Hi Wiep,

I wanted to send a personal note and thank you so much for using crowdSPRING. We’re thrilled to have you as a customer and hope that your experience was positive.

Please let me know if there’s anything we can do to help you or your company going forward. We’d also value any feedback you have on the crowdSPRING website or on your experience in general. We very much appreciate user’s thoughts: good, bad or in-between. And, last but not least, we greatly appreciate any way you might help us to spread the word – in fact, a simple blog entry about your experience is the best possible compliment you could ever give us. We promise to reciprocate any way we can…

Thanks again for being a part of our young community,

Best regards,

It’s a simple email, thanking me for the business we did, asking for feedback, and mentioning that spreading the word (for example a blog post) would be appreciated. It’s a short, honest and to-the-point email, and although it wasn’t in the style I was used from crowdSPring, this short blog post proves that it works.

Do you sell products online? Take a good look at the approach above, and ask yourself how you can implement something similar. It’s simple (it can even be automated), but can be very effective.

Easy Links: Send A Thank You Note

Related posts:

1. Need More Proof that Links are (Still) Important?
   Every two years, SEOmoz ask dozens of search marketing professionals to share...

Let’s start with one of the best posts I’ve read in a while – Gab’s 101 link buying tips. Whether you buy links or not, there are lots of useful tips in there for everyone!

If you rather not buy your way to the top, you’ll have to learn the art of web promoting. And this art starts by fully understanding why people share stuff with each other, and/ or how you can persuade them into doing so. From there on, you can move on to creating the right content and thinking about the right promotion strategy. The actual contacting of webmasters, either by phone or email, is the last (but also very important) part of the process.

And also:

• SMX East: Ask the linkbuilders – Lisa Barone
• Link building using Delicious – Wil Reynolds
• DMOZ: A solid directory or the great pumpkin of search? – Debra Mastaler
• The anchor text sparsity problem – Bill Slawski
• What is the perfect link? – Michael Martinez
• A marketing role in product development – creating buzz… & links! – Todd Heim
• Recovering from link building mistakes – Eric Ward
• Offer testimonials, get links – Rand Fishkin
• Advanced link building: clone your most successful link profiles – Ken Lyons
• Link building: not just off-page anymore – Julie Joyce
• The best linking expert you can know – Micheal Martinez
• Mining 31,500,000 free links for the take – Ruud Hein
• Google trust rank patent granted – Bill Slawski

PS – Lots of people I talk to about link building are always on the lookout for shortcuts. There. Aren’t. Any. Nifty tools like this come close, but it will always be lots of work.

PPS – Shaun Anderson is giving away free link building ebooks this week. Yes, that’s even more link building tips to digest.

Link Building this Month (10.2009)

Related posts:

1. Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics For 2009
   Six and a half years ago (which is ages, in Internet years),...

Although I still love working at Tribal, I felt it was time for a new challenge, which is why I decided to leave the company. Until the end of January, I will still do some work for Tribal. As of February, I’ll be completely independent.

So what’s next?

That’s what I asked myself when I decided it was time for something different. I love being creative, I enjoy testing & tuning, helping others gives me a boost, and trying new things is awesome as well. And all of this had to be part of whatever my next step would be.

A few months of thinking, brainstorming and talking things through, resulted in an interesting combination of developing & running a few (publishing) projects, taking on a few link building clients on my own, and teaming up with the brightest Dutch link builder I know. He happened to have a great link building domain name laying around, which is where you can see both our faces now.

The next few months will tell how this combination turns out to be, but I’m definitely looking forward to it :)

Ready for New Challenges…

Related posts:

1. Time flies, things change
   Although it just seems like yesterday, it’s already been a year since...

For those who know a thing or two about cars – in my opinion, choosing between good content and excellent content is like choosing between giving away a BMW, or giving away a Bugatti Veyron. A BMW (I just couldn’t resist :) ) is a car. It’s a great, luxury car, but it’s still a car. You can see them in your street, on the highway, in the city, etc. And although most people can never afford a BMW, it’s nearly a commodity.

A Bugatti Veyron isn’t a car, it’s a space ship. It’s a dream. It’s the most exclusive car in the world. You might know someone who has a friend, who has a neighbor, who’s cousin has once seen a Bugatti Veyron, but that’s about as close as you’ll ever get to a Veyron.

Giving away a BMW is good. You’ll definitely attract some attention with the campaign, and some people will think “Whoah, I’d definitely want to win one of those”. However, a campaign like this has probably been done by others at least a few times, so it basically isn’t something new. Participants will enter, and move on with their life.

Giving away a Bugatti Veyron is amazing. It probably hasn’t been done before by someone else, so it’s unique. People will go “What the….? Are they out of their mind? Hey Mike! Come take a look at this, someone’s giving away a Veyron!”. They will participate, tell their friends about it, and keep a close eye on the contest to see if they’ve won. And even when they didn’t win, they’ll keep telling their friends that they’ve ‘nearly won a Veyron once’.

The first contest, just like good content, will probably result in some solid links and an increase in traffic. With the second campaign, just like with excellent content, you’ll see all kinds of press jump on it. If you promote it the right way, it can lead to dozens of excellent links, hundreds of other mentions, and a shitload of traffic.

My point is that, with linkbait, it’s well worth it to put in a few extra hours, dollars or whatever to shift your content’s quality from good to excellent. The simple equation below, which I use for link marketing, confirms that statement.

To explain the equation, in case it’s not clear to understand (I usually suck at making myself clear :) ) – the result is always fixed, because you’ve (hopefully) set yourself a goal.

Let’s say that the result you’re after has to be 100x. With an offer value (and your content usually is your offer) of 10x, it means that you’ll have to put in the same amount of sales to reach the end result of 100x. However, if you double the quality of your offer, you’ll only have to put in half of the effort that you originally needed.

Keep in mind that the sales quality (the quality of your pitch, how you use your network, etc.) plays a role in this as well. A low sales quality raises the amount of effort you need to put in, but a high sales quality can decrease that amount.

To make a long story short: increase the quality of your content, so you can take it easier on the promotional efforts to reach the same result. Or even better, put in the same effort you had planned, and achieve much better results.

Linkbait: Good Content Isn’t Good Enough

No related posts.

At Tribal, I’ve had the opportunity to interview dozens of potential link builders, and certainly know how difficult this can be. Useful tips like the 5 questions for link builders that Angela Moore listed, may help you to select the right people, and to build a great team of link builders.

If you would base your link building strategy solely on what people say in forums, or what they write about in blogs, it probably won’t bring you optimal results. Despite what some may say, reciprocal links can still be worthwhile, some directories are still very useful, and even some link buys can be very powerful. Even irrelevant links can help you to get better rankings :)

And also:

• Link building outreach: 5 Steps to maximize the value of every opportunity – Garrett French
• 17 Ways search engines judge the value of a link – Rand Fishkin
• Link building through relationships – Jake Matthewas
• Why ranking top 3 in Bing is important for link building – Dave Naylor
• How to get the anchor text you want without even asking – Kelvin Newman
• A link building rule to cut out and keep – Rob Ousbey
• Practical guide to finding link bait inspiration – Ann Smarty
• Why linkbait is a tactic the search engines will always value – Rand Fishkin
• 18 Must follow link building experts on Twitter – Melanie Nathan
• Search engines applying different anchor text relevance from the same site and related site links – Bill Slawski
• 17 Motivations for linking – Zach Daniels

Link Building this Month (09.2009)

Related posts:

1. Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics For 2009
   Six and a half years ago (which is ages, in Internet years),...

One of the best articles I’ve read in a while is Ken McGaffins list with 10 reasons why journalists may write about your site. Only link marketers who fully understand why people link to other sites in their niche can be optimally successful. Also, knowing the basics and trying to avoid PR mistakes and pitch no-nos can help as well :)

You probably haven’t missed SEOmoz launching their updated Search Engine Ranking Factors document, which they have expanded with a link building section as well now. The Search Engine Ranking Factors definitely are a good read – if you’re looking for more info on link value and valuating links, you can either read David Snyder or Jon Henshaws latest article.

And also:

• Advanced article marketing – Jannifer Mattern
• My favorite link building lie – Eric Ward
• Five approached to creating a link building strategy – Angela Moore
• Three internal links SEO gurus ignore – Michael Martinez
• Link building through social media; is it that difficult? – Ravi Venkatesan
• Finding sites to buy links on with a little help from Google – Marcus Tandler
• How a search engine might analyze the linking structure of a web site – Bill Slawski
• Link building for small ecommerce sites – Rob Ousbey
• Natural Link Building : Create an Online Presence and Linkable Brand – Loren Baker
• 230 Link bait ideas – Thomas M. Schmitz
• How to get dofollow links from Wikipedia articles – Tom Demers
• A case study: Using contests to build links – Debra Mastaler
• 3 Ways to measure link investment risk – Michael Martinez
• Why reciprocal links will always be viable – Eric Ward

 Natural Link Building : Create an Online Presence and Linkable Brand

Link Building this Month (08.2009)

Related posts:

1. Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics For 2009
   Six and a half years ago (which is ages, in Internet years),...

The top 5 ranking factors:

1. Keyword focused anchor text from external links (73%)
2. External link popularity (quantity/quality of external links) (71%)
3. Diversity of link sources (links from many unique root domains) (67%)
4. Keyword use anywhere in the title tag (66%)
5. Trustworthiness of the domain based on link distance from trusted domains (e.g. TrustRank, domain mozTrust, etc.) (66%)

Additionally, Google (unintentionally) underlined the outcome of SEOmoz’ research, and the importance of links. About two weeks ago, they decided to give the world a preview of what it calls its “next-generation infrastructure”, with the code name Caffeine. Within two weeks, this page is ranking at #3 for ‘caffeine’, without even mentioning it anywhere on the page. Although Google tried to make sure that the effectiveness of link bombing would decrease, this again shows the importance of external anchor text and page content of linking pages. Even in Caffeine.

[Edit 27/08: I just noticed that DaveN covered this as well. Great minds... :) ]

Need More Proof that Links are (Still) Important?

Related posts:

1. Easy Links: Send A Thank You Note
   Just recently, I used crowdSPRING’s creative community for designing the logo of...
2. A Good Alt is Better Than a Bad Anchor
   A short while ago, I set up a small test in order...

A good link marketing strategy contains several different tactics. You want to avoid *just* having link spikes, and should aim for a natural link growth profile instead. In my opinion, the optimal approach to reach this, is to start with a foundation of ’single’ links first. This could include a handful of directories, business listings, interviews and other low hanging fruit.Try to get a good flow of continuous links going at the same time, for example by publishing a large amount of images, while providing the right creative common attribution info. Or just by launching a blog, where you add good content on a regular basis. From there, you can move on to the ‘peak’ links; press releases and linkbait.

Let’s start with the first of the two. This can be very effective, but sending out mass press releases can also be one of the most ineffective link building tactics, if you’re ‘just sending out press releases to get more links’. Try to understand why press releases get rejected, avoid the most common press release pitfalls, and understand that web PR is all about relationships, you’ll have much more success.

Linkbait starts with a good idea. For those of you who just ran out of good ideas: Lucy Langdon listed a few ways to come up with great new ones, and Garrett French went even deeper into the process of researching, creating & distributing linkbait content. Oh, and don’t forget to measure your success…

And also:

• Whom did you wake up with this morning? – Christoph Cemper
• 10 Link building strategies for new website or business owners – Greg Shuey
• The 5 B’s of bad link building – Pete Caputa
• When your link portfolio is devalued – Eric Ward
• Link building: a balancing act – Julie Joyce
• Adam Lasnik offers link building advice – Michael Martinez
• Google’s Vince update – Brand or no brand? – Richard Baxter
• Page segmentation and link building & Understanding linking intent; the spam connection – Dave Harry

Link Building this Month (07.2009)

Related posts:

1. Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics For 2009
   Six and a half years ago (which is ages, in Internet years),...

The first report of the Broken Link Checker listed 92 broken links, out of a total of nearly 2,000 links. When ran through this list manually, I noticed that most of the broken links were the result of a new URL structure and bad redirection. Because I wanted to keep most of the links intact (I linked to them in the past, so they should probably still be link worthy, right?), I tried to find the new URL of the 404-ing page first. If the search functionality of the site didn’t point me to the right page, I just dropped the link. Of the 92 broken links, I had to drop 49, which is more than half of them…

What I found most shocking, was that about 75% of all the broken links pointed to web savvy sites, including several SEO blogs. Making sure that you redirect all pages properly when you adjust your URL structure, and checking your 404 statistics regularly both seem pretty basic SEO skills to me.

With new (popular) plugins like this, and with smart folks chasing down other people’s 404s to build links, I’d strongly advise you to keep a close eye on your 404 statistics…

Why You Should Keep an Eye on Your 404 Stats

Related posts:

1. Indispensable Link Building Tools
   A good link building toolbox is invaluable. Some tools provide extra information...

In this post, I’ll mention a few questions that you could ask your new link building client, but, in the case that you’re not working for a client, you could be asking them to your boss or maybe even to yourself as well.

Some of these questions should also be asked earlier in the sales process, for example before or during a sales pitch, but not every link marketer is in the situation that he or she is involved in this sales process from start till end.

What do you know about link marketing? What does your boss know about link marketing?

Starting with this question will make it a lot easier for you to keep your client happy. If he doesn’t know a lot about SEO and/ or link marketing yet, you can try to increase his level of knowledge, while you work for him. For example, when you’re working for someone who’s new to link building, reporting that ‘you’ve managed to get 2 highly relevant, editorial .edu links in just a few hours of work’, might not be such a good idea. Try to explain the value of links first, and/ or start your reporting with results that he can fully understand.

Also, when your contact person has to report to his superior, it’s also useful to get an idea of what the knowledge level of that manager is. That way, you can provide the right information to your contact person, to keep his boss happy as well. Using an approach like this usually results in a very happy contact person (you’re ‘helping him out’ as well), who’s willing to fight for you during meetings with his boss.

Did you hire an SEO or link building company in the past, or have you built links yourself?

Asking a question like this might give you an indication of what kind of strategies have been used in the past. For example, if your new client hired an SEO agency in the past, that mainly used services like TLA, ReviewMe and PPP to get new links, you know that you have to clean up first, before you can start building new links.

While tools like MajesticSEO also have the ability to show you what links were placed to a specific web page in the past, simply asking the client what strategies were used previously can give you just as much information.

Can you tell more about your company, i.e. the company philosophy, office locations, etc.?

Link building opportunities are everywhere. Office locations are a good start for localized link building, a list of important employees might help you to discover (linkless) press mentions, and the company philosophy may provide different link building angles as well.

Ask your client to provide as much information about the company and the people that work there as possible, including (old) brochures and other documentation. Filter out whatever you feel is necessary or useful, and write that down for future use.

What are the USPs of your product(s) or service(s)?

Just like with the company, you also need to know what is unique about the products your client is trying to sell. Unique angles lead to links. Are their products environmentally friendly? Aim at eco blogs & websites. Is your client the cheapest in the industry? Try to obtain links from price comparison websites, or focus on websites that offer money saving tips, just to name a few.

If your client is not able to tell you their USP, you’ll probably have a hard time promoting the website. No USP usually means mediocrity, and mediocrity means low link building conversion rates, because the website does not add a lot of extra value. Adding exceptional content to your client’s website will probably be your only option.

Can you name 5 of your biggest competitors? Can you explain why these companies are big competitors?

Asking this question can give you more insights in the knowledge level of your contact person (”yes, there is a difference between online and offline competition”), but can also be the jump start of your competitor analysis.

Also, adding ‘why are this your most important competitors’, may reveal some details about these competitors and their USPs as well. Some companies seem to know their competitors better than they know their own company, so asking this question might be very useful.

Do you have a LinkedIn profile, and -if so- can you accept me as a connection?

LinkedIn profiles, and some other social network profiles as well, are excellent to discover interesting connections that your new client may have.

First, you can try to see which journalists, bloggers, reporters or other interesting webmasters are directly connected to your contact person. Advise your client on how to use this network optimally, by giving him clear directions. Don’t just say “try to get links from these places”, but use him as one of your own link developers.

You can also try to find interesting connections the other way around. Determine which people are highly influential in your client’s industry, and find out if your client is connected to these influencers, or which of your client’s connections are.

Are you currently sponsoring any events, charities or whatsoever?

Asking this question (and getting ‘yes’ as an answer) can lead you to some low hanging fruit. High quality, very low hanging fruit. Lots of charities and events list their sponsors on their website, but not a lot do this in an optimal way. Some only mention contributing companies, others link using third party scripts and some use heavily unoptimized image links. Spending some time optimizing these relationships (in a non-spammy way, of course) is usually well worth it.

What kind of private data do you have?

I’m not talking about personal private data here, but lots of companies have a huge amount of market research information, general client data, or other facts and numbers that are perfectly suitable for creating linkbait-type of content. Try to find out what kind of data your client has. Most companies don’t even realize the value of the information they have, or what they could do with it.

Now comes the difficult part: when you have discovered some data, studies, or other information that you could use to attract more links, it’s time to convince the client why making his precious, valuable information accessible to the public (including competitors) is a good thing. Some clients will understand this straight away, but you might have a hard time convincing others.

Do you have any interns or students working at your company?

Interns and students not only can be an access point to a .edu domain, but can be used to create awesome, linkable content during their internship as well. Mix both, and you have the ability to publish links to awesome content on a .edu domain :)

What are your offline marketing plans for the next season?

Integrating online and offline marketing efforts can be highly effective. Instead of 1+1=2, it could even be 1+1=3, depending on the campaign and execution. However, even in 2009, not a lot of companies seem to realize this.

If your client is planning on launching a creative offline advertising campaign, you’d want to know, because failing to create a related linkbait campaign (or optimizing the online part of the campaign) would be a missed opportunity.

Of course, there are tons of other questions that you could ask a new (or existing) client. Do you have any other questions to add to this list, that you could ask a client?

10 Questions to Ask a New Link Marketing Client

Related posts:

1. Starting Up a Link Marketing Campaign
   Starting up a link marketing campaign is easy. Thorough preparation before starting...