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Links are like roadways for spiders when they're crawling the web. They're kind of like the
actual web that spiders will crawl on, whether it's internally on a website or from website
to website, and Google started applying value to these links because websites would reference
other websites when talking about a particular fact or an event or a specific topic. A really
good example of this is Wikipedia.com. So Wikipedia.com covers a million different topics
and if you do a search on "Rob Lowe," you will see links going to pictures of Rob Lowe,
Rob Lowe's biography on IMDB… So it's referencing all these other things, passing authority
and votes to these other sites because these other sites know exactly what they're talking
about when they're talking about Rob Lowe. The process of attracting these links to your
website or your client's website to gain their authority in the search engine results is
called link building. Link building is really the foundation to quality SEO. You can have
a page that's optimized perfectly, however if you don't have any inbound links coming
in to your client's page, chances are they're not going to show up in the search results,
especially if they're competing for really competitive terms. At the enterprise level,
so enterprise level meaning really large clients that everyone's heard of. Major retailers,
major manufacturers, something that is talked about all the time in the news and media.
Link building is extremely important, and a lot of times with larger clients, there
are technology implications, maybe they're only doing a code release a couple times a
year, so it's really hard to actually get into their website and do some of those on-page
optimizations. So link building is a really great place to start externally for your client.
Also at the enterprise level, there's a lot of "low hanging fruit," or really easy wins
that you can do for your client to start attracting those inbound links and a really good way
to position yourself is an extension of their public relations team. You're kind of helping
take on the role of online reputation management, helping to make sure that they're effectively
and accurately talked about on the web, and there's really three easy ways you can go
about this to 1. Help manage reputation and 2. To help drive immediate results. The first
way is to think about any sponsorships, affiliates, volunteer types of opportunities that your
client does. So having that type of discovery conversation with them, understanding are
they, do they provide money to any organizations throughout the year, do they sponsor any types
of events throughout the year, do they, are they a part of the Better Business Bureau?
These are all really great partners to reach out to and ask for a link in return because
most of the time, since your client is helping that organization or providing any type of
monetary donation, they're going to be more than happy to supply that link back to your
client. The second way is to set up Google Alerts for your client, and if you're unfamiliar
with Google Alerts, it basically alerts you every time someone publishes any content on
the web about your client. If your client is Toyota and Toyota's rolling out this hybrid
car in the next couple of months, simply put in any phrases that are related to it. Maybe
it's "Toyota hybrid," "Toyota hybrid car," "Toyota new hybrid car." Anything that you
feel people are going to be talking about and then track those emails every day. Most
of the time in these emails it's going to be news sources, automotive bloggers that
are talking about this new product that's coming out, so it's really good to get 1.
In good relationships with these editors and 2. If you reach out to these editors if the
content is still fresh, so within a couple days of it being published, they're going
to be really apt to provide that URL, the Toyota URL, within their content. Not only
is it helping you, but it also helps that editor. It helps them increase their user
experience. So the final way to start attracting immediate links to your client's website is
to get a little more involved with the public relations team, and this isn't a huge process.
You're not going to disrupt any of their current processes. We just want to make sure that
when they are submitting press releases, they're optimized for search, and this is really easy.
All they need to do is make sure that the appropriate URL to the content they're referencing
on their website is included within that press release. A lot of times when big brands submit
their press releases, news sources pick them up, thousands of news sources pick them up,
and either repurpose them with all the data or the information you've included, or they'll
just copy and paste it and throw it up on their website so these are really quick, immediate
links. Google understands how press releases get picked up within news sources so those
links are still going to count when going back to your client's website.
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