The digital community have been freaking out over the recent weeks as Google increasing it’s crack down on publishers selling links to SEO’s across the world.
After Matt Cutt’s came out and said that guest blogging was to be targeted many sceptics suggested that it was algorithmically impossible to identify a paid guest post, well guess what, Google are doing it manually, issuing publishers manual penalties and stripping page rank with some venom.
So what does this mean for your higher quality influencers that blog about your industry? No-following links, increased prices (mmmm) or indeed a outright refusal to promote your content on their site. I’m not going to shy away from the fact that Creare’s SEO team used controlled guest blogging to build links for our clients as part of our delivery strategy.
With the recent changes many people are looking for alternatives to replace the easily acquired equity that guest blogging provides (or did provide) for their clients. I know there is loads of content published already about this subject , but this post is really to inspire the Creare team (anyone else who wants to read it) to think differently, think big and be creative.
If your looking for an easy scalable link building options to replace your repository of webmaster or blog owners, you might want to stop reading now. Google is striving for purity and pushing digital teams to do the same, Link building for organic improvements on scale is over. Work hard, work smart and you can achieve not only better quality links for your clients, but longevity.
1.) Great Content Marketing Strategies
This simple principle hasn’t changed for years. Create something cool, interesting, usable and people will share it naturally. Failing your content going big on it’s own, give it a push, find some influences in your clients industry and outreach to them, call them, tweet them, door knock them… whatever it takes.
Here’s some examples: Creare created a “How safe is your area” piece of content for our client CIA insurance. http://www.cia-landlords.co.uk/let-property-insurance-news/latest-news-story/nid/1495.aspx – We then outreached to some relevant sources who kindly promoted our content on their sites: 4 Great relevant links were earned.
Another example is from a fellow digital marketer Pete Campbell, who now runs a start up called http://www.kaizensearch.co.uk/. Pete used to work with me at Creare, but since going to the big smoke is now going it alone.
This simple concept from Pete for his Bingo client earned him a link from the radiotimes.com, http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-04-11/play-britains-got-talent-bingo
2.) Maximising Existing Client Relationships
It sounds silly, but often we over look our clients industry relationships, contacts, contracts and suppliers. Why not find out about your clients latest project, who their working for or working with. Not quite orphan link reclamation but similar… Making the most of your clients good work is an easy opportunity to build relevant equity. Why not ask your sales or commercial team to ask these questions at point of sale to give your marketing team a head start. Here’s a couple of nice example we managed to get for our clients:
BL Pneumatics – http://www.asconumatics.eu/contact-us-uk/fluid-automation-distributors.html The client has a landing page for each of their main suppliers, we linked out to the these suppliers and asked them to reciprocate.
Vine House Farm – http://www.bbowt.org.uk/news/2013/08/07/vine-house-farm%E2%80%99s-nicholas-watts-could-be-uk%E2%80%99s-most-wildlife-friendly-farmer Andy had mentioned that the client was well-known in his industry, this allowed us to search for mentions of ‘Nicholas Watts’ to gain a free link
3.) Ad’s To Drive Traffic NOT Equity
Our job as marketers is to essentially drive traffic to our clients websites, that traffic translates into enquiries as long as it’s relevant.
Banner ad’s on magazine sites and even re-marketing via the Adwords display network offer a different approach, no longer focusing on improving organic traffic to get clicks but push the brand, website or even a piece of content through banner ads or re-marketing.
Although hardcore SEO’s out there might be panicking, the integrated search approach is ‘SEO’ in 2014. Although the term SEO has stayed strong, the industry has moved to an ‘inbound’ approach covering Social, PPC, CRO, SEO and UX.
What’s more valuable to a client, targeting a potential client that abandoned the cart at the last stage of buying process through re-marketing or a link from a relevant publisher? I’ll let you decide that one, but why not look at spending that ‘link earning’ budget somewhere else.  And what’s the worst that can happen? You might even pick up some brand advocates and links as a side product.