The Search & Social Blog From Amplify Interactive

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Co-authored by Kristin Wall

You’ve reached the end; you’ve searched the internet and obtained links from essentially every site for your niche. Don’t cry: diversify! For many search marketers, traditional link building is the only link building strategy in their “portfolio.” Spending your time getting many low-quality links for the sake of getting a large bulk of links is a waste of time.

As a recent article on SearchEngineJournal.com explains “Google has played down the importance of reciprocal links. One way to ensure that Google will value back-links is to embed them with content.”

“Traditional” link building strategies are shifting to accommodate changes in search engine ranking criteria and have put the focus on content. There’s a lot of talk out there now about this concept of “social link building” (SLB), and I have to say – I find it interesting that a lot of old ideas are new again. I can’t believe I’ve been in this game long enough to identify when things are starting to come full circle, but we’re truly getting back to the idea of trying to tap into a community.

At Amplify Interactive, we preach the idea of diversified links a lot, and we build a strategy for each one of our clients that incorporates all types of link-building strategies and links from all different types of sites. In fact, we don’t call it “link development” so much anymore as we call it “site marketing”, and I think that’s an important distinction. Our goal is to help our clients get found, whether it’s through a search, through a well-placed link, or the synergy of the two working together. Our mantra for site marketing has always been “If search engines didn’t matter, would I care about this link?” And again, I think that’s important to keep in mind.

Now, back to this idea of SLB… what does that mean? what are the “new” rules? How do we execute an SLB strategy? I’ll quote the SearchEngineJournal.com article again – here are the types of links & the criteria for links that search engines (and users!) find value in:

• Links embedded within content
• Links corresponding with the content they’re embedded in
• Links created by individuals & rated due to their relevance & value
• Links consistent with the original website
• Links that appear to be organically posted
• Links posted on sites where the content is user generated

Now we know the rules.

In Part II of Diversify Your Links, I’ll discuss the pro’s and con’s of the different types of links, and the 3 goals that are essential to every ‘social’ link building campaign. Stay tuned…