Link Princess

Over on SearchEngineLand.com, there is a weekly article series on link building by Eric Ward. This week, he has written about something that is truly close to my heart.

I, like many of you I have no doubt, rely on the internet for much needed information on a variety of sources. Whether it be tips on my favorite hobbies (I am a crafting nut for anyone who doesn’t know), showtimes for the newest blockbuster I want to go see, or a recipe for vegetarian lasagna, I go to the Web time and time again. Sometimes, my research is of a more serious nature. Like researching healthy living tips for my two small children, or learning about diabetes and how I can help my grandfather, or discovering what my risk factors are for getting breast cancer since I am the daughter of a survivor.

These topics are (obviously) incredibly important to me as well as to millions of others who are in the same predicament as I am: sifting through the muck to find out what is truly expert advice, and what is just a link to yet another drug that has nothing to do with me. That’s why I completely agree with Eric in his post called Life, Death, and Links.

It’s a known fact that black hat link builders can kill the quality content by burying it under drug ads and product pages by building a ton of links that are poor in quality, but have enough juice to shoot them to the top of the rankings. They’re doing their job, you may argue. They are also pushing non-relevant content to the top of the SERPs without concern as to what the user is actually looking for. They have taken the most important element out of the entire equation: the people who are surfing looking for vital information to make their lives better. They spend all their time trying to game the system. It’s so much easier to give the search engines what they want and (albeit patiently) build the links over time to continue push your site in the general upward direction in the SERPs.

When you are beginning work on a link development project, it’s important to start with the right information before diving into the work head first. Here are questions you should ask before beginning:

1. How many links do I currently have?

2. Where are those links coming from? Directories? Random blog posts? Educational sites?

3. Who am I looking to target? Coming up with two or three personas can be very helpful.

4. What is my brand position? How do I want the public to see my site / company?

5. What are my business goals?

6. How will I define success?

7. How will I measure statistics to determine if I have achieved that level of success?

8. What resources do I currently have to work with.

Obviously, the answers to these questions will indicate a number of things in terms of your link building campaign. Your audience will determine where you are looking to get links from. Your brand indicates what caliber of sites you are looking at and what, specifically, you will be saying on those sites. The amount of resources will determine what you can do now and what you will have to build up to.  Defining your analytics can help tie in a whole other group of individuals, or spur you into learning how to use the analytics you already have running on your site.

Of course, these are not all the questions you should ask when starting, but this is definitely a list of “must-asks” and it will open the door to all those other things that you need to learn about your company or site and how it will apply to your link building and overall SEO efforts.