Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

This article was first published  Amy 8, 2009 on the Tatum Marketing blog

In my last article I talked about inbound links and how, rather than just putting links onto random websites, it would be better to create what I call a word-of-mouth link campaign. In a word-of-mouth link campaign, instead of just going for a large volume of links, the focus is on creating links that will drive real people to your site.

Let’s skip over Pay-Per-click campaigns and other forms of paid advertising and just talk about soliciting free links.  Links from unpaid independent people and web pages are worth more those you buy, and these can be generated by getting people interested in talking about your business and your site.

In other words, you want to get a ‘buzz’ going about your website. And you want to get that buzz going in the right places. Just as a major studio that’s marketing an action movie isn’t going to advertise in a gardening magazine, you want to avoid wasting time on places that don’t attract your prospects.

So, the first step when starting a word-of-mouth link campaign is researching where your potential customers and clients hang out. These are websites, blogs, message boards and other locations where your potential customers go to look for information related to your subject.

Start by looking at your bookmarked web pages and talking to co-workers and friends to find out where the latest and greatest information related to your site is located. Because this is your company and your own area of expertise it shouldn’t take too long to come up with an impressive list of different type of sites and groups.

You can start your link building as soon as you find one one good spot. You don’t need to create a five page plan with every location detailed before you start.

Over the next few articles, I’m going to talk about the different types of locations where your target audience might be, and what to do with these locations once you find them. Briefly, here’s what I’ll cover:

• Message boards
• Yahoo & Google Groups
• Web directories
• Social Networks & Blogs
• Online Magazines and Articles
• E-mail

You are going to be sending a lot of emails out for this process, and you might want to create a new e-mail account just for your word-of-mouth link buildling efforts. Unfortunately, going through this process can generate a large amount spam in your inbox.

Next week I’ll take a closer look at message boards.

Meanwhile, if this seems like a lot of work to you, you’re right! An effective link-building campaign is very time consuming but it’s critical both for generating direct traffic and for getting high rankings on the search engines. If you’d like some help, Tatum Marketing is a great place to turn. Check out our Search Engine Optimization programs.