Social Bookmarking and

Linking Strategies

Page 1

Linda Fisk and Mark RobertsonFreedom Interactive Marketing

Our Goals for Linking and Bookmarking

Ensure that we are given credit for our content.

Ensure that our content is highlighted and promoted across the web.

Get as much of our content distributed to as wide of an audience as possible.

Widen our audience and increase our traffic by helping people find our content and our sites.

Our Strategies

Generate a significant number of quality links into targeted areas of our site to increase visibility of our sites and drive additional traffic to our sites.

Distribute our content to social bookmarking sites to increase visibility of our content and drive additional traffic to our sites.

Benefits by Adopting these Practices Better SEO Results:

Search Engines count links as “votes” for a page and assigns link scores

Search engines assign trust scores through quality of links

Better Visibility Across the Web: Wider Distribution of Content Wider Net to Catch New Audiences

Increased Audience Better Distribution of Content = More Audience Better Search Engine Scores = More Audience

Page 5

Distributing and Highlighting Content through Social

Bookmarking

Function of Social Bookmarking Sites

Page 6

Social bookmarking sites allows users to:

Submit story descriptions, as well as links back to stories, from all over the web

Vote for submitted stories they feel are worthy of being read. Top-rated stories end up on the homepage and on the 1st page of the category pages.

An article of high interest can generate high quality back links – meaning lots of traffic!

Taking Advantage of Social Bookmarking Sites

Page 7

“The reason that social bookmarking has exploded in the last year is obvious -- storing your bookmarks online instead of in the browser just makes sense.” – Tech Biz

“Social bookmarking services let you keep links to your favorite web destinations in one location that's accessible from any computer on the net. Add the ability to share your favorite web destinations and search through other users' bookmarks to discover new sites, and you've got a highly addictive and truly remarkable phenomenon.” - Wired

Taking Advantage of Social Bookmarking Sites

Page 8

Examples of social bookmarking sites include: Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Newsvine, Furl, Wink, StumbleUpon, BlinkList, Mag.nolia

Articles need to be submitted to the social bookmarking sites to be effective

Submitters need to be active in the site community

If an article is going to be submitted by the same person multiple times, then they will need to have multiple accounts to avoid being banned from the communities

Benefits of Sites Like Digg.com:

Page 9

Benefits Include: Digg.com is a popular site that millions of people visit.

Getting a story and link on the home page or a primary category page can result in significant traffic to your web site.

Digg.com has a high page rank. Search engines pass this page rank value on to pages linked to and from high-level pages.

An external link from a website with a high page rank tells search engines that this site is of value and the link value is passed on.

Submitting Content to Digg.com

Page 10

Submitting content to Digg.com can be done in 5 simple steps.

1. Sign up for an account

2. Begin story submission to Digg.com

3. Submit the story link

4. Submit title and description

5. Check duplication and submit

Using Digg.com

Page 11

Step 1: Sign up for an account

Using Digg.com

Page 12

Step 2: Begin story submission process

Using Digg.com

Page 13

Step 3: Submit Link

Using Digg.com

Page 14

Step 4: Submit title and description

Using Digg.com

Page 15

Step 5: Check duplicate articles and submit/cancel article

Page 16

Driving Traffic through Linking Strategies

Power of In-Bound Links

“Quality links into your site might be the most important part of SEO.” – SEO Fast Start, 2007

“ Links pointing to a page are extemely important…and there’s no real limit to the number of links that can point to a page.” – TSA Best Practices

“Our general approach to link building is based on the concepts of authority and trust….We want more links, from sites that are as authoritative and trusted as possible.” -NYTimes

Developing a Linking Strategy

Content and features that represent an opportunity for publicity through in-bound linking: Content elements Navigation elements Discussion boards Video RSS Feeds Podcasts

Not All Links are Equal

Quality and Relevancy are Key Quality Links for a news site might include:

Yahoo Discussion Lists Blog Sites Yahoo Picks Drudge Report Fark Report .edu sites .org sites

Basically, Two Types of Links

Navigation Links – those that are present in global or section navigation. This could include links that you add to the “footer” of the page.

Contextual Links – those that are present within the content itself. These links can enhance usability and conversion as well as the reputation of the page.

Create “regional hubs” that cross-link to each other Links should provide additional value and stay within topic Create an “About Us” page with all site-specific or regional

site brands Link directly off content index pages to other sister-site

same-index pages

Create cross-links to different properties/partners Regional Freedom Interactive site listing page Develop links within page text - Search for more

“Weather” information from one of our trusted partner sites

Cross-Linking: Leveraging Current Sites

Create a national site list page

Link to page off the home page Option 1 - Add to main site navigation Option 2 - Add link at the bottom of the home page

Page should contain description of Freedom Interactive followed by a comprehensive list of all properties

Cross-Linking: Leveraging Current Sites

Leverage site blogs and video clips Post blog articles to other properties outside of

regional hub Post video clips on social network sites such as

youtube.com, break.com, grouper.com, etc

Develop Inbound Links with Site Tools

Request links back to site from all third party suppliers Sub-domains Weather provider Traffic provider Travel content partner

Identify additional partnership opportunities Current display advertisers Local libraries Chamber of Commerce Better Business Bureau Schools City/County Government

Develop Partnerships

Widgets Restaurant locator Calculator – Salary, Auto loan, Mortgage Weather Maps

Feeds RSS Weather Traffic Classified listings Events listings

Promotional Campaigns

Benefits by Adopting these Practices Better SEO Results:

Search Engines count links as “votes” for a page and assigns link scores

Search engines assign trust scores through quality of links

Better Visibility Across the Web: Wider Distribution of Content Wider Net to Catch New Audiences

Increased Audience Better Distribution of Content = More Audience Better Search Engine Scores = More Audience

Questions?

No. Method of Acquisition Definition Example

1 General Directory Links Compiled lists of web sites, usually categorized and organized by topic. Directory listing usually contains short, descriptive information about the site. Unlike search engines (like Google), directories are compiled by human editors who review each web site before listing them in the directory.

Yahoo! Directory, Open Directory Project, Best of the Web, Microsoft Small Business Directory

2 Industry Specific Links Compiled lists of web sites categorized and organized by topics in a specific industry or vertical space. Directory listing usually contains short, descriptive information about the site. Unlike search engines (like Google), directories are compiled by human editors who review each web site before listing them in the directory.

http://www.designingonline.com/ (Industry: home and garden)

3 Geographic Links These are directories that are based around specific geographic centers.

http://www.at-la.com (Los Angeles)

4 Web Portal Links A portal is a full service web site. Usually refers to any high traffic web site that provides news, email, search, and some form of entertainment.

Yahoo!, MSN, About.com, AOL

5 Partnership Links websites with an existing relationship with company. Vendors, Partners, Customers, Friends, Family, Corporate Family

6 Press Links Creating Newsworthy creative/data for the thousands of media sources looking to publish content

PR articles distributed through a source like PRWeb.com

Authority Link Development

No. Method of Acquisition Definition Example

7 Content Links Generally developed by writing articles this is a category of increasing emphasis because it appears to advocate the most organic (democratic) and web-friendly method of one-way authority link building

Writing how to and best practice Articles relevant to your space and submitting them to article directories to be picked up by bloggers.

Developing web based tools that include a link-back to your site and encouraging integration either through partner networks or b2b opportunities via affiliate networking.

8 Data Links Generally developed by making available general site collected, segmentation and user-behavior data. This is a category of increasing emphasis because it appears to advocate the most organic (democratic) and web-friendly method of one-way authority link building

Top 10 searches by users; top real estate markets according to users, hottest ring tones, etc.

9 Tool Links Involves creating a downloadable tool or service. Adobe Acrobat Reader.

10 RSS Feeds RSS allows Internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly. To use this technology, site owners create or obtain specialized software (such as a content management system) which, in the machine-readable XML format, presents new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post. Unlike subscriptions to many printed newspapers and magazines, most RSS subscriptions are free.

See examples: http://www.faganfinder.com/search/rss.shtml

11 Paid Links Any form of paying for direct pass through link space on another server

Buying text link space through content networks.

Leasing a webpage on a high PR authority site in your space and placing high authority content with link backs to new pages for the site.

12 Reciprocal Links Traditional link swaps between sites with compatible content

Use automated links page management network like linksmanager.com to eliminate much of the cost associated with link building.

Create master lists of worthy partner sites. Sample Link Request Letter and Thank you for addition letters.

13 .gov links Links from govt agency sites. Usually obtained through volunteer work or participation

http://www.fypower.org/save_gasoline/resources/

14 .org links Links from charitable non profits. Usually botianed through sponsorship.

redcross

15 .edu links Links from education institutes. Usually obtained through providing content, sponsorship, alumni giving, paid links.

stanford, berkley, ucla, usc

Authority Link Development