Creating Win-Win Link Building Scenarios

link-building-win-win

Like many in the SEO community, the closing of Yahoo Site Explorer was a difficult pill to swallow. YSE was one of the most powerful tools in helping search experts to deconstruct the most important factors of an increasingly complex algorithm.

For those of us who have spent the past several years using YSE to conduct competitive analyses, a few indefatigable qualities dominate a page’s likelihood to rank highly in search engines:

  • Quality of the site linking.
  • Quality of the page linking.
  • Anchor text linking.
  • Thematic relevance of the linking site.

Given that this information isn’t new in search circles, why are many marketers still struggling to generate the incoming links required to succeed?

Why So Many Link Building Efforts Fail

Failed link building efforts typically occur for one of two reasons:

  • Links were not obtained.
  • Only low quality links were generated (such comment, nofollow, and low quality directory links).

The root of many failed link building campaigns usually stems from a misguided approach. Too often, companies engage in commoditized link building, such as hiring an SEO firm for (X) number of links per month. While the logic is sound, the output can be frequently less than desired because the vendor now has a quota objective as opposed to a performance objective.

If we know (and we do) that link building is an effort in quality over quantity, why have we become so hell-bent on link numbers?

To overcome these misaligned incentives, it becomes critical to rethink link building activities. One of the best ways to do this is to apply group dynamics to the problem.

Make Link Building a Win-Win

Historically speaking, three of the most effective link building mechanisms all involve some principal of a win-win relationship. In each of these cases, the person giving the link actually receives a tangible benefit from the transaction: