{EAV_BLOG_VER:c449abc4a92aa76b}
I have always thought that my link building strategies needed to center around analytics, focused keyword marketing, and writing articles. Last week I began to see that all the technical stuff aside, link building is pretty much just like high school popularity. The more you find connections with the people in your school, the more popular and sought after you will be. This means not only getting but giving as good as you get, or more at first.
I went to high school in a small rural Wyoming town. There aren’t really any large schools in Wyoming compared to the rest of the US but it was still a smaller small school. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone was related to someone else. Most of the families in my home town had been there for at least 3 generations or longer. I was a 4th generation kid. When I was in grade school everyone in my class of about 130 were friends. We played with certain people but didn’t really have any huge feuds unless there was a generational thing going on. When we got into Jr. High and High School the dynamics of my class started to change. Groups or cliques were formed. Some of these were grouped by sex, some were divided by social status, and some were formed by interests.
When I was in High School it was very important to be in the right group. You were popular, or a nerd, or ignored, or in the crusties. The more sports, activities, and Saturday night parties you attended, the dynamics of your popularity increased. There were sports people, cheerleaders, aggies, artsy, drama, and the smokers. This is the way link building works basically. Just think about being in High School all over again.You want to group with people that share the same interests as you, you want to be popular, and have people like you and what you are doing. The more popular you are, the more parties, and events you get invited to. Same thing happens when you comment, and have your link show up in peoples content, social pages, and websites, you will get more traffic. So you must be active, and try to get included in a lot of peoples content or social circles. In return you will get comments on your blog. If you have a good blog comment plugin like we do it will help you get more comments.
You can do this by being active with people in your same topic that are influencers online. You can easily search any topic in Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. You also can type your topic into your browsers Google Search, and if you have a Google account under the more button it lists blogs. If you click that you can go to those blogs and add their RSS to your reader. You will then get all the updates to those blogs, and an easy way to follow each and read then comment on each one that is relevant to your topic. Be sure to tweet, and retweet and like and G+ people and their links. This is one of the fastest ways to create relationships that may lead to a guest post, or podcast. It happens every single day online. Today I woke up to this…tweet from someone I don’t even follow (or didn’t until now).
The url led me to Insights On Business Analytics which has a post in it that I commented on. So I got cred, a tweet, and I quickly re-tweeted it, went to the article and G+ and commented. So now I just promoted this site in 4 different ways including this post. Link building strategies are really just like high school. The more active, and the more you participate with others…the more you get out of it. Don’t sit around and whine like the shy kid at school because you don’t have any friends go out and make some. The really cool thing is I was such a geek in high school I didn’t have many friends. Online there are millions of geeks and I fit right in!. Who knows I might have a chance to get invited to the Social Media Marketing Prom!!
This is excellent. It makes so much sense and is so true…and another thing, the High School groups are the same all over the world. I live in England and I was the class clown, but before that I was known for my physical strength and that meant that the other kids never gave me much trouble.
I will make sure that I “like”, “G+” and “retweet” all the time now.
…and by the way, what is a crusty?
Have a great day
David
David Verney recently posted..How to Get Readers of Your Blog to Return Again and Again
David
Thanks it made a lot of sense to me as well. People get so caught up in trying to build links they sometimes forget that relevant links with people with the same interest and focus will often do them more good than just links from wherever.
Glad to know that High Schools in England also have cliques. I also was a ranch kid so hung out with all the other country kids.
A crusty is someone who (when I went to high school) really could care less about their personal hygiene. It was a statement.
Good analogy – link building is a lot like high school. Only it’s almost more difficult, because instead of a few hundred people you have to market yourself to millions upon millions and compete with thousands of others on a daily basis. At least in high school you can eventually like the work you’ve done in the past do the talking and relax a bit! On the web it never stops!
Melanie
I don’t remember it ever stopping in high school either, it was just slower than online. In life it never stops, you change jobs, churches, or cities you must start link building all over again. The internet is the same, and if you do it right online a few really well placed links, or the right person with the right pr site, and the right followers can make you popular overnight. You have to work daily at this no doubt, but I love to see how others are doing things. There are many ways to get links if you don’t enjoy it and one of them is through link building services . Using a service to get you relevant links to your site, is like dating the most popular guy in school. Over night you have a whole different set of people wanting to be around you.
If you don’t mind me asking, who are aggies? I thought I’d heard of all the high school groups. I googled it, but I found mostly info on Texas A&M University…
Sonny recently posted..A 3D-Disney Mac Tutorial Using Blender Software
Sonny
Aggies are the people that are interested in agriculture. In our school they were the kids that to Ag and were involved in FFA ( Future Farmers of America). They are generally ranch and farm kids, and often were home working on weekends instead of out running around having fun with their friends. This left them in a different social group.
Even before twitter and facebook in high school themed movies there were shown websites like who is the most popular. The issue is too many people take it too seriously in high school and sometime ruin their lives.
David E. recently posted..Banks in Cayman D | Offshore Banking
David
You are right…I saw this in High School time after time. People would think their life was over if they weren’t included with the right people. The really sad thing is, I live in a small town now and the parents of these kids are often more competitive to have their child in the right circles, and popularity than the kids are.
Hey Sarah,
I really admire and appreciate your firm and well fabricated analogy between High School environment and Link Building strategies.This is a great way to understand link building strategies very easily because we all have gone through that phase.I do agree that if you want to be get noticed in this blogging world then it is very much essential to participate actively,like commenting,giving thumbs up,share,retweet and follow.By doing this you can get attention from other bloggers also and they will also show there interest in your stuff.This is a great way for making some magical differences.
Thank you for sharing such a great,valuable,informative and considerable content with us.
Good Luck and God Bless!!
With Regards!
Samuel Joshua
Samuel Joshua recently posted..GFCI Breaker Tripping
Thank you it was a fun article to write.
Your analogy with High Schools is perfect!!!It was a long time ehn I was in high-schools but I remember it the way you described. very nice article!
Anna recently posted..Who cares about the cost of veneers nowadays?
Anna
I think most High Schools are the same.
Thanks for your comment.