Oh my god; another presentation about link building.

What? From a white hat guy too?

Who the heck am I?

• Andrew Girdwood

• Head of Search at bigmouthmedia

• … but also an affiliate • Supposed to put soft sales text in here

• Talk about how capable we are

• Talk about how large our European footprint is

• Talk about how we’ve never lost a football match to an affiliate network

Types of Links

Types of links

• The ones you make– Some count– Some don’t

• The ones you get given– Some count– Some don’t

• The ones Google hates– Some count until Google catches them– Others count against from you the outset

Oh Google, what are you doing

now?

Goodbye directory links?

• On the 2nd of October Google made an important change to their webmaster guidelines. Google stopped recommending directory submissions.

• A single line of text was removed. It read; “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.”

JohnMu to the rescue! Again.

• Google’s JohnMu helps frame the situation for us. Writing in Google Groups he said;

– “I wouldn't necessarily assume that we're devaluing Yahoo's links, I just think it's not one of the things we really need to recommend. If people think that a directory is going to bring them lots of visitors (I had a visitor from the DMOZ once), then it's obviously fine to get listed there. It's not something that people have to do though :-).” 

John Who? What did Matt Cutts say?

• Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.

• What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn't speak well to the quality of the directory.

• If there is a fee, what's the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.

Do I think directories are dead?

• I think easy directories are dead.

• Quality directories will still be beneficial.

• What does this mean to affiliates?

• Most directories prefer to link to homepages.

• This makes it easier for a small site about a specific product to benefit from directory links than it for a large retailer to directory link to product pages.

He’s going to talk about paid links!

Report Paid Links!

• Level the playing field

• Earn kudos for your Webmaster Console login

• Help underline the value of affiliate marketing and commissions

Spotting Paid Links

Yahoo Pipes – Link Watch

Making your own Link

Should it work?

Articles and PRs

Submission to editorially controlled sites

Crash Course• Social profile pages

• Activity stream sites

• Syndicated RSS feeds

• Comments and forum citations

• HTML gadgets and widgets

• Memes and virals

• Bios and profile pages for conferences and expos

• Press interviews

Can you make other people link

to you?

Be a suck up (virtual networking)

• Many of the most popular affiliate and search blogs became popular because the author is a good networker;

– Leave comments

– Ask questions via Twitter, etc

– Give you reason to get involved in their blog

• You don’t need a blog to do this;– Shop sites have reviews and editorials

– Travel and Finance sites can cite resources

Offer soft incentives

Become hated (virtual networking)

Be quick. Have a target audience.

• Who’s most likely to blog about you?

• Write something that’ll interest them– More risky; contact them and see if you can get some friendly

communication going

Give your URL to the linkers

Twitter Credits!

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpwillis/283144228/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/pigstyave/367353091/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/restlessglobetrotter/2166068194/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/425231402/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/iainb/162799808/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhammza/1381101959/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlunar/298456969/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/lon/275039534/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/gustavog/4557105/

Thank you!

• Andrew Girdwood

• Andrew.Girdwood@bigmouthmedia.com

• Twitter: AndrewGirdwood

• FriendFeed: AndrewGirdwood

• Blog: blog.arhg.net