Screw Link Building – Its called Relationship Building
Jo Turnbull
Case Studies
- Search London
- SEO.jo blogs
- Clients
Why build a relationship vs. a link
- low cost for you / client
- long term
- beneficial to you and the client
- quality link building is about relationship building
How to build relationships
-
be honest and open
-
attend events
-
take the long term view
-
do something different – stand out
-
ask why?
- Search London
- took over ownership oct 2010
- goal was to grow the event
- wanted to know more people in search
- Changed name to “Search London” simpler and more effective
- doubled in size from relationship building
- How did I do it?
- Strong domain, meetup.com attracts members
- Got Good Speakers
- Guest post
- Interact with people at event
- Don’t spam people
- Central Venues
- Started using #SearchLondon hashtag on twitter
- Film presentations for later
- Results
- New search London website (beta)
- Google’s Pierre Far asked to speak at meetup
- First day time event – Google Campus March 20th
- Could I have built this from links?
- Invited to guest post
- client confidence
- personal brand has increased in industry
- people want to sponsor the event
- latest conference in front of entrepreneur
- More links to SEO Jo Blogs and referrals
- Cost: $60 every 6 months to host the meetups on meetup.com
- SEO.jo blogs
- Work freelance in Perth, Australia
- Ran 5 meetups
- Attended 2 Brighton SEOs
- SMX London and SMX NYC
- How to get started?
- Just do it.
- Be honest and approachable
- Don’t be afraid of using your contacts
- find a good blog in your field
- use rapportive to find email address
- use follerwonk
- follow people on twitter and @tweert them
- is there a public facebook group
- personalize the email
- short version of the email (no one likes reading long emails)
- Attend relevant events
- Many events e.g.. meetup.com, trade shows, new product launches
- Travel bloggers / food bloggers / mommy bloggers
- Approach with interest in the event
- Speak to other bloggers
- Speak to the press
- Do something different
- make sure you stand out
- Results
- regular blogger on state of search – euro best search blog 2012
- post on Brighton SEO was top read seo blog of the year
- Client case studies
- Holiday apartments in Europe
- client has a blog that hasn’t been updated
- sole KPI was to increase in rankings
- only off site work was allowed
- What can i do is different?
- Engaged in blogger outreach
- reciprocal blogs
- relationship with the bloggers
- good blogs via meetups / search events
- updated the client blog weekly with photos of new cities
- Results
- increase in number of referring sites
- more natural link profile
- increased rankings for key terms
- brought forward fresh way of thinking
- now the agency is engaging in blogger outreach
- cost $300
- Retail client
- moving to new location in a new shopping mall
- set up launch party
- asked people to write their info and put it in a box
- prize draw, doubled sales for day at the store
- cost $1000
- Holiday apartments in Europe
Building relationships takes effort
- brainstorm ideas
- buzz monitoring tools
- What are people saying about the brand?
- Topsy (what is trending)
- Google instant search
- Google insights / trends
- Be prepared to address negative mentions
Find good blogs
- search for lists
- advanced search queries
- inurl:guest-post
- travel blogs “write for us”
- Check out the blogs on the 10th page of google and work backwards
- engage with blog communities
How to check the blogs are genuine
- social media profiles established
- contact us page
- do they have google authorship?
- look to see if there are other sites on same IP address
- sent a test email, do they respond?
Personalize email
- find the contact’s name and mention it in the email
- mention if there has been communication before
- twitter?
- colleague?
Long term
- don’t just look for the sponsored post
- build up relationship with the blog owner
- check out past posts on the blog
- can the blogger help run a competition
- look for comments on competition
- who enters the competition? more potential bloggers
- don’t give up
- email follow up, but don’t harass
When the post is live
- tweet
- don’t be afraid to promote
- share internally
- share with friends
Ideas to do things different
- Competition or contest
- Sponsor an event
In summary
- honest and approachable
- attend events
- take the long term view
- do something different
- why would the want to work with you
Part 2, Erin Everhart @erinever
Relationships require a lot of work
- 1-on–1 relationships are the most valuable
- Link building is hard
What do you want out of a relationship?
- Value
- Loyalty
- Care
- Friendships
Stuff not to do
- Don’t just ask for links. It’s creepy.
- don’t lie to people
Blogger outreach
- Guest blogging
- Searching for sources the old way
- google the topic
- Who are the people behind the website?
- you are building relationships with people, not the website
- learn about the people
- New way to find sources
- go on linkedin and search
- search for employees from a company
- search twitter
- Follerwonk, SEO as a pro
- FIND PEOPLE FIRST
- Pinterest to find people and content that’s being shared
- Other money keywords
- blogger
- blog owner
- marketer
- etc
- work with what you have
- analyze who follows you (follerwonk)
- analyze THEIR followers
- look for writers
- they are already engaged with you
- do this with your competitors
- analyze who follows you (follerwonk)
- Don’t forget about the mass media
- Searching for sources the old way
- How do I contact people?
- Do your homework, find out about these people
- find the common denominator
- interact with them, like, tweet, +1
- don’t creep people out
- on twitter instead of
- hey I love your site can I guest post?
- do this: start a conversation with someone, a real person
- Call people
- if you must email
- make it noticeable
- make it short, break things up in short digestible paragraphs
- use the right address, at the domain name
- fave subject line: “Hi NAME”
- Talk to people like they’re your friends
- Show you care, and people will care back
- Ask them questions
- people like talking about themselves
- if you ask, they will answer
- Give people things
- things related to your industry
- Be a resource
- for other in industry
- students
- Lend a hand
- do social good
- give help with their site or whatever
- Speak at student organizations
- links from .EDU address (HUGE)
- Have a personality
- This is real company stuff @wilreynolds
- Real companies build relationships
Maintain the relationship!
What can you expect
- More traffic
- More leads
- More conversions
- More revenue
This can’t be the only thing that you do
- UX testing
- Other outreach