7 P’s of Marketing (and Link-Building) for SEO

Following on from a guest post I did for David Harry (aka theGypsy) where I dabbled with the idea that traditional marketing models can play an important role in carrying out SEO projects successfully, I want to provide coverage to an idea that I raised in that post. The essence of which was that I didn’t see why we should not be enjoying the scientific and creative merits of REAL marketing.

With this, I thought it might be helpful  for myself and possibly others to go through an old-school marketing framework and see how it can be used to make us think about covering all the bases in developing and managing link-building strategies.

An understanding of REAL Marketing can help with link-building

I certainly don’t think SEO’s need to reinvent the marketing wheel.  With traditional forms of marketing having so many more moons to develop strategic and day-to-day tools and prinicles that can add value.  So, I think we should take advantage of this.

What is blatantly obvious is that, a successful link-builder must be more than a copier and paster, sendng cold email after email via website contact forms.  Instead though, does it mean that they need to have a greater knowledge of marketing?  Well, being self-critical, I would suggest that it is not strictly the case, but I do think that the person in charge of designing and planning the link-building campaign should…this can hone their efforts to build a link-profile to be proud of.

The 7 P’s of Service marketing and link-building

The 7 P’s are attributed to service marketing, and essentially link-building acts as a service in two respects.  You are providing a service for the website that you are working on, and, you are potentially providing a service to another website owner by raising their awareness to your products, services, cause, etc…

It’s also the important to remember the traits of a service.  Services are typically:

• Perishable – they cannot be stored and perish at the point of consumption
• Intangible – you cannot touch a service like you can goods
• Inseparable – services cannot be separated from their service providers
• Heterogeneous – difficult to make eash service provision identical

The reason I raise these points is because even in this list there are reminders that we, as service providers, should build these considerations into the delivery of reassurance/trust/accountability to our clients.  A link-building service carries each of these traits, so consider factors whereby you can provide an exemplary service to justify your activity in the next 7 items.

The 7 P’s of Link-building Success!

Product – market the features and benefits cleverly

Why would they ever want to link to your website?  What is the products relevance to the site you are approaching? What are the features and benefits to that particular site owner? Why would they ever envisage that linking to your site would add value (or highlight appreciation) to their visitors.

Bear-in-mind that the best sales-pitches are so often those that are not salesy.  An indirect approach to selling can be far more effective than hitting the prospect with a heavy sales pitch out of the blue and with no prior knowledge of you.

Price – buying and selling links

The grey-area of link-building. Buying links is, as we know, ‘frowned-up’ by search engines. Beyond this, it could be argued that ‘they would never know’ – unless of course you are buying into a network of sites that have been ear-marked as

Place – the link placement for optimised link-building

Think semantically. The links placement is ultra important regarding the how positively the link is perceived by the search engines and the weight that it passes. E.g. a text link, sat in a relevant paragraph, prominently in the content of a relevant page,

I think if you tackle the other 6 factors correctly then this iten should really be a by-product of naturality of link-placement.

Promotion – PR not link-building

What incentive are you providing for the user to link-back to your site? Is it newsworthy in a way that they will drive people to pick it up in a way that they want to share it with their users? How does it stand-out from other link requests? Does it include a discount coupon for a purchase that they might want to share, a fun, friendly, challenging piece, or even tool that provokes natural interest?

What is it about the item you’re building links for that makes people think: ‘oh that’s funny / quirky / interesting / helpful??

Often the answer is that it doesn’t look like a link request and is simply providing something of value. So often it’s the case that people will hit the easy links first (friends and family) and try to build a bit of a buzz about it. But that buzz needs to be maintained not simply be allowed to dissolve – the world-wide web is after all a ultra-fast marketing platform and marketplace.

People – link-building is about the people, the friends, the contacts….

Get sociable. Making friends and building contacts can be one of the most effective ways of building links online. It’s via these that not only can you directly gain links, but also spread the buzz about your link-worthy item.

Process – manage your link-building with attention and care

This could well be the most important aspect of managing the link-building campaign. The process defines both the intent, the market, and the approach. Essentially it should also include a continual feedback loop of what worked, who needs to be followed-up, and where do new opportunities lie. If something works, push it some more – think: snowball-effect.

On a day-to-day basis though, maybe you could think about:

• How is the link-building activity integrated into the optimisation of other areas of the website?  Keyword research and analysis, landing pages, conversions, site structure, information architecture, flow of link-equity?
• Keeping a contacts database.  This can take many forms:
  • It could be a customer management database
  • An opt-in email / newsletter database naturally built from the site
  • Friends and family contacts of course
• How you are alerted by new links (Google Alert, other?)
• How are you alerted by removed /dead links?
• How do you value the links?  Do you analyse and report on the semantic nature of the placement of the link?
• How do you manage the feedback loop that tracks what is working in your link-building, PR  and SEO efforts?
• How much flexibility is there in what you are doing to mould it to the things that are proving to work?  How you time have you factored in for this feedback analysis and revisions?

Physical evidence – incentivise, you’re more than an email

This is the toughest one. So often is the case that people get a random, unsolicited email via the ‘contact us’ form on a website asking for a link-exchange (often to a new and poorly optimised website, of little relevance or interest to your ideal visitors). Approaching webmasters can work, no doubt about that, but it’s 10 times easier when there has been a bit more of a personal connection made…a business transaction, a meeting, a training session, a direct mail shot…some physical presence other that simply a dot com website.  I wonder how many people have sent out corporate gifts with the hope that they will receive backlinks, even?

Do you find this kind of thinking helpful?

Previously, I have found my SEO thoughts returning to my marketing education and experience to tackle issues, develop proposals and carry-out activities. Maybe this could be a good way of making sure that you are considering a wider (and deeper) variety of factors that influence effective link-building and your online marketing efforts?  It helps me, how about you?

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