Link building Archives - Page 2 of 3

I Build Great Links for my Clients, and what do they do? GIF War

June 19, 2013 By Lyndon Antcliff

@ChrisLDyson and @barriemoran I am calling a GIF War!

This is what happens to my clients after I build great links for them

Meanwhile the haterz are giving it this.

Inspired by the great minds at:

http://www.barriemoran.com

I think I should leave this kind of linkbait to a younger crowd, I mean, substituting Z for S in haterz. It really has gone too far this time.

Where I got this stuff from:

http://weareheadoverfeels.tumblr.com/post/42196945509/listen-up-fives-a-ten-is-speaking-in

http://denissevelazquez.tumblr.com/post/45886903344/pelea-de-dinero-suele-pasar

http://leftphalange.tumblr.com/post/36437710156/black-friday-shopping

http://youngmoneygifs.tumblr.com/post/39066154532

How to ask for a Guest Post

January 9, 2013 By Lyndon Antcliff

I talked about guest posting in the last post I wrote, it seems it’s still the fashionable term of the online marketing fish bowl I swim in.

However, it’s important to understand that what most people are talking about is something very specific. Even though asking people to host your content in exchange for a link back for seo purposes has existed for over a decade, the way the term is used now seems to be talking about something that is systemised and geared up to achieve the highest ROI possible.

This of course leads to a lessening of quality in the guest post requests that bloggers get as it becomes more about numbers and less about the quality of the writing or even the pitch.

In the past I have found guest posting a very useful way to connect to other bloggers and also to help with back links to clients. But I am finding it increasingly difficult, some bloggers now ask for cash to place a guest post, which would make it a sponsored post rather than a guest post. Not that I have that much against advertorials, as long as they are clearly stated as such.

But lets cut the bullshit.

Publications, both offline and online take money to publish paid for editorials. It’s the way of the world and naive not to expect otherwise. This is what you have to compete with.

However, lets look at this from the bloggers perspective. I have been talking to a few blogs who do guest posting, to ask them what they think about the hordes of mercenary seo types swarming around their blogs asking for a guest post with a link back.
Mitch from Top Finance Blog, said this.

The best way to ask for a guest posting opportunity is to actually visit the person’s blog first to see if they have a guest posting policy, and if so then following it. I get tons of requests to guest post and most of the letters are generic and immediately lying when they say “I have followed Top Finance Blog for a long time and enjoy its content”. If they liked it so much, they’d have commented at some point, and they’d already know what the guest posting policy was before I need to send them to read it. Help us decide you’re worthy; yes, we get a benefit from it as well but if you’re looking to place your content on someone else’s site, act like you want to without making it seem like you’re doing it for their benefit; that’s just insulting.

He went on to say he could easily write more about this subject.

I think the problem is when you dehumanise the process. Sure, still have tools to help you find a blog that will post your content, but you have to invest time, politeness and commonsense to connect with the blogger.

I confess I have on the occasion taken shortcuts in this regards and it has led to failed guest post campaigns. When you do a lot of link building it’s natural to try to make things as efficient as possible.

Trying too hard to squeeze links out of bloggers can lead you to take your eye off the ball.

I know I am not alone in this as I daily get guest post requests and press releases that seem to be geared to the short cut. I think only twice in the six years this blog has existed has there been requests that result in stuff happening.

Which is interesting.

Because, if you take the time, invest in the initial connection and develop relationships, rather than “guest posting” or that awful word “outreach”, you will probably have more success.

Most of us are uber busy and have hectic lives, my own has increased of late and I probably need to pay more attention to investing in real conversations than acting like a one legged, starving marmut with rabies out to get links whatever the cost.

Yes, this is part confessional, part do what I sway not what I do, but this is part of the process. You constantly have to relearn the basics. And it’s not the “20 ways to do guest posting”, type posts you really learn from. It’s the real experience of people out there in the trenches, working it.

In the meantime, if you want a guest post. You know where to find me and you should know by now how to ask me.

What Tools do you use for Outreach?

November 6, 2012 By Lyndon Antcliff

I will be honest, my outreach is limited because I mostly implement linkbait and so the linkers come to me. But sometimes you want something else and need to have a campaign to reach out to website owners and bloggers.

You can do this with email, twitter, spreadsheets, text templates (modified to be personal of course) etc., but there are a number of tools these days that streamline the process and allow it to be scaled.

I asked the question on Twitter and got some very interesting replies.

ysekand

@lyndoman I use Social Crawlytics and Buzzstream

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 8:47:03 AM

paddymoogan

@lyndoman I don’t use many, mainly Google (gives you everything you’ll ever need) @followerwonk @buzzstream & common sense 🙂

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 6:23:10 AM

seo_monkey

@lyndoman the scrape similar add on for chrome is also useful as in some industries bloggers tend to link heavily to one another through

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 6:29:57 AM

pagesauce

@lyndoman Search operators, Twitter, ahrefs, OSE, Google Docs to record everything, and the best content I can write

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 9:07:01 AM

We are testing out dashburst…its 50 dollars a month but could be useful. From @dannyashton

Links
socialcrawlytics.com
buzzstream.com
dashburst.com

Any more suggestions, you can either Tweet them @ me or pop them in the comments.

Thanks to all those who shared their tools.

Learn How to Linkbait like a Pro: Linkbait Coaching 3.0 Launches on Thursday

March 20, 2012 By Lyndon Antcliff

For over 4 years now I have been training and coaching people in how to get links from people using content. Sometimes known as link baiting, although I prefer the term magnetic web content. This of course is all part of content marketing, which is something I also help clients with.

Linkbaitcoaching.com was launched in 2008 and offers members a way to learn and develop their link building skills. It focuses on the development, production and promotion of content that is specifically designed to attract large amounts of links.

We are now going to open the doors again for the third time in 4 years. As you can tell this is not a mass market product launch and is very low key. This is simply because we don’t have a lot of slots, only 20 are on offer this time, because I give personal, one on one attention to all members within the membership forum.

We have 4 years of archives to plunder, examples, ideas, wild ideas that have to be caged and never go public (if you have been a member you know what I am talking about), and analysis of lots of other successful linkbait.

Please do not sign up if you think this is an easy to do course. It’s not, I expect you to work with me and to follow a process of “deliberate practice” that allows me to coach you to linkbait nirvana.

You do of course have the option to simply watch the process and suck in all the info, but you will get much more out of it if you get stuck in and we knock around some ideas.

This outing we are going to have a closer look at infographics. We have been having a lot of success with using this technique and we can coach you through the process and show you step by step how it is done.

I’m not going to deploy a bunch of sales techniques to get you to sign up, because it is only going to work for you if you really want it and already. So no, “TAP INTO THE AWESOME POWER OF LINKBAIT AND CREATE A TSUNAMI OF LINKS TO YOUR WEBSITE”, and other such nonsense.

Although saying that, past members have gone on to create some of the best linkbait in this part of the Solar System. And you will be surprised to learn who have entered the hallowed and sacred space that is the Linkbaitcoaching.com training space.

Launch is ~~Thursday, 22nd of March~~.Friday, 23rd march.
Only 20 spaces available.

More info later, in the meantime sign up for the email newsletter on the right and also watch the blog and my Twitter feed.

Oh and by the way, I’m going to be adding a few new goodies to the coaching this time, more on this later.

Why Attract the Linkerati

January 10, 2012 By Lyndon Antcliff

If you want links, it is the Linkerati you need to get the attention of.

Who are the Linkerarti?

The Linkerati are those who link

They are distinctive from your customers or your clients or the other people you would like to impress, but do not have the power to link to you.

There are various tribes within the Linkerati, and these all respond to different stimuli.

Most are excited by information.

Not just any kind of information, but information that intersects their current thinking. Which raises other problems.

How do you find out which kind of information intersects the thinking of the Linkerati?

How do you get the linkerati to take notice of you information?

How do you create information which will juice up the linkerati enough for them to link to you.

You have to tap into the Lizard brain, or the Old brain. You need to get down to fundamentals.

People link, motivated by emotion. It’s why popular bloggers can produce mediocre content and get links. Emotion counts.

A lot of the linkerati get emotional about data, particularly when it’s represented in a graphical format. Hence the rise of infographics for seo. The brain can digest pictures or visualisations quicker than text and the linkerati love information that is steam pumped into the visual cortex.

Although linkbait is still effective, an infographic or visual based linkbait will generally get more links.

But, if you are not part of the linkerati it’s very tricky to get into the head of this tribe. You certainly have no chance if you are a suited marketing executive, you must dip into the tribe and employ a translator, negotiator, emissary.

The best advice I can give is become like them. Even if you are one of the Marketing Executives, come over to the side. Other than that, you are going to have to talk to one of us who can communicate with both sides.

Would you buy a link for the Price of a Mars Bar?

January 5, 2012 By Lyndon Antcliff

Can a link, retailing at 55p be both profitable for the link builder and effective for the linked to?

A while back I came across a link building scheme that was effectively selling links for 90c, or about 55p. Which is the price of a Mars bar.

As I offer a link building service I was left scratching my head over how they did it whilst keep it effective and making a profit.

Consider one link being built every ten minutes

(they stated all this on the site)
By hand
Do follow
Indexed
Correct anchor text

6 links per hour
30 links per 5 hours = one day
600 links built over 20 days = one month

Retailing at 90c per link
= $540
Costs = $320
Profit = $180

Worker gets $360

This does not take in to account links which are rejected.

To hire a full time worker you would have to outsource to a country where $360 a month is a decent wage. They do exist, but running a team offshore raises other issues.

The only place which fits the criteria are forum links, not the signature links, but within a snippet of text. Could this be performed within the 10 minutes? Probably could be, but you would have to have a team process where each member concentrates on a specific task.

Tasks would be:

Researching forums
Opening accounts
Opening email accounts
Seeding the account
Writing link text and posting link
Entry into spreadsheet and saved in Dropbox
Indexing of links
Report to client

It could be done, whether or not a link from a forum is worth the effort is worth it is another thing. And you would only know this if you tested it. And if this did work you would hardly blog or comment about it.

My thinking is that it is cost effective, rather a binary yes/no work/not work.

The problem is the effort involved in setting up this kind of thing is not worth it if you only have one site. It really only works if someone else sets up the service for others to buy and then creates efficiencies of scale which make it worthwhile, and would probably need quite a few clients.

It’s interesting though isn’t it?

Link building with content is not the only way to get links

November 9, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

You may think it counter intuitive for me to propose that link building content is not the only way to go for links, as I earn my crust selling link building services.

But this is what I tell my clients who hire me for link building consultation.

There are many ways to skin a cat and many ways to build links, sure, content is a tried and tested way to build links if properly implemented and this is discussed at length.

But as you roll back the reasons and psychology of why people link you find that content can sometimes be less important.

Something I have observed over the years is that you are more likely to link to someone if you meet and like them at an seo conference. Why is that? The content is still the same.

It’s because the process of giving a link is based on emotion. Not the sobbing into your hanky after watching a tear jerker, but the fact that deep down within the brain the bit that drives emotion always beats the cold hard logic.

In a way it’s odd that a bunch of Spock wannabe seo engineers will link to someone because they feel it deep within them.

But the human condition affects us all.

Good or bad.

We try to be logical and base our decisions on the cold hard data, but we never do and here’s the thing, we don’t even know we are doing it and hate it when it is pointed out.

Fear
Greed
Social acceptance
Sexual gratification
Jealousy
Pride

All impinge on our decision making process. It’s what makes linkbait work. Linkbait is not based on logic, it’s based on the emotional triggers.

Social psychology is what you should be studying, rather than that new programming language.

Don’t believe me?

Watch the links fly after an seo conference. It’s not because the link targets content got better.

Observe that people mostly retweet those who retweet them. Getting retweets is link building lite, same process. If you can do one you can probably do the other.

How can you up your link building game.

1. Develop a social context
2. Control the relationship
3. Know why people link
4. Give back to those that give

We will be concentrating more on link building psychology in the coming weeks.

Web 2.0 Link Building Service

November 7, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

A quick an easy way to build effective back links is to implement a Web 2.0 link building technique.

This simply involves:

Writing an article about your niche
Placing it on a web 2.0 property
Link back to your target URL
Link to your links and send indexing power to placed article

It’s a technique that has worked well for aged sites, working best when targeting the long tail.

If you are just starting out it makes sense to do this yourself, but if you want real power and need to scale it, you need to put a team on it.

Hiring and training a team takes time and skill, but can be done. But it’s much easier to outsource to a dedicated, experienced team already in full operation.

For over a year I have been running such a team and have now opened up the doors to allow anyone to hire it.

I first offered it to my Link building list, (you can sign up on the right) and they snapped it up.

It is now open to everyone else.

Here are the details

1 x 500 word, human written article, written to be read (not spun)
Placement on a high ranking Web 2.0 property
Article is written within the context of the niche
Up to three links can be placed in the article, one to the target site and up to two to other articles placed by us
Links will contain keywords you provide
Full reporting of where articles have been placed with urls and keywords supplied.
Article is blasted using various methods to ensure indexing, after being published

Sites we use include:

Posterous
Weebly
Tumblr
Squidoo
Hubpages
Blogspot
WordPress.com
Quizilla

This is a short snapshot of the sites we use, we have over 40 sites in our database which are constantly reviewed. New sites are added when tested and pass quality control.

The price for all this is £15 per article/link

To order:

Email me at lyndon@cornwallseo in a spreadsheet format, preferably .csv or .xls:

Number of articles required
Keywords to include as anchor text
Theme or niche

I will then send an email back with availability and an invoice. Once payment is received we will process your order within the month and send a full report. Although the work can be completed in 7 to 10 days.

There is a minimum order of 16 articles, this technique works best with scale and regularity.

Email me if you have further questions.

Regards
Lyndon Antcliff

P.S Sorry, no porn, or illegal stuff or anything that is going to get me in trouble with Bubba.

I retain the right to refuse to accept any work for whatever reason whatsoever.

Link Building Machine Introductory Price ends 1st October

September 26, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

Note: If you have already ordered from Link Building Machine, don’t worry, you are locked in for one year at the introductory price.

The introductory offer for the Link Building Machine will be finishing on October 1st. Those ordering the minimum spend before then will be locked into the introductory price.

Why have an introductory price?

I like to reward those who sign up first
Uptake has been surprisingly high
Generates loyalty from those who sign up first
Highlights the inexpensiveness of the product, this is important when price is a buying trigger
An increase in price allows the potential for an affiliate offer
So many people have told me its too cheap, it probably is.

Order before the first of October and get locked into the introductory price for one year year.

If you have already placed an order, don’t worry about it, you are already locked in at the intro price for a year.

To order, subscribe to the email list on the right to receive preferential information on how to order.

Deploy The Link Building Machine V 1.0

September 15, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

OK, here’s the deal.

Over the past 12 months, I have researched, tested and developed a way to build contextually accurate, Google loving links with a tasty, long tail anchor text capability, which can be scaled up or down at will depending on specific requirements.

My desire was to build a system which created a semantic footprint that is contextually aligned to the niche of the target website, whilst not detracting from brand development and could be as big or as small as needed.

I knew three things were crucial:

Ability to Scale
Efficiency of implementation
Reliable level of quality

Rather than simply outsourcing the work to fickle freelancers, I hired and trained my own full time workers which enabled me to ensure a consistent level of quality needed to add valued backlinks. Focussing on the processes of hiring, filtering out the best people and training, I’ve been able to systematically build a quality team from the ground up.

By putting together a full time team and implementing correct training, I could deploy tried and trusted methods and processes which enabled me to compete and win in the most competitive industries.

Even though it’s basically a bunch of highly trained,hard working people, I call it a machine because it performs efficiently and effectively at the rate required no matter what amount of work needed. It delivers the required level of quality consistently over and over. As long as it is fed it will not and cannot be stopped. Cue Terminator theme music.

This is something that is clearly lacking in cheaper offerings you can find around the web. Although what I offer is more expensive than what you can find on certain forums, what I add is consistency at the required quality level. Plus a more open and honest approach and the fact that I personally check all work that goes out and can be reached on the phone, providing a level of assurance not found in other cheapo services.

I’m not interested in offering a cheap service, but a competitive, effective one that brings home the goodies. By focussing in on making the processes more efficient, I was able to create a more cost effective service, which I can now offer to you.

Before I get too carried away, and I am a tad excited about this offering. Seasoned, grizzled, hard core SEO types are probably not going to find anything new here and probably have built your own machine, implementing tried and trusted methods. This is not brain surgery or even highly creative. It’s about taking what we know to work and delivering an efficient, scaled up version.

But, if you don’t have the time to hire a team of people, filter out the bad ones from the good ones, train them in current best practice and effective methodologies and then manage the day to day running of the team, who can then deliver a constant stream of linkalicious ouput,my link building machine is now available for hire.

Although I have quite a large initial capacity, spots are limited, this is not a marketing wheeze. This is because I intend to keep quality at the level it needs to be at and if extra capacity is demanded I can train more link building Terminators and deploy where needed.

With regards to pricing, I’m going to let the market set the price. My personal day rate is £850 a day, usually for strategic planning. This is different though, and so I can offer at a rate at which will sell out 100%

We officially launch next week in the Cornwall Seo newsletter, you can sign up on the right. All the juice will be dished out in the first edition of the newsletter.

So there you go, some of you will love it, some of you will not need it as you do it in house already and some of you will try to copy it. Good luck to you if you do intend to copy it, it’s taken me about a year to get to this place.

May your links be many and aged.

How to Get Lots of Links Very Quickly

August 3, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

Want links?

Set up a site that panders to a certain prejudice and creates a suspension of disbelief. Provide the usual pointers that linkers and journalists need to pass the test and bada bing.

Of course it’s not as easy as that, it’s a lot of work and you really, really have to know what you are doing.

Hoaxing for links.

I’m a big fan of hoaxing for links and this one popped up on the radar today.

Titled, “Is Internet Explorer For The Dumb? A New Study Suggests Exactly That.”

Someone set up a website that looks and feels like a proper research type site and published what looked to be an authentic report. A lot of people retweeted and linked to it, including the BBC and the Freakonomics crew.

We all get hoaxed every once in a while and it’s mostly harmless and just a bit of fun.

But, it can get you an asssack full of links.

If you look at this story you will soon realise that an SEO would never get hoaxed by this as the PR of the site is zero.

11 Tips to Help you Outsource your SEO and link building

July 1, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

Last year I bit the bullet and started hiring and have now built a team of about 10 link builders and writers. It was hard letting go, but if you follow certain rules and deploy a strict process it can be highly rewarding.

A lot of people don’t want the hassle of working for themselves, they like to do the work at home in their own time and at the end of the day turn the computer off and go out and party. I don’t care when my team work as long as the work is done within set parameters. And so a team can be created

Here are 11 quick tips to think about when hiring an online workforce.

1. Don’t call them outsourcers, they are part of the team. Instead of saying “we can outsource this”, say, “we can let the team handle this. They are human beings and it’s wrong to commoditise them.

2. Pay more than every one else pays. When I have someone work on my work I want the best not the cheapest. I want to continue to work with the best and paying them extra is the best way to do this.

3. Work hard to turn the best freelancers into the best full time employees. Cost of acquisition in terms of time is high, so when you find the cool workers, keep them. Keeping long term team members means training does not go to waste.

4. Do not micro manage. Control freaks will have issues with this and have problems sending work half way around the World. Odesk (a place where you can find team members) have this thing where you can get screenshots of the freelancers work to check up on them. This is nuts, if you don’t trust them, don’t hire them. Give them the task, if they do it great, if they don’t then that’s the signal that you don’t hire them again.

5. Expect to get ripped off and lose money. Give out with small jobs and pay in advance, potentially setting yourself up to get burned. I learned this from a guy called Richard Cussons, who really has the whole outsourcing thing covered. He pays new people in advance for little jobs, some of them scarper and are never seen again, whilst others do the work and finish the job. This is the price you pay to find the best workers, consider it an investment rather than a loss.

6. Expect life to happen. People get ill, family crisis happens. This should be factored into your hiring. If any of my workers fall ill or have a problem they get a paid day off. They are worth it and are not the type of people to lie. You get to that point of trust by going though a set of processes, even though this is a human resource issue it should be run on a process based system.

7. Use your team to build your team. Your current workers are the best people to find you more workers. They will not want to introduce you to people who do not come up to scratch as it will reflect bad on them. The people you want are the people who care about their quality of work and have a good work ethic.

8. Ditch your racist stereotypes. Different countries have different cultures, I used to get into a lot of trouble being ironic and sarcastic when I lived in the USA. What I saw as witty banter was mostly taken as offence (this still happens but online). So when hiring in India or Germany or Columbia, best to see the people as people rather than through a prism of prejudice. Although references to Basil Fawlty are allowed when dealing with the Germans, (joke, see what I mean it’s easy to fall in to the trap)

9. Pay on time. This is the most important thing, and I will bust a gut and sometimes have to run down to the Western Union office in Truro to make sure payment gets out within the set time if the website is down. BTW, the local Cash Converters shop in Truro is the best one to use if you are in Cornwall and need to send cash around the World.

10. Be nice. You are dealing with human beings not commodities. Treat your team with respect and you will get it back tenfold. Just because the annual GDP of the nation they live in is lower than the cost of serving lunch to the employees of Google does not mean they are stupid or not informed about stuff. They have the Internet and they know how to use it.

11. Try to pick a country that speaks the same language as you, if you need content creating that is to appeal to a certain nation it’s best to have the content created by a national of that country. When I have content aimed at the American market I make sure the writer is American, although a lot of countries can speak and write English, you still need that nuanced writing. In linkbait this is really important, not so much if you need articles just for Google.

I continue to build my team and they continue to do amazing work, maybe I got lucky and got the right people. There have been problems as there always are when hiring people, but most can be sorted. It is different hiring people you have never met who are from another culture. A little research and you can soon get up to speed on the does and don’ts.

I always make sure my team has spare capacity, so if you want to benefit from outsourcing work without the hassle of hiring and managing get in touch and we can work something out. I will be putting together a more detailed service in the future so make sure you sign up for the email newsletter and keep in touch.

Inspired by Byrne Hobart CEO of Due Digital Dilligence on Search Engine Land

SEO Linkbuilding Video of the Day

June 30, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

Very interesting debate with Wil Reynolds and Brett Snyder from Seer Interactive, an (if you want the points you have to give the right anchor text as well as the link 😉

I have this conversation with clients all the time. Both sides have merits and I think it comes down to the business model of the client and the amount of knowledge they have. The best client will just give you the cash and say, “you do that voodoo that you do so well,” but very few actually say and even less sing it in key.

There is something I call, Positive Domain Name Context. If you have a blog and call it Death Star Pizza and stick a blog post about space ships, it makes it more likely that you will get links. You tap into a niche where you clients and the clients competitors will not normally be able to get links. The site then only links to the sites the client wants to link to.

Also, there are a few other things that you can do with a Microsite like this which gets good quality links. But, I’m going to leave that for another time.

Linkbait has definitely evolved and there are quite a few creative ways we can use content that gets links. A client I was chatting too last week was amazed how his site for Ironing Board covers jumped in the SERPS from a link from a an authority site on cat snacks. (Niches have been changed to protect the innocent) You hear a lot about you gotta get links from sites from in your niche to rank for your keyword. No you don’t.

Time and time again I see sites ranked with links from all sorts of niches, as long as those sites are linked to and are seasoned over time it doesn’t matter.

Now, back to creating content about space ships.

Where Can I Find a Great Link Builder

June 20, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

Throughout my travels in the world of Internet Marketing and SEO, you meet a lot of liars, bullshitters, schmoozers and arse-lickers, (a nice line inspired by Alan Sugar). There are a bunch of other words too, but I don’t have that long to write this.

Point is, how do you know who is good.

How do you know when you have found a good link builder?

It makes little sense for a good link builder to show work they have done as it is commercially sensitive. I always keep a few in my back pocket that I know I can show, but most of the time there is little visible sign of anything really happening.

Link builders tend not to have showrooms or large shop front windows.

But, one bunch of people do know and that’s long term clients. I say long term as there is no such thing as short term link building. Not if you want a long term business.

Great link builders take a strategic look. Here are a few I have found along my way who I would recommend.

Wiep Knol, a creative link marketing consultant.
Garret French, a link building consultant from North Carolina
Debra Mastaler, who is great for link building tips
Eric Ward, very big into link building strategies

This is not a definitive list by all means, and if you are a great link builder and feel you should be on my list then let me know and I can make another list.

But these link builders stand out and would be who I would hire to manage my link building. They are also who I recommend to other clients when I have no client spaces available.

So, take it from me. These are people who are at the top of their game and have impeccable credentials and can be trusted to get the job done.

Of course the more interesting blog post would be the dark side of link building and the story about the one armed, Ukrainian, transexual midget, who can do amazing things with sub-domains – but lets save the best till later.

You may be interested in these other posts:

Great wordpress plugin

Secrets of Link Building

January 26, 2011 By Lyndon Antcliff

Yesterday I had three people from separate companies ask me to sign an NDA, actually they weren’t people they were clients. And clients have a much higher status than people, at least they do around these parts.

The bigger the client of course, the more you are likely to trigger an NDA and of course an NDA can cut both ways. It protects you if you are offering seo services and protects your client who is hiring the seo company. So, everyone should be happy and signing the NDA is all good stuff.

But that got me thinking. What’s the point of the NDA? Ultimately is about protecting confidential information and secrets.

Secrets!

It’s a massive word, much over used in online marketing of course. Come learn the secrets of link building, buy the latest ebook, SEO secrets revealed.

The Zen master will tell you that the secret to success is that there are no secrets. That the secret lies within yourself.

Megh!

Whilst there is truth in that, I know of a high ranking authoritative website where you can drop a dofollow link, point it at a target page, using the correct keyword and get it to rank quickly and rank well. But, I’m not going to tell you where it is. It’s a secret. If I published it on this blog the harvest would be shortened and the fruit would soon be over ripened and riddled with maggots.

So it stays secret. The point is, there are secrets, little bits of information floating around that would benefit your online marketing efforts.

No this isn’t a lead in to a “Secrets of Link Building” ebook.

To get to know these secrets of link building you do have to revisit the Zen Master and learn that there are no link building secrets. The reality is, there is nothing that you cannot know in the click of a mouse that will teach you all you need to know to create the most amazing online marketing campaign.

Because, it’s not the secrets to link building that will make you a great link builder. It’s the other stuff, the stuff that expert link builders give away for free on their blogs, it’s what gets talked about at SEO conferences, in free downloads of pdf files. It’s what given away in the seo books stacked on the shelves of you local book shop for a tenner.

The secret stuff, probably only makes up 5% of the mix, if that. The other 95% is hard work and focussing on what works.

The reason why people are looking for that link building secret is because link building is boring, simple and hard work. Which is why people outsource to link building agencies.