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	<title>Wiep.net &#187; Link Building</title>
	<atom:link href="http://wiep.net/talk/category/link-building/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://wiep.net</link>
	<description>Link Building Blog</description>
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		<title>5 Reasons Why I Won&#8217;t Link to Your Website</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/why-i-wont-link-to-you/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/why-i-wont-link-to-you/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:59:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=1623</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When I&#8217;m in the middle of creating a new website or an in-depth blog article, one of things I usually do is making a list of which websites to link out to. Sometimes, visitors may find a resource page, a list with links to other relevant websites or a few in-content links very interesting. And [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/why-i-wont-link-to-you/">5 Reasons Why I Won&#8217;t Link to Your Website</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>When I&#8217;m in the middle of creating a new website or an in-depth blog article, one of things I usually do is making a list of which websites to link out to. Sometimes, visitors may find a <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/diy-link-building/resource-lists/">resource page</a>, a list with links to other relevant websites or a few in-content links very interesting. And when a page is relevant to mine, meets a certain quality standard, and adds value to the content on my page, I&#8217;m usually more than happy to link to it. For free. However, you&#8217;d be surprised how very few pages meet that quality standard.</p>
<h2>1. Ads before content</h2>
<p>If I want to see nothing but ads, I&#8217;ll <a href="http://blog.converseon.com/2010/08/13/google-removes-organic-results-in-local-tests/">go to Google</a>. When I&#8217;m looking for content to link to, and I land on a page with a 336&#215;280 AdSense block above the fold, or with bouncing banner ads that have to be minimized before I can read the content on the page, I will definitely not link to it. Why on earth would I want to let my visitors experience something annoying like that? </p>
<p>It&#8217;s not a problem that you try to monetize your website, but do you really have to turn your page into a blinking neon sign to do so? Ditch some ads and get more links!</p>
<h2>2. Bad writing &#038; grammar</h2>
<p>You don&#8217;t have to be a best selling novelist, but you should be able to tell me a story without boring me to death. Also, when you&#8217;re too lazy to use a spell checker, you probably didn&#8217;t deserve that link. <a href="http://outspokenmedia.com/about/lisa-barone/">Remarkable</a> <a href="http://www.conversationmarketing.com/">writers</a> score bonus points, though.</p>
<p>If you don&#8217;t like writing, hire someone to do it for you! You can usually tell if someone doesn&#8217;t like writing, just by reading one of his or her articles. Try Demand Media if you want to see some examples&#8230;</p>
<h2>3. Sell, sell, sell</h2>
<p>A good salesman knows when he should try to sell something, and when it&#8217;s time to socialize or to talk about other things. Bad salesmen try to sell nearly anything, at all times, to anyone, which can be quite annoying. Is your website a good or a bad salesman?</p>
<p>There&#8217;s nothing wrong with promoting your services every now and then, but when nearly every blog post is nothing but a lengthy sales pitch with a picture of a kitten, I won&#8217;t be linking out to you anytime soon.</p>
<h2>4. Link greed and pink illness</h2>
<p>The web is a social place. Linking out every now and then is <em>not</em> a bad thing. It might be the link builder in me, but when I see a blog that has zero outbound links in the last 10 or so articles, I&#8217;ll go and find a more social website to link out to. The same goes for linking out to your sources. Link out, and thou wilt receive.</p>
<p>Websites that automatically nofollow all outbound links are even worse, in my opinion. I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s company policy, a WordPress plugin going berserk, or &#8216;something that IT should have fixed two weeks ago&#8217;, I&#8217;ll do the same to you. Nofollow and thou wilt receive. Yes, karma can be a bitch.</p>
<h2>5. Being mediocre</h2>
<p>Just recently, I was looking for an article with beautiful city landscapes for an &#8216;additional resources&#8217; section of a page. I ended up at a nicely written page about city landscapes and what&#8217;s beautiful about them, but that page did not contain any photographs. When the SERPS of the topic of your page contain image results (<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&#038;q=city+landscape&#038;aq=f&#038;aqi=g10&#038;aql=&#038;oq=&#038;gs_rfai=">like so</a>), your page should contain images. Period.</p>
<p>Also, when you do a &#8216;Top 101 Ways to do X&#8217; article, make sure that it contains 101 ways to do X. Not 14, followed by 87 variations of the first fourteen ways. When I send my visitors away from my site to visit yours, I want them to go &#8216;ooh&#8217; and &#8216;aah&#8217;. Not &#8216;meh&#8217; or &#8216;boo&#8217;.</p>
<h2></h2>
<p>Of course, there are several other reasons that will make me think twice about linking to your website (lack of uniqueness, very ugly web design, bad neighborhoods, not having an &#8216;about us&#8217; section, being a direct competitor, etc.), but for me, the 5 reasons mentioned in this article are the most important ones. </p>
<p>How about you? What makes you link to other websites, or what prevents you from doing so?</p>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/why-i-wont-link-to-you/">5 Reasons Why I Won&#8217;t Link to Your Website</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


<p>No related posts.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>18</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Link Building: It&#8217;s All In the Details</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-details/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-details/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Aug 2010 08:00:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=1555</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When it comes to link building (but with most other things as well) most people try to find shortcuts. They look for &#8216;secrets&#8217;, smart things that can get them to rank very quickly, preferably without any effort. Unfortunately, I have to say that there are no link building secrets, shortcuts or quick tricks. Well, except [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-details/">Link Building: It&#8217;s All In the Details</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>When it comes to link building (but with most other things as well) most people try to find shortcuts. They look for &#8216;secrets&#8217;, smart things that can get them to rank very quickly, preferably without any effort. Unfortunately, I have to say that there are no link building secrets, shortcuts or quick tricks. Well, except for one maybe; have an eye for details.</p>
<p>Just think about it&#8230;</p>
<ul>
<li>Do you start your email with &#8216;Dear Webmaster&#8217; or with &#8216;Dear Lauren&#8217;?</li>
<li>Is your content <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-baiting/good-content-isnt-good-enough/">good or great</a>?</li>
<li>Do you use a spell checker?</li>
<li>Do you mention the word &#8216;Pagerank&#8217; in your emails or not?</li>
<li>Are you an &#8216;SEO Link Builder&#8217; or a &#8216;Product manager&#8217; according to your email signature?</li>
<li>Do you send out thank you notes?</li>
<li>Do you use the word &#8216;guru&#8217; in your Twitter bio?</li>
<li>Have you thought your content&#8217;s title well through, or did you just write down the first thing that came to mind?</li>
<li>Do you test or do you assume?</li>
<li>Do you block your HTTP referrer or not?</li>
<li>Are you going to send a press release on Tuesday morning or Friday afternoon?</li>
<li>Do you buy your links from a broker or privately?</li>
<li>Do you take no for an answer?</li>
<li>Can you answer <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-question/">the most important link building question</a>?</li>
<li>Do you *really* understand what you&#8217;re promoting?</li>
<li>Do you *really* know who you need to target?</li>
<li>Did you hire the expensive designer, or the one that was $50 cheaper?</li>
<li>Do you use the phone as well, or email only?</li>
</ul>
<p>And that&#8217;s just a *very* small portion of all the details you have to think about. Nothing special, it&#8217;s all common sense. Get it all wrong, and you&#8217;ll find yourself spending your Saturday nights at the DigitalPoint forums, complaining that &#8216;link building is so hard and it&#8217;s not working anymore&#8217;. Get it all right, and you&#8217;ve got a chance of dominating your niche.</p>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-details/">Link Building: It&#8217;s All In the Details</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


<p>Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-question/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Link Building is All About Answering One Question'>Link Building is All About Answering One Question</a> <small><br>When it comes to link building, people tend to overestimate and over-analyze...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://wiep.net/talk/diy-link-building/easy-links-send-a-thank-you-note/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Easy Links: Send A Thank You Note'>Easy Links: Send A Thank You Note</a> <small><br>Just recently, I used crowdSPRING&#8216;s creative community for designing the logo of...</small></li>
</ol></p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Link Building: Just Another Popularity Game</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-popularity/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-popularity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:05:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=1551</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[You can come up with all the explanations you want, but link building basically is nothing more but a popularity game. (click to enlarge) Infographic by Linkbuilding.nl, which is the Dutch company I run together with Martijn. This post, Link Building: Just Another Popularity Game, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-popularity/">Link Building: Just Another Popularity Game</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>You can come up with all the explanations you want, but link building basically is nothing more but a popularity game.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.linkbuilding.nl/link-building-popularity-game/"><img src="http://www.linkbuilding.nl/images/link-building-monopoly-small.jpg" alt="Link building: it's a popularity game" width="530" height="388" /></a><br />
<em>(click to enlarge)</em></p>
<p>Infographic by <a href="http://www.linkbuilding.nl">Linkbuilding.nl</a>, which is the Dutch company I run together with <a href="http://twitter.com/martijnanschutz">Martijn</a>.</p>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-popularity/">Link Building: Just Another Popularity Game</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


<p>No related posts.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>12</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How to Create World Link Maps With Majestic SEO &amp; Google Spreadsheets</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/creating-link-maps/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/creating-link-maps/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:30:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=1511</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Managers love visuals. Nice charts, infographics or pivot tables make excellent excuses for not having to actually *read* those long reports or documents. And since link building reports tend to be packed with data, they love to see something visually appealing every few pages to give their eyes some rest. A possible chart that could [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/creating-link-maps/">How to Create World Link Maps With Majestic SEO &#038; Google Spreadsheets</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Managers love visuals. Nice <a href="http://www.seobook.com/seo-flow-chart">charts</a>, <a href="http://searchengineoptimization.elliance.com/search-marketing-resources/seo-infographics.aspx">infographics</a> or <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-make-a-pivot-table-and-chart-in-excel/">pivot tables</a> make excellent excuses for not having to actually *read* those long reports or documents. And since link building reports tend to be packed with data, they love to see something visually appealing every few pages to give their eyes some rest.</p>
<p>A possible chart that could spice up your SEO or link building document, is a World Link Map, which displays your link profile on a world heatmap. And although this may sound like a lot of work, it&#8217;s actually quite easy. All you need is <a href="http://wiep.net/link-building-tools/majestic-seo/">Majestic SEO</a> and <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com">Google Spreadsheets</a>. </p>
<h2>Step 1: Get the data</h2>
<p>Create an Advanced Report of the website who&#8217;s link profile you&#8217;d like to see in a World Link Map via <a href="http://www.majesticseo.com/">Majestic SEO</a>. Select &#8216;Countries&#8217; in the Report Menu and export this report to csv.</p>
<p>Besides using Majestic&#8217;s &#8216;Countries&#8217; info, which uses the IP adress of a website to determine the country of origin, you can also use the TLD data that Majestic provides. Although such a report is more accurate for ccTLDs, it is also a bit more work to create a World Link Map with this data.</p>
<h2>Step 2: Copy, paste &#038; ISO codes</h2>
<p>Now you can copy the first five columns and paste them into Google Spreadsheets (or delete the other columns if you have opened the csv file from Google Spreadsheets directly). Now insert one column between the first (Country) and the second (RefDomains) column, which you can title &#8216;Country code&#8217;, or something similar. </p>
<p>In order to let Google create a nice map of the world, you will have to add the <a href="http://www.iso.org/iso/english_country_names_and_code_elements">ISO Country Codes</a> of all countries into this column. This is not my favorite step in this process, but adding the ISO Country Codes to the country csv export is already on Majestic SEO&#8217;s feature request list :) Until then, if you&#8217;re planning on creating multiple maps, I&#8217;d suggest taking a look at <a href="http://blog.ouseful.info/2010/02/15/creating-a-winter-olympics-2010-medal-map-in-google-spreadsheets/">using the QUERY formula</a>.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1512" title="spreadsheet-data" src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/spreadsheet-data.jpeg" alt="" width="417" height="129" border="1" /></p>
<h2>Step 3: Create a World Link Map</h2>
<p>Right-click anywhere in your spreadsheet, and select &#8216;Insert Gadget&#8217;. After clicking on &#8216;Maps&#8217;, select the option &#8216;Heatmap&#8217;.</p>
<p><img src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/heatmap.jpeg" alt="" title="heatmap" width="500" height="252" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1513" border="1" /></p>
<p>Now you can select the field range and the map region, before you hit &#8216;Apply and close&#8217;. The result is a small map, which displays your link profile. Light colored countries indicate a low level of links, while you get linked a lot from bright colored countries. Grey countries indicate no links at all.</p>
<p><strong>Some examples</strong><br />
These World Link Maps can highlight interesting situations. For example, the relatively high amount of links from Polish websites is a bit strange for a Scottish website.<br />
<img src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/map-1.jpeg" alt="" title="map-1" width="441" height="265" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1514" border="1" /></p>
<p>And this African News website seems to get links from anywhere but Africa&#8230;<br />
<img src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/map-2.jpeg" alt="" title="map-2" width="441" height="265" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1515" border="1" /></p>
<p>You can take things even further, by dividing the amount of links by (for example) the spent marketing budget in certain countries, population, or any other data. </p>
<p>The map below shows the link profile of the earlier mentioned African News website, but with the amount of links per country weighed against the amount of <a href="http://www.internetworldstats.com/list4.htm">internet users</a> in that country.</p>
<p><img src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/map-3.jpg" alt="" title="map-3" width="441" height="238" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1520" border="1" /></p>
<p>As you can see, there&#8217;s quite a lot you can do with link data and a map of the world, besides &#8216;just creating pretty maps&#8217;. While creating a World Link Map may not be very useful for most SMB websites, link visualizations like this may reveal very interesting overviews for large and/ or international websites. </p>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/creating-link-maps/">How to Create World Link Maps With Majestic SEO &#038; Google Spreadsheets</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


<p>Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://wiep.net/link-building-tools/majestic-seo/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Majestic SEO'>Majestic SEO</a> <small><br>Tool name: Majestic SEO Company behind the tool: Majestic 12 Type of...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://wiep.net/link-building-tools/majestic-seo-free/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Majestic SEO Free Tools'>Majestic SEO Free Tools</a> <small><br>Tool name: Majestic SEO Tools Company behind the tool: Majestic 12 Type...</small></li>
</ol></p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>19</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Link Building is All About Answering One Question</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-question/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-question/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2010 08:09:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=1241</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When it comes to link building, people tend to overestimate and over-analyze the entire process. Although the dozens of link building tools out there definitely can be useful, and many advanced factors can come into play, the essence of link building all comes down to answering one single question; Why? Image via Jody Miller Yes, [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-question/">Link Building is All About Answering One Question</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>When it comes to link building, people tend to overestimate and over-analyze the entire process. Although the dozens of link building tools out there definitely can be useful, and <a href="http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=3806">many advanced factors can come into play</a>, the essence of link building all comes down to answering one single question;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1409" title="why" src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/why.jpg" alt="" width="501" height="266" /><br />
<em>Why? Image via <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jodymiller/">Jody Miller</a></em></p>
<p>Yes, it&#8217;s that simple. If you can answer the question &#8216;<strong>Why should I link to your website?</strong>&#8216; without hesitation, you&#8217;re good to go. However, answers like &#8220;because our websites are relevant&#8221; or &#8220;because it&#8217;s relevant for your users&#8221; are <strong>not</strong> good answers. Most links on the web are placed out of emotion, and relevance does not trigger any emotion.</p>
<h2></h2>
<p>Think of all the link requests you have received yourself, and about  which ones you have actually accepted, and why. Think of all the  websites you have linked to yourself over time, and why you have linked  to these sites.</p>
<h2></h2>
<p>There are <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-buildin-principles-of-persuasion-influence/">many good answers possible</a> to this question, but the most common ones are:</p>
<ul>
<li>because I <strong>love</strong> your website/ images/ article/ etc.</li>
<li>because I like <strong>you</strong></li>
<li>because you have offered something in return</li>
<li>because I think I will be missing out on something if I don&#8217;t share your  website with others</li>
</ul>
<h2></h2>
<p>Ask yourself this question before any link request you send out. Before you start creating another link bait concept. Before any brainstorm session you run.</p>
<p>If you can&#8217;t answer this question properly, there are basically three things you can do:</p>
<ul>
<li>proceed nevertheless, and deal with demoralizingly low acceptance rates</li>
<li>offer something in return (content, money, services, etc.) to persuade people</li>
<li>improve your content (or your pitch) in such a way that it <strong>does </strong>answer the question</li>
</ul>
<h2></h2>
<p>Now if more people would ask themselves this question, it would make my inbox a whole lot cleaner&#8230;</p>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-question/">Link Building is All About Answering One Question</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Link Building for Image Rich Websites</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-with-images/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-with-images/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 18:41:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=1242</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Link building can be relatively easy or pretty difficult, depending on the industry, the type of website and the content. One type of website I have always felt is quite easy to promote, is an image rich website. Images tell stories, images trigger emotions and images are usually non-commercial, which means they have everything a [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-with-images/">Link Building for Image Rich Websites</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Link building can be relatively easy or pretty difficult, depending on the industry, the type of website and the content. One type of website I have always felt is quite easy to promote, is an image rich website.</p>
<p>Images tell stories, images trigger emotions and images are usually non-commercial, which means they have everything a link builder needs. With a bunch of great images and the right approach, you can turn your photo-rich website into an image-powered link magnet.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1251" title="images" src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/images.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="300" /><em>Image via <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/krazydad/">Krazydad</a></em></p>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Damage repair</h2>
<p>However, life isn&#8217;t always as good as it should be. Scrapers, copycats, cheapskates and other scum try to use other peoples&#8217; photos for their benefit, without paying for it, or even giving credits to the owner. Especially for Flickr users, photographers and webmasters that paid for their images, this can be pretty frustrating.</p>
<p>Some website try to block others from stealing their images as much as they can, but with tools like <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/tools-plugins/clip-n-save/">Clip &#8216;n Save</a>, this is a near-impossible job. So in stead of doing your utmost to block image theft, how about shifting your focus to use image users for <em>your</em> benefit? After all, positive energy is more likely to lead to positive results.</p>
<h2></h2>
<h3>Find *your* images</h3>
<p>Step one is to all websites that use images you own the rights of. This sounds like a very difficult job, but with reverse search engine <a href="http://www.tineye.com/">Tineye</a>, which searches for similar images in its database of 1.37 billion images, it&#8217;s actually pretty easy. You can use their website or the very useful <a href="http://www.tineye.com/plugin">Tineye plugin</a> to search for images that are exactly or pretty much the same as yours. If you want to check hundreds or thousands of images, you can also use their commercial API.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tineye.com"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1253" title="tineye" src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/tineye.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="183" /></a></p>
<p>For example, a quick search for <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/digg.jpg">this image</a> not only highlighted the same image on <a href="http://nowsourcing.com/2009/04/28/social-media-motivators/">Nowsourcing.com</a> (with a link back to my site), but Tineye also <a href="http://www.tineye.com/search/9da0b727b67ee8bf5eafbc2fc46ef3b471bde307">found</a> the original of the image.</p>
<p>Now if Nowsourcing.com didn&#8217;t have a link pointing back to Wiep.net in the article, I would probably have contacted <a href="http://nowsourcing.com/about/">Brian Wallace</a>, asking him if he would be so kind to link back to the original, since he liked the image so much. It&#8217;s <em>that</em> easy.</p>
<p><strong>Getting links, building relationships</strong><br />
Agreed, lots of websites -mostly scrapers, forums or cheapskates- that use your images will probably not link back to you. However, it&#8217;s not about the websites that won&#8217;t link back to you, it&#8217;s about the ones that <em>will</em>.</p>
<p>Your moment of contact could be the start of a new and good relationship &#8211; they have used your image once, so they might be interested in using more of your images in the future. Which they can, obviously, in exchange for one or more juicy links. Or money, if you prefer the offline currency.</p>
<p>Tineye is also great to check your stock photos, by the way. If you had known that <a href="http://www.tineye.com/search/16c600474a8ac529354f847ca5ecf22a25def21d">this lady works for 153 different websites</a>, you probably wouldn&#8217;t have hired her for your customer support&#8230;</p>
<h2></h2>
<h3>Find hotlinkers</h3>
<p>Tineye does not find all images, so you need a second step in your damage repair process. You can find out who is hotlinking your images in your logfiles, but Yahoo! (unlike most other search engines) <a rel="nofollow" href="https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwiep.net%2Ftalk%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2008%2F12%2Fdigg.jpg&amp;bwm=i&amp;bwmo=d">shows</a> which websites link to your images, too.</p>
<p><strong>Contact the important ones</strong><br />
After you have compiled a large list with websites that hotlink your images, it&#8217;s best to start with filtering out the most important websites. Create a shortlist with authority and/ or highly relevant websites that use your images, and contact them directly. The &#8216;getting links, building relationships&#8217; works here as well.</p>
<p><strong>Watermark the scrapers &amp; forums</strong><br />
You can contact as many scrapers, sploggers and forums as you want, but none of them will link to you. This means that we&#8217;ll have to work on a different solution for these owners of automated or UGC websites; <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">shooting them in the kneecap</span> using watermarks. In most cases, a watermark is the closest you will get to getting a link from these types of websites.</p>
<p>There are several ways you can add a watermark to hotlinked images, for example <a href="http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/watermark-images-php">with php</a> or with a <a href="http://beesbuzz.biz/code/web/watermarking_hotlinked_images.php">cgi script</a>. You can make the watermark as large as you want, or you can even go as far as <a href="http://www.davidairey.com/stop-image-theft-hotlinking-htaccess/">replacing your images by another image</a>. This is completely up to you, but I usually prefer a smaller, but very clear logo plus URL.</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Make linking easier</h2>
<p>Now that you have managed to get some links from people that were already using your images, it&#8217;s time to ditch most of the booby traps and other anti-copy protection on your website. These &#8216;solutions&#8217; are usually bothering your regular users, and have a limited efficiency. If someone <em>really</em> wants to use one of your images, he or she will get it, eventually. </p>
<h2></h2>
<h3>Clear guidelines</h3>
<p>One of the most important things is to have clear guidelines, that easily informs people on how they can use your images. It depends on your website what the preferred method of displaying these guidelines is, but it is usually the more prominent, the better. </p>
<p>Make sure that your guidelines and/ or the photos pages also contain the proper <a href="http://creativecommons.org">creative commons information</a>. This ensures that your somewhat web-savvy visitors will know how they should treat your images.</p>
<h2></h2>
<h3>Embed code</h3>
<p>If you own the rights of your images, you can also choose to take &#8216;make linking easier&#8217; one step further, by providing an easy embed code to visitors that want to use your photos. You can display this code on every page, or just <a href="http://www.funscripts.net/javascript-widgets/?">when someone right-clicks</a> on one of your images. Services like <a href="http://www.tynt.com/">Tynt</a> can be very useful too, but unfortunately most of these only work for text, and not for images.</p>
<p><img src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/image-copy1.jpg" alt="" title="image-copy" width="500" height="245" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1265" /></p>
<p>Please note that providing an embed code may conflict with the watermarks you&#8217;ve set up earlier. Either inform your users that a small watermark will be added to the photo, or, preferably, host your images on one or more subdomains too. This way, you can put the image location on the subdomain in the embed code, while leaving your &#8216;regular&#8217; photos where they already were. Allowing the subdomain images to be hotlinked, but disallowing it for the regular images, would allow both solutions to coexist.</p>
<p>Again, not a single solution is completely water proof, but when it comes to images, there will never be one.</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Target image search engine users</h2>
<p>There is one type of visitor you probably want to treat differently, which is the visitor who came in via an image search engine. If someone found your website via images.google.com, bing.com/images, or any other search engine, he or she is more than likely to be interested in your images only. Therefore, treating him or her accordingly is not more than logical.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mauriziopetrone.com">Maurizio Petrone</a> wrote a great article about <a href="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/seo-sem/link-building-secrets/maurizio-petrone.php">how to treat image search engine referrers</a> for PolePositionMarketing a while back, so in stead of regurgitating his article, I&#8217;d just advise you to read his post. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/seo-sem/link-building-secrets/maurizio-petrone.php"><img alt="" src="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/seo-sem/link-building-secrets/images/maurizio4-cloakedlandingb.jpg" title="image search engines" class="alignnone" border="0" width="450" height="330" /></a></p>
<p>Again, it&#8217;s completely up to you how aggressively you want to combat image theft. Try to find your personal sweet spot between user experience, image protection and getting links, and set up your measures accordingly.</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2>To conclude</h2>
<p>Like I have said many times in this article, it&#8217;s near impossible to completely block others from using (read: stealing) your images. However, by taking the right precautions, you can ensure that your website will receive as much link juice from your images as possible. </p>
<p>Obviously, there are many more ways to promote a website that contains lots of beautiful images. However, it depends on your type of website if a photo contest, submitting your website to image related directories, using galleries, or providing photography/ Photoshop/ etc. tips is the right fit for you. A little bit of creativity will get you pretty far, though ;)</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Two great <a href="http://seo2.0.onreact.com/image-seo-for-photographers-and-other-visual-artists">additional</a> <a href="http://explicitly.me/social-media-content-copyrights">resources</a> from the comments. Who said blog commenting can&#8217;t get you links? :)</p>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-with-images/">Link Building for Image Rich Websites</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


<p>Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-question/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Link Building is All About Answering One Question'>Link Building is All About Answering One Question</a> <small><br>When it comes to link building, people tend to overestimate and over-analyze...</small></li>
</ol></p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Link Building this Month (03.2010)</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-this-month-03-2010/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-this-month-03-2010/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:20:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=1234</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Compared to last month, it&#8217;s been relatively quiet in terms of link building articles. I guess lots of people were just too busy, crafting their April Fools jokes in an attempt to get some extra links :) A must-read for any SEO is Eric Enge&#8217;s interview with Matt Cutts. He confirms a lot of things [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-this-month-03-2010/">Link Building this Month (03.2010)</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Compared to <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building-week/link-building-this-month-02-2010/">last month</a>, it&#8217;s been relatively quiet in terms of link building articles. I guess lots of people were just too busy, crafting their April Fools jokes in an attempt to get some extra links :)</p>
<p>A must-read for any SEO is <a href="http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml">Eric Enge&#8217;s interview with Matt Cutts</a>. He confirms a lot of things most people already assumed, but you can get even more info out of the interview when you try to read between the lines.</p>
<p>As of now, Steve Herrmann is my favorite BBC editor. He published the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2010/03/bbc_news_linking_policy.html">BBC&#8217;s new link policy</a>, which is -in my opinion- an excellent shift forward, as lots of news websites seem to have difficulties linking to their sources. Combine news websites that are not afraid to link out with a <a href="http://thefuturebuzz.com/2010/03/08/web-marketing-pr-strategy/">solid PR strategy</a> and the ability to <a href="http://www.techipedia.com/2010/influencer-attention/">get an influencer&#8217;s attention</a>, and you&#8217;ll definitely be successful.</p>
<h2></h2>
<p>And also:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.best-seo-blog.com/2010/03/02/the-basic-link-builders-practice-guide/">The basic link builder’s practice guide</a> &#8211; Michael Martinez</li>
<li><a href="http://searchengineland.com/5-reasons-to-make-sure-youre-deep-linking-37740">5 Reasons to make sure you’re deep linking</a> &#8211; Julie Joyce</li>
<li><a href="http://searchengineland.com/seven-deadly-link-sins-38905">Seven deadly link sins</a> &#8211; Debra Mastaler</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkLFlaWxgJA">What are some effective techniques for building links?</a> (video) &#8211; Matt Cutts</li>
</ul>
<h2></h2>
<p>And a few link building presentations:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://seoroi.com/link-building/guest-post-links-the-difference-is-repeatability/">Guest post links: The difference is repeatability</a> &#8211; Gab Goldenberg</li>
<li><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/strategic-link-building-how-to-productize-link-acquisition-and-dominate-your-niche">How to productize link acquisition and dominate your niche</a> &#8211; Rand Fishkin</li>
<li><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-magnets-a-new-paradigm-in-link-acquisition">Link magnets: a new paradigm in link acquisition</a> &#8211; Rand Fishkin</li>
</ul>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-this-month-03-2010/">Link Building this Month (03.2010)</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


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		<title>What if link requests were honest?</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/honest-link-requests/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/honest-link-requests/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:00:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=1184</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Everybody who owns a website gets them, and usually several a week: link requests. Especially when your site jumps to a PageRank of 5 or higher, all kinds of webmasters suddenly seem to feel that their website is related to yours. And since they are, why not swap links, right? Over the years, I must [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/honest-link-requests/">What if link requests were honest?</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Everybody who owns a website gets them, and usually several a week: link requests. Especially when your site jumps to a PageRank of 5 or higher, all kinds of webmasters suddenly seem to feel that their website is related to yours. And since they are, why not swap links, right?</p>
<p>Over the years, I must have received thousands of <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-request-email-template/">link requests emails</a>, but I have sent out quite a few myself as well. This has learned me to understand the language of link requests, because some are actually written in a secret language with lots of hidden messages. I have translated an email for everybody who doesn&#8217;t speak this language, so you can see what *<strong>most</strong>* link builders actually mean.</p>
<p>This is a real life (slightly modified) example:</p>
<blockquote><p>Hi Webmaster,</p>
<p>I have a web site, http://www.a-website-with-lots-of-hyphens.com and have spent a lot of time and effort to ensure my visitors gain the maximum benefit from their visit, and from what I have to offer. As our web sites are closely related and our products do not compete, I feel the exchanging of links would be a mutually beneficial arrangement. If you are interested for Link Exchange so please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience. I will also add your site within 6 hours of your positive reply.</p>
<p>Here is my linking details :-</p>
<p>Title: Buy cheap blue widgets online<br />
URL: http://www.a-website-with-lots-of-hyphens.com<br />
Description: Cheap blue widgets, high quality red widgets, exclusive ivory widgets and fluffy pink widgets. Free worldwide shipping on orders over $250.</p>
<p>Or you can simply use the following Linking code:</p>
<p><code> <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Helvetica, Tahoma;">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.a-website-with-lots-of-hyphens.com"&gt; Buy cheap blue widgets online&lt;/a&gt; Cheap blue widgets, high quality red widgets, exclusive ivory widgets and fluffy pink widgets. Free worldwide shipping on orders over $250.&lt;/p&gt;</span></code></p>
<p>I will add your link at here :<br />
http://www.website1.com/web-development-resources.html (pr1)<br />
http://www.website2.org/website-development-services-india.html (pr3!)</p>
<p>http://www.web-site-4.com/Resources.html</p>
<p>http://subdomain.website3.com/Computers_Communications_And_Electronics/Internet/</p>
<p>Your link will be added on my site within 6 hours. So if you are interested for link exchange with my site please let me know and we can do a better work for our sites.</p>
<p>Please forward me your linking details along with confirmation where my link have been added by you.<br />
Hoping an early and positive response from your side.</p>
<p>Have a nice day ahead :)</p>
<p>Bests Regards<br />
webmaster.anna@gmail.com<em><br />
</em></p></blockquote>
<p>But this is what &#8216;webmaster Anna&#8217; actually means:</p>
<blockquote><p>Hi there,</p>
<p>I was too lazy to find out what your name actually is, but webmaster is probably fine, right?</p>
<p>I have a web site, http://www.a-website-with-lots-of-hyphens.com and have spent a lot of time trying to find short cuts to make money with it. I am quite lazy and want to make loads of cash while I stay in my bed as long as possible. I believe that a link on your website to mine will improve my search engine rankings, so I feel the exchanging of links would be a good arrangement for me in particular. I love starting sentences with &#8216;I&#8217; (after all, it is all about me), and my grammar is pretty bad. I pretend to add your site within 6 hours of your positive reply, so please drop all your other work and reply to me asap. Capice?</p>
<p>Here are my linking details :</p>
<p>Title: Buy cheap blue widgets online (Yes, this is my company name. Pinky swear.)<br />
URL: http://www.a-website-with-lots-of-hyphens.com<br />
Description: A bunch of keywords here. Additional sentence to camouflage all the keywords.</p>
<p>And since I really want you to use the exact keywords I provided as the anchor text, here is the info in html:</p>
<p><code> <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Helvetica, Tahoma;">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.a-website-with-lots-of-hyphens.com"&gt; Buy cheap blue widgets online&lt;/a&gt; Buy cheap blue widgets online A bunch of keywords here. Additional sentence to camouflage all the keywords.&lt;/p&gt;</span></code></p>
<p>I will add your link at here :<br />
http://www.very-crappy-website.com/irrelevant-resources.html (PR1)<br />
http://www.3-way-linking-site.org/link-page-391.php (PR3 &#8211; w00t!)</p>
<p>http://www.trapezoidal-linking-matriflux.com/Resources.html</p>
<p>http://even.more-crap.com/Free_Links_For_All/ (notice how I have stopped mentioning PR?)</p>
<p>Your link will be added on my site within 6 hours. My script will take care of it, and it will also take care of deleting two of your four links in about a week. The other two links will be on penalized pages with a noindex, nofollow meta tag. So if you are interested in exchanging links, please let me know and I will screw you over.</p>
<p>Please forward me your linking details, along with confirmation where my link has been added by you. I need to show this to my boss to collect my bonus.<br />
Hoping for an early and positive response from your side. I&#8217;ll sign you up for 23 newsletters you won&#8217;t be able to unsubscribe from if you ignore all three of my messages.</p>
<p>Have a nice day ahead. With an average conversion rate of nearly .02%, I&#8217;m sure I will :)</p>
<p>Best regards,</p>
<p>webmaster.anna@gmail.com<br />
(My name is actually Roger, but I think you&#8217;re more likely to accept my offer when I call myself Anna. Yes, I will literally do anything for links.)</p></blockquote>
<p>Yes, the language of some link requests can be quite deceiving. Make sure you write yours in plain English.</p>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/honest-link-requests/">What if link requests were honest?</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


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		<title>Need More Proof that Links are (Still) Important?</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/links-kick-butt/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/links-kick-butt/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:47:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=973</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Every two years, SEOmoz ask dozens of search marketing professionals to share their opinions on several (possible) search engine ranking influencing factors, and they&#8217;ve just released this years edition. It&#8217;s funny to see that, although I hear and read about &#8216;links getting devalued as a search engine ranking influencing metric&#8217; more often, 80% of the [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/links-kick-butt/">Need More Proof that Links are (Still) Important?</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Every two years, SEOmoz ask dozens of search marketing professionals to share their opinions on several (possible) search engine ranking influencing factors, and they&#8217;ve just released <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors">this years edition</a>. It&#8217;s funny to see that, although I hear and read about &#8216;links getting devalued as a search engine ranking influencing metric&#8217; more often, 80% of the top 5 factors (according to the <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#contributors">72 contributors</a>) are still link related.</p>
<p>The top 5 ranking factors:</p>
<p>1. Keyword focused anchor text from external links (73%)<br />
2. External link popularity (quantity/quality of external links) (71%)<br />
3. Diversity of link sources (links from many unique root domains) (67%)<br />
4. Keyword use anywhere in the title tag (66%)<br />
5. Trustworthiness of the domain based on link distance from trusted domains (e.g. TrustRank, domain mozTrust, etc.) (66%)</p>
<h2></h2>
<p>Additionally, Google (unintentionally) underlined the outcome of SEOmoz&#8217; research, and the importance of links. About two weeks ago, they decided to <span><a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/help-test-some-next-generation.html">give the world</a> a preview of what it calls its &#8220;next-generation infrastructure&#8221;, with the code name <a href="http://www2.sandbox.google.com/">Caffeine</a>. <em>Within two weeks</em>, this page is ranking at <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/caffeine.jpg">#3 for &#8216;caffeine&#8217;</a>, without even mentioning it anywhere on the page. Although Google tried to make sure that the effectiveness of <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-bombing-still-works-even-unintentionally/">link bombing</a> would decrease, this again shows the importance of external anchor text and page content of linking pages. Even in <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www2.sandbox.google.com/#hl=en&amp;source=hp&amp;q=caffeine&amp;aq=f&amp;aqi=g10&amp;oq=&amp;fp=7b823cb19394de08">Caffeine</a>.</span></p>
<p><span>[Edit 27/08: I just noticed that <a href="http://twitter.com/davenaylor">DaveN</a> <a href="http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-its-really-about-the-backlinks.html">covered this as well</a>. Great minds... :) ]<br />
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<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/links-kick-butt/">Need More Proof that Links are (Still) Important?</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


<p>Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://wiep.net/talk/diy-link-building/resource-lists/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Creating Resource Lists for an Improved User Experience, Content Ideas and Links'>Creating Resource Lists for an Improved User Experience, Content Ideas and Links</a> <small><br>Great content is the solid foundation of a good website, a positive...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://wiep.net/talk/diy-link-building/easy-links-send-a-thank-you-note/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Easy Links: Send A Thank You Note'>Easy Links: Send A Thank You Note</a> <small><br>Just recently, I used crowdSPRING&#8216;s creative community for designing the logo of...</small></li>
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		<title>10 Questions to Ask a New Link Marketing Client</title>
		<link>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/10-link-building-questions/</link>
		<comments>http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/10-link-building-questions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:16:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Wiep</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wiep.net/?p=904</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yes, I know that I have already explained where you can start your link building campaign, but, actually, a link building campaign begins even before you start analyzing the current situation, and far before you start building new links. It starts with asking the right questions. In this post, I&#8217;ll mention a few questions that [...]<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/10-link-building-questions/">10 Questions to Ask a New Link Marketing Client</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yes, I know that I have already explained <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/where-do-you-start-your-link-marketing-campaign/">where you can start your link building campaign</a>, but, actually, a link building campaign begins even before you start analyzing the current situation, and far before you start building new links. It starts with asking the right questions.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-926" title="questions" src="http://wiep.net/talk/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/questions.jpg" alt="questions" width="518" height="183" /></p>
<p>In this post, I&#8217;ll mention a few questions that you could ask your new link building client, but, in the case that you&#8217;re not working for a client, you could be asking them to your boss or maybe even to yourself as well.</p>
<p>Some of these questions should also be asked earlier in the sales process, for example before or during a sales pitch, but not every link marketer is in the situation that he or she is involved in this sales process from start till end.</p>
<h2>What do you know about link marketing? What does your boss know about link marketing?</h2>
<p>Starting with this question will make it a lot easier for you to keep your client happy. If he doesn&#8217;t know a lot about SEO and/ or link marketing yet, you can try to increase his level of knowledge, while you work for him. For example, when you&#8217;re working for someone who&#8217;s new to link building, reporting that &#8216;you&#8217;ve managed to get 2 highly relevant, editorial .edu links in just a few hours of work&#8217;, might not be such a good idea. Try to explain the value of links first, and/ or start your reporting with results that he can fully understand.</p>
<p>Also, when your contact person has to report to his superior, it&#8217;s also useful to get an idea of what the knowledge level of that manager is. That way, you can provide the right information to your contact person, to keep his boss happy as well. Using an approach like this usually results in a very happy contact person (you&#8217;re &#8216;helping him out&#8217; as well), who&#8217;s willing to fight for you during meetings with his boss.</p>
<h2>Did you hire an SEO or link building company in the past, or have you built links yourself?</h2>
<p>Asking a question like this might give you an indication of what kind of strategies have been used in the past. For example, if your new client hired an SEO agency in the past, that mainly used services like TLA, ReviewMe and PPP to get new links, you know that you have to clean up first, before you can start building new links.</p>
<p>While tools like <a href="http://www.majesticseo.com">MajesticSEO</a> also have the ability to show you what links were placed to a specific web page in the past, simply asking the client what strategies were used previously can give you just as much information.</p>
<h2>Can you tell more about your company, i.e. the company philosophy, office locations, etc.?</h2>
<p>Link building opportunities are <a href="http://www.thinkseer.com/blog/how-being-pet-friendly-became-a-link-building-opportunity/2009/05/05/">everywhere</a>. Office locations are a good start for localized link building, a list of important employees might help you to discover (linkless) press mentions, and the company philosophy may provide different link building angles as well.</p>
<p>Ask your client to provide as much information about the company and the people that work there as possible, including  (old) brochures and other documentation. Filter out whatever you feel is necessary or useful, and write that down for future use.</p>
<h2>What are the USPs of your product(s) or service(s)?</h2>
<p>Just like with the company, you also need to know what is unique about the products your client is trying to sell. Unique angles lead to links. Are their products environmentally friendly? Aim at eco blogs &amp; websites. Is your client the cheapest in the industry? Try to obtain links from price comparison websites, or focus on websites that offer money saving tips, just to name a few.</p>
<p>If your client is not able to tell you their USP, you&#8217;ll probably have a hard time promoting the website. No USP usually means mediocrity, and mediocrity means low link building conversion rates, because the website does not add a lot of extra value. Adding exceptional content to your client&#8217;s website will probably be your only option.</p>
<h2>Can you name 5 of your biggest competitors? Can you explain why these companies are big competitors?</h2>
<p>Asking this question can give you more insights in the knowledge level of your contact person (&#8220;yes, there is a difference between online and offline competition&#8221;), but can also be the jump start of your competitor analysis.</p>
<p>Also, adding &#8216;why are this your most important competitors&#8217;, may reveal some details about these competitors and their USPs as well. Some companies seem to know their competitors better than they know their own company, so asking this question might be very useful.</p>
<h2>Do you have a LinkedIn profile, and -if so- can you accept me as a connection?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/wiepknol">LinkedIn profiles</a>, and some other <a href="http://twitter.com/wiep">social network profiles</a> as well, are excellent to discover interesting connections that your new client may have.</p>
<p>First, you can try to see which journalists, bloggers, reporters or other interesting webmasters are directly connected to your contact person. Advise your client on how to use this network optimally, by giving him clear directions. Don&#8217;t just say “try to get links from these places”, but use him as one of your own <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-developers/">link developers</a>.</p>
<p>You can also try to find interesting connections the other way around. Determine which people are highly influential in your client&#8217;s industry, and find out if your client is connected to these influencers, or which of your client&#8217;s connections are.</p>
<h2>Are you currently sponsoring any events, charities or whatsoever?</h2>
<p>Asking this question (and getting &#8216;yes&#8217; as an answer) can lead you to some low hanging fruit. High quality, very low hanging fruit. Lots of charities and events list their sponsors on their website, but not a lot do this in an optimal way. Some only mention contributing companies, others link using third party scripts and some use heavily unoptimized image links. Spending some time optimizing these relationships (in a non-spammy way, of course) is usually well worth it.</p>
<h2>What kind of private data do you have?</h2>
<p>I&#8217;m not talking about personal private data here, but lots of companies have a huge amount of market research information, general client data, or other facts and numbers that are perfectly suitable for creating linkbait-type of content. Try to find out what kind of data your client has. Most companies don&#8217;t even realize the value of the information they have, or what they could do with it.</p>
<p>Now comes the difficult part: when you have discovered some data, studies, or other information that you could use to attract more links, it&#8217;s time to convince the client why making his precious, valuable information accessible to the public (including competitors) is a <em>good </em>thing. Some clients will understand this straight away, but you might have a hard time convincing others.</p>
<h2>Do you have any interns or students working at your company?</h2>
<p>Interns and students not only can be an access point to a .edu domain, but can be used to create awesome, linkable content during their internship as well. Mix both, and you have the ability to publish links to awesome content on a .edu domain :)</p>
<h2>What are your offline marketing plans for the next season?</h2>
<p>Integrating online and offline marketing efforts can be highly effective. Instead of 1+1=2, it could even be 1+1=3, depending on the campaign and execution.  However, even in 2009, not a lot of companies seem to realize this.</p>
<p>If your client is planning on launching a creative offline advertising campaign, you&#8217;d want to know, because failing to create a related linkbait campaign (or optimizing the online part of the campaign) would be a missed opportunity.</p>
<h2></h2>
<p>Of course, there are tons of other questions that you could ask a new (or existing) client. <strong>Do you have any other questions to add to this list, that you could ask a client?</strong></p>
<p><br/><br/>This post, <a href="http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/10-link-building-questions/">10 Questions to Ask a New Link Marketing Client</a>, was published on Wiep's <a href="http://wiep.net">link building blog</a>. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.</p>


<p>Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://wiep.net/client-requirements/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Client Requirements'>Client Requirements</a> <small><br>I believe taking on a new client is like hiring a new...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://wiep.net/services/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Services'>Services</a> <small><br>Link marketing is much more than directory submissions, which is why I...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-question/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Link Building is All About Answering One Question'>Link Building is All About Answering One Question</a> <small><br>When it comes to link building, people tend to overestimate and over-analyze...</small></li>
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