It’s the SEO activity which is the probably the most outsourced as it typically doesn’t require much creativity, just time and an eye for opportunity. But link building can be a very big influencer, in terms of your ranking and how Google perceives your website in general.
The problem is that many websites build links as if they were building a house: If the brick’s good quality, pave it in. Not enough attention is paid to the way the links build on your website’s image, general reputation or if the right keywords are being optimised around with your links to begin with.
Paid and Local Search
It’s important that information is shared between those running the PPC campaign and those building links for the associated site. Firstly, having the campaign bid on the same keywords that your website is well ranked for organically or that your link builders are already busy optimising around, can lead to your SEO efforts being cannibalised.
This can be a strategic decision for your professional search engine marketing agency but make sure it’s something you want from your online marketing strategy. Also, keep in mind that certain keywords are very popular with sponsored links and even top rated organic results can be pushed well below the fold.
Local search can also have a big effect. Certain keywords can bring up multiple local results that, combined with PPC results, can veritably crush your link building efforts. Depending on the industry you operate in (for example, how long your purchase cycle is) you may want to get a bit more inventive with your choice of keywords to optimise around.
Navigation
Always make use of 301 redirected to direct between multiple versions of your site, otherwise you could end up wasting a lot of link juice and having the two versions of your website indexed causing a whole slew of SEO implications.
When you get a link it’s easy, and naïve, to think that you have that link forever. However, in reviewing your link profile, you’ll find many lead to 404 errors (page not found) as the page has been since removed. This makes you look bad to visitors and webcrawlers alike- an increasing problem known as link rotting.
For other competitor sites, there could be a broken link building opportunity. If you find a broken link on a site that you’d like a link to and the subject matter is similar, contact the webmaster of the site and check if they’d be willing to swop the broken link out for yours. They’re a lot more likely to agree as 404 errors makes their site look bad and you’re offering actual content.
Social Media Marketing
A lot of professional search engine marketing consultants will tell you that social media is ineffective. However many websites, particularly those performing link building, have found success with it. The key is in maintaining a constant social interaction through your profiles rather than just using it to promote your new content or products, just to build links.
Content posted on social media sites should be easy to interact with and shared. If the content is good enough, you won’t even need to build links for it. People conducting social media campaigns should also liaise with link builders to ensure their efforts of being fully capitalised on.
There are so many factors to consider in SEM that is can be dizzying but it’s important not to forget how these activities are integrated and that synergy can be achieved if there is communication and even a modest degree of cooperation.