For some reason, lots of people from the search engine optimization industry have always associated link building with the country India. According to Google, all these people are right…

This week, during the Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques session at the SMX in London, I had the opportunity to share a panel with Lyndon Antcliff, Tom Critchlow and Jay Young. It turned out to be an awesome session.

Overview of the SMX, by Mark Bovenkerk, MarkBovenkerk.nl

Lyndon kicked it off with a breakdown of his famous 13-year-old-hooker-bait and explained which psychological factors the story contained. He made it perfectly clear that his story wasn’t just a lucky shot, but that every aspect of it was a well thought through. His lemon-colored Powerpoint has to be one of the best ones I’ve seen during the SMX.

Up next was Will Tom Critchlow, who showed a loophole in the (British?) tax system, that lets you buy links on charity websites tax free. Of course, you shouldn’t buy them for the link, but to support the charity. He also discussed how expired pages, abandoned websites and even bankruptcies can be (or lead you to) possible link targets. He closed off with a few examples of how niche forums (did you know there are even forums for lemon juice fanatics?) can be awesome sources to pick up linkbait ideas.

After Tom, it was my turn to do some stuttering on stage. The attendees didn’t start throwing lemons at me, so I guess I did an acceptable job for a first timer. I’ve included my presentation below. I know watching just a few sheets isn’t the same as attending the session, but it’s the best I can do :)

Jay Young closed it off with a presentation about negotioting links and other useful tips. His points that intensifying your link building efforts during seasonable peaks (to look more natural) and to adjust your anchor text every now and then are worth highlighting.

After these four sessions, Rob unleashed a discussion about paid links. Bottom line of this discussion: buying links is something that you should do with care and variation, and you should be aware of the risks.

The SMX has been pretty interesting (and LondonSEO was excellent as well), so I’m already looking forward to next year’s edition.

Last week, I received an email of an Indian link development company, pitching their services. Normally, these emails end up in my deleted items without reading, but for some reason this email caught my attention. Not that I am interested in outsourcing link development campaigns, but the formatting of the email was pretty unusual (emphasis mine, but original formatting):

Dear Sir \ Madam,

We are a Delhi-NCR, India based, and leading web services company with main competency in link building, working as an outsourced vendor for many reputed SEO agency based in USA, UK, Canada and Australia.

We have a dedicated team of 66 professionals to serve you. We build the natural quality and theme based links as one-way or reciprocals links with our manual process.

We always adopt the ETHICAL LINK building process/White hat technique; also follow the guidelines of Google and major search engine for SEO result.

We strictly work on performance basis and can assure you of getting quality links for your site as well. Our links building service will help to increase the link popularity of your website.

We follow a Agency Client Oriented Approach in our process, as sign-up the NDAs( Non-Disclosure Agreement), effective online project management tracking tools, timely and smooth communication etc.

We are looking forward starting a long and healthy business relationship with you.

We will be happy to AMAZE you with our work. I will really appreciate you please let me know your link building requirement.

Kind Regards,

******

While hiring expensive experts can definitely be worth it in some occasions (if you happen to hire the right one, of course), you don’t need to hire a link builder to get more links. Every company -even yours- has employees that can increase your link popularity pretty easily, some even on a weekly or daily basis. Some of these links might only bring in a couple of visitors, but others can be pretty valuable. All these links combined, however, can result in a pretty natural looking and SERPs boosting link profile.

To show you how many link developers you might already have, I’ve listed just a few employees of the average (small to mid-size) company below.

The Sales/ Account Manager

Besides going out for several “business” lunches every week, account and/ or sales managers serve another goal: they can build links for you. They talk to a lot of (potential) customers and have tons of useful connections.

Not only may your account manager know some potential link targets (scanning their LinkedIn connections every now and then certainly is an option), but they might be able to get some links from existing clients as well. Happy clients, for example, might be willing to add a testimonial, a product or service review, or a simple partner link to their website.

The Purchasing Division

This one is similar to the previous one, but just the other way around. Lots of suppliers -especially the ones you’ve already got long relationships with- might be willing to link to you, as one of their (top) clients. Offering to write a testimonial (which contains a link to your site, of course) can work like charm as well.

This one is even easier if you happen to be a (somewhat) popular or well-known company. In this case, your suppliers will be more than happy to show that they’ve been doing business with a big brand like yours.

The Product Specialist

Your product specialists are probably the most well known people from your company (except for perhaps your CEO) within your industry, because they (hopefully) attend conferences, training sessions or contests on a regular basis. Exploit this stardom by turning these specialists into hard core link developers.

Guest posts, speaking gigs or participations in research are not only a great opportunity to show others that your company has knowledgeable specialists, but they’re also excellent as a part of your link building strategy. Product specialist are usually able to get links from above-average websites and they know their way in your industry online.

Marketing & PR

This one’s a no-brainer, because the folks from Marketing and Public Relations are probably responsible for the largest part of your external communication. Unfortunately, they usually forget to improve the company’s link popularity.

Advertising, press releases, sponsoring, industry website listings and lots of other opportunities that might contain links are within their reach. I’m not only talking about direct, SERP boosting links, but also about other, nofollowed options (such as sponsored reviews, for example), that might result in extra links indirectly.

Talk to this department on a very regular basis for maximum effect.

Human Resources

The lady from human resources not only talks with dozens of potential new co-workers every week, but she probably also puts several job related advertisements online on a regular basis. While some of these ads do not allow links and others only allow nofollowed links, others can be direct links that send in targeted traffic.

Although ads for specific jobs usually have a temporary character, links to your overall vacancies page can be permanent ones, that not only might bring in new employees, but link juice as well.

The Intern

Interns are much more than low (or un-)paid employees that are positioned at the bottom of the coffee-getting-tree. Interns have the ability to get you some fresh and juice (.edu) links.

Lots of universities publish reports, studies or other pieces of interesting information -such as intern reports- on their websites. This is why offering a challenging internship assignment to your intern sure is a good idea, as is giving them the right guidance. Oh, and if you’re lucky, your new student might be active for the school newspaper and a student association as well.

IT

I just can’t say this too often: internal links rock, but get forgotten way too often. A simple sitemap, the website’s navigation, getting in-content links or converting 302s into much better 301s; the IT department is your friend for all internal linking issues.

Don’t just send your IT guy (or gal) an email when something’s wrong, but explain why internal links are important (and which ones), and they might do it the right way in the future. I said might…

The CEO

The CEO (or CFO, CMO or any other O) of the company is the public face of the company as well, in most cases. These guys, such as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, also get the most requests for interviews, publications and on- or offline appearances.

In stead of rejecting nearly 99% of these requests, ask your CEO to let these requests run through you as well. Pick out the most interesting ones (link juice and potential traffic wize, of course) and explain to your boss how and where he should try to get some links in.

The Rest

These aren’t the only ones within your company that can build links for you. The boss’ secretary might be a moderator at a puppy forum as well, while the person sitting next to you could just as easily be webmaster of a local website. Ask around to see what everybody’s doing online and look for interesting connections.

Also, online profile links might be useful additions to your link profile as well. Don’t stop at Facebook, Twitter, Digg or your niche social media platform, but encourage your colleagues to optimize their LinkedIn profile as well.

The Possible Dangers…

While all of the employees listed above together might work as rocket fuel for your link popularity, they can just as easily take your entire link profile down. This is why proper guidance is so important. Work together with your “link developers” as a team, in stead of letting them do the work while you sit back and relax.

Also, I’m not saying that you don’t need professional link building services and/ or advice. You might be able to live without it, but -especially if you happen to be in a competitive niche- you just might need that extra link-building-specialist-oompf to reach those top spots.

Google’s Maihle Ohye surprised the staying-at-home-from-SMX-East-’ers earlier this week (in a good way) by announcing a series on links on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. She started with discussing internal link architecture, followed by outbound links and last but not least a post about inbound links. It’s good to see a few detailed posts from Google about this subject and it’s fun trying to read through the lines. So, what can these three posts teach you about how Google might think about links?

Internal linking:

When Google says that ‘breadcrumbs help users to understand where they are‘ in a post about links, it means that Google really wants you to implement breadcrumbs to help them index and rank your site properly. Luckily, any good internal link structure includes breadcrumbs, because of their Freedom Anchor Text.

Anchor Text mattered a lot yesterday, it matters a lot today and it will matter a lot in the future. While some say that ‘they’ve seen a decrease in the importance of anchor text’, when Google repeatedly says that ‘descriptive anchor text is important‘, they mean it.

Linking out:

‘Thoughtful outbound links can help your credibility.‘ Not only is this true for visitors, but I also believe that linking out to reputable sources on a regular basis is way better than trying to do your utmost to ‘prevent PageRank leaks’. And I know I’m not the only one.

Inbound links:

Ok, this last post was quite a bit disappointing. While the subject (links) was apparently worth it to spend an entire week on, Maile Ohye did her best to let the readers think that inbound links aren’t that important. The line ‘Have other relevant sites link to you‘ disappeared from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines earlier this month, so it looks like they’re covering up the small amount of information they’ve shared on this subject.

Although there are lots of different link building strategies that are way more effective, lots of people still use good old link requests to get new backlinks. This varies from sending out an occasional email to spamming the hell out of nearly anything online with some kind of link building software. The problem with link requests is that over 90% of these unsolicited emails get deleted, ignored or end up in a spam filter. This, however, absolutely isn’t necessary.

Sending out a link request isn’t different from sending out a press release. You want someone else to cover your story (or website), both journalists and webmasters receive several requests a day (including lots of irrelevant ones) and you’re trying to get attention for free. If you’ve read a thing or two about press releases, you’ve probably read that a good press release answers a few important questions;

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• Why?

If you don’t manage to answer these questions in your link request, your message will probably end up in the garbage bin, together with the thousands of other link soliciting emails.

Who?

While traditional press releases should start with answering the ‘What?’ question, I prefer that link requests answer ‘Who?’ first, in most cases. If you send me an email, and I don’t know who you are and am not expecting an email, you’ll have to introduce yourself first. Tell me who you are, and I might continue reading.

Don’t: Tell me that your name is Kelly and that I can reach you at cheapseoservices78@gmail.com.
Do: Show me where I might know you from (company name, URL, portfolio, etc.).

What?

Let’s move on, now that you’ve introduced yourself properly. This is the part where you can explain why you’re emailing me and what you want. Are you just pitching a story, do you want to swap links, do you want to sponsor something in exchange for a link or do you want something else. Don’t leave stuff out, but give me all the info you have.

Don’t: Trying to make me use a specific anchor text by sending me html code is not an option.
Do: Include a short summary of the content you want me to link to.

Where?

Some websites are quite large, so explaining in what section you want your link might be useful. When you’re requesting a link on an older page, make sure to include the URL of that page. The receipient of the email most often wants it quick and easy, or the link request will be discarded. Don’t make him search.

Don’t: Push your luck by listing the homepage as the URL you want a link from.
Do: If you include a specific URL, make sure it is 100% -not 99%- relevant to the URL you want me to link to.

When?

This question is only important with timely content, but I’ll list it nevertheless. When are you planning on releasing this great product? When are you leaving the company you work for? When did your stocks lose 50%? This is mainly interesting for journalists, because if they know a date or something like that, they can use it as content filling (date in the past), or use it for their content planning (date in the future).

Don’t: Tell me that your link request offer is only valid until next Tuesday.
Do: If you’re pitching journalists and don’t have a specific date, make sure to include something like ‘today’, ‘as of now’ or ‘since this week’. This way they’ll know that the content is fresh.

Why?

This is the most important question to answer and this is where most fail as well. The first four questions mostly involve explaining, but this question requires persuasion. Explaining what you want and where you want it sure is important, but only if you can explain why you want it and why it might benefit me as well.

Let’s compare a link request with a regular press release again and try to place yourself in the position of the journalist. You have only one spot left in your local newspaper from Hayden, Colorado. You receive three press releases 5 minutes before you have to hand in your final copy. The first one is a press release of a company that sells garden equipment, proudly stating that they’ve hired a new janitor. The second one is from a marketing agency in Alaska, that offers you a scoop about a new marketing service for crab fishers, but you can only publish it if you use the text they’ve provided at a third party site. The second one is from a local manufacturing company that announces that they have donated a large sum of money to restore the oldest church of Hayden. Which one would you add and why?

Which one to pick is a no-brainer, but the best answer to the question ‘why?’ is a combination of relevance and added value. If your content, link or message is relevant for my visitors and has added value for my website to offer, I will certainly link to you. If your website isn’t relevant, try reading the earlier mentioned post about link building & persuasion or move on to the next target. Almost anything else is just a waste of time.

Don’t: A link back from a PR2 directory page of a Botswana newspaper website does not trick me into linking to your gambling website.
Do: Remember that your sending out a link request, so try explaining why your site might be a good addition, in stead of sending out a sales pitch.

For those who still don’t get my point; this post wasn’t meant as a guideline for how to send out mass link requests, but to show you why lots of link request get deleted, rejected or ignored. In stead of just blindly firing off link spam messages, try to answer the questions above with answers that matter to the receipient of the email as well, and not just to you or your client.