How To Get Quality Links, Moses-Style
Building Links Without Straw
In the movie “The Ten Commandments,” Pharoah Ramses II threatens to punish the Hebrew slaves by having them make bricks without straw. The idea of course is that a high-quality brick needs straw to stay together, and that a brick without straw is nowhere near high-quality.
I’m reminded of this lesson by Eric Ward’s latest Link Moses post about quality link building, in which he lays the responsibility of getting links solely on the quality of the content and not the quality of the link builder. In turn, he says the quality of the link builder rests on his/her ability to find “link curators” (website owners with links to give) that match well with the target audience. Once s/he makes the “introduction” with the link curator, it is up to the content to earn that link.
(Eric Ward, in case you aren’t aware, is a reknowned link builder who’s been successfully building links and blogging about it for years. In fact, if you Google search for “link builder” he’s at or near the top of the page.)
It’s an interesting way of looking at the link building process, because typical SEO clients look to the SEO consultant to take ownership of all link building activities. For example, a recent law firm client’s website was full of posts/pages with variations on the theme “(legal problems) suck, so give us your name and contact info.” He wanted me to conduct a link building campaign, but who’d want to link to that crap? Sure, it’s easy to get classified ads and other unilateral links, but those aren’t going to be worth much. The high-value links from quality reference sites are going to want you to contribute value. I mean, if they’re willing to give links to any old page then how valuable can those links be?
Sure, as a link builder you need to hunt down great places that are effective at drawing traffic and increasing search rankings. At the heart of it, though, you need to have quality content to get quality links. Otherwise, you’re just trying to make bricks without straw.
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I can’t believe I missed the opportunity to use the phrase “So let it be written, so let it be done.”