I think to Boldy Go where Man Has Gone Before.. is Foolish

Even I am too young for the real original Star Trek sagas, but I do remember the daytime TV I watched as a kid, with episode after episode of Captain James T. Kirk keeping courage, trust, integrity and humanity alive in the Universe. And of course, the call to action every episode was “to boldly go where no man has gone before“. Wow… not just to go into the unknown, but to boldly go. That takes courage.

We SEO innovators put our courage to the test constantly, pushing limits and testing both Google and the marketplace. We go where no man has gone before, and often on behalf of our clients. When we boldly go, we usually go on our own, testing the waters or innovating, uncertain of the outcomes. Since in capitalist systems reward tries to flow to risk takers, we often boldly go where we believe we can successfully innovate. There is little room in the SEO research arena for timidity.

Recently I’ve witnessed a different sort of SEO effort though. I’ve seen SEO people boldly going where many people have gone before, without full awareness of the outcomes (seo history).  I think that is the definition of SEO foolish. As my favorite ADD coach says, go boldly, but not carelessly.

The other day in an initial meeting with a web team, I boldly stated that “I know that 95% of quoted statistics are nonsense, but I say 90% of SEO materials published on the web are wrong“. I offered  a money back guarantee on that claim. It’s true. The vast bulk of so-called SEO blogs, articles, and advice proffered by web vendors is misleading at best and typically incorrect (often outdated). To boldly follow such advice can be very risky.

When a webmaster believes what she reads about SEO on the web and then implements it, she either wastes time and effort (because it won’t work well) or assumes undue risk (making changes with uncertain outcomes). In search marketing, taking incorrect actions can cost you more than not having done anything at all.

Changes to public-facing signals (which by definition are search-engine-facing signals) always incur SEO risks. If something  is misinterpreted by the search engines, it can cost you. Even if nothing changes, the wasted resources bleed power from other efforts that could have increased sales or lowered costs. And if we analyze subsequent rankings changes (which may or may not have had anything to do with the “seo” efforts) from a correlational perspective, or otherwise biased cause-and-effect perspective, such efforts can gain negative momentum and cost us even more progress.

I wrote about the way the SEO marketplace skews understanding of the SEO a long time ago in a blog post about “A Market for Lemons” and SEO consulting. The marketing materials published by SEO vendors comprises a big portion of the potentially harmful SEO misinformation out there.

Following incorrect SEO advice is a mistake. Boldly following it, can be disastrous.

SEO contrarians have been more consistently correct than SEO pundits for quite some time now. Don’t let that stop innovation and experimentation, but I suggest the following approach to strong SEO today:

• Don’t execute hard on anything you haven’t soundly tested for yourself
• Don’t trust what you read from free or vendor-sponsored SEO publications. this is a variation on the old but very sound advice “follow the money”
• Ask specific questions so you can estimate risk and reward, before you execute SEO tactics. If you don’t know where to safely ask such questions, you’ve just identified your first need: you need a good seo consultant (such as Audette Media)
• Definitely go where SEOs have gone before, just don’t do so foolishly (boldly). Test and execute, and of course double down on  things that clearly work. You won’t enjoy the benefits of early execution for long, as the web is rather transparent when it comes to SEO (competitors will see you rank and figure out what you did… and copy it).
• Learn why PPC is a valuable test tool for SEO. Join PPCBlog.com if you need cut-to-the-chase practical advice.
• Boldly Go where No Man Has Gone Before - this is great advice. Do it on separate test sites or sites you can afford to lose, and learn learn learn. And if you find you love this aspect of SEO, welcome to my world of advanced SEO and SEO research. I hope to see you in the seobook.com private forums, or in-person at conference networking events, or involved in my future SEO newsletter WebPrescience.com.

Big is attractive. Now Facebook is so big, it’s a magnet drawing attention from otherwise reasonable people in online marketing. Facebook Facebook Facebook. It was previously Social Media, Social Media, Social Media but now it’s more specific because, well, Facebook is big. Billions big.

Whatever you’re measuring, find a smaller unit of measure so you can report bigger counts. People just love big numbers. Facebook had millions of users, but now it’s valued at Billions of dollars. Billions…. wow.

So Facebook is super important. Are you marketing on Facebook?

And then the same old  discussions begin… we have a “Facebook Page” (but don’t do anything with it). We have “Facebook friends” (but not many, and don’t do anything with them). We do some “Facebook advertising” (but most things we’ve tried didn’t produce results). Etcetera.

Take a look folks, and know your history.  Facebook is a closed community. A walled garden. Like the old AOL - America Online. It needs to be big to succeed. Huge, even. It must, or it won’t work. Big big big.. huge. Everyone is on it.. you have to be on it. Unless “just about everyone” is on it, it will disappoint. Etcetera.

So what about content? Well, why should anyone be on Facebook at all? In the beginning, if “everyone” is on it, you have to be on it. But once you’re past the “hey you’re here too? that’s cool I’m here too did you know Bob’s here also?” stage, then what? That’s right.. content.  Same old same old. Entertain me. Educate me. Adore me. Make me feel special. Or… I’l go somewhere else.

So content becomes king. Just. Like. On. The. Web.

Content? What content? Well, take a look at the reports from emarketer.com on Facebook activity. Who’s got Facebook pages? Local businesses, politicians, musicians, schools…. the top list is full of community builders or community-based efforts. That reflects the comprehensiveness part of the equation — if everyone in your group is on Facebook, you need to be on Facebook. It’s audience building.

Then look at the “Ten Largest Brands on Facebook” and you see the same thing… audience building, for branding. Coca Cola, YouTube, Skittles. What used to be done with a web page on the web and TV and other media, is now *also* done in Facebook (because a BIG community is there).

Look at what people expect from those brands with Facebook pages… “77% of new media users want brands to offer them incentives online. Additionally, 28% would like to be entertained.”

Content. Constant, attractive and engaging content to keep the audience happy. Just like on the Web. The big difference is that now your content is managed by Facebook. Your audience is “owned” by Facebook. Your web page (fan page) is owned and hosted by Facebook, who by the way can wrap it in any context it likes, etc etc etc. Just like the old AOL.

A few more quotes from that article, showing how much work is associated with publishing to Facebook to succeed on Facebook:

Coca-Cola, with 19.8 million Facebook fans, used a year-long social media campaign…to keep its Facebook page constantly updated with content posted by brand ambassadors.

Sounds exactly like a regular website (if you want it to succeed). So, basically, what you have to do to succeed on Facebook is the same stuff you have to do to suceed on your website. And if your organization doesn’t make and maintain compelling content on your website, will it do that on Facebook?

Sometimes I wonder if these Facebook successes really just skunkworks, and I wonder when managers will acknowledge that it is their own people that get in the way of their own people succeeding on the web (or in front of any audience for that matter).

At first it seems pretty obvious what “link building” is… it is the practice of building back links to your site. But in the SEO marketplace, it is NOT clear today what “link building” is. What, exactly are you getting when you hire and pay a link builder? What are reasonable expectations for paid link building?

Today more than any time in the past I can remember, the service of link building lacks clarity in the marketplace. I’ve been doing SEO professionally for 7 years, and SEO was part of my job for almost 6 years before that. I’ve always done link building, but not the way I do it today. So what do professional link builders do for you today?

6 Aspects of Modern Day SEO Link Building

There are 6 obvious aspects to modern SEO link building. Some are integral to SEO, as you will see below, so in effect there are more than 6 aspects but these 6 get us started:

Link Building Foundations

Your content must be “linkable”, which means it has to present itself as something unique on the web. It doesn’t need to be truly unique as in one-of-a-kind, but within its target audience, it must appear unique and thus link worthy. This also means your content must be identified with unique URLs, so linking is possible. The foundations of link building require that your site work properly, be reasonably navigable and recognizable, and be “able to be linked to”.

Link to It, and Build Sites/Pages for Linking

Once your content is “linkable”, link builders link to it. They may adjust your within-site linking, or make use of your existing sub domain published content, your other owned sites, or sites where you have influence, to get links in to your site. A link builder will identify which pages of your site should be supported with links, and what sort of links will bring the most benefit. Link builders may have existing sites that can link to your site, or they may build new sites (or publish content on other sites) to carry more links to your site. Article writers do this, as do social media managers who create profiles on other sites linking to your site.

Link builders may create new sites in order to use them for link building, or may build new sites as extensions of your site, to benefit link building. These methods can be valuable, but care must be taken to align the activities with SEO activities (to protect your brand and your site SEO status).

This is link building at its fundamental core, and surprisingly many site owners have not engaged in this most basic form of link building.

Extending the Foundation with Directories

Professional directories and “listing” sites present opportunities for additional link building. Anywhere your competitors appear, you should consider. Your link builder explores such opportunities, and recognizes the ones that might have the biggest impact. Your link builder should also create links to you, and will want to expense any editorial fees or perhaps management fees associated with such links.

Good link builders know the difference between meaningful, powerful directory links and low-quality, questionable directory links. Oh, and not every “directory” is called a “directory” and this is another area where professional link builders bring value for those who hire them.

Link Building Innovation

Good link builders innovate to cause the marketplace to link to your content. Innovation might be content-based (infographics, interesting and remarkable content) or technology-based (such as new systems that make it easy to “recommend” your content via links), or activity-based (activity on exiting sites such as forums prompts linking to your site from third party locations). There is no limit to innovation, but of course innovation requires creativity, skill, and perseverance.

The best link builders rely on innovation first, and build their strategies out from there to suit your particular site’s needs. The innovative SEO link builder is sort of the opposite of the link builder who has a secret network of sites on Topic X which he will link to your site for a monthly fee. Link building must match your site’s unique positioning and needs, and your link builder should consider everything in the toolbox when forming a link building strategy.

Copy-Cat Link Building

I call this sadly common tactic “copy cat link building” mostly because I get copied a lot and don’t enjoy it. A copy cat link builder simply does what you did to get links for herself, after you already did it.

If you find a webmaster willing to give a link, and convince her to do so, the copy cat follows up with a request for a link to her site, too, sometimes even pointing out your link as rationale for her link. If you publish a list of “10 Favorite Thanksgiving Dinner Table Jokes” that gets a lot of attention in the marketplace, you’ll probably see 4 or 5 copy cats publishing “5 Favorite Thanksgiving Jokes” and similar rip offs shortly after, since your efforts demonstrated such copy cats can be expected to similarly resonate well in the marketplace.

By copying your innovation, creativity, and research, the copy-cat link builder eliminated much of the costs of link building, instead stepping in to steal market share from your link building instead of growing the link building opportunity base. It becomes a race of social media seeding, instead of link building.

Fortunately, Mother Nature built in some natural controls for such cheats and scammers. First, they put competitive pressure on you (the innovator) to be even better than you are. As you get even better, the copy cats have more trouble keeping up. Second,  cheats and scammers generally cheat and scam in everything they do (not just link building). Copy-cats tend to earn poor reputations for themselves over time, which lead to less effective social media networking and this less ability to beat you on execution.

Still, copy cat link building can be effective for the short term, and can definitely piss you off.

Integrated Link Building / Competitive Web Strategy

This is where modern SEO link builders really shine. Working closely with the web strategist or lead SEO, a good innovative, experienced, and technically skilled link builder can propose a strategy with a high probability of success in a given marketplace. Using existing content (which may need re-positioning or adjusting), or by creating new, complimentary content, the SEO and link builder work together to draw quality inbound links to your site. Nothing gets published until it is “link worthy”. Nothing gets published without additional promotion designed to draw links. No link is built without consideration for how it impacts the site and its SEO status. In short, integrated link building is part of SEO.

A Few Tips for Working with Link Builders

As always, keep your goals and objectives in mind and be transparent about them with your link builder. Ask, “what is my current link profile” before they start. Ask them to qualify it… tell you in writing how it looks. The same qualification will be asked after some months of link building, and the link builder should be held accountable for progress. If you are told your existing links are low quality, as why. Ask which ones are low quality, and how do they know. Use this to judge the quality of new links built.

What about examples of prior work or an outline of what will be done before a contract is signed? This is tough, and if you read the above 6 aspects it might become clear why some link builders balk at such a request.

If they use a “secret network of owned sites” to link to you, they won’t reveal that network or they could put it at risk. You should consider your own risk of working with such a link builder.

If they rely on innovation and strategy, they won’t have the answers before work starts. They won’t know what works for your site and your market until they do the research and perhaps some testing. The link builder can propose broad categories of efforts like quizzes, infographics, surveys, and curated collections (of images, of links), but not specifics. When you pay a good link builder for more than just links from existing sites, you are paying them to answer that question for you.

As with any activity, there is art and science to link building, but no one has yet shown magic to be real in any context.  Don’t pay for magic… pay for performance, results, or link building, and set aside adequate detail in the beginning so you and your link builder can point at the outcomes of efforts and agree on how good or bad they are. And most importantly, remember that link building requires a certain degree of persuasion of the marketplace (those who make links). No link builder can guarantee third parties will freely build links to your site,  but you and your link builder can definitely agree on what represents honest effort, what constitutes a hit or a miss, and how your money will be spent during a link building engagement.

Update: We’re looking for link builders of all styles and capacities. Send email to info at this domain with your pitch or other details. Don’t be shy… if you’re up front with your style/approach/capabilities you are more likely to be considered. I also have a trusted directory of link builders you may want to be in, which I will consider.