Monthly Archives: March 2015

Link building. White hat or black hat?

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Link building can be defined as a form of SEO which involves placing your  link on other websites and vice versa (Duk, et al., 2013).  This boosts web traffic and helps page rank.

This blog will explore 4 different ways of link exchanging and whether they are white hat or black hat. Black hat methods are short term fixes that search engines frown upon. Algorithms are becoming more savvy about showing relevant content and the consequences of using black hat linking could be a search engine ban.

Buying or selling links – Black hat

This involves exchanging money or goods/services for links or posts with certain links in. A quick google search reveals several websites offering page linking services. This is against search engine guidelines as Google prefers sites to build links by having quality content in order to keep their search results relevant (Duk, et al., 2013). Although this may be an easy and quick way to build links it will harm your websites page rank long term so avoid at all costs!

buying links

Link Farms – Black Hat

Link farms are a clique of websites that all link to other websites in the group. These are normally automated services and do not provide relevant content. Link farms are a way of bypassing search engine algorithms and to improve page rank. Link farms violate search engine guidelines and can result in penalties being imposed (SEO chat, 2015).

link farm3

Online Partnerships – White Hat

Requesting links from relevant business partners can provide inbound links. It is key to find a partner with the same target market or offering a complimentary service, especially one with a high page rank itself. Search engine algorithms take more notice of links that will provide value to visitors and so this method is seen as white hat and will successfully boost page rank if done right  (Bourne, 2013).

E.g. The Telegraph and Superdry. The Telegraph has provided a highly ranked inbound link to Superdry by forging a strategic partnership with them. This giveaway obviously costs Superdry more than other link building methods but would have been very successful in improving web traffic and page rank.

online partnership online partnership2

Linkbaiting -White Hat

Linkbaiting is the process of providing quality content that encourages links to it  (Wuebben, 2012). This could be from reviews, blogs or other websites.  (The Moz Blog, 2012) has identified 10 top tips for successful link baiting.

  1. Get influencers involved.
  2. Make it easy to understand.
  3. Give away free stuff.
  4. People love lists.
  5. Choose a highly desired topic.
  6. People like personalized content.
  7. Establish it as the go-to resource.
  8. Make it visually appealing.
  9. Segment large lists to make them readable.
  10. Use social share buttons.

Search engines like link-baiting because it provides natural links that add value for visitors.

A great example is Skybets ‘look busy’ campaign. It was creative and funny and therefore provide Skybet with lots of shared and inbound links. http://www.skybet.com/cms/bet_boss.shtm

Helpful points to avoid when link building – courtesy of  (Anderson, 2015) & 

This blog as only covered 4 types of link building and of course there are many more but it gives you an idea of what links are black hat and what search engines are looking for. I will finish up with some helpful tips.

  • Avoid unnatural links
  • Avoid spammy HTMLs
  • Don’t include links below footers
  • Avoid links from unethical or explicit websites
  • Avoid irrelevant links
  • Avoid repetitive links or using too many links
  • Avoid purchased links

If you want to read more about building links Google provides guidelines as to what they do or do not allow here

References

 

Anderson, S., 2015. Free Link Building Tips For 2015. [Online]

Available at: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/link-building-strategy-for-beginners-a-month-of-free-tips/
[Accessed 19th March 2015].

Bourne, J., 2013. Understanding Reciprocal Links and How to Use Them. [Online]
Available at: http://www.bourncreative.com/using-reciprocal-links-the-right-way/
[Accessed 19th March 2015].

Duk, S., Bjelobrk, D. & Carapina, M., 2013. SEO in e-commerce: Balancing between white and black hat methods. Opatija, IEEE.

SEO chat, 2015. Reciprocal Links: Are They Really So Bad?. [Online]
Available at: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/link-trading-help/reciprocal-links-are-they-really-so-bad/
[Accessed 18th March 2015].

The Moz Blog, 2012. 10 Extraordinary Examples of Effective Link Bait. [Online]
Available at: http://moz.com/blog/10-extraordinary-examples-of-effective-link-bait
[Accessed 19th March 2015].

Wuebben, J., 2012. Content is Currency. America: Nicholas Brealey.

 

Can digital marketing provide a sustained competitive advantage? I’m not so sure.

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Digital marketing is described as a way of communicating a message to customers using an online platform.  This blog will look into whether digital marketing strategies can give companies a competitive advantage and if they can sustain this over their competitors.

Michael Porter described a competitive advantage as an advantage over competitors either by differentiation, cost or focus (Porter, 2008). But with most companies having some form of digital marketing presence in this new era, what sets apart your company from your competitors and how do you ensure they don’t copy you?

(Earley, 2014) discusses how firms must leverage new digital marketing tools and approaches faster than others in the same industry, creating differentiated value for the customer. So for example, Hotmail was one of the earliest to use viral digital marketing by inserting the tagline ‘Get your free e-mail at Hotmail’. This differentiated them from other email providers and Hotmail signed up 12 million users in 18 months  (Jurvetson & Draper, 1997).

However, since then many companies have jumped onto the viral marketing bandwagon perhaps doing it bigger and better than hotmail suggesting their competitive advantage has not been sustained. For example the Red Bull space jump.

In an interview with  (Bell, 2013) Rita McGraph goes so far to say there is no such thing as sustained competitive advantage anymore only transient competitive advantage. I believe that statement is a bit drastic but in the world of digital marketing it is certainly true that sustained competitive advantage is hard to achieve due to low barriers to entry, increasing knowledge and the ease of copying.

So this brings me back to the original question of how can digital marketing be used as a sustained competitive advantage. I’ve come up with the following list which is designed to help companies stay one step ahead of the digital marketing crowd. (With a little help from (Earley, 2004) and  (Singla & Durga, 2015))

– Be pro-active in searching out new and better ways of digital marketing

– Don’t be afraid to take a risk, it could work out as a barrier to entry for competitors

– Transform the whole digital marketing approach. Don’t use the same processes with new software as software is easily copied.

– Apply new approaches to the context of the company. An approach which is tailored is harder to copy.

To summarise, this blog has identified that digital marketing strategies can give companies a short term competitive advantage but competitors are likely to follow suit.

References

Bell, G., 2013. The end of the strategy world as we know it? Rita Gunther McGrath on how sustainable competitive advantage may be a thing of the past: an interview with Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School, USA. Strategic Direction, Vol.29(No. 8), pp. Pg. 37-40.

Earley, S., 2014. The Digital Transformation: Staying Competitive. IT Professional, Vol.16(No. 2), pp. Pg. 58-60.

Jurvetson & Draper, 1997. Viral Marketing: Viral Marketing phenomenon explained.. [Online]
Available at: http://dfj.com/news/article_26.shtml
[Accessed 5th March 2015].

Porter, M., 2008. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. 1st ed ed. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Singla, M. & Durga, A., 2015. How Social Media Gives You Competitive Advantage. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol.8(No. 4), pp. Pg. 90-95.