Ah, relationships. Good relationships are strong, meaningful bonds that act to hold people or objects together. Like the furniture maker’s forgotten “dovetail” joint that once held a strong piece of furniture together and is now replaced with weak staples between faux wood fiberboard, relationships seem to be the forgotten glue that once held the business world together. Oh relationships, where have you gone?
Actually, relationships are alive and well, out there, calling your name with opportunities awaiting just beyond that first handshake. And why do we love relationships? Relationships lead to links online! Some of the best links that a business can acquire to their website are those developed through real-life relationships.
The best advice to grab these links is to get out from behind that keyboard and monitor (don’t worry, you can take your iPhone or BlackBerry with you) and go meet some real PEOPLE.
By meeting people and developing real relationships with them, you have the opportunity to garner quality links to your website. If you’re networking in the right places, these links are often targeted and of relative high value for SEO and for traffic purposes.
What do we mean by “real-life” relationships? These are relationships with people that you’ve spoken to on the telephone or have met in person. These are actual people you’ve developed a rapport with at some point at an event or in online social networking.
How does one go about garnering links from real life relationships?
First, you need to initiate or develop the relationship:
- Start by attending industry conferences and social events. Those who you meet at industry conferences, if you have a similar philosophy, will allow you to link to them and visa versa. The great thing about industry conferences is that you meet targeted prospects for link opportunities. Sometimes there are dot-org (.org) website owners who run trade or industry sites and are willing to link to you. We all love .orgs, don’t we, for many of them are trustworthy and non-commercial in nature.
- If you’re not able to afford major industry conferences, it’s helpful to look for local networking groups and informal gatherings within your industry. It doesn’t have to be a huge once-annual event to attract a strong, focused group of attendees.
- Within industry magazines, find vendors who are offering related products but aren’t direct competitors. Approach them and let them know that they have an opportunity with you.
- Within industry trade journals, find other businesses and organizations that you can call on to work up a relationship. Offer up lunch in your neighborhood and then discuss with them your online opportunities.
- Look to your local Chamber of Commerce, get involved and become active as a volunteer / member. Make sure to get some linking going from the Chamber website.
- Use online social networking sites like Meetup.com, LinkedIn.com and even Twitter.com to network with users who have like-minded interests. The search features in these sites are solid and can lead you to some of the most valuable relationships anywhere.
- Visit targeted users’ websites from their profiles to see if they could be a good linking candidate.
- Find local MeetUp groups with people who are interested in like-minded topics or even topics that are slightly related. For example, if you’re in the art-supply business, find a MeetUp of artists such as photographers, painters and/or sculptors. Attend the MeetUp, be friendly and good things will happen.
- Twitter can be a great resource for finding links because the search is efficient, targeted, pretty much real time, and the initial pitch only has to be 140 characters in a direct message!
Once you’ve established a relationship, simply brief the target linker on the potential of the relationship. If you think it’s a good linking partner based on audiences (and not solely on SEO weighting), chances are this is a very easy pitch and beneficial to both parties. Engage and see if there can be a meaningful way to share information between sites and help each other out in whatever form would work for both parties.
Granted, in a fair amount of cases you may end up with reciprocal relationships, but a targeted and natural-looking reciprocal link may be better than no link at all, both for SEO purposes and for actual traffic over time! In many cases too there are simple, overlooked opportunities to garner one-way links directly back to your site and content.
Linking is a cumulative effort. Don’t expect to get hundreds of links overnight from this method. This is an organic, methodical process and not one which will bounce you to page #1 for all of your target or most competitive keywords in a day, or even a week. BUT, if you start out and say to yourself, “I’m going to garner quality, meaningful links over the course of time through hard work” - and set your goals to do so – it will happen. If you take the opportunity to ask for a link from most encounters and relationships you develop in your industry, good things will happen.
Relying on real-world networking, going out and pressing the flesh and meeting people in your industry (both at events and in online social networking websites) allows you to start on this path of natural linking success. You’ll find that your business “dovetails” with some of the best places on the Internet!
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26 Responses to “Link Building through Relationships”
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Really good stuff and obviously legitimate when trying to build "merit-based" links.
[...] Link Building through Relationships, 10e20 [...]
Thanks Bill for stopping by and reading through. It seems that this is overlooked time and again by business owners. You can definitely garner some real quality linking (or "merit based" as you mention) by working hard in the relationship channel.
This is really a "back to basics" approach that is so fundamental. I keeping thinking "I knew that … why didn't I blog about that". It's networking 101 but most people forget about the how truly valuable the relationship building process can be at its most basic level.
And let's face it, as bloggers, we need to get out of the office and away from our keypads more often anyway.
Good advice, but almost completely unapplicable to agency SEO’s that work on multiple clients.
This is really nice concept about real life networking to gain something. But i don't like this idea because, for me anything done outside online spectrum is waste of time. It may not be true for every one.
Good reading there thank you. I often forget about the simple stuff to be honest. I did do a blog very recent about not forgetting your "roots" of link building
Thanks for the post, I couldn't agree more with your comments on building relationships and partnerships online. Not only can it be a great source of support the links you create will also booster your website legitimacy and rankings. All in all a winning formula!
Relationships are and will be the name of the game for a very long time it seems. I specialize in SEO and the way Google has arranged their algorithm, relationships are vitally important in how your website is ranked. Real, genuine relationships (business or otherwise) will help your website top searches more than any other tactic.
Interesting. I never would have thought to strike up a conversation about website links with people in person or over the phone.
Couldn't agree with you more Case! When the relationships are real, ongoing and related that's one of the best quality indicators.
Thanks for stopping by and reading the blog.
nice take on "link building" not just about website to website relationships
people need to get back to the basics now days cause alot of them are jumping in head first and be crying why it don't work take some time out and read and go back to the roots that's how i feel
i have to agree with you Case this tactic is a must when doing seo
[...] Greg Finn | Link Building, SEO, Social Media Marketing Last week Jake wrote an awesome post about leveraging relationships for link building and it got me thinking. Seeing that I am a hermit who lives in front of the computer, how the [...]
[...] week Jake wrote an awesome post about leveraging relationships for link building and it got me thinking. Seeing that I am a hermit who lives in front of the computer, how the [...]
You really do have to get out from behind the computer sometime and really get involved. Social media is just an online version of what should be happening in real life. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, so thanks for the reminder!
[...] http://www.10e20.com/blog/2009/09/18/link-building-through-relationships/ [...]
[...] Link building through relationships – Jake Matthewas [...]
Good strategy. Not only links used to calculate PR, but you will get quality links and potential visitors that convert well.
[...] Link building through relationships – Jake Matthewas [...]
Review of Textlinks.com…
Great review of this link building site…
[...] Link building through relationships – Jake Matthewas [...]
a working strategy…..No doubt
[...] Link Building through Relationships, 10e20 [...]
It is realy fresh content .i have read many articles and blogs on link building butthis article delivers fresh and different content from others.I am keeping eye on this blog.