Pushing the Information is Sometimes the Easiest Method of Link Development

The mileage you get out of this link development method will vary depending on the type of business model you have, but it works best for businesses with a tangible consumer product. It’s an easy method and really it’s nothing new, but a lot of SEOs don’t do it because it nearly falls under the category of public relations, and that is something companies do not easily loosen their grip on.

We know about sending out press releases with the intentions of link development, but it happens too often that we spend money on press releases and see little or no return in the form of sales activity, brand awareness or even inbound links. And we have all used the email and telephone approach with success, but an approach I’ve had good results with is to push my information to the publishers rather than waiting for them to come and get it.

Here’s how simple this is and how well it can work.

Recently I did some search engine marketing for a manufacturer in the home fashion industry. Their product range was high quality, uniquely cutting edge, and affordable priced for nearly any consumer. But they had a problem with dragging their feet on critical issues to the extent that even link development was met with road blocks because they thought it might conflict with their PR and brand message. But I did manage to circumvent the link development road block by pushing information to bloggers appearing as PR, and here’s how I did it.

1. I needed interesting news and event information to send out so I set up a program allowing myself to capture reader worthy information concerning the company and the home fashion industry overall. I did this by collecting all emails regarding the companies new product releases, news, and events. And to get the home fashion industry information I subscribed to Google alerts. It worked out well as there were plenty of news worthy events happening in the company and the Google alerts were coming in daily.
2. I needed to get this information online so I began establishing relationships with the industry bloggers through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email and even through the telephone. After about one month I had direct communication with around twenty serious bloggers, and several of the top bloggers in the home fashion industry.
3. The next step was determining what information was reader worthy and the easiest way to get it published online. The best approach to this was to assemble a Word document of the news or event I thought should be covered. I set this document up as a summary so the publisher could easily copy and paste it to the website and easily rewrite it in his own words. This document also included the keywords, links, anchor text, and images I wanted delivered in this message.
4. The final step was to attach the document to a carefully crafted email stating what it was and then send it off to those bloggers. Because I had already established communication with most of these bloggers it was usually well received. And even in the case where one blogger gave me a attitude over the email because she wanted me to purchase advertising in return, she used it in her blog weeks later.  

This method works well because most of the work is done for the blogger, so by pushing your message to the blogger you become a welcomed resource rather than appearing as a spammer or one of those annoying SEO link request email senders. And in this particular case it actually worked better than sending out free product for reviews because this costs nearly nothing in comparison to mailing out the product, and many bloggers want content not your silly product that they can’t use.       

There is some work up front with this method but once it builds momentum and your relationships develop you can see the link opportunities increase dramatically over time.