Preparing Yourself for the SEO Expert Link War

Once everyone has optimized their website, the Link War will begin. Therefore, you should consider preparing yourself for combat by establishing an aggressive long-term link development strategy.

Search Engine Optimization is still only about 10 years young. In fact, most small businesses have only recently transitioned to the Web, let alone done any research into search marketing. I estimate that within the next 3-5 years every small business will have their own SEO Expert dedicated to doing nothing more than link development, assuming all business are using SEO-Compliant website templates. This SEO Expert is the General who should be arming your company with the SEO and SEM tools to help battle your closest competitors, specifically link development tools.

Paid Links vs. Natural Links
PPC is gaining popularity once again. There’s a lot of talk in the SEO forums about the value of having a mix of both Paid Search and Natural Search listings in the search engine result pages (SERPS). This talk has driven people back to the Paid market and you may want to consider allocating at least 75% of your SEM budget specifically to your PPC campaign - if you want to capitalize on the PPC market. Natural search is more affordable and can be done in-house by your “Web Guy” if he/she understands SEO Best Practices.

Don’t want to manage your own campaign on Google AdWords, Yahoo!, and MSN AdCenter? You could enlist a company like ReachLocal or find a freelance PPC Manager.

Tools for the SEO Link War
Here are some powerful tools recently introduced into the search market that could supercharge your Natural Search campaign:

• Start with submitting 3-5 links per month to Pay to Play Directories. The average cost for inclusion ranges from 5 bucks to a couple hundred. The value is that your link will be on a topic-relevant webpage, most-likely with extremely high PageRank.
   
• Axandra’s Link Popularity Software offers a greyhat solution to acquiring links from related websites. Basically, the IPB software scrubs the search engine results for websites related in content, looks up the website owner’s email address, and then allows you to request a link exchange. This software is becoming extremely popular - expect to see more ads for IPB and Arelis in your SEM newsletters.
   
• A blackhat solution called SEO Elite, which I don’t personally use, was created by Brad Callen several years ago. The software allows the user to see who their “eye competitors” are and dig for information pertaining to their incoming links. Once you have a list of who is linking to your competitors, you can use the software to email the site owners for potential link exchanges. This software violates Google’s Terms and Conditions (notice their 0 PageRank) and should be used with caution.
   
• Text Link Advertising can be expensive, but with the right match of quality websites, you can essentially buy your way to the top of the search engines. Check eBay for “PR6″ or “PR7″ to see the power of link-buying.
   
• Social Networking is a fad where users are basically controlling how they use the Internet by adding links to their own special list of recommended websites. The Google Co-Op for example actually allows you to control what people subscribed to you see in the search engine results. Social Networks that allow you create static links on a page that could be indexed by the search engines include: deli.cio.us, DIGG, Technorati, Yahoo! MyWeb, MySpace, and the list goes on.

There are other things you can do to build links as well, including blasting press releases, submitting articles, and hiring a reputable link development firm. If your site still isn’t optimized, consider visiting my Top 10 SEO Tips website and handing a copy of my SEO eBook to your web designer.

Once your site appears at the top of MSN, you’ll know you’ve completed the SEO portion of search engine marketing campaign and you can focus on link development. It’s going to be a war like no other. Commit yourself to investing in link development for the long-term. Don’t get too many links at once or you will have trouble finding “fresh links” on a continuum (consider the “link aging” factor of Google’s algorithm).

You can win the battle for quality links, but you need to start with a strategy and the tools above should help. Best of luck and may the SEO Force be with you!