Integrating Marketing Campaigns with Link Development
SEW EXPERTS: PROMOTION & LINK BUILDING By Justilien Gaspard, Search Engine Watch, Feb 5, 2009
Columns | Contact Justilien | Biography
Are you utilizing your marketing campaigns for link development? Companies can often make simple modification to their promotions to develop links simultaneously. Other times, the links already exist from marketing campaigns, but they aren't being utilized for their full value.
Let's explore a few examples.
Promotion URLs
Many companies use promotional URLs, such as example.com/tv or example.com/promo, to track the success rate of specific TV and print media campaigns. These promotional URLs are often referenced with a link from other sites that cover that product, industry, or demographics. An example would be a beauty blog telling their readers about sales on makeup or jewelry.
Even though these promotional pages may have high-quality links pointing to them, they're often left as orphaned pages on the site. One quick fix is to add a section of links on those pages linking to your most important pages. This will allow the link value to flow to those main pages.
Don't delete the page once a promotion has ended. Recycle the page for future promotions. You could also mark the promotion as ended, add some content, and take advantage of those incoming links.
Another option for older promotional pages that have already ended: use a 301 redirect to the home page. That way the home page will gain the value of those links.
Newsletter Promotions
Next time a newsletter or promotion is e-mailed to customers, encourage them to mention the sale on their blogs, social media profiles, or traditional Web sites. This is a great way to let others promote your company while developing links at the same time.
You may need to add some incentive to entice people. It could be an upgrade, free shipping, discount, or add-on.
Traditional Media
Take advantage of your advertising spend with traditional media companies such as TV, radio, and print. If you have a significant advertising budget with a television station, then ask for a link from their site. Mentioning that your company is an advertiser will help.
Always leverage your assets and contacts in traditional media. Many newspapers and magazines are creating shopping directories on their sites. They will often extend a discount to existing advertisers.
Sales/Clearances
Running a promotion on your site? Ask visitors to blog about it. This can be done with a simple incentive such as free shipping.
Sure some of these links might not be worth much, but it only takes a couple really good links to increase your rankings. Also, it will drive new traffic. This strategy is low-cost and great way to acquire new customers.
Public Relations Campaigns
Spend a couple hours going over the value of links with your public relations agency or in-house PR person. Often, they're unaware just how important links are and what types of links have the most value. With some education they can start to leverage their contacts to integrate links into your PR campaigns.
Some agencies might not be keen on client's educating them on marketing. After all, they're the experts. Those tend to be the ones that still live in the old media world and haven't kept up with SEM.
One way around this is to tell them you're putting together a meeting with all people involved in marketing to explore ways to work with each other. At the meeting, have your SEO person or consultant provide education on links. If they're unwilling to at least learn a little about SEO/M on your dime, then it's time to get a more progressive PR agency.
Make sure you keep an open mind, and an open ear. Your PR agency may have some ideas that fit in with your link building plans. Sometimes the agency will say something that sparks an idea for you, or identifies a PR tactic that you can take advantage of in your work.
How can your company expand on integrating links into promotions? At your next meeting with anyone involved in marketing, ask a simple question: "How can we get some links out of this?" Some opportunities never considered will be revealed.
Remember, good link building is just good marketing.
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Biography
Justilien Gaspard is an independent consultant that provides custom link building, seo consulting and link training. His area of focus is organic search. He has spoken at Search Engine Strategies conference (SES), authored 3 advanced search optimization courses for Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's (SEMPO) Learning Institute and runs a link building blog. He has worked and consulted on link development campaigns that included Fortune 500, top online retailers and small to medium size businesses in competitive fields.
Article Archives by Justilien Gaspard:
» Integrating Marketing Campaigns with Link Development - February 5, 2009
» Jumpstart a Viral Marketing Campaign - January 22, 2009
» Don't Overlook These Link Building Opportunities - January 8, 2009
» Look for SEO Opportunities in these Dire Economic Times - December 11, 2008
» Use Online Public Relations for Link Marketing - November 13, 2008
» Use Humor for Link Marketing - October 30, 2008
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1 comment:
Thank you for sharing very useful information useful to all the internet marketers.They can now build a monster list and get huge traffic to achieve success in their online business. They can stuff lot of money through this viral marketing techniques.
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