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Eric Ward on the Hyperlink Hot Seat

Eric Ward is one of the most well-known names in linking. To learn more about his services, visit Net Post or URLwire.

1. I know you’ve done link building for a lot of high profile sites (such as Amazon.com). That aside, which of your past link building campaigns was the most fun for you?

A cable TV network had a web site with companion web content, and they ran an online contest, the "Three Stooges Year Supply of Pies" contest from American Movie Classics.  As a kid I loved the Stooges, but hadn’t really researched them online. I dug into it was amazed to find fan pages, discussion lists, forum boards, etc. that Stoggtes fans had created.  And when I contacted them they were quite excited.  What’s funny is that the links to the contest page I was able to obtain were 100% about people, not bots.  I never pursue links based on some hoped-for algorithmic ranking boost.

2. Do you think that there are aspects of link building that the average webmaster just doesn’t "get"?

Most webmasters understand links, especially since they likely receive 1,000 spam link request a day.   But what I see them missing is an understanding of the power of editorial based links to drive topically interested people.  They are consumed with SEO and links.

3. Link building can sometimes get to be a tedious task. Do you ever feel like you need a break from it?

Only when I’m working.  Serisously, there are some projects that do make my eyes bleed. But then I get a fun one and the response is such that I smile again.

4. Tell us a bit about your upcoming link building seminar.

Plan is to do an intensive day-long linking workshop in Charlotte. I’m teaming up with Debra Mastaler for this. She is one of the most cerebral link builders I’ve even known, and also a really fine person, and between the two of us hopefully we can put a few people in the seats and help them learn to link, without too much pain and suffering.

5. Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it’s made up of two separate words – "mank" and "ind". What do you these words really mean?

That you’d better make sure to double check your anchor text.

Vary Your Links’ Descriptions, Or Else

I think most good SEOs have been varying link descriptions for some time now. It’s just another thing we can do to make our links look “natural”. Admittedly I’ve never been one to use 100 descriptions when I get 100 links — but I would try to use 5 or 10 variations, for instance.

This is one of those SEO methods that we say is forward-looking. I.e., in 2001 when a lot of people did this, you better believe it didn’t matter. It really didn’t. But as long as you’re building links, why not build links that will probably still help in 5 years?

5 years later, it matters. I just came across this WMW thread [supporters only -- riffraff, keep out], where Robert Charlton says:

At SES, in the search engines’ linking session, Matt Cutts was very explicit that Google looks at the uniqueness of descriptions when evaluating links. For a bunch of reasons outside the scope of this thread, I’m very much inclined to believe him.

In other words: showing links with many duplicate descriptions is almost certainly evidence of aggressive link building, and it appears Google is filtering / devaluing those links. Note: MSN probably isn’t. But they may in 2007

Bottom line: if you aren’t already, start varying your links’ descriptions!

eComXpo is sweet… NOT!!

Well, eComXpo has finally begun. Truth be told, I’m pretty pumped about it, since it’s so cool.

Wait, not ‘cool’, what’s the word I’m looking for, oh, right, ‘stupid’.

What eComXpo has taught me about good marketing

• if your web site doesn’t work in many browsers, it’s cool!
• charging people $100 to “paint” a virtual booth is a smart, creative marginal revenue stream
• sending attendees 30 emails a day is good for branding, this will create an emotional connection between them and your company
• if you want to impress people, use Flash!

Open letter to Seth Godin:

Dear Seth,

eComXpo seems to have gotten some buzz this year, partly because you have been plugging it. Question: are you sure you want to associate yourself with these people?

Sincerely,

Andy Hagans

No more blogging for now, I gotta get back to our booth.

*The views expressed above are the personal opinions of Andy Hagans. They do not necessarily reflect the position of Text Link Ads Inc.