I’ll admit it. I’m psyched about attending the Search Marketing Expo East conference next week! Sessions offered cover everything from up and coming search marketing techniques like mobile search to good ol’ search engine optimization.  My only regret is not having the ability to clone myself so that I can attend more than one session at a time. I had to go through the painstaking task of choosing only one session per time slot. It was brutal, but I managed to narrow down my schedule to some really cool sessions:

The Search Crossover: Local, Mobile, Social
As mobile and social converge, the search landscape is becoming even more localized. In fact, local search is proving to be the driving force behind consumers’ brand preferences and, ultimately, buying decisions.

In the past three weeks, I’ve had a handful of clients ask about mobile, local search, and social media.  Clearly, these are all emerging trends in the industry. I’m interested in gaining more insight on how social media, local search, and mobile search can be leveraged together.

SMX Boot Camp: Link Building Fundamentals
Ever since Google created PageRank, more than a decade ago, every good search marketer’s motto has been “I link, therefore I am.” In fact, links are cited as four of the top five factors in the SEOMoz 2009 Search Engine Ranking Factors survey.

Link building is like the ugly duckling – Nobody wants to look at it and take it seriously. But link building is important! Though it may seem like a no-brainer, it’s more complicated than many realize. This session will serve as a refresher and I hope to gain some valuable insight of what’s new in the world of link building.

SMX Boot Camp: Search Engine Friendly Web Design
“I’m not designing my site for search engines” is a common designer objection to SEO suggestions. But when search engines collectively have more users than either Internet Explorer or Firefox, how can you afford to ignore how they interact with your site?

Our industry is constantly changing. It’s imperative that we keep educated about designing and developing search engine friendly websites. I expect to bring back valuable information to share with our entire team. Although I suspect we’re already doing the things we should be doing, I wouldn’t be surprised if I learn some new techniques we haven’t adopted yet.

And last, but not least…

Actionable Metrics and Diagnostics
We have hundreds of data points to track how the search engines and visitors are accessing our sites, but what’s really actionable and what’s not worth spending time on?

The most rewarding part of my job is knowing that something we’ve done actually made an impact. Analytics is the only way we know how effective we are in what we do. I love analytics!

All in all, I’ll be a very busy strategist at this conference. From rubbing elbows with search engine big wigs to spying on the competition, it’s all very exciting and I’m looking forward to it! Watch for my tweets from the show @gisellebardwell.

I recently came across an interesting Search Engine Watch article that gave some clever ideas for how to develop links in a natural way – all for free! Link building is important to your site because by developing good quality and natural links, you are building trust in the online community by becoming known as an ‘authority’ in a particular industry. Also, having high link popularity is a good indicator of how ‘popular’ your site is. Below is a condensed version of the article which includes 3 different tactics that are not only free, but they are fun to do and my favorite ways to build links!

Link Recovery – When doing link research I often come across sites that mention our clients name but do not link to their site – or link to the wrong website. A quick and friendly email asking the webmaster / site owner to make this change more often than not will result in the link being added or fixed.

Business Groups – Most of the time a client is a member of a group or organization for their industry or a member of a chamber of commerce. Research which groups they belong to and make sure that their website is listed along with all of their other company information. If the site is not mentioned, reach out and request their site be added or inquire if they have a directory of some sort to add website information.

Local & Niche Directories – This is fantastic way to develop links.  If the client has an actual brick and mortar location, submit their business information to local directories. There are plethora out there such as Google Local Business Center or Yahoo Local and many more. We have noticed significant traffic increases after we submitted to local directories. Also, there are niche directories out there for just about any industry you can think of. If your site is relevant to a certain directory or site, it has a good chance of being added.

When creating your link building strategy, you should make sure that you generate quality inbound links. There is no easy way to do that – it demands research and hard work.  The rewards can be well worth the effort. If you are up for it and on a shoe-string budget these tips can help you get you on your way!

Social media has opened up a whole new world when it comes to link building.
Gone are the days of the massive directory link submissions,  begging anyone and everyone for a link, and praying to the DMOZ god of directories for a link (well mostly, anyway).

Contextual link building is not new, necessarily, just the more current way of building links back to your site.  For those who would like a definition, you see this all over the place; it is when you find a link within any body of copy. This blog is littered with them. People often link back to a product or interesting piece of information.

Bloggers are often sought after sources for contextual links, especially those bloggers who are  popular.  Some will review a product or service for a fee. Some have been successful in selling ad space on their blog because of their popularity, so advertisers know that their ads are being seen.  Most bloggers will only promise to do their best to present and honest and fair review of a product, so hopefully, if you would decide to go this route, your product is a good one. Might be wise to ask to review the post before it is published. You’ll have to pay the fee either way, but at least they should give you the option of whether you want it posted or not.

Other places you might find contextual links are articles, emails, marketing materials, breadcrumb navigation and most websites include them right in the copy, where appropriate (sometimes where it is not appropriate, but that’s up to the site owner).  You need to make sure if you are doing a contextual link in your copy that it is relevant to the page you are on, that the anchor text (the actual wording of the link itself) lets the user know where the link goes, or what type of content they will find. Also, make sure that the page it points to holds some type of relevancy to the page it is coming from.  It would be silly to just stick a link to a page about frogs when the page you are on has nothing whatsoever to do with them.  Also its not advisable to stick purely gratuitous links in for the sake of passing on link love to your boss.

Is it possible that Yahoo! has decided to fade out their backlink reporting? In a recent update, many site owners are experiencing HUGE decreases in the amount of backlinks that Yahoo! is reporting. There are a few theories that might explain the decrease; I suspect that Yahoo! is starting to discredit or devalue the backlinks that are seen by Yahoo! as “less important”.

TKG.com hasn’t experienced this drastic decrease in backlinks being reported (at least not yet). We’re still not where we were prior to the domain transfer, but we continue to climb…

Guest Blogger: Megan Jeffery
While everyone agrees that link building is still an essential part of a successful SEO campaign, it has become increasingly more difficult. Link building is easily one of the most time consuming tasks of an SEO campaign. There are plenty of articles out there to guide you, a couple of good ones I have read lately focus a little more on what not to do, such as The Link Building Kiss of Death by Eric Ward. Very simple, yet vitally important – he illustrates the idea that when requesting links, you should actually find out who has the authority to grant the request – a novel idea!

There are many theories that float around the SEO world, certain tactics that are now supposedly defunct, or are misunderstood. One of the most debated is Reciprocal Linking – you may as well have said a dirty word when you dare utter the phrase! Some now refer to it as a link exchange. I feel that there is still a very important place for this practice. I think if it makes sense, do it! There are many times when this is a perfectly acceptable practice.

Say for example, you are selling gourmet cookbooks on your Web site. It naturally makes sense to link out to a provider of gourmet cooking untensils, or pots and pans, especially if they are items recommended in your cookbooks. Asking for a link in return is also acceptable, especially if you have already placed a link to them on your site. This is beneficial for both parties, in that the sites are related, it makes sense to link to one another, it is only natural to do so. Your users will appreciate the ease with which they are able to find the cookware mentioned in your books. Their users will appreciate thier ability to buy great cookbooks to go with thier new cooking tools. A relationship is formed. This aspect is important, as you would not want to form this relationship with just anyone.

Linking to the wrong site is to be avoided. Because a link is viewed as a “vote” for that site, you want to avoid linking to the wrong kind of site. An example of this would be that your nephew Marvin has a site. His site is all about his pet cat, and he really wants you to exchange links. Don’t do it! Marvin’s cat has nothing to do with your gourmet cookbook business, it won’t benefit your users, and it will look questionable to the search engines, causing you to loose some of your standing. Now, if Marvin has a section of his site devoted to gourmet cooking, with some articles and other interesting tidbits, then it would be appropriate to link to that page, and to have him link to you from that page.

As for forming the wrong kind of relationship, be careful about whom you ask for a link. If they have a links page devoted to obscure, unrelated sites, you probably don’t want to be on that links page. The site is just trading links with anyone who is willing, and you are in the wrong neighborhood, get out!

As always, if you provide good information, some points of interest, and are willing to do some work, building links will come, slowly, but they will come.

So, how do you feel about granting link requests? Do you do it? Do you ask for a link in return?