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Link-building for established brands

Author's avatar By Chris Soames 15 Sep, 2010
Essential Essential topic

How to gain high-quality links

Value: [rating=4]

Our commentary: A recent post on Search Engine Land (see recommended link at the end) draws out the tactics you may want to consider if you are facing the challenge or opportunity of a client that already has 10,000's of incoming links and is a well known brand in its market.

The article focuses most of its ideas around high quality & high volume links. The first being links from authority sites such as key newspaper sites or government / education related websites for example. The second is much more about volume links from lots of websites to yours, very social media & advertising orientated.

Clearly the two options I have mentioned there will be on any link building task list, where this blog adds some good value is how you should then leverage your brand & other marketing activities to accelerate & improve the effectiveness of your link building.

The one area I think the blog maybe lacks is anchor text analysis, only recently I have been working on a client project for a high street brand that has really untargeted anchor text in huge numbers of their links. I would personally say reconfiguring old links will give you quicker & potentially better results, definitely first on the list for sites with the right volume of links already.

Marketing implications: Even if you maintain smaller sites and lesser known brands please do not discount this blog post, the same rules apply and you should definitely read the post and digest, there will undoubtedly be actions for you. Either way the post should help you:

  • Define a link building strategy - not just tactics and task lists but how to approach such a large part of online marketing, lets remember this work has more implications than just improved rankings
  • Inspire you with some new tactics & ideas to use in your future campaigns
  • Appreciate the links between other marketing activities and your link building efforts

And remember even after reading the article, remember to make sure the link building you have already done is working for you... check the anchor text!!

Please add any thoughts or ask any questions in the comments area below.

Recommended link: The art of link building for establish brands

Author's avatar

By Chris Soames

Chris Soames is a Smart Insights blogger and consultant, he has worked in digital marketing for over 6 years with the last few years managing international web strategies for a leading travel brand. Now the Commercial Director at First 10, an Integrated marketing agency, he helps clients get clarity on their marketing strategy and create campaigns engineered to engage with their consumers to help drive sell-through. Most of all, Chris enjoys working with talented people who want to create great (& commercial) things not just tick boxes.

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