I was asked the other day about backlinking. We do not offer it as part of our SEO program but it is a legitimate search engine marketing activity. But, then again there are a lot of legitimate search engine marketing activities. The trick, as always, is knowing where the value lies.
I have to start all conversations about SEO and SEM by stating that Dog Star Media ONLY chooses measurable activities for our SEO. Backlinking is a legitimate activity that generally contributes to rankings but it is labor intensive. When other sites link to you, then you are extending the connectivity of the Internet and this improves your rankings somewhat. To achieve this, backlinking activities can be lots of research and emails to other site administrators hoping for link exchanges. The results frequently can be nothing but you have still paid for the efforts to try.
We just prefer to know that the time we spend is having a direct impact that is measurable. But this is not to say that linking can’t drive you plenty of traffic. Here is an example of how to invest in linking and still know you are not wasting on effort:
Let’s say you are going to pay an SEM or SEO service $450/month for the time to do backlinking. It is labor intensive, so you are paying for someone’s time. If they get you some links, depending on those linking sources, it will have an undetermined, yet positive impact on your rankings. (See why we don’t do this? Too many ifs and maybes).
For that same $450, why not pay to be linked to a local media outlet’s web site? This is a very common ad buy and local TV web sites get a lot of traffic typically. We have had many clients do this and drive a lot of traffic. Plus, you are still linking from a highly trafficked site! This improves your rankings and drives traffic all at the same time for the same investment. And... look at that... it’s fully measurable; just how we liked it.
This is the time of year that people like to try things new. After what we all went through last year, don’t you think you owe it to yourself to be smarter in your refinements this time around? If you want to refine your Internet strategy, let me help. Either through my coaching program where I help you learn and make these decisions or through our SEO program itself, we can help you compete better on the web by refining your efforts and cutting waste. If this motivates you to try better this year, why not email me at donald@dogstarmedia.com for help.
