Link building by inviting bloggers
-
Hi everyone,
I'm relatively new to SEO, and I have a question on a link building strategy for a holiday resort I am working on.
The resort has a paintball arena and zorbing facilities at their premises. I want to use this in the link building strategy and the owners have agreed to have an open day for bloggers.
Basically the resort will invite 20 local bloggers for a day to their resort. They get to play paintball, zorbing and get to see the resort in exchange for an honest write up about their day at the resort.
I am looking at asking the bloggers to write about the event twice (Once before, and once after they visit the resort) with a minimum of 4 links to the website.
I want to know how I can identify the top bloggers? What factors should I consider while making a list of 20 bloggers, and how do I measure these factors?
Also, is this a good strategy for link building? And please feel free to add anything else you think I am missing out on, or will help in the link building.
Cheers!
Arjun
-
Good luck Arjun, would love to hear how it all goes!
-
Thanks EGOL.. Point noted.. Not everyone may turn up if at all. Will let you know how this goes after the event. Cheers!
-
Thanks ASR! Yes, will follow your advice and keep it natural - and not put too much pressure on them or focus on links.. Thank you!
-
hmmm......
I don't know how carefully you have thought about this.
**I want to know how I can identify the top bloggers? **
It does not sound like you are very familiar with the bloggers in your area. Maybe you should get to know them well before you count on them to attend something and blog about it twice.
Are there 20 bloggers in your area? Have you ever been on their websites?
If you invite 20 bloggers will they attend? Some might be busy on your open day... some might not like paintball... some might be too old for paintball... some might... you get the idea?
So if you identify 20 bloggers you might get 2 who will show up and that will not produce the kickass blogger gathering that you are planning. If you invite 20 and only 2 show up they are going to write on their blog that nobody cares about your paintball and zorbing.
If you expect to get 20 bloggers you should invite at least 100 and entice them with free food, free beer, gift of paintball guns, free swag and $100 gasoline cards.
-
Agreed on all points - Just encourage the bloggers to do the right thing, and they'll link to you plenty. They don't like being bossed around, and they know what to do (and what you're looking for) anyway.
-
Hi,
First up, good idea but I would be a bit careful about asking bloggers to post 4 links. Bloggers hate being told what to do from my experience. I would just ask them to link through to the resort without putting too much pressure on them.
The idea is very sound but I would be a bit more careful, I have seen bloggers come out and post about "X place" wants us to blog for links and put out a lot of bad press.
However, otherwise I would use opensite explorer to have a look at the blogs you are interested in and rank them against each other, this is what I do and it's quick and easy. Remember your link profile should look nice and natural, so don't try and get too tricky.
Also today's small blog might be the next big thing tomorrow, so there is no harm in getting a smaller blog to link through.
Great idea - just be careful in the execution, bloggers can turn on you very quickly!
A
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Link building with PDFs
I created a manual for a popular piece of equipment and placed it, as a PDF-file, on my website. The PDF contains a clickable link to the root domain of my website. Other websites have downloaded the PDF and put it on their own website, hosting it themselves. Since Google indexes PDFs, does the link in the PDF count as a regular 'link' from an external website, and does it have comparable value? Can't find any thoughts or studies about this anywhere.
Link Building | | RBenedict0 -
Link Building Paralysis
I have been hesitant to build links with all these penalties and need a few good tips for building good quality links. I have a wedding and photography business and we produce tons of photo content which we: blog - 1-5 times per week Facebook Social bookmark Get our work featured on other sites 1-2 times per month Any other ideas I'm missing? I know their is a ton. Just need some fresh, clean link building ideas.
Link Building | | photoseo10 -
Link Building - Post Penguin
Hi, We have an eCommerce site that has recently been hit for some unnatural linking, resulting in a warning in our Google Webmaster Tools account. We weren't doing anything particularly underhand (and indeed before Penguin there wasn't a cause for concern) but nevertheless Google has picked up and penalised us. We've instantly removed the worst offending links and requested a resubmission. If this doesn't result in positive action from Google we're planning on employing the services of an Oracle member on SEOmoz who was kind enough to give us some fantastic free advice in order to go through and remove any further links that may be seen as questionable. Moving forward however I'm a little bit overwhelmed as to exactly what we should be doing in order to create a positive, natural link portfolio. I understand the emphasis is on ‘natural’ linking but we’ve been online for 8 years and I think it’s fairly safe to say that the number of links we have now is probably representative of about our ‘lot’ when it comes to 100% natural links. It would be nice to give our portfolio a nice gentle push in the right direction. I’ve checked through SEOmoz and the most up to date link building article they have appears to be http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links - This guide however does seem to suggest some things that are potentially frowned upon now (for example, highly optimised anchor text I understand is now a no-no). Obviously, in days gone by I could look at Open Site Explorer to try to emulate my competitors but, to be honest, most of them have what I would describe as a fairly poor link profile and if I'm going to invest real time in to this I want to make sure I'm heading off in the right direction. Does anybody on here know of a really high quality post penguin link building guide, either on SEOmoz or elsewhere that I can use as some bedtime reading? Our website is eCommerce in nature so an article tailored towards online selling would be ideal. Thanks for reading! Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Stop Building Links During Reconsideration Request?
We had a message in webmaster tools to say our site had 'unnatural links' pointing towards it. I investigated and found a number of sites where we had uploaded articles, containing links, had been de-indexed. As such we have suffered a few drops in rankings. I have submitted a reconsideration request and I'd like to get on with recovering any lost ground. However, I am wondering whether it's best to cease any link building activity whilst the reconsideration request is processed. Please do let me know your thoughts and experiences on continuing to build links after submitting a reconsideration request.
Link Building | | RiceMedia0 -
I am looking for a link building service, recommendations?
I am looking for a link building service, are there any recommendations or tips I need to consider. With so much to sift through on the web I figured I could get some good advise from the Moz community. Thanks!
Link Building | | d25kart0 -
Link building
i want to ask a question. i am sure this is kind black hat seo. look at this web site http://www.199999dollars.com/ if we also create website like this and put a banner as domain for sale and in the footer put back links to our domain ? thanks
Link Building | | idreams0 -
Please critique my link building plan
Hello, Here's my revised link building plan for nlpca.com Let me know if I'm off or missing anything. 1)Identify a list of competitors that are strong enough to have good backlinks (probably about 15 in our industry Look at top content for top competitors and see what type of content is being linked to. build infographics for each area we want to target based on top content Using OSE, analyze competitor backlinks and decide which sites might link to the infographics and which sites might just link to us if we asked them (our site is already an authority). In this step we would also expand the backlink analysis to include sites on pages 4-8 Only choose link aquisition for sites based on the following criteria: Age A lot of unique content A clean site Backlinks going to that site Facebook followers Which of course means high search engine rankings Publish infographics and do outreach
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
To hire a link building company.... or not?
I am doing a lot of the niche partnership link building but I am looking for a company to compliment some of my work in other related areas. Need some advice from the group. A couple of questions: 1. I'm looking for a company to acquire around 20-30 links per month. Not talking about easy directories or social links, but good (PR 3+) sites that are somewhat related to my business. Is that a reasonable request? 2. What should I expect to pay for this each month? 3. Any good suggestions on companies in the US. I am a small startup with a fairly limited budget, at least for now? Thanks everyone!
Link Building | | paddlej0