Quantifying Link Building

A client recently asked me:
"With all of the activities we handle related to search - PPC, copy, competitive analysis etc, how can we quantify the choice to incorporate 'link building' into our overall search marketing campaign?"

Outside of the actual link that creates a sale, it can be difficult to justify (financially) the time and commitment required for effective link building - but search marketers know that link building is a key element to any successful SEO/SEM campaign.  The fact of the matter is that not so long ago, most links for SEO had little to do with the actual user-based traffic that actually was related to them.  As search algorithms have matured and improved, good search marketers know that effective links are created to build quality traffic, increase the amount of appropriate users, and ultimately, generate prospective customers. 

Here are some real answers to how you can quantify your link building campaign, as it relates to your complete search marketing efforts (outside of the direct sale). 

• Link Duration
  Quality inbound links give your website a greater presence online for the long-term.  In comparison to an investment in PPC, your website and company message get the benefit of long-term visibility, rather than just through the query of a search term.  More importantly, as these links stay alive, the benefit of age increases their own value as they get older.
  
• Trust Factor
  Your website presence on respected sources brings the benefit of relevance and trust to your own company.  Without inbound links, you rely solely on Internet advertising and website copy for establishing recognition in your products and services.  Being seen in the online communities and properties that make up your industry base and potential customer base is important.
  
• Strategic Brand Awareness
  Creating inbound links allows you to better understand the patterns of your prospects and potential customers.  Having quality links that generate traffic and (potentially) sales gives you an opportunity to better spend your marketing dollars for brand building and marketing communication.  Your inbound links help identify what types of websites will bring you the best traffic for your money.

Inbound link building is critical to achieving keyword rankings in search engines, but actually justifying the time and cost associated with building links can be hard in comparison to other methods of traffic building which incorporate more direct statistics for tracking ROI.  While the end game is always a measure of how much more your website makes in terms of overall leads and sales, hopefully the answers here provide additional insight into what makes link building more beneficial as a function of your overall search marketing strategy.

Popular Web Directories

While the overall value of links found in web directories may or may not have a serious impact on your keyword rankings in today's search algorithms, there are still reasons to consider submissions into the major directory resources, including:

• Getting Indexed.  Search engines still crawl the best web directories, and they offer the opportunity to be found, if nothing else, by search engine spiders.
• Directory Data Feeds.  An unspoken value of the Open Directory is that it provides data feeds of its listings for webmasters to publish.  What happens then is that the syndications of its content (including Google and AOL), automatically feature your website in their specific directory listings, without any additional work from you.
• Categorical Reference.  Because most directories will have you specify a certain category for your submission, at the least your site gets placed within your strategic thematic relationship, even though the purpose of the website as a whole is not necessarily industry or business related.

Popular Web Directories
Here is a list of popular web directories that you should consider submissions for.  Note that today, most of these directories now require a fee of some sort for inclusion. 

• The Open Directory (DMOZ) - The original volunteer, human-edited web directory.  This is one of the largest and oldest directories out there.  Make sure to adhere to the submission guidelines as required.  More information on the submission process for the DMOZ can be found here.
• Yahoo Directory - The Yahoo Directory is an extensive catalog of websites organized by topic. Non-commercial sites may submit for free but most commercial sites require a $299 annual fee.
• Business.com - A comprehensive directory of business websites, and an ideal choice for B2B companies.  The directory requires an initial $199 submission fee and then $149/year thereafter.  One nice benefit for new listers is that they offer the ability to create 4 additional sub-links into deeper pages of your website.  They also feature a nice 800 number for questions and service.
• Best of the Web - Editor-based web directory since 1994 and now revamped with a blog directory as well.  There is a one-time fee of $149 for submissions, with a review process of 3 business days.
• GoGuides - General directory listing sites by ratings. The fee is now $69 per submission and you can pay through PayPal or traditional methods. 
• JoeAnt - General directory listing sites by ratings. Uses icons to aid content selection.  The nice thing about Joeant is that they encourage webmasters with interest in the directory to become contributors, and have a complete section of information and forums for Joeant editors to discuss topics and work together.  Outside of being an editor, there is a one-time submission fee of $39.
• About - A network of sites where visitors can find many targeted topic areas, each one managed by a personal guide.  The strategy for getting linked in this website is a little bit more difficult, as there is no commercial process for submissions.  Rather, webmasters should contact the appropriate guide and begin a working relationships demonstrating the relevance and value associated with their website and the specific topic at hand.
• Gimpsy - Holds reviewed, interactive sites, classified by the activity the user is aiming at, and provides a Natural Language search interface.  There is a one-time $40 submission fee.

The list here is a mere handful of web directory opportunities for webmasters to investigate and submit their material to.  It should also be noted that this list does not even touch on specialty directories, which include regional guides, topic specific directories and niche directories (for bloggers, RSS, articles etc)

Here is one of the best places I have seen for listing a ton of directories (free and commercial) in one place, but if you would like more information and additional resources, check out the links below:

• The Yahoo Directories own listing of Search Engines and Directories
• Wikipedia
• SearchEngineWatch.com's listing of major search engines and directories for consideration (somewhat outdated)

Google’s Phone connection Extends Search

I’ve always been very curious about using Search as a way to find local business information. Yes, there is another way and it called the phone book, but to the newest generation of consumers such as my own kids they find it “way too slow”. I still keep the phone book handy and suggest they look there first but they complain it’s too hard. And with the latest “beta” test of a new Google feature it's getting even closer to making the yellow book really old fashioned. Google has added a new feature to lookup a business over the phone, it works by calling 1-877-466-4411 (1 877 GOOG 411), and you can get an automated directory assistance based on their local search listings. Here’s a quick product walk thru.

Call the number and the first prompt is for city and state. It will confirm if the location is right and then ask for a business name or description. Now here the fun begins. If someone doesn’t know or remember the exact name they can say simple words like “pizza” and what is returned is the same top three search results you would find at the Google website (if you used search terms like "pizza waltham ma"). This is linked up with their “Local Search” program that also ties into the mapping program and allows the business to create/edit their own listing information. So it reads back to you the top three listings and pauses to ask you if you wish to text message or have them call the business. I’d suspect that someday instead of paying per clicks on ads we will be a paying per call. Considering this could be a replacement for the 411 fees charged to phone user, gaining popular support should be an easy task.

If your business is a total Internet only business model and has no local “presence”, then being concerned about a Local Search (and Phone extension) could be irrelevant. But don’t stop reading yet. We have a large client that lists used farm equipment for sale and doesn’t have a storefront or retail presence, sort of a on-line directory website. So they may not need to worry about a local search strategy, right? But wait, their business partners do have a local operations so integration of their search marketing tactics is a very important thing. So when a farmer is stranded in a cornfield in Iowa and calls directory assistance for a quick tractor replacement, wouldn’t you want him to hear your business mentioned at the top? So maybe paying attention to this development is not a bad thing, except that the phone book will even get even lonelier at my house.

Be Careful With Parked Domains

As a site matures, website owners frequently buy and retain alternative domain names and there are many valid reasons for doing so, including brand protection, brand relationships and simply to prevent competitive entry.  If you intend to use your domains as pointers to your site however (especially in the case of brand protection), make sure that your 301 redirect is correctly enabled.  We've talked about 301 redirects in the past and a good resource for implementing them can be found here.  Parking your new domains can have serious implications that may not be realized in the short term.

Domain Parking
A frequent, alternative solution is the parked domain.  In shared web hosting, it is very common for webmasters to use this feature, because it's easily available and simple to add on (usually just a few clicks in a web hosted control panel).  Parked domains enable the desired URL to act exactly like the main URL.  In essence, DOMAIN.com and DMAIN.com are both browser accessible and present the same content.

There in lies the danger.

This is can be construed as duplicate content, one of the most critical issues in SEO to avoid.  But if you don't market the web address, how can it even be found in the first place?  A great question to ask, and one that is asked by webmasters over and over.  Directly speaking, if there is no marketing presence of the parked domain, in theory there will be no availability for a search spider to access and index the material, and in turn, no way for the search engine to potentially be confused about what content should be available.

Unfortunately, there are ways for the search engine spider to not only find that domain, but crawl it and index the unintended, duplicate material.  How?  Here are some examples:

• A user types into their browser the parked domain and gets to your webpage.  They bookmark the material in http://del.icio.us/ without even acknowledging that they typed in the wrong URL.
• A scraper site aggregates new domain purchase data and presents the information as links on their website, in an effort to draw traffic.
• Your data with ICANN, which lists the domain name, is crawled by a search engine spider.

Once the domain gets crawled, it gets indexed, unless you tell the spider not to index it somehow.  But in the event of domain parking, you do not have this type of control.  The only control you have is in being able to point the domain to your main website. Eventually the parked domain will be integrated into the search results and while it may not effect your rankings initially, as the spider keeps crawling and seeing the additional domains, it adds confusion and clutter to your website and ultimately devalues your overall search presence.

How To Fix The Problem
First, remove the parked domain from the web server system.  If you are using an apache web server and have access to a control panel, you need to do the following:

• Create a sub-folder in the web root for the domain.
• Point the domain, using the control panel to the newly created folder. (Note, if you had the domain parked already, the DNS settings should already be in place.  If this is a new domain, you need to have the DNS set to the location of the web server.)
• Upload a .htaccess file with the following information:
  
  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule (.*) http://www.DOMAIN.com/$1 [R=301,L]
  
  Effectively, DOMAIN.com refers to the main domain that you want to be displayed to your users.
• This will now 301 redirect the (formerly) parked domain to the appropriate destination.

Creating a 301 redirect versus parking a domain ensures that you will not inadvertently display duplicate content on the web.  If you are using a Windows based web server, there are slightly different steps, but essentially a similar process.  Remember, just because you are not advertising your parked domains does not mean that they cannot be accessed online.

Benchmark Ideas for Calculating SEO ROI

As SEO and SEM becomes a much more in-demand service for businesses in all industries, here are some thoughts on the ROI of an SEO campaign.

Keyword Rankings
Not only is it important to appear in the top positions for the major search engines, but it is also important to gauge traffic and competitive positioning.  Some considerations:

• Overall keyword referrals per month, as well as the trend, month-to-month.
• Keyword position in search results as a factor of keyword popularity.  For example, a #3 position for a keyword that is searched for 1,000 times a month may be far more valuable than a #1 position on a keyword that is searched 50 times month.
• Competitive keyword analysis - keeping above your top competition in strategic keyword listings.

Content Recommendations and Page Tagging
Aside from how the search engines "see and rank" your website based on keyword strategy, how the customer inteprets the site, where they click (and where they leave) and how long they stay are equally important to where you rank.

• Stickiness - what is the percentage increase in page views after the initial SEO campaign is complete?
• Search referrals - quality content should foster higher click-thru rates/for the same keywords in the same keyword positions in search.  This means that better titling and search descriptions foster a higher percentage of clicks to your site, even if your site has not seen dramatic increases in keyword rankings
• Conversion volume - obviously, the end goal in any marketing campaign is to increase sales, sales opportunities and "touches" to the customer and prospect. 

Link Building and Website Promotion
It's hard to directly correlate the relationship between link research and new links to keyword improvement and ultimately, sales conversions.  But here are some general ideas.

• Research volume - do you track how many links are being investigated, contacted and approved?  It may also be possible to create a "points system" based on the qualities of the link opportunity.
• Website referrals - more pertinent to the promotion side of the equation, but becoming equally valuable overall, make sure to guage how many referrals are coming from new links.  The concept of link building has become much more about providing value to your audience.  If that is the case, then users of sites that link to you should be coming to your site because of this value.

SEO as a Long-Term Investment

First let me state that by inferring "long-term investment", I do not mean on par with your 401k plan and dream house.  But I am talking about strategic marketing and (potentially) brand recognition. 

Consider the inital working process of a traditional SEO campaign

1. Keyword research
   Any SEO company of good quality needs to understand the keywords that are going to drive the right users to your website.  To do this, they need to understand your business, what your online objectives are, the sales process and (to some extent) your revenue and pricing models.  From this discovery, we're then able to research and propose the best keywords from a standpoint of organic search volume and popularity.
2. Tagging and Content Recommendations/Implementation
   This is usually the first step in an SEO campaign.  Once we have an agreement on keyword strategy, we take the keywords and merge them into your existing content.  Overarching themes should be more prominent on the site, and we want to capture the overall message (hopefully the best/most popular keywords) on the home page.  This is not about being the most popular kid on the playground (in terms of keyword selection).  This is about working with your company to create the most appropriate, yet most desirable keyword-based message for your company

The way search engines work is changing

As recently as 2005, SEO's could reasonably predict when a search engine update in listings would happen.  But it was because of this that it was "wait and see" game in terms of page changes and how effective they were - which would mean as much as a month wait if your changes were implemented and crawled right after an update took place.  Yahoo of course, was the first to fully integrate Direct Submit into their search engine programs, which guaranteed 48 hour spidering on specific pages, but it was really the integration of Search Engine Sitemaps that has appeared to have shifted the indexing process. 

While sitemaps in general are a contentious topic, no one will argue that this was Google's first real step to attempting to understand, from a user's perspective, what pages are available on a website for the search engine to find.  The use of sitemaps (if you agree that they work) as well as the integration of other input-based search programs (Google Base and Yahoo 360 as examples) will shift the way that search engines like Google update their index, from a standpoint of understanding page-specific information.

But just because Google (and now Yahoo) allow you to tell them what you are about, does not mean that you get a free ticket to the top of the rankings for "insurance quote".

Back to SEO - Next Steps in a successful SEO Campaign

The next two steps in an SEO campaign are equally important, but take up one critical resource - time.

1. Links, Links, and more Links
   Your site needs more links, better links and high quality links.  I'm not going to delve into a topic that could span an additional 5 pages of detail, but rather to just state that the link building process has matured into a much more detailed (and arguably better) process.  The bottom line is that "gaming" the search engines is not as easy as it was.
2. Competitive Analysis
   Beyond the general understanding of the fact that competitor A has a website, you need to know what they have on the site (features, functionality etc), what their keywords are and how they rank, and what sites (links) point to them.  In cases where they rank higher than you for "x" keyword, you need to know why and more importantly, what to do about it.

These things take time and like business in general are constantly changing and evolving.  Your time investment in these two subjects does not end in one month or after a one-time investigation.

Considering the link process

• You spend time obtaining a new link
• Search Engine crawls that new link and finds your site
• Search Engine "digests" the text that is the link, around the link, and what the overall page (where the link was located) was about
• Search Engine still has to go back and either a.) see if the place the link was located has a sitemap but most definitely b.) cross-reference the existing database of information they have on the link's site and your site

This doesn't happen overnight.  Well, the actual process could happen overnight, but even with new search engine services in place for webmasters, I've yet to hear anything from Google or Yahoo or MSN stating that they "process inbound links faster these days".  In fact, our monthly reports, while definitely indicating keyword shifts, oftentimes do not always reflect our inbound link building efforts, especially in Google on a regular, 30 day basis.  Thus, my understanding would be that the real value in inbound links, for SEO, can take months, especially when it relates to improving keyword rankings.

Now take a look at what your competition is doing

But beyond the process of search engines, your business still needs to be aware of the competition and what the competition is doing, whether they realize it or not, for SEO.  Are they building new theme pages to capture different keywords?  Are they forming new partnerships to gain high quality inbound link relationships?  Have they began a site redesign for purposes of a better user experience?  If you buy SEO services for a month, or for a one-time project, you get that SEO's understanding of the competition at that point in time.  That's like investing in EMC in 2000 because their balance sheet looked really solid.  Real SEO companies not only understand how your site should perform for search, but they acknowledge why the competition is where they are, and what you need to do, ongoing, to stay ahead of them.

Final Thoughts

You should tailor how much you need to budget for SEO ongoing as it relates to the objectives of your online marketing strategy.  If your revenue model requires you to draw traffic and sales leads directly from the web, it makes sense to spend more time, money and effort in increasing and maintaining your online presence through search.  If you keep a brochure of yourself online and that is your only objective, maybe not so much.  But how the search engines see your site, and rank your site for the words your customers enter in their everyday search queries can change, and as technology changes and evolves, may be changing everyday from now until the day that the Internet goes away.  This is why you need to look at SEO as a long term investment.

Google’s Search Partner’s Unveiled?

A very common experience in Paid Search Marketing is noticing sudden increases in search impressions for a particular search term. Are more people searching by those terms? Or is something else going on here you may ask. Most search terms do have seasonal trends. Google (and MSN AdCenter too) also provide insight into this by using the Keyword Tools in their ad centers. But another likely source of random spikes is from the Content Partner Network. Herein lies a constant rub of mine about this Google “black hole” of web traffic, where it’s challenging to measure the success of this marketing channel. Not being a big fan of it, I always recommend doing a limited test first before a full blown launch. But I’ve never had an issue with the Search Partners, because I always thought it was clear and documented who they were, with well-known websites like AOL and Netscape.

It could be another reason for this increase traffic maybe they are coming from new search partners that Google is adding into the Search Partner network. Lately, it has come to my attention that the list of Search Partners is a bit longer then documented and even contains previously Content Network Partners. By doing a bit of research of running campaign’s where I have the Search Partners enabled and the Content Network Partners turned off here is our little “unofficial” list the Google Search Partners. Note, some of these Google claims are part of the Content Network but in our research proved to be really Search Partners instead. Enjoy.

Search Engines:
About.com
AOL.com
Ask.com
Business.com
Dogpile.com
MyWebSearch.com
Netscape.com
Lycos.com
Search.com (CNet)
Netster.com

Internet Service Providers:
ATT.net
Bellsouth.net
Earthlink.net
CompuServe.net
Comcast.net
Adelphia.net

Content Portal Websites:
Nytimes.com
Howstuffworks.com
Shopping.com (via About)
TechTarget.com
Tripadvisor.com
Myway.com
Sfgate.com
Sourceforge.net
Sportsline.com

If you happen to notice anyone new one, just let me know and I’d be happy to “expand” the research and add it to the list.