MediaWhiz Blog: Archive

This post isn’t really about link building, but the strategic decision making that supercedes tactics. I got inspired by JudgeJeffries’ thoughts in Is Google Stagnating? (subscribers only)

Just a thought about my main site and my views being almost the same as my main competitor who I met recently for the first time. We both now think its a waste of time to put new sites up in our sector due to the sandbox, but more interestingly we are both totally scared to touch our large main websites for fear of tripping into the sandbox. Neither of us add links, we dont exchange but more importantly we’re both frightened of adding new pages or changing the structure in any way.

I think the sentiment of ‘not wasting time’ on a new site is a valid one. The threshold of momentum you need to gain traction (visitors = links = more visitors = more links, OK but how do I get the initial visitors) seems to be increasing in Google with each passing day. (Perhaps this is indeed what Google wants, anyhow).

I disagree that one should be scared of adding content to an old domain–that thar’s the only low-hanging fruit left in ol’ Goog!

But anyway, in light of the ‘box, what do you do? Not start new sites? Only start a new site if you can launch with a year-old, indexed domain? (My preferred strategy) Or start new sites assuming nothing but hate from Google for a year, and banking on MSN and Y! traffic? (my backup strategy when I can’t get ahold of a year-old domain)

Bennie votes for the latter:

Get mad and flood domains and content like there is no tomorrow. Before long you will be 6 months in and have sites ready to go back over. Then with your newfound network you can use your trustrank power to overcome the so called sandbox.

Don’t play the game get mad and work hard at it. The more diverse your content is (provided it all comes back to the main goal - or niche) you will be way ahead.

Keep adding new sites and pretend there is no link aging process. Ignore Google, work with Y and MSN, G will follow.

In the end, the only bad strategy is the uninformed one. If you can’t get link love from trusted sources quickly, expect Google to ignore you for a year or so. If that scenario is in your business model, there’s no problem.

LBB readers: Do you ‘do new’? How do you do it?

Quick heads-up for all your link builders out there, from Loren Baker:

With our tagline âHumanity at work!â I am dead set on showing the
world that a human edited spam free directory can still be built and
maintained; with an emphasis on quality and authority.

To celebrate the launch of this mighty fine looking site (yes, there
is a rather nice design behind Umdum), Iâm offering a special for
Search Engine Journal readers - or anyone who clicks over to this story
from our blogging friends.

To celebrate the launch, we are running a free submittal promotion which will run until 5 pm PST on Thursday April 20th.

You can have your site listed in Umdum for free by Umdum Web Directory these simple steps…

Two words… free… links…

Rand’s post about his possible ‘link bait consulting’ service got me thinking:

Seeing all this in advance and taking into account the lessons of the
past, it may be wise to jump ahead 24-30 months and simply offer
linkbait services only to those who are ready and
financially/organizationally ready to make this leap. My initial
thoughts are that services would cost from $75-$150K and we’d only take
3-4 projects like this per year.

Is anyone else offering link baiting as a service? It seems like the type of thing that would be hard to ‘price’, as good link bait can be a 2000 word article, or a sexy AJAX app, and anything in between… there’s no one-size-fits all. I searched for "buzz marketing" and "viral marketing" (loose synonyms) in Google to see what comes up (if they can rank, they must be decent, right?).

Buzzmarketing.com services - "Whether it involves PR, events, stunts, remnant TV, or the Internet…we take responsibility", but couldn’t get pricing info
Buzz Marketing Group - appears to specialize in market research, no pricing info
Buzzoodle - appear to specialize in strategy and tracking, again, no pricing info
DMC - appears to do the ‘implentation’, you guessed it, no pricing info available (hey guys, why don’t you all read Jakob Nielsen once in a while)
Viral & Buzz Marketing Association - pretty extensive list of firms who do this

I suspect buying buzz marketing services is a lot like buying PR services — there are a few good firms, a lot of pretty terrible ones, and you never know what kind of ROI you’re going to get.

I got to give props to Rand to showing his pricing. Yeah, it ain’t "cheap"  if you have a "what can I get for a hundred bucks" mentality, but, from a value-based perspective, if you can get 500k of links out of 100k worth of link baiting, well…

So does anyone have tips for buzz marketing / link baiting services? Who is doing this? And what do they typically pay?

I am guilty of it and so is my friend Andy Hagans.  I am going to wake him up with this post though and we both will do a better job of getting some original linking news up on this site again.  In the meantime I have to link out to a couple new interviews I stumbled through recently.

I did one for Brad Fallon’s SEO RADIO, here.  Brad Fallon is one of the most underrated seo’s in the world.  How this guy is not bribed into the seo conference circuit is a mystery to me.  Check out Brad’s blog when you can.

If interviews that are rated 3/5 stars are your thing, check out the interview I did at IT Conversations.  3/5 is no complement from the listeners but I’ll take it because it was nice being able to sneak on such a high quality site.

Hagans come back soon before our rss subs go in reverse…

We couldn’t resist giving www.text-link-ads.com a new "web 2.0" design.  The design is the handy work of the talented Chris Pearson.  Take a peak for yourself and let us know what you think of the new look!