Marketing Advice
About link building...
by Bruce Bates Cooperative marketing
Bruce Bates 
Cooperative marketing
So this is a post I made a while back on my blog, I am just copying some parts of that post here for you all to read. I think it will give you some clue on link building.
Now a lot of people will tell you that the only important links are ones coming from websites that are similar in topic and content. The belief is that Google will rank you better because it seems only natural for targeted links to come from related sites, however this is not only untrue, its not very logical either.
Thinking in logical terms we know that offline, many of businesses that have nothing to do with each other, advertise other businesses. Its a very common practice for local businesses to recommend other local businesses even though they have nothing in common except being local to each other. The services they offer often times have nothing at all to do with the businesses they recommend. In an online world, this would mean the content they offer has nothing to do with other sites they link to.
Now because Google is shifting to be more social search experience, and because the whole world has shifted to using internet social networks, its very likely you are going to make connections with other business owners and website owners who have websites that have nothing to do with yours. You are also going to find customers with personal websites that have nothing to do with your website. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t link to and get links from these people.
If Internet marketing worked the way most people think, you should refuse to link to anyone not relating to your topic, and you shouldn’t have people link to you that don’t have a website related to the topic you are discussing. Luckily however, things don’t work the way most people believe.
Linking to unrelated content, absolutely helps Google in ranking links and doesn’t hurt anyone as long as you are doing things correctly. This is one of the main reasons for Google recognizing relationship link tagging. Relationship link tagging is the process of making your links social by tagging your links with specific tags.
Relationship tagging works by using the html attribute rel="" in your html code. If you are using wordpress every link you create gives you the option of adding relationship tagging by default. Just look to the menu below the where you add your links.
The most common relationship tag is the friendship tag. The friendship tag has 3 choices – friend, contact, and acquaintance. This tells google the relationship between yourself and the owner of the site you are linking to. Aside from friendship tagging, you can use two other alternatives to the relationship tagging. You can use family tagging which has the options of child, parent, sibling, spouse, or kin. The last type of relationship tagging you can do is self relationship with is done with a simple option of me. The last tag is to tell google the site you are linking to is another site owned by you.
Below I have included a couple examples of how to relationship tag your links.
<a rel="parent" title="pet waste removal service" href="http://spotandfido.com">Spot and Fido pet waste removal service</a>
<a rel="friend" title="parenting is crazy" href="http://parentingiscrazy.blogspot.ca/">Insanity is genetic</a>
<a rel="me" title="unlimited free traffic" href="http://unlimited-free-traffic.com/">Free Internet Traffic</a>
In addition to the above relationship tags you can also add some additional information when using the friendship tag. For example you can add if you have ever met the person or not by adding a simple met to the tag as shown in the example below.
<a rel="friend met" title="Photo Manipulation / Caricature Manipulation by Rodney Pike" href="http://rwpike.blogspot.com/">Rodney Pike Humorous Illustrator</a>
The tags I just explained above are really only the start of relationship tagging links you can get a lot more details by checking out "relationships meta data profile" (search it). You can also check the Google site to see specifically all the relationship tags that they recognize by checking out "The rich snippets article" (search it) in the google webmasters support.
Relationship tagging your links is very import for SEO as is getting relationship links back. Unlike other types of links, relationship links are a bit more difficult to get because they really require the person linking to you actually put effort into it. The best way to do this is by getting links to your site from people you meet through social networks. As you develop a relationship with these people explain to them the importance of relationship tagging your links. Teach them how to alter your link to contain a relationship tag.
To be clear this does not imply relationship tagging any old link will help, you need a relationship with the people at the linking website.
Mar 13th 2013 16:31
Cooperative marketingSo this is a post I made a while back on my blog, I am just copying some parts of that post here for you all to read. I think it will give you some clue on link building.
Now a lot of people will tell you that the only important links are ones coming from websites that are similar in topic and content. The belief is that Google will rank you better because it seems only natural for targeted links to come from related sites, however this is not only untrue, its not very logical either.
Thinking in logical terms we know that offline, many of businesses that have nothing to do with each other, advertise other businesses. Its a very common practice for local businesses to recommend other local businesses even though they have nothing in common except being local to each other. The services they offer often times have nothing at all to do with the businesses they recommend. In an online world, this would mean the content they offer has nothing to do with other sites they link to.
Now because Google is shifting to be more social search experience, and because the whole world has shifted to using internet social networks, its very likely you are going to make connections with other business owners and website owners who have websites that have nothing to do with yours. You are also going to find customers with personal websites that have nothing to do with your website. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t link to and get links from these people.
If Internet marketing worked the way most people think, you should refuse to link to anyone not relating to your topic, and you shouldn’t have people link to you that don’t have a website related to the topic you are discussing. Luckily however, things don’t work the way most people believe.
Linking to unrelated content, absolutely helps Google in ranking links and doesn’t hurt anyone as long as you are doing things correctly. This is one of the main reasons for Google recognizing relationship link tagging. Relationship link tagging is the process of making your links social by tagging your links with specific tags.
Relationship tagging works by using the html attribute rel="" in your html code. If you are using wordpress every link you create gives you the option of adding relationship tagging by default. Just look to the menu below the where you add your links.
The most common relationship tag is the friendship tag. The friendship tag has 3 choices – friend, contact, and acquaintance. This tells google the relationship between yourself and the owner of the site you are linking to. Aside from friendship tagging, you can use two other alternatives to the relationship tagging. You can use family tagging which has the options of child, parent, sibling, spouse, or kin. The last type of relationship tagging you can do is self relationship with is done with a simple option of me. The last tag is to tell google the site you are linking to is another site owned by you.
Below I have included a couple examples of how to relationship tag your links.
<a rel="parent" title="pet waste removal service" href="http://spotandfido.com">Spot and Fido pet waste removal service</a>
<a rel="friend" title="parenting is crazy" href="http://parentingiscrazy.blogspot.ca/">Insanity is genetic</a>
<a rel="me" title="unlimited free traffic" href="http://unlimited-free-traffic.com/">Free Internet Traffic</a>
In addition to the above relationship tags you can also add some additional information when using the friendship tag. For example you can add if you have ever met the person or not by adding a simple met to the tag as shown in the example below.
<a rel="friend met" title="Photo Manipulation / Caricature Manipulation by Rodney Pike" href="http://rwpike.blogspot.com/">Rodney Pike Humorous Illustrator</a>
The tags I just explained above are really only the start of relationship tagging links you can get a lot more details by checking out "relationships meta data profile" (search it). You can also check the Google site to see specifically all the relationship tags that they recognize by checking out "The rich snippets article" (search it) in the google webmasters support.
Relationship tagging your links is very import for SEO as is getting relationship links back. Unlike other types of links, relationship links are a bit more difficult to get because they really require the person linking to you actually put effort into it. The best way to do this is by getting links to your site from people you meet through social networks. As you develop a relationship with these people explain to them the importance of relationship tagging your links. Teach them how to alter your link to contain a relationship tag.
To be clear this does not imply relationship tagging any old link will help, you need a relationship with the people at the linking website.
Mar 13th 2013 16:31
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Comments
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Leena C.
 Indian accessoriesmakes alot of sense when you read all of it...thankyou for sharing.. Mar 14th 2013 05:58 |
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Bruce Bates
Cooperative marketingNathaniel you are dead accurate. I don't actively build links as you know so for me, knowing how to build and tag these links properly has helped a lot. When peopel ask me if they can link to my blog (which does happen from time to time) I explain to them how. Also when creating cut and paste code, I have used that and it has really helped. For the record, lets not kid ourselves, to anyone reading what I type.... I do actively build links. I just do not consider what I do link building as my goal is not to gain a link, its to gain the exposure the site can bring, as Nathaniel has very elegantly explained. When I go out and create company profiles on the branding websites, I do so because of the branding it delivers, but at the same time I am building backlinks. And speaking of I am going to make a new topic about branding :) Mar 14th 2013 07:14 |
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Bruce Bates
Cooperative marketingNathaniel I also tend to think you are correct about several factors needing to be thought about, however some niches, fall into all niches. I run several marketing websites and if someone uses my service or my advice and finds it works, I don't much care what industry they are in I want them to share it with others. I won't get into the whole nofollow, dofollow, and the lack thereof any follow debate. Lets just say, its fairly well known that Google doesn't adhere to their own rules very well so I don't think those matter so much anymore. Mar 14th 2013 07:29 |
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Nathaniel Bailey
 Online Marketing Developer"I won't get into the whole nofollow, dofollow, and the lack thereof any follow debate. Lets just say, its fairly well known that Google doesn't adhere to their own rules very well so I don't think those matter so much anymore." Rofl, I hear you! Google have had their own sites and "link building" pulled up enough times in the past (and a couple recently). Yeah, I wouldn't want to turn this into a convo about follow and nofollow links as its something I have grown very tired of over the years due to being to a topic which comes up far to often on many sites, forums and blogs etc lol. Branding will be a great topic, not sure I will have time to comment today though, but will try to join it tomorrow if time permits :) "some niches, fall into all niches" I know what you're saying in the context you mean, but I don't fully agree, but that's because I know something work for some niches and not others. But that's another topic I think and I don't have time for example today but would be happy to share some examples of what I mean tomorrow if you like? Mar 14th 2013 10:47 |
Whilst I do agree with you in part that you shouldn't and don't need to gain links from just sites which are related to yours, you do still need to think about relevance and whether xyz site will earn you targeted traffic which is the main reason why I as an seo aim to mostly build relevant links, not just to make the google bots happy but to make sure that the links I am building are going to help with traffic and conversion as well as rankings.
"The services they offer often times have nothing at all to do with the businesses they recommend. In an online world, this would mean the content they offer has nothing to do with other sites they link to."
This is what rel="nofollow" should be used for, because it sounds like your talking about advertising more then a natural link within a pages content, no? If you're simply getting a link/advertising space say on the right of this page for a 'used car sales' site, it should be nofollowed according to the google guidelines.
But hay, that's kind of a grey area IMO because it would depend on a number of factors such as:
A. What type of site you have.
B. What type of site you're getting a link on.
C. Where your link is being placed
D. The niche both sites are in.
For example - keeping with the above 'used cars' example - say you was to gain a link on a friends vets website, it would be safer from a google guidelines point of view to add nofollow to the link. But if you was to have a link on a friends blog it might be ok to keep the link followed.
This is when the relationship link tagging comes in handy and can tell google more about the link so the bots can see you're linking to a friend rather then it being a paid link which google might think if your linking to what they see as a non-relevant used cars site on a blog where you would normally talk about say marketing.
Mar 14th 2013 05:24