…and the past is the future.
Stuff that worked last year no longer works as well as it did. But stuff from 5, 10, or even 15 years ago is rocking it! Three notable examples:
- Reciprocal linking (not for the reasons you think)
- Guest blogging
- Press Release distribution
If I were writing this 2-3 years ago, I'd include post card marketing.
Everything has a life cycle. The keyword phrase there is life cycle. Things come and go. What worked before will lose its effectiveness, and then regain it. Things working now won't work as well tomorrow. Change happens. Go with the flow.
Know that marketing and sales strategies and tactics ebb and flow.
Right now, two-way links are working great (if you do it right), guest blogging works like gangbusters (again, if you do it right), and PR is phenomenal (if you do it right–sense a theme here?)…
Primary thing NOT to do: Don't be spammy with any of the 3 methods. Ask for a link back from an authority site in return for a link to them…and then some. Try not to link down, but don't be a jerk about it.
Be choosy about what sites you guest blog on:
- Ideally, you blog on an authority site
- that is relevant, and
- that doesn't do a lot of guest posting (you need a little exclusivity or else your guest blogging site looks like an article directory)
And finally, use a great press release service. You still need to write a good press release, but you have to spend some moolah getting it distributed to the right channels. With a service like PR Web, you can do that. It's the granddaddy of all online press release sites.
Reach 30,000 journalists, bloggers and influencers with your story! Try PRWeb for free.
Nice post Bill. I like the ‘try not to link down, but don’t be a jerk about it,’ part. I shied away from guest blogging because sites with no traffic were trying demand 100% unique to them content, but didn’t want to give anything more than a resource box link because they were afraid of big bad Google.
And I pretty much ignore Google based on the ‘reciprocal linking is bad’ policy. If that’s no longer true, great, but as a niche blogger, our ‘community’ often visits each others sites, comments on each others sites, and guest posts for each other too. No way to avoid reciprocal linking when there is a real ‘community.’
Usually my feelings on the issue are met with snide remarks from uppity SEO’s who just respond with stuff like “I don’t have time to explain it to you,” so I appreciate the straightforwardness of this post. 🙂
Excellent points, Danielle! Yeah, we need to get away from guessing what Google likes and just do what real people do, even if what we do is somewhat–ahem–automated. The point is that everything works within reason. It’s dumb-ass “SEOs” who think they find a “loophole” and then exploit it until they ruin it for everybody.
Like press releases. They work great but because everybody and his mother has jumped on that bandwagon, you can expect to see reduced results from them very very soon.
However, people who use them wisely will still get benefits from them, albeit perhaps at a lower level. But they’ll still work.