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.
