How to Get Links as A Web Host

[coreymanshack]

As a web hosting provider how would you get links other than people writing reviews about you? How would I find people with actual websites/blogs to ask to write reviews about us? Current customers will usually write reviews on webhostingtalk.com a popular forum for web hosting. We already have plenty of links from forums in the industry. Giving out prizes will only result in more links from webhostingtalk.com presumably, what do you think?

[jrfisher]

I'm interested in finding new avenues to promote our long term storage foods we manufacture. Contact me at www.survivalcavefood.com thanks,

[loopyal]

Excellent comment, Ian

[SEO-Doctor]

You don't have to do straight content either, get creative with linkbait, infographics and viral posts.  These can also generate lots social signals which will help your campaign overall.

[coreymanshack]

Thank you very much Rand, watching those now.

[randfish]

I LOVE this comment Corey. I think this is a great, succinct way of describing the disconnect between what experienced marketers have learned about having success in inbound channels (SEO, social, community, content, etc) and what businesses often think about marketing on the web (I just want people to buy).

The truth is that over time, it will be increasingly hard to have any success in these worlds unless you're willing to commit to inbound as a strategy and that means content in some form or another. Without content, there's no opportunity for SEO (unless it's black hat SEO), no opportunity for social media growth (unless it's merely buying ads), no opportunity to take the power content has to earn trust, likability and familiarity and convert those exposed to your brand into potential customers and potential evangelists.

Id gave a couple presentations recently that might be helpful to explain this more deeply: http://hackersandfounders.tv/RDmt/rand-fishkin-inbound-marketing-for-startups/ and http://www.edsocialmedia.com/2012/05/rand-fishkin-connecting-inbound-marketing-for-exceptional-return/

Hope those help.

Unfortunately, it's my belief and experience that one cannot simply "sell your product" without marketing, and if you want to compete in inbound (non-paid) channels, content is a requirement and great content is the competitive advantage.

[wrttnwrd]

Well, you don't, if you don't want to do SEO. But if you do, then you'll have to generate content and demonstrate value above and beyond your competitors. Since they're generating content, you have to compete.

[coreymanshack]

Honestly - we just want to sell our product, I don't understand why we have to generate content solely for the purpose of SEO, our customers do not care about our content.

[loopyal]

What Ian says is true

• BUT -

whatever you do, there is more than one way to do it.

If you want to be seen as an expert, and everything is on your site, and nothing about you is elsewhere, then you are an expert in your own mind.

Somehow, you have to get others to take notice of you.

You could have the best content on the whole of the internet, but if nobody visits, you may as well not bother.

If you have no third party validation, then why would people trust what you say? It can be done, but you said you wanted a faster boost, so that is what I am suggesting to help you do that.

This is the reason you need to have a content strategy that covers many bases.

I'm not suggesting you guest post on a dog training blog. You need to find some authoritative blogs that cover your area of business, that can expose you to more people, especially other bloggers who will follow the links at the end of a few well-placed blog posts, and discover that you have a wealth of information they can use to trigger their own posts. (this is how you get more incoming links)

So you do need to write those authoritative posts on your own site, because that is what people will find when they follow the links and find your site.

You could also be using twitter to find people interested in your content. Follow several people in your industry and learn from what they do. Find the good and bad things, and do the good, discard the bad. There are some smart twitter people in the SEO industry that I see generating good interaction and a good following. No doubt there are some really good ones in Hosting - I just looked and there are some crappy ones too, so do your research.

[wrttnwrd]

I'm not really suggesting that you send your articles elsewhere.

What you need to do is write stuff on your site, then promote it via social, and get links that way.

Post-Penguin, "In the meantime" is dicey. You can submit to directories, of course, but many of the free ones are getting dropped from the Google index. Stick to reputable ones like Best of the Web.

Be very, very careful about guest posting. You need your posts to show up on sites with really high-quality content. Shotgunning your writing out to blogs that cover everything from hosting to hotels is going to get you right back into trouble.

Your best move is to understand that Google does not like to be tricked. So anything that feels 'easy' or 'quick' is going to get you into trouble.

That said, some fast link-building tricks:

1. Fix broken incoming links by replacing the missing pages or 301-ing to relevant ones. Nothing's faster.
2. Find and fix canonicalization issues on your site. Duplication screws up your link profile.
3. Check your log files for any 404 errorscaused by external links but not crawled by Googlebot. Those are links that Google's likely given up on because they've been broken for so long. And they're often the juiciest. Fix those too.
4. Get your site to zero 404 errors overall.

At the same time, work hard on your content strategy. You have to get this going, or you won't have a prayer in the long term. You have to demonstrate value to Google and visitors. Outside being the cheapest (bad plan) or the biggest (not exactly a quick strategy), being a great resource is your best plan.

[loopyal]

Well that tells you something.

You could counter by finding a few good blogs that want content and will allow a guest post from you. That way, you don't need to follow the competitors by making up blogs and always be adding content to them, wondering when google will crush you.

[coreymanshack]

Yea I've been trying to get my sales guy to post in more than just one forum.

None of our competitors are in directories. In fact - one of our direct competitors that is on the front page for the key terms we want to be - has created a bunch of blogs and linked to their page with the desired anchor text.

[loopyal]

Other people may have a different opinion, but I don't think Penguin is against directories, otherwise, most would just shut down.

Relevant directories make sense.

Whatever you do, it has to make sense. If all of your competitors are in a few  or even a few dozen relevant directories, you should be too. What you don't want to do is to be in 10,000 directories that are about gardening, internet marketing, dog training etc.

webhosting talk isn't the only place to chat. There are people in other forums, who aren't getting any help. You could help them.

Participating in the same forum over and over isn't going to lift your DA.

If the only people who know about you are in webhosting talk, then you aren't getting the message of your expertise out to millions of people who don't know about webhostingtalk.

[coreymanshack]

Well the DA is low  because we are participating in relevant forums - and a few related blogs.

Should we be putting our sites in directories since penquin is out?

[loopyal]

Hello Corey. You are looking for a short term boost, as well as long term. I can help you with a place to post, for one or more interesting stories. This can get you a short term boost and set you up for longer tterm too. PM me later to work out details. Your DA is a bit low, so it looks like you have few links coming in. You are probably concentrating on your business, and not participating in places that can help you. You could participate in a few forums, and a few related blogs. You probably have a wealth of information related to hosting that people would lve to hear about. You could also get into a few relevant directories. This isn't all about link power it is also about getting your name out there. A few extra links here and there are going to help too. The stories you write, if done the right way, will get you links because people will want to link to them. If you do it right, others will write blog posts commenting on what you say or the information you provide. This can be fast and get you short term action and it will last.

[coreymanshack]

I like the submission idea for articles - find places that are popular that will post your articles basically....

BUT - what can we do to get up in the serps for some medium competition keywords in the meantime?

[wrttnwrd]

As the underdog you can make the biggest splash!

Here's a formula that always works for me: Pick a topic that's on everyone's mind. Making sites run faster, for example, seems to come up a lot. Write a huge list of tips for speeding up your site, from server tuning to coding to database management.

Then, when you publish it, submit it to Hacker News, Inbound.org, StumbleUpon.com, Twitter, etc.

And, e-mail a link to the post to all of your customers, so that they can read it. It's a great service for them, so even if no one ever links to the article, you've built value with existing customers.

Make sure you have easy sharing buttons on the post, too, so that customers AND strangers can all tweet/like/stumble/vote for the post.

I will say this: It doesn't happen overnight. I wrote for years before I had my first big hit.

But every post you do that 'fails' now will potentially generate attention later. You're building an asset every time you publish.

[coreymanshack]

Why would anyone want to link to us being the underdog? We have already written several articles with no links back, no presence in google for much of anything - so how would anyone find us unless they were a customer, and once again - they wouldn't link back to us being a customer unless it was a review that they would post on the forum we get business from.

[wrttnwrd]

You're in the business of managing lots of servers. You could easily write content about:

1. Security
2. Performance
3. Deployment
4. Testing
5. Log analysis

The list goes on and on. Write about your industry and your specialty - it'll get you lots of attention.