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Linking in a searchless Web

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 8, 2007 in Link Building

Link building has become the heart and soul of most SEOs’ strategies these days. But there was a time when linking networks were necessary for Web sites to build traffic because most people didn’t even know the search engines existed.

So let’s take off the SEO Theory mantle for a moment and imagine a Web without search. How would you build visibility for your Web site? There are not many obvious options, but there are actually quite a few not-so-obvious options.

My first choice would be off-Web branding. Advertise who you are and where your Web site is through everything you do “out there in the real world”. For a typical business, this includes branding your stationary, sales slips, business cards, packaging — every printed thing in your inventory — with your URL. And that is now accepted as common sense advertising, but how many times have you asked other people to place your URL in their printed copy?

There are some places where you can do this, such as newspaper ads, phone book listings, restaurant menus that offer advertising (you may have to find an ad broker in your city), local business service organization brochures and newsletters, etc. And if you are interviewed by the media for any reason whatsoever, mention your Web site. Don’t be a pain, but ask for the URL reference.

Church bulletins, school job listing boards, super-market notice boards, bus stop notice boards — most large cities have an endless supply of free offline advertising space and I have seen many small Web site operators use them. Some people also pay for signs or transparent stickers to put on their cars, trucks, and boats. If you move it around where people can see it, you can emblazon your URL on it.

Of course, your merchandise can also carry your URL. But other people may let you sponsor them in athletic tournaments (bowling teams, dart teams, etc.) and competitions. Let the winners carry your URL across the finish line. Donate some t-shirts. Provide some branded coffee mugs. If you are already giving away stuff to promote your business, make sure you include your Web site on it.

Online opportunities include all the usual victims of link spam abuse: directories, forums, blogs, mailing lists, news groups, and social media Web sites. But if you dig a little deeper you can find other tools for promoting Web sites that still work wonders. Some people try to measure the value of links in terms of how much “juice” the links pass. Frankly, all I care about is the traffic a link produces.

If you can get your URL (not necessarily a link) mentioned in an article or blog post somewhere, do it. That’s visibility. That’s value. That’s a path potential visitors can follow to your site.

You can donate content, money, and inventory to worthy groups in exchange for a polite “thank you” notice on their sites that includes your name and the URL of your Web site (it doesn’t have to be a link).

You can add insight to other people’s Web articles, blog posts, and forum discussions without promoting yourself by contacting the site operators via email. Let them decide to give your URL a little air time if they credit you for a private comment. It happens more often than you think (but only truly worthwhile comments make the cut — don’t start compiling lists of sites to send email to).

There was a time when people used to rely almost solely on Webrings, mailing lists, and discussion forums to announce their Web sites. But they only made such announcements where they were active, known members of communities. Their community peers then linked to their sites, mentioned their sites in other groups, etc. The more value you provide to an online community, the more they will help you promote your Web site. Some Web sites have built their traffic almost solely on the basis of “word-of-mouth” marketing — they had to because they didn’t know how to optimize for search engines.

Of course, there are tools now that you can use to build out a small network of Web sites where you advocate your ideas and promote yourself. I’m talking about large blog networks (the lowest tier on the social media pyramid) where people are sent to random blogs, where random blog posts are featured, where you have a voice.

Social media sites, of course, are heavily manipulated by social media marketers so don’t expect to find your content on the front page. Instead, you just want to blend into the crowd of interesting, unassuming people sharing their thoughts. If you build four blogs on as many networks and post 3-5 unique, original articles on those blogs per week (you can take time away from your feed reader to do this), you’ll find that people read what you say.

SEO Theory is not built on link baiting, but on creating content for search engines (and people). But you can easily build an audience by creating content as long as people can find it. I never allow a Web site to be wholly dependent upon a search engine. You cannot trust the search engines to constantly favor your sites. The merest algorithmic change can cause a site to lose all its search visibility.

Hence, SEO Theory doesn’t count on links and it doesn’t count on search. Most of our traffic comes from direct accesses (people have bookmarked us or subscribed to the RSS feed) and from links on other Web sites. This blog can live with or without the search engines.

Which is not to say you should go around doing things to cause search engines to ban or penalize you. You should make sure they suffer the greater loss by banning or penalizing your content by not doing anything more than you need to do to promote your site.

And that does include setting up true link partner pages (reciprocal linking). I’m not talking about signing up with “Quik Reciprocal Links, Inc.” but rather about reaching out to other Web sites and saying, “Hey, I like your content and have written an article about your site here.” You don’t have to ask for the link to get the link, and you won’t always get the link but you can still recognize all the sites that link back to you by providing a concise directory listing of sites that linked to your content.

But what if that gets you banned? Hey, if you’re promoting your site like there were no search engines, you won’t notice the drop in search referrals. Search engines really do need you more than you need them.

Just make sure you’re creating content that people will want to see. Don’t fuss over “link bait”. Don’t fuss over “pagerank”. Just be the resource that people want to mention. You’ll be fine and search engines will seem less intimidating to you.