Future Proof SEO Strategy: Real Life Link Building

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Over the years I have repeatedly expressed my belief that the only way to do proper SEO in a social media world is to forge relationships. I have never elaborated on it in a single post here on SEO 2.0 as far as I can remember. The only posts that directly dealt with it was "Think Relationships not Technology".

Recently I was engaged in a debate on Google+ whether terms like SEO or even more SEO 2.0 do make sense at all these days and what possibly a future proof SEO strategy could be. You know nowadays the tools of the trade are changing each year. The hypes come and go but one thing stays, your relationships, unless you rely too much on tools and lose your contacts in the worst case once a social site goes defunct.

Your social relations on the Web have to be tool-independent.

That doesn't only mean that you have to backup your contacts from Gmail, Twitter, Google+ or whatever medium. You need to remember the people you are engaging with ideally without having to use a tool like Twitter at all. You have to make sure that when Twitter or any other site you usually use goes down and you email a person who knows you from there or even call that person, that s/he knows who you are.

I remember in the early days, when everybody was still using nicknames, yes it was before Facebook and LinkedIn, people would literally gasp in surprise when I called them up after "meeting" them on the Internet.

I've done that a few times. I wasn't stalking people. I was just contacting them by the phone after having engaged with them for years on social media of that time, like mailing lists or forums. So for me it was a logical or rather even overdue next step in our relationship. For many people the virtual and the real life have been two very separate things back then it seems. That has changed.

In the SEO industry people are meeting in real life all the time at conferences.

I rarely take part in conferences for many reasons I don't want to explain here. When I do it's like meeting a bunch of old friends. Even when meeting people I have never met before. Why? It's our online past where they have linked to me or supported me in other ways I remember. I look up to other people based on their writing on the Web. Sometimes it's both of the reasons to feel at ease with people you have never seen before.

How come these people recognize me? They only know my nickname, my avatar or even less, they only remember an article of mine. That's sometimes enough to build a real life link. An article that has changed their approach to SEO might be powerful enough to be remembered ten years from now. Sometimes a little gesture may suffice. Beginners are often shy and consider industry icons to be untouchable. When such a person who is well known replies to a comment by someone who is new to SEO they will remember it for the next decade.

So it doesn't take a lot of time and effort to form a relationship. You do not have to be friends in real life and meet every week in the pub. It may be fun but you don't have to.

Some of my best friends have never seen my face.

Not that my face is particularly ugly or that I would hide or something. It's just economic reality of the Internet times. You don't meet everybody you know online unless you socialize only with real life connections from the start.

I have repeatedly explained how you can make people remember you. Giving before receiving is still the best thing you can do.

• link out to peers on your blog
• write about those who inspire you
• approach people you admire on social media
• converse with those who speak about the same topics online
• stay in touch using different tools.

While link building as in collecting hyperlinks is often tedious and overtly technical the real linking happens between people. A hyperlink may break quite quickly but a relationship may get renewed on each new platform seamlessly. So ideally the people you exchanged links with years ago have befriended you on Facebook and now Google+ or maybe already on Pinterest. Whatever the ranking signals today are they may provide you with them.

So from now focus on real life link building via relationships with people not just the short-lived technical aspects of SEO.

Let me summarize by citing myself from the recent debate on Google+ I had with Lyndon NA. I added some text decoration:

How is SEO 2.0 future proof? It's about the people not the tools.

I don't care whether it's StumbleUpon, Twitter or Google+ - The people remember me. When Google decides to ditch social media altogether the people will still know me and I will resort to swapping links with them ;-)

I don't build links I build relationships with those who link no matter how they do it and independently of the tools and acronyms they use. They can call it LOL instead of SEO and I still will get the support.

Every tool and technique that aims to influence solely the current Google algo is just tactical. A long term SEO strategy has to venture beyond that.

More recent posts on SEO and relationships from other authors:

• Building Awesome Relationships For Links, Likes, and Love
• Giving Has Its Own SEO Rewards
• Earn Your Way In
• 7 Basic community management tips that will take you far
• Ready for Spring Cleaning? Start With Your Twitter Account
• Use Social Networking to Effectively Build Media & PR Contacts
• How to win a customer’s trust
• Get True Followers with Social Media
  

Image: Out of Milk by Voyager212.