Link Princess

Over in the link building search engine watch forum, a member asked a great question about managing a team of link builders and I was very excited to weigh in. But a couple of forum posts just isn’t enough content to cover all the really important keys to successfully managing a team of inviduals like link builders.

Link builders are, by nature, very different than most people. We tend to enjoy working by ourselves, follow random trails of information and suddenly wondering “how did I get to this site/ page?” Eric Ward has a great article called The Portrait of a Perfect Link Builder that really clued me into the fact that link development is something I need to be focused in. He writes:

As companies realize that content publicity and link building must be a core part of online marketing, rather than just the latest SEO fad, those same companies are faced with the challenge that there’s no consensus or body of research to help them pinpoint the person with the perfect skill set to do that job. Not only that, but the perfect skill set itself is open to great debate. Is link building a technical skill requiring programming or experience similar to on-page content/code optimization? Is link building more related to publicity and public relations, which would indicate the need for a different set of qualifications? And what would those qualifications be? Computer science degree? MBA? MSLS? Member of the PRSA? What about an MBA with a specialty in ecommerce? Can any of them do the job?

So, let’s assume that you have interviewed and hired a group of link builders that fit this description. What should you do next? Here are five keys to managing a team of link builders whether they have prior experience in SEO and link acquisition or not.

1. Train them thoroughly. Putting together a comprehensive overview of link building, what it means, and how to measure success will give your link builders a whole picture approach to link building that is truly invaluable. If you only tell them “this is how you submit to directories,” then you are severely limiting yourself. Tell them about content and how it builds links, social media and how it means more than just dropping links. Tell them about link popularity and visibility. Tell them about strategy, not just tasks.

2. Let them explore. Give your team the ability to learn more on their own. Provide resources that allow them to grow not just in link building, but in SEO in general. Give them the power to test their theories, to participate in forums, to explore a new tactic. Show them how to measure their work and gauge success.

3. Collaborate. Regular team meetings with brainstorm sessions, educational presentations, and group discussions will allow ideas to build themselves out and team members to grow as link builders. It also allows your team’s vision of link building to expand.

4. Keep learning yourself. Just like your team needs to grow, so does their management. Subscribe to forums, regular newsletters, and attend webinars. Pass along the information and invite your team to share the stuff they learn with you.

5. Give regular feedback. Establish what you want to measure/ evaluate and set up regular one-on-one meetings with your team to give them their feedback. Yes, this is a lot of time. If you have 20+ team members, establish mentors within your team. Pick 3-4 of your top most well-rounded link building team members and have them take on a couple of newer team members. Let them perform the evaluations and submit their feedback to you as well. This keeps you in the loop and it gives everyone insight into where they need to improve. Some possible points of evaluation that I listed out in the Search Engine Watch forum could include (and are certainly  not limited to):

- How many submissions can they accomplish in an hour?
- How many submissions are declined due to not looking at the site guidelines?
- How often are they evaluating the quality of the sites that are being submitted to?
- What type of feedback are they giving the team regarding these sites?
- How often are they finding new sites to submit to?
- Are they finding more efficient ways to accomplish tasks?
- How much are they communicating to other team members about what they are seeing in these sites?
- What is the quality of that feedback?
- How quickly did they ramp up on the task?
- Are they training new team members on processes?
- Are they proactively getting more knowledgeable about their piece(s) on their own?
- Can they work with little supervision?
- Is their work returning positive results in both link popularity and keyword visibility?

When all of these pieces are in place, you will be able to establish regular check points and a team that is empowered to grow without constant hand-holding. A final piece of advice: listen to your team. What are they passionate about? Could their passions possibly lend themselves to a particular piece of link building that is yet to be explored? What do they hate about their job or role? What options can you provide them? Listening and then acting on that information will make your team appreciate you even more and allow you all a bit more space to grow and to work together more cohesively.

People in the SEO industry tend to look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them that not only do I solely focus on link building, but I asked for the job. Let me give you a little background.

 I started at Brulant in February of 2006 and was given the task of evaluating our link acquisition process. Within weeks, I was immersed in the world of link building, reading articles from industry experts like Eric Ward among others. The world of link acquisition was bigger and broader than I initially thought and I began to experiment with all types of link building, distinguishing the white hat tactics from the black hat tactics, not that this was an easy task. Long story short, I became hooked.

I’m fascinated by the nature of humans, especially how they act online. I began to explore the concept of why people link to other sites in the first place. Eventually, I started heading up processes and building out customized strategies for clients in a variety of industries. And that brings me to where I am today.

Recently, I had someone ask me “what do you do all day?” The easy answer is “build links.” But that’s easier said than done and there is more to it than just that. So here is a look at a typical day for me:

4:00 am - the alarm starts to go off. I wake up with my head full of tasks that need to be accomplished, topics I need to research, and sites I need to evaluate. Often times, a concept/ idea that started blooming the night before is still on my mind first thing in the morning.

4:30 am - I sit down with a cup of coffee and a good book. I read a variety of things and I am always looking for new ways to connect two seemingly dissimilar things together.

5:30 am - I’m off to work, listening to books like Freakonomics, Cluetrain Manifesto, and Linked - the New Science of Networks.

6:30 am - I arrive at work (I have a slight detour to take my kids to the sitter, hence the long commute), fire up the laptop and begin working.

6:30 - 3:00 pm - This part of my day varies the most. It’s generally full of client meetings, brainstorm sessions, regroups, and reporting analysis. I also spend a good portion of this time executing a lot of our strategies. The big point about this whole chunk of time is that I often have very little time to research new things. This I reserve for evenings. In an average 8 hour work day, I have rougly 2 - 3 hours when I am not in meetings or being pulled into conversations about the status of a project.

3:00 pm - Shut down and head home. Again, I’m usually listening to a book on CD, but sometimes, I drive in silence, brainstorming ideas. I carry a digital voice recorder with me so I don’t forget anything by the time I get home.

4:30 pm - I arrive home and start doing the typical “just got home” stuff: make dinner, do laundry, give the kids a bath, etc.

6:00 pm - Fire up the laptop again, check emails and get in touch with people as necessary.

8:00 pm - Kids go to bed, so I start researching. Generally, when I research I start with one particular topic in mind and I let myself wander online, gauging how I find the sites that I do and what is typically catching my attention. I work on client projects, do research relevant to their vertical, create and edit deliverables, etc.

11:00 pm - I call it a day and go to bed. But not until I lay in bed for a bit, brainstorming just a bit more before falling asleep.

One of my esteemed colleagues (stop blushing, Charles, you know it’s true) has written a great post about the Super Bowl and Search Marketing. I’ve decided to follow his lead and take it another step deeper by asking a poignant question: How does pop culture affect link popularity?

The short answer is that they tend to fuel each other, but not always. The long answer can take on a myriad of factors to explain the chicken or the egg theory, thereby sparking a heated debate. The bottom line, like all things that are link-related, is that if something is truly not worth talking about, then no one will talk about it. The standard for what is actually “worthy” for online conversation varies from topic to topic and something that one person deems to be a “hot topic” (such as the Britney Spears saga) and what another person deems to be far more important (the election) depends on what the person values and where they are in life.

Pop culture (whether it’s Hollywood, sports, viral commericals, etc), by its very nature, shifts from day to day as to what is important and what is not. The internet is fueled by conversations that follow this trend. Can those of us who are obsessed intrigued with celebrities imagine what it would be like to go to our favorite gossip site and read the following post (or something similar):

Thanks for visiting. At the moment, we have completely run out of things to say. Please check back at another time when we think of / hear of something that will actually be worth your time. Thanks again!

Panic. Horror. Not to mention the frantic Google searches to find out just what is going on and what other sites are picking up the slack.

A great example of a widespread popculturish phenomenon occurs every year on a seemingly quiet Sunday night. The Super Bowl always leaves us with lots to talk about and this year was no exception. With the exception of the Giants pulling out what could be considered the greatest upset in the history of the Super Bowl (way to go Eli), the standard question that was asked around the water cooler/ coffee maker/ copier the next day was this: “What did you think of the commercials?”

 This year, a MySpace page was put up to house all the super bowl commercials so that everyone who missed one or all of them could go and take a look at them at their leisure. From a link popularity perspective, this has been hugely successful. The day after the Super Bowl, links to this page numbered around 630. Not bad. Not bad at all. This morning, a mere two days later that number has more than tripled to 1,960+ links. While taking a look at these links, the majority of them are coming from (surprise, surprise) blogs. There was the sprinkling of corporate and sports-related sites, but predominantly, blogs have taken the lead in pushing the link around the Web. Additionally, the page is ranking first (behind the news results) for “2008 super bowl commercials,” 18th for “2008 super bowl,” and 13th for “super bowl commercials.”

Another thing that happened that is being debated in the office, but not really online is the alleged “f-bomb” that Terry Bradshaw dropped on the pregame show. Most people say that he said “bucket head” while others swear (no pun intended) he made a remark about a hat being big enough for Howie’s f—ing head. I’m not here to settle the score. My point is that many sports experts have contended that this is not what happened and is quieting the conversation rather quickly. But people are curious.

 On YouTube, there is a video entitled “Terry Bradshaw says F bomb during Super Bowl, maybe” and when I first heard about this, I jumped over to watch it. At the time (Monday), 268 people like myself were trying to figure out what all the commotion was about and had viewed that same video. Today, two days later, that video has been watched nearly 473,000 times. The number of inlinks to that video? Only 11. Surprising? Not really. The general chatter on the internet has died down and people have discovered that the conversation really doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve now turned to more important things.

The moral of the story is that Terry Bradshaw should enunciate just a bit better. The link lesson of the story is to ask yourself a simple question. Would I read this? How does this affect my business/ services? The answer could be very revealing and your efforts surrounding it should be matched up accordingly. When planning link bait or social media campaigns, the “worthiness” of the topic will make or break your success. YouTube benefited from Terry Bradshaw; MySpace got the limelight when it came to the commercials.

There are a number of other experiments that I will be investigating because people are so fascinated with pop culture in general, but in the meantime, topics surrounding the Super Bowl have generated some serious buzz, but in very different ways.