From Link Building To Link Marketing – An Evolution In Strategy…

What’s the difference between Link Building and Link Marketing and why could an understanding of the difference make a big difference to your bottom line?

There is a very good overview of what link marketing might look like from Eric Ward over at Search Engine Land.

What do you think about when it comes to link building? Asking other websites to link to your site, posting comments on blogs and forums? Basically trying to artificially boost the authority of your website. OK, so the comments and the forums posts may be legit, but these techniques have a very high appeal to spam artists and it’s contributing to more and more bloggers setting the no-follow attribute.

Google wants you to attract links to your website naturally, by providing something useful that other web sites owners feel compelled to link to , e.g. your content, a cool app, snappy video,  inspiring/funny images…etc.

Businesses should continue to focus on this type of link building. It’s important to develop reasons why other websites should link to yours. There’s a great post from Rae Hoffman, asking 11 top link building experts about their insights into link building.

So what about link marketing? What is it and is it a easier way to enhance your bottom line that  traditional link building?

Link Marketing is about getting visibility for your business in ways that are more akin to guerrilla marketing than link building.

An obvious example (now) from the Eric Ward article above is to cross market your business with another similar business. Let’s use a different, the site http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk offers people the opportunity to find accommodation from property owners directly.  What happens when you inquire about a property? You get the confirmation email. What if this email contained a link, with an endorsement, to car hire firm?

At the moment the Owners Direct site already links to some card hire sites, but they don’t actively endorse them? Why not, surely this is a great link marketing opportunity for both sides. A car hire firm, say Budget car hire gives you a link to the Owners Direct sites when you book a car and visa versa – a match made in heaven?

I’ve seen some comments along the lines of…this type of link marketing is difficult in the real world as companies are always wary of losing customers or harming their reputation – crap! This type of creativity in marketing is and should be regarded as more business development that marketing. Think about your own company – what companies do you know who are complimentary to what you do? Would a link in their thank you emails and newsletters bring benefit to both companies?

The bottom line with link marketing is that you want your website URL to appear in places where people find it both useful and natural to want to contact you.

What about another example – You go to the supermarket and buy some food, you pay at the checkout and get your receipt. Have you ever looked at the back of those receipts? Why is it only supermarkets that do that? Any business with  a POS has the capacity to strike up agreements to promote complimentary businesses on the back of their receipts. You have to get creative with this stuff.

Ok, so where do your customers hang out? What’s your target demographic? Maybe it’s moms with young children. Maybe you’re selling back to school books. What’s a creative way to get in front of this target audience? By leveraging the power of being linked with another business, one that is complimentary to yours?

What if you developed a link marketing strategy with a company that sells schools uniforms? Every time a mom buys x amount of schools books from you, maybe there is a discount printed on your receipt or their thank you email  - the discount is for buying X amount of uniforms from your partner compay and visa versa.

Link marketing does not replace link building, but complements it. I think link marketing and guerrilla marketing are very similar and are only limited by your imagination.

What about your experiences?

What unusual tactics have you used to gain links to your business?

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