Presentation on Effective Link Building by Justin Briggs at Distilled Pro SEO Boston 2011.

1. Effective Link Building @JustinRBriggs Justin Briggs

2. Sociable Geek Internet Culture Sales Experience Creativity Ingenuity Analytical Skills Technical Skills Hustle What Makes An Effective Link Builder

3. Stop getting links, and start earning them? meh.

4. A link builder can dominate large brands by simply outworking them.

5. How do I compete? Client Unknown brand One in-house marketer Ecommerce, no content < 100 linking domains No blog No social media Competition National brands Large marketing budgets Free resources Thousands of linking domains

6. Systematic Hustle

7. What do you need? What might be done? #3 Brainstorm Approaches #2 Competitive Analysis In Theory #1 Backlink & Competitive Research #4 Actionable Ideas Real World

8. Hustle for Links

9. Do what it takes

10. 6 Months before, I told a coworker: “I’m getting links on these pages”

11. Site wasn’t “good enough” Spent six months building out blog, content, and social media.

12. Figure out what they link to. Now BUILD IT! Nice, email.

13. Does this work? PA 48, DA 80 PA 48, DA 62

14. Get Your Content Out StumbleUpon posted content to their Facebook and Twitter

15. Throwing mud at a wall is NOT a link building strategy.

16. You need stellar, targeted content.

17. But sometimes content fails. And it’s embarrassing.

18. Even if you failed, you still need links.

19. So JFDI.

20. Recover Failed Infographic Skip the social, do manual outreach. Incentivize the embed. Guest post: The embed is the post. Chop up the image and repurpose. Additional research and write great post.

21. Creative Contact Mining Just a Stanford blog with guest posts… There is no contact information. Fail.

22. Take the Time to Find the Email This will give you their email.

23. The first infographic I created was picked up by a BIG site, but they messed it up.

24. I hunted for nearly two hours to find their personal email address. “You can’t outsource giving a shit.” - Tom Critchlow

25. They’re now the first person I email when I’m promoting content.

26. They get me a lot of links.

27. Link Giver Psychology

28. By initiating a low risk relationship, you increase the success of your link request.

29. Incremental Commitment

30. Blogging Contest Make easy to enter (no link requirement). Gave them email address. They emailed in their post. Reply with link request.

31. Getting the Link Hi <Their Name> Thanks for your entry. I will pass it on to the judges. Would you mind please placing the following code at the top or bottom of the post to let people know it’s an entry in the contest? This post is an entry for the <a href="http://site.com/contest">{Name of the Blog Contest}</a> being hosted by <a href="http://site.com">Brand</a>. Thanks! <Your Name> 85% placed the link! I tested multiple templates. This one won.

32. Use Zombies (just be damn creative) Yes, seriously. I got a link like this.

33. So do you think <removed> would help you survive against zombies? Even if not, I think it'd be epic to bust out in Spanish like Stewie on Family Guy while blowing the head off a zombie with a shotgun. I saw on your Twitter that you like <removed>. If you'd be up for checking out our <removed> and reviewing how they can help you survive a zombie apocalypse, I'd love to send one out to you for free. You can pick from <removed>, but I'll leave that up to you. An no, there is no special catch. I just think your blog is funny, and I can send out <removed> for review. And, well, I love zombies. :) Let me know what you think about the review / post idea. Thanks! Justin

34. Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement

35. BATNA No Can I have link? Yes Can I overcome reasons? Win! Yes No What else can I get? That’ll do.

36. Improve Effectiveness

38. Number of outbound links

39. Position on page

40. TrustRank / PageRank

42. Compare to previous links

43. Value based off profile naturalness

45. Surprising Growth Rank Time

46. Use branded high value links to increase value of high leverage, lower value link building tactics.

47. Directories? Yes, still. Check homepage cache date, eliminate stale sites. Check indexation of linked from page. Avoid high difference between mR and PR. Check listing order (newest, alphabetical, PR) Take the time to submit it right. “You can’t outsource giving a shit.” - Tom Critchlow Protip: Consider this relative to my last tip.

48. Ingenuity

49. Improve Prospecting with GCSE http://bit.ly/amziMz

50. Scale Prospecting with Scrapers http://bit.ly/lVY3q6

52. Quickly Identifying Site Type

53. Some of these aren’t very active today.

54. Find Fresh Linkers Doesn’t give date search like normal.

55. Simple Little Hack Put date parameter from regular search in linkfromdomain URL

56. Discovering Fresh Linkers Build Agile Tools: http://bit.ly/iBhMeh

57. Scale Outreach with Tout http://toutapp.com

58. Quickly Compose Emails with Templates

59. Track Template Effectiveness

60. Coupon Code: PROSEO2011 Tout Premium Free for 1 Month Thanks to TK at Tout!

61. Thanks! Justin Briggs SEO Consultant, Distilled Twitter: @JustinRBriggs Justin.Briggs@distilled.co.uk http://distilled.net