Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

Rainmaker.FM

The Digital Commerce and Content Marketing Podcast Network

  • Home
  • Shows
  • Hosts
  • About
  • Home
  • Shows
  • Hosts
  • About
  • Member Area
  • Log In
Menu
  • Log In
  • Free Training
7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
Get More Clients With Smarter Email Marketing
Hack the Entrepreneur
Members Only
Rainmaker.FM Elsewhere
Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites
StudioPress FM
Technology Translated
The Digital Entrepreneur
The Missing Link
The Showrunner
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Youpreneur with Chris Ducker
Zero to Book
Rough Draft
hosted by Demian Farnworth

007 A 12-Minute Crash Course on Link Building (Ugh)

  • Social:
  • Link:
  • Embed:
https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/rough-007.mp3
Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes
Previous Episode:006 An Idiot-Proof Guide to Writing Blog Posts That Google Loves More Episodes Next Episode:008 Where Headlines Have Gone Horribly Wrong

All Episodes:

October 21, 2015

102 The Beautiful Message Joseph Campbell Was Really Trying to Tell Us

October 8, 2015

101 The Greatest Storytelling Guide This Side of Saturn

September 1, 2015

100 The Episode That Explains the Future of Rough Draft

August 31, 2015

099 A Better Way to Find Big Ideas (That Make You Stand Out)

August 27, 2015

098 How to Grab Great Ideas (Without Using Your Hands)

August 26, 2015

097 The Problem with the ‘Hell-For-Leather’ Writing Movement

August 25, 2015

096 Why These Famous Time-Management Techniques Are Ruining Your Productivity

August 24, 2015

095 Freaking Out Over the Thought of Writing a First Draft? Try Scaffolding

August 20, 2015

094 How to Avoid Obscurity by Misusing Language

August 19, 2015

093 A Creative Email Trick for Becoming a Plain Spoken Writer

August 18, 2015

092 Let This Stupid Machine Read Your Copy Out Loud

August 17, 2015

091 This Free App Will Help You Write Bold and Clear Copy

August 13, 2015

090 Four Writing Lessons I Learned from This Depressing Music Project

August 12, 2015

089 The Clear-Copy Rule of Writing for the Web

August 11, 2015

088 Three Ways Writers Must Adjust in a World Dominated by Social Media

August 10, 2015

087 How This Social Media Thing Kicked Web Writing Right in the Feels

August 6, 2015

086 An Elegant Story on Outsmarting Career Obsolescence

August 5, 2015

085 Raise the Stakes! 13 Writing Ideas That Really Work

August 4, 2015

084 The Two Things That Make a Dull Product Irresistible

August 3, 2015

083 Proof That Stories Can Increase the Value of Even ‘Worthless’ Items

July 30, 2015

082 Could Podcasting Make You a Better Writer?

July 29, 2015

081 When Do You Abandon the Editing Process?

July 28, 2015

080 Four Ways to Get Attention by Rocking the Boat

July 27, 2015

079 A Brief Introduction to the Art of Catching Hell

July 23, 2015

078 Six Storytelling Lessons from a Famous Urban Legend

July 22, 2015

077 Vexed by Your Bankrupt Vocabulary? Listen to This

July 21, 2015

076 Why Writers Need to Develop a Sense of Humor

July 20, 2015

075 Listener Challenge: Could You Read 100 Books in a Year?

July 16, 2015

074 How to Get Massive Attention with a ‘High-Concept Pitch’

July 15, 2015

073 A Lesson in Swagger from a Wooden-Legged Civil War Soldier

July 14, 2015

072 Six Ways to Becoming a Completely Original Writer

July 13, 2015

071 The Oldest Writing Trick in The Book

July 9, 2015

070 Eight Things Every Writer Should Know about Landing Pages

July 8, 2015

069 The Fascinating Truth about Boring Topics

July 7, 2015

068 How to Craft an About Page That People Actually Read and Share

July 6, 2015

067 The Psychology Behind Winning Email Subject Lines

July 2, 2015

066 All Great Writing Boils Down to These Four Emotional Appeals

July 1, 2015

065 A Mildly Spooky Illustration of “Reason Why” Copy

June 30, 2015

064 A Mild Warning for All Headline Writers

June 29, 2015

063 How Every Creative Must Think about Marketing and Advertising

June 25, 2015

062 Do Millennials (Really) Hate Long Copy?

June 24, 2015

061 These 4 Sales Principles Can Improve Anyone’s Writing

June 23, 2015

060 How to Use the 5 Stages of Audience Awareness to Dominate Online

June 22, 2015

059 Why The Most Hated Headline Structures Work So Well

June 18, 2015

058 This is the Most Fun You’ll Ever Have “Explaining the Mechanism” …

June 17, 2015

057 The Doomsday Cult School of Specificity

June 16, 2015

056 How to Sweep Away Skepticism with a Dramatic Demonstration

June 15, 2015

055 Meet the Tragic Poster Boy for the Emotional Brain

June 11, 2015

054 A Straightforward Research Method for Finding a Potent Hook

June 10, 2015

053 What You Don’t Know about Your Product Can Kill Your Copy

June 9, 2015

052 Three New Ways to Write a Headline (and When to Use Each)

June 8, 2015

051 Want Copy That Actually Works? Start with Mass Desire

June 4, 2015

050 The Curious Secret to Building Trust and Credibility

June 3, 2015

049 My Second Most Favorite Copywriting Formula in the World!

June 2, 2015

048 How to Get Lazy People to Care about Your Ideas

June 1, 2015

047 My Favorite Copywriting Formula … Ever!

May 29, 2015

046 How to (Rapidly) Build an Audience with Content Syndication

May 28, 2015

045 Solve Your Online Proofreading Problems With This Simple Trick

May 27, 2015

044 The Profanity Princess on Finding Your Voice

May 26, 2015

043 The Oddest Story About Overcoming Obscurity You’ll Ever Hear

May 21, 2015

042 10 Odd Books That Will Improve Your Writing

May 20, 2015

041 How to Read a Book in 2 Hours

May 19, 2015

040 The Shocking Way to Master Any Book

May 18, 2015

039 Nine Copywriting Books for Web Writers

May 14, 2015

038 The 8 Rules of Ruthless Editing from David Mamet

May 13, 2015

037 Revealed: The Perfect Blog Post Length

May 12, 2015

036 The Aggressive Work Ethic of Highly Creative People

May 11, 2015

035 The 10 Rules of Rough Drafts

May 7, 2015

034 5 Ways to Create the Perfect Ending that Your Content Deserves

May 6, 2015

033 6 Simple Rules For Writing Effective Dialogue

May 5, 2015

032 Use Internal Cliffhangers So People Never Stop Reading

May 4, 2015

031 226 Transitional Words and Phrases Every Writer Should Know

April 30, 2015

030 The Great Paragraph Hoax

April 29, 2015

029 5 Ways to Write a Seductive Sentence

April 28, 2015

028 How to Be Smart in a World of Dumb Verbs

April 27, 2015

027 How the Perfect Article Is Framed by White Space

April 23, 2015

026 The Best Articles Always Have This (and a Great Headline)

April 22, 2015

025 The Anatomy of a Hyperlink That Woos Readers

April 21, 2015

024 The Beginner’s Guide to Writing Bullet Points That Work

April 20, 2015

023 How to Create Exquisite Subheadlines

April 16, 2015

022 Four Safe Ways to Find Your Writing Voice (and One Dangerous One)

April 15, 2015

021 The Two Kinds of Knowledge Every Writer Needs

April 14, 2015

020 The Crazy Thing Writers Do to Become Exceptional

April 13, 2015

019 How to Answer the Most Important Question About Becoming an Exceptional Writer

April 9, 2015

018 Four Things That Can Make Writers Famous

April 8, 2015

017 A Small Gift for Your Dark Days as an Obscure Writer

April 7, 2015

016 Steal This Episode

April 6, 2015

015 David Sedaris’ Guide to Writing Brilliant First Sentences

April 2, 2015

014 Six Proven Ways to Open an Article With a Bang

April 1, 2015

013 How I’ll Make You Read Every Single Line of This Article

March 31, 2015

012 The Ugly Truth About How People Read Online

March 30, 2015

011 The 3 Pillars of Great Web Writing

March 26, 2015

010 How to Use RSS to Write Better Headlines

March 25, 2015

009 How to Write Headlines that Get Results

March 24, 2015

008 Where Headlines Have Gone Horribly Wrong

March 23, 2015

007 A 12-Minute Crash Course on Link Building (Ugh)

March 19, 2015

006 An Idiot-Proof Guide to Writing Blog Posts That Google Loves

March 18, 2015

005 Keywords: Your Love Affair With the Language Your Audience Uses

March 17, 2015

004 How Search Engines Work, Part Two

March 16, 2015

003 How Search Engines Work, Part One

March 3, 2015

002 The Unbreakable Law of the Web

March 2, 2015

001 Two Challenges All Digital Content Must Conquer

March 23, 2015

007 A 12-Minute Crash Course on Link Building (Ugh)

The number one SEO practice you can employ to get people (and Google) to pay attention to your online content.

Links have become the online content creator’s currency. Get a lot of links, and you get “wealthy”. And the more quality links that point to a particular page, the higher that page is going to rank.

But how do you get those links without breaking the law, or looking like a scuzzy spammer? Well, here are some clean and pretty ways to get them.

In addition, in this roughly 12-minute episode you’ll also discover:

  • The first search engine to capitalize on links as a ranking factor
  • Why you want high-quality links pointing to your pages
  • The most popular ways to attract links
  • How you can easily outrank a page with 100 links pointing to it
  • The site-destroying danger of link lust
  • The power a state government link gives you (and a simple way to get it)
  • How to repurpose content to attract links
  • Demian’s true feelings about the phrase “link building”

Listen to Rough Draft below ...

007 A 12-Minute Crash Course on Link Building (Ugh)Demian Farnworth
  • Social:
  • Link:
  • Embed:
https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/rough-007.mp3
Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

  • Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants
  • See you at Authority Rainmaker?
Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

The Transcript

A 12-Minute Crash Course on Link Building

Demian Farnworth Hi, welcome to Rough Draft, your daily dose of essential web writing advice. I’m your host, Demian Farnworth, Chief Content Writer for Copyblogger Media. And thank you for sharing the next four minutes or so of your life with me.

Now this is episode 7 and I’m calling it “A Crash Course on Link Building — ugh.”

Rough Draft is brought to you by Authority Rainmaker, a carefully designed live educational experience that presents a complete and effective online marketing strategy to help you immediately accelerate your business.

We are hosting in May of this year, May 13–15, in beautiful Denver, Colorado at the stunning Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

The lineup of speakers is equally as stunning. We’ve got author Dan Pink, punk legend Henry Rollins, fascination aficionado Sally Hogshead, the omnipresent Chris Brogan, Sean d’Souza, Pamela Wilson, our very own Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, and Jerod Morris and, so on.

And not to forget the secret sauce of it all: building real-world relationships with other attendees. Get all the details right now at rainmaker.fm/event, and we look forward to seeing you in Denver, Colorado this May. That’s rainmaker.fm/event.

The First Search Engine to Capitalize on Links as a Ranking Factor

A few episodes back I mentioned that search engines like Google use links to evaluate the content on a page. A link to a page is like a vote. Since the early 90s this has been happening. Google was simply the first search engine to capitalize on links and make them a major factor in ranking.

But let me be clear. It is not the only factor. There are some 200 factors — Google’s words not mine — but what exactly those factors are remains somewhat of a mystery. It is perhaps the most important off-page factor when it comes to getting found in the search engines.

Why You Want High-Quality Links Pointing to Your Pages

So, links become the online content creators currency. Get a lot of links, and you are wealthy. The more quality links that point to a particular page the higher it is going to rank.

The Most Popular Ways to Attract Links

How do you get those links? Like I mentioned before — you create high-quality content. Now there are some quick and dirty ways to get links.

  1. Infographics – perhaps one of the most popular forms of link bait, infographics turn complex data into meaningful stories using graphics.
  2. Egobait – the concept behind this form of link bait is simple … appeal to someone’s ego. Think Ad Age’s Power 150.
  3. Interviews – doing interviews with other bloggers and you’re going to get links, traffic and a growing audience.
  4. Drawings – a good drawing can go viral and attract links and traffic to your site. Hugh MacLeod and FAKE GRIMLOCK are good examples.
  5. Videos – Jib Jab’s Elf Yourself or Airbnb’s “Wall and Chain” short film.
  6. Quizzes – Buzzfeed’s quizzes. What kind of disco hairstyle are you?
  7. Stories – If all else fails, then you can simply fall back on an old-time favorite … the story.

Google’s PageRank algorithm attempts to judge the relevancy of a page by asking two questions:

How many links point to a particular web page?
How valuable are those links?

In practice, the theory is this: when you have two identical pages on training for a marathon, the one with the most links pointing to that page should rank higher in the search engines.

However, the quality of those links matters a lot.

How You Can Easily Outrank a Page with 100 Links Pointing to it

If both pages have ten links pointing to them, but one of the pages has links coming from Runner’s World and the official Ironman Triathlon, that page is going to be deemed more authoritative than the other.

In addition, a page with ten high-quality links could potentially outrank a page with 100 low-quality links.

In other words, PageRank rewarded keyword-rich content that attracted high quality incoming links.

On these sites, content is original, useful, and ultra-specific. Content is epic. So what made the links coming to these sites different from those who were punished?

The Power a State Government Link Gives You (and a Simple Way to Get it)

Quality of links matters.

  • Join the Better Business Bureau. They’ll link to you once you are a member.
  • Join the local chamber of commerce who will likely link to you once you are a member.
  • Get your city and the state governments you live in you to link to you by submitting to the relevant sites.
  • Get your library to link to you.
  • Get business partners and non-competing business to link to you.
  • Launch an affiliate program.

Do testimonials for other people and businesses and they will link back to you.

Interview big bloggers. Once you publish the interview, they’ll link back to you.

You could run a contest.

How to Repurpose Content to Attract Links

Repurpose your content. Here are some ways to do that:

  • Turn a dozen or so posts into a PDF that you can then publish on a landing page that will then help you rank for the topic.
  • Turn a series of posts into a slide share document.
  • Submit your best posts for syndication to larger publishers. They’ll link back to the original.
  • Create a video of a series of posts and then upload to the top video sites like Vimeo and YouTube.

Some of these links will add value to your site either as that vote of confidence or actually sending traffic from those sites. One of the best ways to get links and build relationships and broaden your audience is to guest post.

Of course on your own sites you create link-worthy … but there is a danger we need to talk about. Because there is this mindset that says lots of links and tweets and Facebook posts and on and on … otherwise going for that viral headline.

We love viral headlines. However. There is a problem. And we will discuss that in the next episode.

But before I let you go I remind you to please jump over to iTunes and give this show a rating, a review, leave a comment. It would mean a lot to me. So please jump over to iTunes when you get a chance … thank you so much, and look forward to talking to you in the next episode of Rough Draft.

Never Miss New Shows and Episodes on Rainmaker.FM

Get the best of the Rainmaker.FM network in a single weekly email, along with two weeks
of free training that will change the way you think about online marketing ...

Free Registration

You might also like...

The Missing Link

11 Smart Ways to Prepare for LinkedIn Sponsored Ads

Listen to episode
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

How Neuroscientist Michael Grybko Defines Writer’s Block: Part Two

Listen to episode
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer

My #1 Time Management Tip: Don’t Multitask; Compartmentalize

Listen to episode
7-Figure Small with Brian Clark

The Power of the Post-Geographic Company

Listen to episode
Rough Draft

098 How to Grab Great Ideas (Without Using Your Hands)

Listen to episode
The Digital Entrepreneur

How to Create Legendary Content That Builds Your Business

Listen to episode

Comments

  1. Kevin Donnigan (@anythinggraphic) says

    March 23, 2015 at 3:51 PM

    I’m really digging these podcasts. Thank you for your insight!

    Reply
    • Demian Farnworth says

      March 23, 2015 at 7:46 PM

      Thanks Kevin, glad to hear that! And thanks for the comment, sir.

      Reply
  2. Scott Cooper says

    March 20, 2017 at 8:03 PM

    Thank you, Demian, for this podcast episode. I’m learning quite a bit. Hope that there will be another summit to attend in 2017. Sorry I missed the 2016 conference.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

Copyright © 2023 Rainmaker Digital, LLC. Powered by the Rainmaker Platform.

Privacy Policy  ·  Refund Policy  ·  Cookie Policy  ·  Terms of Service  ·  Contact