The whole LinkMoses shtick was also an accident. A few years ago someone at a conference made fun that I was still link building, like it was a disease. So I made lemonade out of the joke and turned it into a few thousand new inbound links. Don't mess with a link builder...
I've never intended to be an expert at anything, and the only reason I know so much about link building is that I had the sense or stupidity to stay focused on just that one skill as the web exploded around me. I could have done a thousand different things, but I stayed the link building course. I passed up a $1.3 million buyout offer from BCentral. I ignored Overtures from Overture. I didn't move to San Francisco, Seattle, or New York like everyone thought I should. I stayed right here in my garage office. I didn't write a book when the publishing houses called. Instead I kept doing what I liked. Studied web sites and links. Watched how content gets known, linked, found, by who, when, and where. I did a few industry shows back when just us geeks went. Back when real talent like Danny Sullivan was working his rear off at his kitchen table for just a couple hundred appreciative readers. Somehow my business strategy resulted in other authors writing about me in their books. Again, accidently successful. I was and remain to this day very happy doing what I do. I hope to continue being a content publicist/link builder for many more years.
For several reasons I'm a bit reflective right now. I'm also worn down a bit due to criticism, some deserved and some not, from folks who have have taken issue with my contributions to several link building expert articles. They say I don't give up any secrets. I don't provide worthwhile advice. My answers to link value factors questions are too vague.
Fair enough. This month I begin Link Building Best Practices - Q&A With Eric Ward.
I'll take questions from all comers and turn the best of them into posts where I provide my opinion on what the best practice should be for that particular topic. Send them to lbquestion@ericward.com. I don't pretend for one moment to believe that my best practices should be your best practices. I'm just using this avenue as a way to provide very specific advice and opinion developed over the course of building links for 1,000+ new and old sites from 1994 til today. Here's the link to the Link Building Best Practices RSS feed
Link well friends!
Eric Ward
Working on a project for a church website building company. Problem is the community as a whole is very underfunded and is infected with a few "open-source" types who say(and I love Open source but..) that spending $300/yr is bad because you can spend 300 hours to build it yourself.
ReplyDeleteOnly problem is they carry quite a bit of the mindshare because people don't (or feel guilty about) putting value on their time.
Any suggestions about how to overcome inner-industry snobbery or bias among the "linkerati" when getting a site connected to the fabric of the community? I've seen that behavior outside of this market as well.
I work for a sports tickets brokerage company that I put in the url field given. It's a very cutthroat industry where we often see our competitors doing underhanded techniques to bring us down. I told my boss to focus on link building and not mind the clouts working against us (he agreed as he doesn't want bad karma).
ReplyDeleteCan you suggest anything to help us? If you see merit in discussing this, my contact is [artabon] at [gmail dot com] and will be glad to read your answers from the inbox or even better - your blog.
My bad. I read about the anonymous post requirement when asking questions.
ReplyDeleteSo here's the question:
What do you do regarding link building when you are being attacked from all sides? Does conventional link building work?
How do you keep track of and report link building campaigns for clients? A spreadsheet showing requests and eventual results is all I've come up with so far -- my larger clients aren't satisfied with that, and my smaller clients don't want that much detail (especially if I'm typing it all in on their dime).
ReplyDelete