| Linking Strategies |
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How to Deploy Your Link Building Budget for Maximum ImpactEric Ward, EricWard.com - Jun 24, 2008 |
By now you know you need links -- links from other sites, pages, bloggers, bookmarkers, editors, Diggers, Stumblers, and others. These links help your site in a number of ways, not the least of which is the potential they have to improve your site's search engine rank.
With so many different types of link building related services available, how do you know which ones make the most sense for you? How do you decide how much of your budget should be spent on each one? Are link bait strategies a sound financial investment for your site? What about press releases, paid directories, paid links or paid reviews? Which links should you be willing to pay for and how much? And what in the world is a widget link?
The bad news is that there is no one-size-fits-all link building budget deployment that will assure your success. This is also good news, because it means the site with the biggest link building budget does not always win the link building game. Having a million dollars to spend doesn't matter if you spend it in the wrong place. There's a reason you don't see a lot of Travelocity.com ads in the San Quentin library.
How do you decide which approach should get what percentage of your link building budget? Here are a few guidelines.
New Sites. If your site is brand new and launching for the first time, then tactics like paid directory submissions or paid reviews can make sense. You could spend upwards of $2,500 in order to obtain 100 or so links from directories. You could spend ten times that for sponsored reviews/links. This is not a tactic I'd recommend for every site, or even every new site. It would depend on other factors ranging from the goal of your site to the competitiveness of your niche.
Competitive Niches. If your site is a pure ecommerce site, you need to understand the competitive niche you are in from a linking perspective before you spend money chasing those links. If you sell possum traps you probably don't need to spend for link building as much or in the same way as you would if you sell Tiger Wood's golf gear. Remember, the very thing that makes your site different is also the very thing that allows you to seek and obtain unique high value links. Take advantage of your uniqueness.
Do It Yourself. Don't automatically think you have to pay a third party to build links for you. You may have all the skills you need to do it yourself in house with minimal help from a link building expert or consultant to guide you through the key parts of the process, such as selecting the right link building tactics for your site, identifying target sites, tracking, etc.
Doing it yourself has the added benefit of making you more comfortable with the link building process. Link building should be seen as an ongoing activity that will need to be performed on a semi-regular basis over time. The more you learn about it, the better equipped you will be to deploy your link building budget in the most advantageous ways possible for your site.
Eric Ward is considered by his peers as the top link building expert in the world today. He provides instruction and services in link building best practices and linking strategies.
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