Don’t waste time – let your fans build links for you.
Some people spend years trying to implement a “Link building” strategy. They try out every useless method of acquiring worthless links. The one thing they haven’t tried yet it creating content which is actually worthwhile.
As most of the people reading this post would understand, the idea of Google using inbound links to a website as a factor in their ranking algorithm is that a link is a vote for that content. This entire concept is thrown out of wack when webmasters post spam links on blogs, article directories and forums which are there solely for the purpose of increasing rankings rather than voting for relevant content. In the last 12 months, Google have picked up their game in regards to spam detection and it is becoming increasingly difficult to acquire inbound links through illegitimate means.
So what can a webmaster do to naturally acquire links that Google will actually recognise? Create awesome content! All of the websites making their mark on the internet and generating a huge amount of links and traffic don’t do so through black hat techniques – they do it by creating a video/website/post so fantastic that people actually want to write entire articles about your website and link to it in order to help their visitors.
Shave Time. Shave Money
When Dollar Shave Club founder, Michael Dubin, was working on the viral video which launched his business into success, I would bet that the last thing on his mind was SEO. It is far more likely that he was thinking about how he could explain why is business is great in the funniest way possible. Without the intention to do so, Michael created some of the worlds best link bait – resulting in thousands of genuine links from highly reputable blogs and news sites. He didn’t spam a single website and he didn’t ask for any of his links. Dollar Shave Club are ranking on the first page for every relevant keyword because they created the most interesting and ‘Link-worthy’ content.Compare the generic line from Gillette, “Turns Shaving Into Gliding” to the the famous catch line from Dollar Shave Club, “Our Blades Are F**king Great.” I know which one I am more likely to link to.
In 2012 and beyond, the most effective SEO strategy is to stop thinking about SEO and start being different. What is it that your business is dong a million times better than your competitors and what are some really clever ways to promote that? How can you properly utilise social media to send your content viral among more than just your friends? The bottom line is, you need to shock people.
Stop At Nothing – The Kony 2012 Shinanigan
Kony 2012 was a huge deal for a while there. The content lurking within the internationally famous short film by Invisible Children was hard hitting, shocking and motivational. This combination scored the Charity a stunning 104,506,332 video views and 3,590,051 pledges across 204 counties.
The film is quite a lot longer than your average viral YouTube clip – 29 minutes and 59 seconds to be exact. In order to communicate everything it needed to communicate, the film could not really have been any shorter. In a bid to grab the long lasting attention of the viewer within the first few seconds of the video, the producers have focused on methodology which is commonly used in regular TrueView Video Ad Campaigns through Google AdWords. The aim of this video marketing methodology is to deliver as many key points and concepts in the first frames.
After successfully managing to get one person to watch the entire video, they shared it with their friends. From there it was destined to go viral. The massive social relevance of the video and the Invisible Children website would have contributed to its high page rank. In addition to this, thousands of genuine recommendations were made by blogs and news websites to check out the website. Having such high authority news websites linking to the website and then having thousands of blogs linking to those news articles contributed to invisiblechildren.com earning PR7 in a very short period of time. Just like Dollar Shave Club, they didn’t spam a single website, they just created amazing content.
The best link building strategy you could have is to ask yourself, “Would I link to it?” when you are creating your content. If the answer is yes, keep going. However, if you cannot see yourself linking to your own content, then chances are that nobody else is going to either.
