Um… Ah… Building Links, Link Bait & Interview Podcasts

Um.. Ah… Building links can be all about demonstrating expertise in link bait on your site but… Um… But an interview I did yesterday for a podcast illustrates why you should be prepared when demonstrating expertise on other sites.

I am not a big fan of the traditional link request way of building links. The Web is all about links but they should occur organically… How do you get links then? You offer link bait and you engage with relevant websites. And, ideally, you do so in a way that builds your brand…

Do an interview with a journalist running a site offering podcasts about making money online? Of course.

Perfect: demonstrate my expertise to the site’s audience and build a link.

Lesson learnt: remember your tendency to “um” and “ah” when forming your thoughts; ask for questions first and get those thoughts half way formed before the interview. Listen and see what I mean.

Boring as it is to repeat the tired phrase, content is king in the link building realm too. Good content on your site will attract links. Good content you provide on other sites will drive traffic (assuming you think about it enough for it to be “brand enhancing”).

Mike Moran and commenters covered the request vs build links issues succinctly in a Search Engine Guide piece and resulting discussion

As I tell clients, building links is very similar to offline networking where you seek out relevant people and build a relationship. Online links represent that relationship. People will link with you if you offer them something of value to their business or site.

And the value should go beyond the value of a link — “Hi I wondered whether you would like to link to our site because we [insert tenuous association]? We’ll link to you too!” just doesn’t cut it. As Brian Clarke of Copyblogger suggested recently in an excellent post offering five value-based link building strategies:

“The days of flat out link begging are fading…”

Requesting links will work in some cases. But as Mike Moran suggested in a Search Engine Guide piece and commenters, generally, agreed an earned link is preferrable to a requested one.

Building links should be all about offering value on your site and on other people’s sites and demonstrating your expertise as you do it. But do it in a considered way and know your weaknesses… No more interviews for podcasts without some prior knowledge of questions for me!

SEO Spam Primer Featuring Key Insights From Major Search Engines

Found this really great video of SMX East (US Search Engine Optimisation Conference) session on SEO Spam on Search Engine Land. Nothing really new from my point of view. But a succinct introduction to tactics that will get you in trouble with search engines… If your search engine optimisation company recommends the things discussed in this video, fire them.

This video is a useful primer on SEO spam for anyone who isn’t familiar with the issues. And it offers great information on finding out if you have been penalised by search engines and what to do about it. But it also has significant value as an insight into big search engines’ assessment of sites and attitude to links.

Talking About SEO Spam Means Talking About What Search Engines are Looking For

Random quotes/notes, many of which are music to my ears, as an exponent of an “offer content that is of value to your target audience and the search engines will value it too” approach to SEO:

• Don’t “lose track of the user perspective” in building links — for Yahoo it isn’t about whether a link is paid but whether it is a value link that makes sense with respect to the content of the source and destination of the link… good links point your users to content they will value.
• Nathan Buggia of Live Search reminds people of the all-important search engine perspective on assessing the Web. A perspective too often lost in the discussion around obtaining search engine visibility –
  

  “Goal of a search engine is trying to find really great content and connecting people that want that content”

• Nathan again: “stay focused on creating good content” … ahem… content is… um… king!
• For Aaron D’Souza of Google site owners should concentrate on, “building great content that users are going to create the links for you” — that is, offer content that people will want to link to rather than get involved in trading links, etc.
• Aaron also reassures people that the removal of the suggestion that people submit their sites to online directories from Google’s Webmaster guidelines didn’t mean those links had been devalued. Seems it is about discouraging the plethora of low value directories. Removing the suggestion makes it harder for these directories to convince nieve site owners that investment in listings on their sites was an essential part of obtaining search visibility.
• Sean Suchter of Yahoo! Search talks about an approach to web content I would heartily endorse, suggesting site owners create content that has “timeless user value”. He cautioned against adopting the latest techniques based on SEO’s interpretation of the latest algorithm changes. Future algorithm changes will inevitably discount that content’s value… “What might work this year or this quarter might stop working at some near future point if it isn’t necessarily user focused.”

So it might be a session about what you shouldn’t do to get search engine rankings but it ends up being a powerful insight in what you should do.

Search Engine Optimiser or SEO Buyer This is Stuff Worth Knowing… Worth Watching

Watch it for that and a really interesting discussion around the issue of paid links and PageRank (Google’s measure of link popularity/site authority, Link Flux” for Yahoo! and “Static Rank” for Live Search) and whether search engine rankings should take account of big brands’ profile…

All sound a little geeky? Some of it is. SEO spam involves some tricks that take you to the border of geek world. But if you are trying to get search visibility or employing search engine optimisers, you should take a look. You will learn something.


SMX East 2008: What Is Spam? from Search Marketing Expo on Vimeo.

Article Marketing: A Question of Value

The dynamics of the article marketing content market are a classic example of the failure of simple supply and demand to create a value-based outcome. The Web offers writers easy access but low-pay opportunities but they should be withholding supply to this cheapskate demand. The Web would be a better place for it: less junk, more worthwhile content.

Aspiring freelance writers, the supply side of the market, as Jennifer Williamson of Catalystblogger asserts, need to understand that they can say no to poor pay for article marketing copy.

Trouble is the Web, which makes it so much easier to sell writing, provides a medium for putting people who don’t understand the value of good content together. It also provides a medium for getting the “don’t sell yourself short short-term in hope of long term gain” message out to writers and freelancers in general. But the noise of the supply and demand curves meeting in a chorus of low-bids drowns out the voice of reason…

It Goes Beyond Low-Value Content

The noise drowns out the good sense. Hmmm… How like the web. How like modern media. How like modern life… [At which point I am going to stop before I start my essay on the ills of our information saturated time... Others, better qualified, can deal with that. Back to the issue: Article marketing...]

But the Ugly Article Marketing Picture is the Matter at Hand

It’s an ugly picture. Poorly… No… Abysmally paid writers producing articles of dubious value that offer minor link profile value and make it harder for people to find valuable information. The web is flooded with hundreds of articles making it harder for people and search engines to find useful information.

And I don’t think I captured the whole picture when I bemoaned the article marketing generated junk website content phenomenon a while back.

• I was naive to think that the bulk of bids for $5 article writing would come from the less prosperous countries of the world.
• I forgot that there is a large supply pool of people for whom earning money from stringing words together — even at a fraction of a cent per word in the string — is a “major life goal”. (Silly; I was involved with a site for aspiring writers on a daily basis for six years.) And then there’’s the whole “build up your portfolio” temptation.
• And, because of my first two errors, I neglected to address the supply side of the market equation properly.

Value Your Writing to Enhance the Value of Writing Work

In a compelling argument for ignoring those fraction-of-a-cent-per-word writing “opportunities”, Williamson of encourages people to ask for more. As she said, the low value article writing market prices writers time at well below minimum wage.

Who’d work for less than minimum wage? Well, it seems, lots of people — $3, $4 and $5 per 500 word article projects on Elance.com, Guru.com and the like are seldom short of bidders.

What to do then?

Williamson’s blog earned a comment from, master copywriter and freelance writing information seller extraordinaire, Bob Bly about sites like Elance turning article writing into a commodity market. He urged people to concentrate on copy more directly linked to revenue to get/demand a premium price.

Value Shouldn’t Only Be Associated with Obvious ROI

All makes sense:

• If writers start ignoring the $5 article opportunities the price starts to rise. So, its important for writers to value their time and their writing.
• It is much easier to demonstrate the value in a landing page or email newsletter content that asks for a sale.

But the message I’d prefer to get through the low-pay article market noise is the first. The second message — pragmatic in it’s “accept of the way things are and work around them” approach — could contribute to the continued devaluing of all article marketing.

Demonstrating expertise and building trust through article marketing can be an important part of achieving sales and ROI online. But low-pay, low-value articles make it harder to stand out…

Bottom line:

The situation is a classic case of the dark side of the Web. The web facilitates a market, bringing people who need content together with people who can provide it. But it’s too easy for both parties. Neither party understand the potential value of that content because they can get together without doing the groundwork that might have been required to join a less accessible market. The content traded is devalued.

All of which makes it harder for writers to get a return on their writing effort that reflects the effort put in and harder for valuable content to stand out. Eventually people find voices of reason like Williamson and Bly but the ease of access means the supply of people willing to offer super-cheap writing services won’t dry up any time soon.

Later:

Here is a classic case in point. This Tennessee based business owner doesn’t attach much value to the time of the “Freelance Article Writers” he/she asks to submit proposals…

“Project Description:I am looking to hire a freelance writer that is willing to write three (3) articles a day for $1.00 per article for one (1) week. After a relationship has been established and I get to know your work, we can talk about future business involving more articles at a slightly higher rate[...]

Project Category:Article

Document Length:450 words

But there is also the issue of the quality of the articles in question. If he/she finds someone willing to do the job, are they likely to produce work that you’d want associated with your business? [sigh]

Junk Website Content Bad For Business

Dumbed-down website content so devoid of value it’s effectively junk can’t be good for the web. It’s definitely bad for anyone trying to build a respected business…

Sites like www.guru.com and www.elance.com demonstrate an alarming trend with respect to the value of website content. Their website content job listings are dominated by people offering $1-3 for 500 word articles. Why? A distorted view of an effective internet marketing tactic based on a quantity not quality-based search engine optimisation strategy.

The alarming thing is that these [irony] enlightened [/irony] internet marketers are not short of people, often from the Indian sub-continent, willing to produce [irony] articles [/irony] for them.

Three problems:

1. I can’t see how quality content can be the end result of these projects. So they simply add to the junk people have to wade through to reach quality content and waste search engine bandwidth as the engines try likewise to find the quality content.
2. The people producing the [irony] articles [/irony] are being exploited.
3. The overall value of website content is dragged down by an over supply of junk content.

Truly Alarming Disdain for Fair Pay, Copyright, etc.

The problem is epitomised by this Getafreelancer.com job posting requesting bids for 60 thousand word “articles” with a $250 budget.

“You can just use content from ezinesarticle, ehow or any famous articles site and rewrite it.”

Who would think $250 was a reasonable price for 60,000 words (half to two thirds of the latest novel from your favourite author) of content? Well. Twenty three bidders think, on the basis of an average bid, $172 is about right.

[irony] I s’pose, if all you need to do is copy others’ work…[/irony]

Why Would People think There Was Value in Exploitative Junk Website Content?

The demand that drives this sort of unhealthy scenario bastardises legitimate article marketing.

Rather than producing keyword savvy articles and distributing them to build links and demonstrate expertise beyond your own site. These internet marketers, often specifying keyword density, are adding little value to the Web’s content in their attempt to get search engine rankings via back link text. They may see some search engine visibility payback but spamming content sites with articles of dubious value devalues their brand and the payback won’t last…

Recent buzz about Google algorithm changes reducing weight attached to back link text are an indicator that, as with all spam tactics aimed to influence rankings falsely, the search engines will catch up with this.

Bottom line: better 10 articles that actually say something than 100 articles that just use words to create some space around keywords. Paying a few dollars for thousands of words smells a lot like your average sweatshop…

King Content, Advertising Effectiveness & Adwords Placement

“Content is king” is a tired old phrase. But phrases don’t get used enough to get tired unless they warrant repeated use. And this old friend of web content specialists is ever more relevant even, it seems, with respect to online advertising’s effectiveness. Something to bear in mind when setting up Adwords placement campaigns.

According to e-consultancy’s Drama 2.0, who references two recent studies:

“it may be smarter for advertisers to focus on content, content, content — which really means location, location, location on the internet.”

It is not only the relevance of the content that your ad appears in but also the quality of the content that determines effectiveness.

• Referenced study one (Ipsos MediaCT’s MOTION digital video study) says — as Drama 2.0 notes, a concern for the likes of YouTube — that people will put up with ads in video if the video is off sufficient quality.
  • Advertising in downloaded full length TV shows or sports clips, acceptable to 75 & 66% of people, respectively.
  • Advertising before that 16 second clip of the cat, fur bolt upright, sizing itself up in a mirror, not ok.
• Referenced study two, by the Online Publishers Association, finds that:
  

  “…ads on content sites have greater impact on the overall purchase process, including customer awareness, brand awareness, brand consideration, brand preference and purchase intent[...]“

Makes Sense… Relevance to SMBs?

Makes all sorts of sense to me and is, in some ways, statistical confirmation of common sense and existing reality. You pay more for space in quality publications offline not just because they are quality publications with good distribution but also because the implied endorsement makes readers less wary of your message. Same scenario online.

“So. OK. Yawn. Thanks a lot. If I want my ads to be effective online, I have to pay big bucks for popular/recognized authority sites. Very helpful.” says you, SMB owner with your tight ad budget in mind.

Well, yes. Hang on a minute, though. There is an opportunity/point in this…

Where Does Adwords Come Into This

I spent a bit of time creating a Adwords placement campaign for this site yesterday and enjoying the new control on offer.

Google’s content network is an effective, if flawed, traffic generator. People often ignored it in favour of search results because the traffic was generally less likely to convert and therefore less valuable. In my experience, not always the case. But often the way to lift Adwords traffic conversion rates is/was to turn of content network placements.

The newish ability to see sites in the content network where your ads are appearing opens means the content network is no longer an inpenetrable black hole.

It opens up the possibility of focusing on content network sites that refer valuable traffic. What a change. Now you know where your ads appear and you can target very specific sites. Target those authority/high credibility site for affordable rates. (I will report back exactly how affordable after my campaign had been running.

So, that is exactly what I was doing yesterday. The tightest of tight budgets in mind, going through sites in the content network relevant to my services and checking out sites I wasn’t familar with before adding them to my placements.

And the Tie in With Content Quality and Ad Effectiveness is?

With very little to spend I can’t afford to place my ads on sites that don’t have some credibility. I made sure to read a couple of articles on sites I was considering, which were all content sites rather than service providers.

Seems I was right to be wary and you should be too.

Bottom line: Adwords or otherwise, when you are vetting advertising opportunities don’t just think relevance to your target audience; think quality content.

Added bonus: you’ll be doing us all a favour by helping starve those begged*, borrowed or stolen content based sites whose only raison d’étre is adsense revenue. These sites have been cluttering up the web with poor quality content for too long.

And by the way: Also from e-consultancy, and related to the nexus between website content and online advertising, Graham Charlton’s 12 PPC Landing Page Tips are well worth a reading — nothing too startling there but a useful checklist.

*Freelance writing sites and places like Elance and Guru are overflowing with [embed tongue in cheek] amazing opportunities[dislodge tongue] to write 500 words for one of these sites for $2 or even $3. Lest we forget, Internet marketing is sullied by slave labour just like many other industries.