To maintain or begin any link building strategy for your SEO efforts it is essential to keep some things in mind.  Outlined below are some things to consider while you developing a link building strategy that will work for your business and help drive success and maximize reach in your efforts.

1. Have a Plan

Before you start, it is key to identify your objectives and define what you would consider a successful SEO campaign.  Understanding these objectives will help you determine the types of links that you will acquire.

Know Your Backlink Portfolio

Before beginning an SEO campaign, it is essential to understand what types of links that your site already has.  It’s important to maintain a natural balance.  Understanding this will help you better understand what needs to be done for the site.  Some of the attributes you will want to look at are as follows:

• Branded vs. non-branded anchor text
• Diversity of linking domains
• Anchor text distribution
• Types of links

All of these things are important to understand and will help you better develop a strategy that will fit in line with your goals and objectives, in addition to ensuring that your backlink portfolio is as natural as possible.

Know Your Industry

One thing to consider as you are figuring out what will work for your business is to look at your industry.  The more you understand about your industry online the easier it will be to market your website on blogs, forums, Q&A sites and etc.  Depending on the industry you are in some of these types of sites may be more popular and beneficial than others.  For example, if you are in the automobile or tech industry it is going to be more important for you to be active on forums than in the fashion industry where it will be more worthwhile to gain visibility on popular blogs.

It is also important to understand who your online competitors are.  This can help you to identify their strengths, weaknesses and any opportunities that you may have.  As online efforts are transparent it will be easy for you to learn from your competitors and use tactics that may be working well for them. There are various tools that you can use such as Open Site Explorer and MajesticSEO to gain more insights into your competitor’s backlinks.

Know Your Consumer

The other piece to the puzzle is to fully understand your consumer and the way they make purchases.  This insight will help you be more strategic and selective as to the types of links that you will acquire.  Having this information will help you to find blogs, social networks and other websites where you customers are spending time.  You can cater your SEO efforts to these sites as many of them have very specific demographics.

For example, each social site has a different demographic, and it is increasingly important to be active on the networks in which you believe your customers are active on.  There are infographics that show the demographic on Pinterest and Google+. Being active on these social sites not only facilitates links across these social networks but also gives your link building efforts more reach.  Knowing the user profile on a specific social network will allow you to target a specific demographic and create content that will be spread across these networks.

Develop a Strategy

Below is a process that will help you develop your strategy and better understand the fundamentals of link building.  This process will help you better understand how link building can work for your business, as every link building campaign should be diverse and custom for your business needs.

2. Put People First

As I stated before, it’s important to understand your consumer and the space you are operating in.  This will help you be more strategic in your link building efforts.  If you always put people first, your link building efforts will be much more effective, as they will have SEO value but also help you increase your ROI.

Know Your Consumer

Understanding your customer can also help guide the types of content you are producing for link building, this type of content can range from videos and blog posts to infographics.  A mix of these content types can help you diversify your efforts in addition to creating the best and most relevant content for any potential site visitors.  Content that is catered to your consumers is going to take your search marketing efforts to a different level and keep your brand in front of your customers.

3. Nitty Gritty SEO

As you are building links it is important to understand the nitty gritty, as this will help you get more out of your link building efforts.  Not only are links important to the success of your SEO campaign but the types of links and what those links mean both to the search engines and consumers.

Relevance and Authority

Relevance and authority are both very important attributes when you pursue links for your site.  Relevance is important because you will want to have links on sites that are relevant to your business, this gives users and search engines the right cues as to what your products and services are about.  In the search space you are also credible by association – a link is a vote of confidence to your site.  As SEO is evolving its going to increasingly important to be selective about the links you acquire as they essentially represent partnerships and how search engines will view your site.

Follow vs. Nofollow

According to search engines, links can also be follow or nofollow.  This can be specified in the HTML of every link as a follow link is passing page rank from one page to another, while a no-follow links does not pass page rank.  Here is an example of how page rank is passed for follow and nofollow links.

Although no-follow links do not pass page rank, there is SEO value and benefit from acquiring these types of links, as every link portfolio should contain a healthy mix of follow vs. nofollow.

4. Stay Active

As with all business efforts, it is important to stay active.  You cannot stop your link building, as you do not want to give up market share in the search space.  Your competitors are doing SEO and algorithms are always changing.

Not only is it important to maintain your efforts but constantly seek new opportunities as your industry and consumers may be changing.  In link building its important to remain active, as you want to increase your keyword rankings, increase brand awareness and increase revenue.

4. Don’t Overdo it

As with advertising, it’s important to diversify both in the different types of medium your ads are placed the same principles apply to a link portfolio.  A link portfolio should be diverse in terms of anchor text, types of links you acquire and be spread across many domains. Google has rolled out many updates to their algorithm and the more diverse your efforts and strategies are the more resistant you will be to any future updates. Ultimately, if you use one tactic or very targeted and keyword specific anchor text it will look unnatural and raise red flags to search engines. While the Penguin update favored brands and sites that had diverse link portfolios it looked sites with too much targeted anchor text less favorably and in many instances sites dropped out of the search results pages.  Prior to the release of the Penguin update Google sent unnatural link warnings to many webmasters warning them that their links were unnatural.  Search engines like Google are taking the initiative to constantly improve search results and it is increasingly important to diversify and build links that are not only for search engines but also have people in mind first.  Here’s a graph I’ve put together as what I believe looks natural, although this may vary depending on the industry you’re in.  I’ve broken down Wal-Mart’s’ backlinks and compared them to a small time running shoe company that I found deep in the search results pages.

Not only is it important to diversify anchor text but also it’s also important that you are increasing your reach. Diversification is key, as most businesses cannot sustain themselves with one tactic and one product.  The fundamentals that you would apply to your marketing and business should also be translated to your SEO efforts to gain long-term success.

As link building will be a large portion of most SEO campaigns, it is important to understand that links are not just links; the most effective links have reach and have a dual purpose.  If you have your consumers and your industry in mind when you are building links and setting an SEO strategy this will help you maintain a link portfolio that looks natural to search engines and keep users in mind. This strategy will help you to increase your keyword rankings but also help increase your credibility and brand awareness.

View my slide presentation below, and be sure to watch the webinar replay’s of Implement These 10 SEO Tips, You Must – Part 1 and 2 by clicking here

5 Link Building Strategy Essentials is a post by SEO expert Kristy Ng. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

In light of the recent announcement by Matt Cutts at SXSW there has been a lot of speculation in the SEO industry as to what “over-optimization” entails.  Because this announcement has been vague, it forces many SEOs to rethink and reassess their current strategy.

More than ever, SEOs could learn a thing or two from TED; its tagline alone encapsulates what SEOs should embrace in one simple phrase, “Ideas Worth Spreading”.  As I think about the industry and the way it’s headed, this concept is more true than ever.  Content, products, services and ideas that are worthy of sharing are going to define successful business in terms of SEO and marketing.

There are many things I’ve learned from TED over the years, and I urge you to implement a few things that will strengthen your search marketing campaigns.  Before we get into the three things I’ve learned from TED, here are a few metrics from Open Site Explorer. This site has been able to build a strong domain authority with hundreds of thousands of links pointing to it, not to mention the number of shares it has across Facebook, Twitter and Google.

1. Content

The main thing that makes TED a success is the content across the site. Anyone that watches or listens to the talks can vouch for this. If marketers could create content, products or services that people are excited about, it would be shared and linked to naturally.  Rather than putting your effort into creating content for the sake of creating content, now is the time to rethink what content is, and understand how it benefits and interests your customer base. TED does an excellent job of this as they have thousands of videos that are interesting and engaging which makes it sharable and linkable.

Blendtec is a great example of a company that has been able to implement a great content strategy.  With a very small budget, it was able to create a viral ad campaign to showcase its blenders’ durability in the “Will It Blend” series.

2. Sharability

Once great content is created, it’s essential to make it easy to share.  An example of this on TED can be seen here.

As you are promoting content or products on your site, it is important to make it simple for people to share. This will increase the likelihood of it being shared across social networks, therefore increasing the visibility of your product/content and your brand. Whether it’s an image, advertisement or just a great guide you’ve created for your consumers, make it easy for them to share across their social networks; this will increase the likelihood of it being linked to.

3. Community

In the TED community for every video that is posted, every site visitor has the ability to easily join discussions and add comments to the videos.  This adds another element of engagement to the content they have on the site.

The stronger the sense of community a company creates for itself, the more engaged and attached its consumers will feel toward its brand.  The fact that some of these site visitors have made a contribution to the site makes them that much more attached and increases loyalty to the brand.  Yelp demonstrates this well, it has been able to create a community around food and local businesses.  It has created a platform that facilitates discussion between businesses and consumers. Many people contribute to Yelp and use it as a reputable source of information.

Through these strategic moves, TED has been able to build a strong relationship with their online viewers; therefore, increasing the strength of its brand.  This type of strategy will help companies sustain themselves in their industries.  Ultimately, links can help you gain rankings and traffic, but for a long-term strategy, it’s essential to build a strong brand for your business, as there is no algorithm update that can ruin your brand.

I am excited for this update as it is going to force SEOs to think with consumers in mind.  This will help SEOs be more reputable in the marketing industry. It also forces us to be more creative, and put more focus on social networks, user experiences and consumer relationships.

What are your thoughts in regards to Google’s over-optimization audit and how it’s going to affect SEOs? Would love to see your comments below.

3 Things SEOs Can Learn From TED is a post by SEO expert Kristy Ng. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Although it is important to consider ROI when developing a search marketing strategy, there are many other factors you should consider for long term success of a business. Typically in an SEO campaign, your first and most critical step is keyword research. This sets the stage for your SEO efforts. Before you begin keyword research, it’s essential to understand your consumers and their decision making process. Being visible in critical stages of the consumer decision process will build brand awareness and ensure that you are at the top of searchers’ minds.

There is more to keyword research than just search volume and researching competitors. It is key to understand your customer base and their search behavior. For example, there are many tools such as Google Insights and Google Trends that can help you better understand what’s trending and how searchers find your product or service. It may also be beneficial to conduct a survey to gain insight into how your customer makes a purchase decision.

As you are conducting keyword research and trying to find the best opportunities, there are some factors to consider when planning for long term success. A search marketing strategy, like any business strategy should have both long and short term goals. While every search marketing strategy should focus on profitability, there are other factors that help build the credibility of your brand. These factors are difficult to measure; however, if you consider the principles I’ve outlined below and take some time to better understand your consumer; it will greatly affect the results of your search marketing efforts.

Outlined here are the stages of the consumer research process when making a purchase decision. The time from beginning to end of the cycle can vary greatly depending on the price and technicality of the product or service.

Awareness of a Need

This is the beginning of every purchase decision and can be stimulated by a need or want. It could be as basic as being hungry and recognizing the need for food or could be created by an advertisement for the iPhone 4s.

Information Search

In this stage of the buyer decision process, it’s vital that your brand is at the forefront of your consumer’s minds, or at the forefront of where they will seek information (search engines). This is the stage where consumers are doing the majority of their research. For example, if you are in the market to buy a point and shoot camera, you may conduct a general search for point and shoot cameras. Conducting this search will help you in the information search phase and allow you to determine which brand of camera and what features are available.

Depending on your business and the resources available to you, you will want to develop a strategy to be visible for relevant search terms. This may include targeting keywords that will not generate a sale on the first visit. Not only is it important to be visible for the keyword but it’s also important to understand where your customers go for information through searching Google or visiting review sites.

Evaluating Alternatives

At this stage your consumers are finished feeling out the market and have developed a consideration set. Depending on the product and the industry, most consumers have a consideration set of about 3-5 different brands or products.

Purchase Decision

Most SEO strategies try to catch consumers at this stage of the purchase process, as this represents the lowest hanging fruit. However, if your business has not done due diligence up to this point, your brand or product will not be in the consideration set, therefore potentially ruining your chances of making a sale. To this point, if your brand has reached your consumer at each stage of the decision process your chances of making a sale are much higher.

Post Purchase

At this stage of the decision process, you have the opportunity to continue your relationship with your customer. This is where your customers determine their satisfaction level of your product or service. Here you have the opportunity to encourage your customers to write reviews on your business and turn them into repeat customers. It is much easier to keep a customer than acquire a new one.

Once you’ve thought through the consumer research process for your business, it will help you better conduct keyword research, and help you determine the strategic moves you need to make to be visible to your consumer. All stages of the purchase decision process are important, and it’s vital to have a strategy surrounding each stage of the process. The majority of SEO strategies focus on the purchase decision phase, by the time the consumer is in that stage it may be too late. Your search marketing strategy can incorporate anything from retargeting, utilizing pay per click services, SEO or a combination.

As you can see, search marketing presents opportunities in all stages of the buying process. To have the most effective search marketing strategy that will lead to increased brand awareness and long term success of your business, it is advantageous to incorporate a wide range of keywords as well as other elements of search marketing that work best for your business.

Beyond Keyword Research: Why You Should Be Looking At Consumer Behavior is a post by SEO expert Kristy Ng. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.