Gone are the days of directory submissions, article submissions and reciprocal links. It’s now 2000 and great (2008) and the way websites generate natural links is more important than ever.

Link builders have to evolve with the times; they should have a strategic and creative mindset behind them now. If you work for an agency or website design company you have to let the higher management know this. Links can not be bought by the number any more, this will not work effectively.

So what of the old link building methods, why don’t they work anymore?

Firstly I’m not saying stop any of your on-going link building methods, for example submitting links to directories will not harm a websites performance in the slightest. However if you want to achieve the same kind of SERP movement as was available through 06 and the beginning of 07 then a new link building strategy must be created, this should be your social media strategy.

There has been an on going debate between seo gurus discussing if social media work is technically classified as seo. I have previously blogged about the subject does seo include social media if you’re interested to know my opinion. What I’m implying here today is that link building has now morphed into social marketing.

So how do I build links in 2008?

The graph below is a basic description on how quality links are generated through link bait and social marketing.

Using social media platforms to link build is a clear and effective method to achieve more search engine visibility for the content on your site. Making the content on your site more visible will open up new opportunities in terms of link building. In stead of the search engine seeing directory links and duplicate articles etc, they will see users bookmarks of your URL with a possible review. Webmasters and bloggers will usually get their information or news for their own blogs from social sites. It’s these links that are valuable, because they are usually high quality and will help with traffic and SEO positions. (Providing you have planned which keywords to use in your content title).

The root to success of this strategy should be the content that is promoted (link bait), this must be high quality and “link able” – this is where a cost might incur on your clients side.

Metrics and Deliverables will change

Previously keeping a note of submissions as well as new purchases of links may well have been included in your metrics. Your agreement with a client could have previously been based on a number (100 new links per month). All this should change! Show the following metrics:

1. Traffic per link bait
2. Social bookmarks per bait
3. Links gained (site/link analysis required)
4. Search traffic gained as a result of bait
5. SERPS analysis and benchmarking for keywords targeted

Your deliverables will obviously be unknown to start with but you should measure the overall link increase per bait and per month, this will give you some averages.

Of course this method of link building is not cheap and it does require a lot of time and effort, the results however are better than any other link building strategy on the table.

P.S – In regard to one of my posts (25 websites every seo should know) as to why I included so many social sites, link building is part of seo, without it you would not be able to achieve good search positions. Link building will eventually be based around social marketing – hence my inclusion of so many social sites.

I have never really opened the gates to a good old fashioned rant on Seounique before, so here goes!

Have you ever wondered why your interesting blog posts or link bait you pay hundreds of bucks for never makes it big on social media sites? You start asking yourself questions like; is my avatar too offensive? Is my title not “catchy” enough? Or is my blog just worthless?

Well the flat out answer is no, no and no! It doesn’t matter how ultra juicy your story or post may be, it’s all about whom you know and what kind of reputation you have. Unfortunately this seems to be the case in every social media environment, although if it wasn’t the case then the quality of the stories making “published” status would probably vary.

Now if you’re reading this for the first time, don’t panic, and whatever you do, please don’t think you can cheat the system. If you’ve read a blog post explaining that you need to build a reputation to get submissions noticed – don’t be an ass!

This is just one example of someone clicking the Sphinn button as many times as possible for as long as possible. This is not an isolated incident by any means and I’ve seen plenty of users do it, I imagine this happens across the board so this is by no means a punt at Sphinn.

What these people are doing:

1. Reducing the quality of stories by voting rubbish stories
2. Not achieving anything because your reputation will look false
3. Thinking a number is better than the interaction
4. Giving their brand a bad name (if applicable)

So I urge all you geniuses out there to stop trying to look good, its not big and not clever and it’s a waste of your time!

Rant over lol!

Many times have I been browsing through forums and freelance websites and seen – “Need to be on fist page”, “Will pay $$$ for first page of Google”, “Will sell my soul for page 1 of Google” – maybe not the last one but you get the idea.

I work with over 40 websites including client and personal projects. For some of these sites, obtaining a page 1 positioning is just not possible, well without spending tens of thousands of pounds anyway (which clients are reluctant to do on seo). Reason being the competitiveness for some keywords are just too high, the first page will be populated with international known brands with 12 year old domains and a trillion backlinks.

Obviously for less competitive keywords anything is possible when you put your mind to it. However a question that has been playing on my mind is – do we even need to be on page one of Google?

Well the answer is yes and no. For extremely popular keywords, being as far down as page 3 or page 4 can still provide more than enough traffic to keep 3 holiday villas in the Caribbean ticking over.

Don’t believe me? Well here is a screen shot of one client’s site I work on:

You may not think it’s a great deal of visits but this is one keyword of about 15 returning similar results. In fact the total visit count for the year positioned around page 3-4 was a total of 400K in 2007 just from SE’s. I can’t possibly image what being on the first page would yield for popular keywords but let me get back to my point.

If there are any website owners that have demanded a “page 1” position in the past, be sure that you understand sometimes it’s not needed, and sometimes it is near impossible, lower pages can produce the results you are after.

I apologize to all my readers that Seounique was down for around 72 hours.

As some of you may or may not know I was hacked a few weeks back and it seems that my hosting company needed me to replace my HD on the server. This is the reason I have been away, and the site down. Seounique is back up and will I will get a posting asap.

Sorry again,

Thanks Matt

I have comprised a list of sites that should be well known to anyone working in seo / web design for 2008

1. www.seomoz.org/blog - Great blog, great seo tools
2. www.searchengineland.com – Up-to-date search news
3. www.sphinn.com – social bookmarking for internet marketing
4. www.mixx.com – a friendly alternative to Digg
5. www.stumbleupon.com – One of the best social bookmarking sites
6. http://forums.digitalpoint.com - Webmasters forum
7. www.sitepoint.com – Another great webmasters forum
8. www.technorati.com - Promote your blog
9. www.mybloglog.com – A must have for blog communities
10. www.twitter.com – A great way to communicate with your audience
11. www.linkdiagnosis.com - A great link analysis tool
12. www.google.com/trends - See how trends in Google look
13. http://answers.yahoo.com - Great for providing traffic
14. www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php - Learn about sitemaps
15. www.ventio.se/seo-tools/google-position - Still in beta but good SE tool
16. www.wordtracker.com - Great keyword performance tool
17. www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools - Another source of good seo tools
18. www.backlinkwatch.com – Backlink analysis breakdown
19. www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories - Quality directories
20. www.internetmarketingninjas.com – Expert seo advise
21. www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia - A wiki alternative
22. www.miniajax.com – Some great free Ajax scripts
23. www.sxc.hu/index.phtml - Free royalty free images
24. www.cssbeauty.com – CSS community
25. www.seounique.com/blog - Well I had to put my site in here!