Just like ‘regular’ marketing, you can roughly divide link marketing into two categories; push link marketing (the good old link building) and pull link marketing (link baiting). This division, however, seems to be a very strict one, as I don’t see a lot of folks mixing up pull and push link marketing in order to maximize their link marketing efforts.

Advertising (and I’m not talking about text link ads) can be a used as a tool that supports both a push and a pull link marketing strategy, and a good advertising strategy can provide valuable market information as well.

Search Engine Advertising

With AdWords (and any other search engine advertising program), you can do a lot more than just generating sales. A creatively designed AdWords campaign can result in extra traffic and, if you combine this with specially designed landing pages for example, a lot of extra links.

Traffic, branding and awareness can lead to links
In stead of aiming for nothing but conversions or trying to reach the ultimate success rate, you can use AdWords as a push marketing tool for branding and awareness as well. Just like with regular advertising campaigns, advertising on the right keywords with the right, attractive landing pages will result in people to see your brand and get familiar with it, and it can even result in people talking about you. And linking to you.

Also, a creative advertising campaign increases the chances of becoming the talk of the day and attracting several links.

Pushing your linkbait
So you’ve just created an awesome quiz about dogs, tv shows or any other quiz and are looking for some extra players? AdWords is your friend. Believe it or not, but there are quite a few people looking for fun quizzes to play each day. And only a few are targeting them. The same goes for tools, widgets and any other piece of content that’s suitable for attracting links.

A bonus tip for quiz baiters: it depends on your target audience, but don’t forget to make your widget code available in phpBB code or to provide an easy Tweet My Score button. Never underestimate the power of social.

Targeting researchers
You can also use AdWords as a pull marketing strategy, by advertising on keywords that reporters, bloggers and journalists may use when they’re doing research for a subject that’s related to your content, company or product.  Try talking to a journalist about how and where he or she performs research when writing an interesting, in-depth piece; this can work very enlightening.

Don’t forget to test around with link-targeted AdWords landing pages that have the sole purpose of turning visitors into links. Just like you can turn other visitors into feed subscribers, you can turn journalists and bloggers into linkers with the right page, CTA or plugins.

Google AdSense

The well known content network of Google is more than just something you can slap on to any two-page website you happen to have lying around and make $0,13 a month with. You can use it to gather extra traffic, as well as valuable market information. And you can turn both into links.

Keyword Advertising
Copy the entire AdWords campaign you’ve created for the search network and target the content network with it. By advertising on relevant keywords, you make sure that your ad shows up on relevant websites. Although not everybody has the same opinion about Google’s content network, I love it for the surprisingly high conversion rates and low CPCs. Especially if you (or your linkbait ;) ) targets markets with a relatively low competition.

Just like with a ‘regular’ AdWords campaign, it’s import to determine your maximum CPA and to keep an eye on your conversion rate (if you’re able to measure this). Campaigns like this can reveal pretty interesting numbers. A campaign for one of my own websites had a conversion rate of ~1% at an average CPC of $0,10, where a link was worth at least 50 bucks to me. You don’t have to be an expert in math to see that that’s a pretty good deal.

Site targeting
If there are websites that look very interesting to you, or have proven their ability to convert in a regular AdWords content network advertising campaign, you should consider to target these websites directly with a site (or placement) targeting campaign. You can do this with text ads, but larger, visually attractive image ads are an option as well. If you choose for image ads, you’ll have to keep in mind that you’ll probably end up with higher CPCs, as it has to beat the combined CPCs for the top 3 text ads on the page you want to appear on (because your image ad takes the space of three text ads).

Market information
Believe it or not, but this is where the fun part of Google’s content network starts.

Like I’ve mentioned before, Google made it possible to see on which websites in Google’s content network your ad has been appearing. To run a report like this, select the ‘Placement Performance’ report in the AdWords Report panel and hit ‘create report’.

Because Google matched your website to content of these sites, most of the websites listed in this report are relevant to your subject. It might be possible that not every website is 100% relevant, but there must be at least one page on the site that is relevant enough to let your ads show up.

The report also gives an indication of the possible amount of visitors, because it mentions the amount of impressions. Besides the impressions, Google also lists the CTR and amount of clicks (interested visitors), the amount conversions (possible customers) and the total costs and cost per conversion (value of the link).  All very valuable link marketing information, if you ask me :) . You can also download the report in csv, which makes the data even more accessible.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is awesome for generating leads or sales, but can be used for branding and to create awareness as well. All of this can lead to links indirectly, which is something lots of people don’t seem to think about.

Also, just like with Google’s content network, an affiliate marketing campaign can provide extremely valuable market information. Reports can show you which websites generate views, traffic and sales, and might be interesting to contact directly because of that. Talking to the folks of the affiliate program or to a few publishers can also result in gathering useful tips, or more information about your market or competition.

Reviews, advertorials & PPP

People only think of services like Review Me, PayPerPost or Viral Conversations as tools to get instant dofollow links with an anchor text of their choice. Setting up a buzz marketing campaign the wrong way, however, could get you into serious trouble. Even when your name is Google.co.jp.

These types of services, however, are very much suitable for generating traffic, buzz and -as a result of that- indirect links. After all, if you’re being mentioned by an influential blogger from your industry, or on any other authority website, it can -and usually will- lead to traffic, sales and more links.

Sponsoring

Sponsoring an event, website, charity or anything else in order to get a link certainly isn’t a new link building strategy. What most people don’t think about, though, is that a sponsorship can lead to even more links indirectly.

For example, the fact that financial services entity ING was pulling out of sponsoring Formula 1  resulted in over a thousand online mentionings, including a few dozen high quality links. And that’s just a company that’s canceling a sponsorship. I’m pretty sure that your budget is a bit smaller than ING’s (to say the least) but you probably get the point.

Offline advertising

Even an offline advertising campaign can generate links. There are numerous websites entirely dedicated to (creative) advertising campaigns or guerilla marketing campaigns, and a unique campaign could generate buzz in your industry as well.

I am a big fan of combining offline and online marketing into one big marketing campaign, but I don’t see a lot of companies doing this optimally, unfortunately. A campaign where offline and online are well integrated isn’t just (link)food for marketers, but increases your chances to be found (and linked to) as well.

Link development = Marketing = Link development

Of course, there are even more advertising techniques, such as display advertising, local advertising or CPV models (such as SU ads), that can lead to links directly or indirectly. The point is that, when you come to think of it, nearly any action you take can lead to links. Link marketing is just like “regular” marketing, but it’s a little bit more search engine optimized :)

Nearly anything you do both online and offline can -and most often will- result in links. Branding and creating awareness not only builds links (in)directly, but it also makes future link building campaigns much easier. After all, people are much more willing to link to websites (and brands) they’ve seen around before than to companies they’ve never heard of. Where the rich are getting richer, recognition is a very important factor.

As you can see, most of the links that an advertising campaign can result in are indirect links. This also means that, besides that links will probably keep coming in over time, you have less control over the URL people will refer to or the anchor text that’s used. You can try to influence this a little bit with your on-page content, but you’ll never have full control. While this is good, because it builds up a natural link profile, it may require additional link building or optimization efforts.

Unlike with the previous Link Building Strategies posts, I’d like to start with a short disclaimer-like opening. Like the title says, this is the blackhat edition. Well, not technically blackhat, but it sure as hell isn’t a strategy that I’d use for clients. So you’re probably better off not to use this tactic for your money making cash cow…

Even in very competitive markets, there are still lots of sites performing pretty well with nothing but questionable incoming links. You probably know the feeling of seeing some company (or affiliate site) ranking above yours because of tons of paid links.

What do you do in such a situation? Do you move on building great content while waiting for Matt to accidentally stumble upon your competitor, do you file a paid link spam report, or do you go for option number three?

Let’s say you want to rank for ‘blue widgets’, which happens to be a pretty competitive phrase. You and me both know that obtaining links from one or more websites that already rank for ‘blue widgets’ could help you on your way up the SERPs.

Unfortunately, the first page only contains 8 direct competitors that probably won’t link to you. And a double Wikipedia listing, of course. Depending on the backlink profiles of those competitors, this doesn’t necessarily have to be a problem. If you’re lucky (yes, I said if you’re lucky), all those competitors are buying links pretty blatantly.

Some backlink profiles just show that either the webmaster probably hired an SEO who’s better at pitching his services than at servicing his clients, or that the webmaster read somewhere that buying sitewides on .info blogs with TLA & PPP ads is a good thing to do.

In stead of filing 8 different paid link spam reports, there is, like I said, a third option. How about if you just pretend to be filing spam reports, while leaving the window open for your competitors to escape?

Let’s start with contacting those 8 competing websites (and feel free to scan the rest of the top 100 for dodgy link profiles as well, while you’re at it) and letting them know that you’ve seen their link profile. These webmasters (or their SEOs) probably know that Google frowns upon buying links that pass PageRank, but nevertheless, you could mention this to them (don’t forget to send them the URL for the snitch paid link report form as well).

Because you’re a very kind person, you still leave an opening for your competitors. Just let them know that you’re willing to skip your duty of reporting them to Google, if they are willing to add a link to your site on their website.

Of course, not everyone of your competitors will respond in absolute delight, but at least a few will link to your site and at least a few others will start cleaning up their link profiles. Getting links from your direct competitors never was this easy…

Like I said at the start of this post, I certainly don’t recommend doing this for clients or money makers, but it can work OK for those fun friday afternoon projects. It can, however, backfire just as easily as well.

Tamar Weinberg pointed to an interesting topic over at the HighRankings forums about link building for big brands. Although the thread was opened over a year ago, the discussion lit up again and the subject remains interesting. A good reason to dedicate this episode of Link Building Strategies to link building for big brands.

So how do big brands build links? Well, in most cases they don’t, at least not actively. Just ‘being alive’ often is enough to attract several links a day from different places. A product launch, a CEO leaving the company, an angry customer, a study at a university or even a cool tv ad can result in fresh links. In other words, like Jill said, “they get links by virtue of their brand name”.

The link building challenge of big brands isn’t in obtaining new links, but in using the strength of these links optimally. Converting link juice isn’t very hard, but certainly worth the effort.

Make sure that your domain gets the links

It sounds pretty easy, but apparently it isn’t: put something online before you start an offline campaign. If you’re launching a new product and still have to set up a page for it when the first ads have been aired, you’re too late. Affiliates, domainers and other clever folks are fast as lightning, or at least faster than your designers. If they manage to beat you with their page or site, they will attract the links and traffic. And they’ll rank.

Another pretty hard thing to believe is that some companies still use agencies that send out press releases hosted on a third party domain. This means that every website that writes about your release will probably end up linking to your PR company. Great deal for them, but not for you. Make sure that your domain gets the juice, since you’re probably already paying them too much.

Tip number three is to set up profiles of your most important employees. In stead of linking to sources like Wikipedia, online media will link to your site more often when they’re writing about the company’s CEO, CFO or CFETWTF.

Make sure that the right page gets the links

Large companies attract links to their home page by the dozen, but you -and Google- want links to be as targeted as possible. This doesn’t mean that you have to get in touch with every single webmaster that links to your home page, but you certainly want the best links to be perfect. Contact the websites that send the most traffic, send visitors that click through to lots of different pages (do these visitors have to search for what they were looking for?), or just are extremely relevant to a specific page, and ask if they can alter the link target. After thanking them for the initial link, of course.

Get rid of the ‘click here’s

Good links can result in better rankings, but good descriptive links can result in awesome rankings. Anchor text helps, so make sure that the most relevant links and the ones coming from authority domains have the right anchor text, in stead of just your company name or ‘click here’.

Control the link juice

So, your pretty flash page managed to attract hundreds or thousands of links. Too bad that flash pages still suck for SEO and aren’t able to pass link strength to other pages on your site optimally. Make sure that the juice can flow around to pages that make you money, have the ability to rank, or -ideally- both.

Get those extra ’special’ links

The ad agencies of big brands usually know how to get offline attention, their social media specialists will hopefully manage to reach bloggers and social networks, but both probably don’t know where they can find the ’special’ spots. You know, those pages or sites that can give you that extra little boost. That’s where link building -or hiring a link builder- can mean the difference between just being a top brand and being a top brand with top rankings.

It pretty much like Brian said in the original forum thread; although big brands attract lots of links just because they exist, link building is needed to help sharpen their link profile to become more keyword targeted.

This is the first part of a brand new series, which will be featuring specific link building strategies every once in a while. Every ‘Link Building Strategies‘ post will explain what the benefits of the featured strategy are and it will give tips on when and how to use this tactic. This first part will discuss Product Reviews.

If you’re planning on launching a new product (or just want some exposure for an existing one) and know where to look in “your” blogosphere, the product review can be a great way to get targeted traffic, positive brand exposure and good links. Just sending out (or offering to ship) one of your products might help you to obtain great links. Can you think of something better than an authority blogger explaining to his audience what your product is and why it’s great, together with providing a deep link to the product itself? Neither can I, but getting one is harder than it sounds.

Step 1: Make great products
It’s impossible to get nothing but positive reviews while your product is crap and still look sincere. It all starts with a great product. If your products are of bad, mediocre or ‘just ok’ quality, actively pursuing product reviews probably isn’t the best choice for you.

Step 2: Participate online
Online participation is a must, whether you do this yourself, have a web savvy co-worker or have an online marketing agency that handles this on your behalf. Contacting people in your industry out of the blue with an email that contains information about your product will be perceived as spam in probably eight out of ten occasions. If you already know the people you want to send your product to, you’ll have a lot more chance of being successful.

Do you think that Glen Alsopp would have been able to get industry bloggers to talk about his Online Reputation Management eBook (which is an excellent read btw! Buy it before the price goes up!) if he didn’t participate online? It not only saves you time if you know who the top bloggers in your industry are and if you know where and how to contact them, but it also increases your chances of getting some great coverage.

Step 3: Pitch your product
A good pitch doesn’t look like a pitch. If you want to control the way that your review should look like or where the links should point to, you can better use a PPP-like review service. If you want great links, a natural and unique piece of coverage and honest feedback, make it look like you’re doing something for the person you’ve contacted. He or she will be more than likely to help you out as well.

To get back to Glen’s book; he contacted me about his ebook and without asking me to write about it, let alone that he mentioned where I should link to or what the post should look like. And yet he still ended up with positive feedback (did I already mention that his book is a great read?) and in content links (with the right anchor text). Not because he told me to, but because his product rocks (step 1), because I knew him before he contacted me about his book (step 2) and because he contacted me the right way (step 3).

Step 4: Follow up
There’s nothing more rewarding for a blogger than seeing that his or her words have had effect. If you’re able to show that you’ve used the feedback that the bloggers that covered your product provided, these bloggers will probably be of great help the next time as well. Also, sending out an update or just a thank you note can help you expanding your network with loyal contacts.

Main goal: Building awareness, traffic
Effectiveness: 4/5
Which markets: Business to Consumer (and sometimes B2B)
When to use: When your products rock
When not to use: When your products suck
Possible Dangers: Backfire (remember this one?)
Biggest benefits: In content deep links, targeted traffic, customer feedback