Link Strategies - Use your brains
August 14th, 2008 by Dan Roberts Working on link strategies can be an extremely frustrating process because of the difficulty in getting other people to put the link on their website - let alone to do it without having to give a reciprocal link. I can’t say enough - I believe reciprocal links are increasingly meaningless. But then I get asked - “well how am I supposed to get links if we are not swapping”. It is quite simple - think about your link strategy in terms of being of benefit to your website user.
Let’s look at a real-world situation - say an accommodation provider in the centre of New Zealand. Firstly, they get contacted by a tour operators who is in fact one of their main suppliers of business wanting a link (say for example, Stray Travel stays here) - but the link is not reciprocal. Where should this property get it’s links from?
Simple! What other sites might be of use to their customers or vice versa - or in another way to look at is, what are the potential feeder sites to your business? How about other accommodation providers in towns that might be en-route to your property? Say if you are in Taupo you might look for links in places in Rotorua, Wellington or National Park - sites where your visitors are and will be looking to move on from. How about things to do in town - sites your visitors might come across and then also look for somewhere to stay?
When I start working with clients it is amazing what they come up - regional tourism sites, fellow operators and complementary services. Think about creating a path to your site for your users and focus much less on just a mad rush to get lots of links - quality will always beat quantity!
August 15th, 2008 at 8:59 am
While I totally agree that links (and content for that matter) should always emerge from the thought “what would our visitors want?” - at times we must still continue to play the SEO game - as unfortunately the two are not alway mutually inclusive.
Finding the right balance between maintaining usability and validity for your visitors - and sticking within the search engine guidelines (perhaps better read as: pushing to the limits of these guidelines) - is really the art of SEO.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Thanks - I always like it when people clarify my thoughts for me. I hate reciprocal link requests. Firstly, they’re never from sites with whom I would want to associate and secondly, it’s just tacky. It’s like the age-appropriate adage that anyone with more then 200 friends on MySpace is just plain sad.
Old school analogue rules do apply on the web…..Focus on writing/producing quality content. Be clever in developing readership. Have some style. And then happiness, satisfaction and dollaros may just follow.
lovely footer!
xx Tiki