (boardreader.com).
- Get your brand included on key, industry lists (Wikipedia/category/internet marketing companies). Go to the discussion tab not edit button, and suggest site X be added. This clearly has a higher percentage chance of working).
- Seek properties operate by trusted entities (Use advanced search queries linkfromdomain:.edu linkfromdomain:.gov – in Bing)
- Use your bio/profile as a link accumulator
- Make your RSS feeds “full content” and include appropriate, good links back to your site in posts (seeking out potential syndicators is awesome, too).
And finally, STOP getting links, and start earning them! – You have to be willing to trade short-term gains for long-term WINS.
