Linking Campaigns – Dirty Linking Revisited

Getting links and link building is always high on the priority list. There seems to be an influx of new linking programs, membership programs, software, and services sprouting up all claiming
By: CEO Seomarketingforums.com
 
July 12, 2011 - PRLog -- Getting links and link building is always high on the priority list. There seems to be an influx of new linking programs, membership programs, software, and services sprouting up all claiming the same thing: “Let us take care of your linking problems for you for pennies on what you would expect to pay.” Let’s first show my favorite ad currently online:

Typical Ad: “Get 300 one-way links for $29.95.”

Full article here:

http://www.seomarketingforums.com/content/77-linking-campaigns-%96-dirty-linking-revisited.html

You’ve seen these, right? Some webmasters fall for it and end up getting garbage links and their frustration mounts shortly after signing up. Why? Because while they may receive 300 one-way links, their perceived value is far from the reality of what they got: 300 garbage directory submission links … all of which are not indexed by Google.

Let me share with you briefly some testing that I have done and some solutions that I have come up with. For some reason, very few people are doing link building the right way. I am here to show you how to do it the RIGHT way.

Now, hiring someone to do your link building is fine, as long as they share your vision of what you want to accomplish. Be very careful who you outsource your work to. Link Building is becoming known as “dirty marketing”. The “dirty” area is when companies offer to build links for you through package, or “pay per link”. The results are often not what you expected or wanted. As you are often given links that either aren’t indexed by Google, on a page with 50,000 other links or the quality is so bad that it might have been better never to have gotten the link in the first place.

It seems that the more time passes, the link building business gets dirtier. Usually they own a “network” of sites, and they are generally link farms. These networks or farms are usually not indexed by Google or have little to no authority online. In other words, they are worthless for what you are trying to accomplish.

Here is the problem. Most webmasters have been brainwashed to believe that they need hundreds or thousands of links in order to climb the rankings in the search engines, especially Google. That is just not the case. What you need are highly targeted, very high quality links, placed in the right spot on the page, and targeting the right anchor text.

Where do you start? Your first issue at hand is to understand what anchor text you want to use. You see, too many go after a very generic anchor text like “buy car” and get nailed with the -30 or -950 penalties. Remember, Google knows what each keyword phrase’s value is because of AdWords, and the high value keywords are the ones that get those most attention.

But think about it, if someone types in “buy car” are they really looking to buy? It is doubtful. What car do they want? What style? What color? What price range? What location? See the problem? Stop focusing on the keywords at the wrong end of the buying cycle. You want the keywords where people are buying.

Ranking means nothing. Traffic means nothing. Conversion means everything.

You might think I am crazy saying the above. Because you might say, you can’t convert without traffic and you can’t get traffic without ranking.

Fine.

Let me put it this way:

If you rank #1 for a keyword phrase and it produces zero traffic is it worth anything?

No.

If your site gets 100,000 unique visitors a day and no one buys, is the traffic worth anything?

No.

All that matters is conversion. Making the cash register ring. Getting customers and keeping customers. It is the lifeblood of any business.

So, what do you do next? How do you find the keywords that sell? You want to test … and test with PPC. See which keywords convert well. This is a concept that very few understand. Instead of looking at which keywords get the most searches, look at the keywords that bring the most buyers! If this concept is going over your head, watch the videos. Here is the quick rundown of the process after you have run your Google AdWords PPC test campaign:

Step 1: Analyze the keyword results from your campaign and rank them (in dollars, or your currency) from the most sales to the least sales.

Step 2: Match what the Cost Per Click on every keyword that converted a “searcher” into a “buyer”.

Step 3: Rank them in categories:
a: best keywords are $4.00+ per click
b: good keywords are $1.50 – $3.99 per click
c: above average keywords are $0.90 – $1.49 per click
d: average keywords are $0.50 – $0.89 per click
e: below average keywords are $0.49 or below per click

Keywords that convert that are below $0.50 per click are those that you want to just pay for, while you work on the organic campaigns for the big ones. A key point to remember here is that the big keywords tend to have a “trickle down” effect on the less expensive keyword phrases.

It is for this reason that you want to start at the top and work your way down the list for if you can get a top ranking for a keyword phrase that converts that is $4.00 a click. You are saving a lot of money on advertising and can focus on other areas to spend your marketing budget which will further your share of the market.

Step 4: Analyze the top ten organic sites in Google for the top keyword phrase.

Step 5: Review the backlinks for each site in the organic top ten using Open Site Explorer (don’t use the Google backlinks, the information is not accurate).

Step 6: Look for unknown directories, press release areas, forum postings, articles distribution areas, “hidden gems”, etc.

Step 7: Hit all the links that are quality that the top ten sites are linking to. Study them to see if you want to be listed there as well. You can even call the webmasters and tell them why it makes more sense to link to you instead of your competitor. Of course, if needed, you can offer to ’sponsor’ their site for a few months … get the relationship rolling. Good things happen with good relationships.

Why do you target keywords that are high cost per click? Easy. Let’s say that a keyword that you tested was $4.00 per click, and in your test, it converted the best. Well, researching this, you realize that if you had the #1 listing, you could potentially get 5,000 visitors to your site a month. Now, simple math tells you that would be a $20,000 spend per month, which may be outside your budget.

Now, if you had the #1 ranking organically for that keyword phrase, you probably wouldn’t get 5,000 visitors, but you would probably get about half that, and other spill over traffic from other phrases that you would rank well for should fill in the gap. The point is, you can see what your site could do, when what you lack is top ranking.

If you kept conservative, and invested 1/10th the spend, or $2,000.00 per month on a paid link/directory campaign, along with other SEO and SEM methods, what do you think your results would be at the end of 90 days? I would estimate that you would be in the top ten, possibly top three, and your traffic and conversions would be solid.

How do you know the conversions will be solid? Easy. Because you tested the keywords first and you know this keyword converts well.

Did you see how that worked? Of course I am being very simplistic in describing this, but this should make sense to you how this is rolled out and how you use testing to uncover the right keyword phrases to target. That is the issue for most SEOs and webmasters. The wrong keywords are often targeted.
End
Source:CEO Seomarketingforums.com
Email:***@silynnie.karoo.co.uk Email Verified
Tags:Link, Campaigns, Backlinks, Service
Industry:Advertising, Publishing, Internet
Location:England
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