Last week, I had the super painful sheer pleasure of attending Sean McGinnis's Content Jam presentation about search engine optimization (SEO).
I wasn't sure what to expect. After all, he and I debate content and SEO quite often (every time we're together), but I begrudgingly admit I learned several things to apply both to the blog here and our client work.
His topic, "Link Building Techniques that Work!" covered why links are still important, even though content marketing tends to have a longer-term effect.
He talks about offsite optimization, where content fits, the top 72 factors in SEO (it's surprising to learn what they are), the components of a link, and how not to get links.
Organic Link Building
The most valuable part of his presentation was when he gets to the 10 ways to do link building organically.
- Write epic content (he used a swear word, but that violates our online policy)
- Guest post your heart out
- Create an infographic
- Curate a list
- Host an event
- Hold a contest
- Issue a news release
- Interview an expert
- Use stock business assets creatively
- Curate, share, and republish
He also talks about what to concern yourself with about the new Google guidelines.
The Rules of Link Building
And then he goes into his three rules of link building, which include:
- Build links as if it won't help your search engine results;
- The value of any link building activity is inversely related to its scalability; and
- Be selective in your link building.