How SEO's should really build links.

@gaelbreton

"This shit doesn't work in Hungary" Disclaimer

This is the correlation between local links and high rankings in google (from august 2011). Internet has no borders and Google understood it.

SEO's are hated in most other marketing circles

We've been gaming the system for so long and destroyed so many great opportunities. Time to work with people and not cheat them.

We broke the directories

We broke comment systems

79 billion spam comments prevented and that's only a small fraction of the spam...

We broke forums

Read how forum spam ruined a great business here: http://bit.ly/Vb9HLM

And due to that Google had to fight back

We only deserve what happened to SEO.

Modern day SEOs are Inbound Marketers

We need to stop thinking how we can exploit the system and more how we can engage real people into our brand story through all the mainstream channels.

Great but what about the links?

@gaelbreton

Invest in thought leadership

Not just for links and SEO but for traffic, brand awareness, lead gen, sales, recruiting, company valuation...

Case study #1: superfoodprofiles.com

Case study #2: entrepreneuronfire.com

Build links with your imagery

Do people steal your content? Upload your image sitemap into imageraider.com and make sure they give you an attribution link.

Build links when you sleep

If you produce quality informational content in your niche you can be here at the right time in the right place with Zemanta.com. avg $14/link.

Connect with the people that already like you

If people decided to follow you, they most likely like what you do. They also list their websites on Twitter. Use Followerwonk.com to connect.

Help the customers of your customers

Then help them out by finding out about their lives and connect them with non competing services when it applies. use inboxq.com to find questions asked by people.

Use your email list to build links

Same with your email list. You can find plenty of quality link opportunities using the fullcontact.com api.

Connect with the people that you pay money to

Connect with your vendors, suppliers, employees, clients etc. These are all great link opportunities.

Connect with the people that spread stories

And spoil them.

Make everything your company do an occasion to build links

Our internship program got us more links and better links than any other link campaign we've done.

Or just treat everyone you work with kindly

Freelancer write unpaid blog posts about their experience with us.

Conclusion

@gaelbreton

This is not just SEO

If you do all these tactics just for links you're a moron. SEO is not a stand alone skill anymore, it's a framework for marketing.

Break the barrier between social, PR, SEO...

And become a real marketing department that gets links, leads, customers, brand champions, referals and other real business metrics.

The best link building are not built by SEO's

Did Red Bull sent someone in space for links? Nope but they built almost 100,000 from 12,000 domains. at $50/lrd that's a link building budget of $600,000.

That's all folks

@gaelbreton