Be the Devil's Advocate to Get Linkbacks and User Activity :)

Joe Ward · #1 03-24-2008, 04:50 PM

This is a good article on how to get links and user activity on your forum, by carefully constructing articles/threads that will capture user interest:

Devil’s Advocate Marketing - AdminFusion

Joe Ward · #2 03-24-2008, 05:05 PM

Also for your consideration, let's review the marketing process that resulted in this link getting placed here:

I am a subscriber at the AdminFusion forum. As a result I received their periodic newsletter. Because I know from experience they are a quality site, I was compelled to open the email.

The title of their email was very straightforward, emphasizing their brand name. This approach means that they are aware they are building a quality brand and can rely on that rather than trying to user email titling strategies to boost the open rate.

Aside: I think they could do both. Use both their brand and a more compelling title.

Upon opening the email I was encouraged to read further. Why? Because the email was very professionally formatted, with lots of white space, and a very organized and readable layout.

"Devil's Advocate Marketing" was the most interesting of the 5 sub-titles (sections) of the email, at least from my perspective.

I only read the first few lines since I am already familiar with the concept, but I clicked the link to see a little more.

The link took me to a very nicely organized (and vBSEO-enabled) articles forum, with many more interesting/useful titles. I clicked the link to the Devil's Advocate article I was interested in.

The article was again nicely formatted. I only skimmed it. But I was confident based on the quality of this site that it would be a good resource for our vBSEO customers. My hope was that it could be used to help improve either (a) the header area of the forum templates, (b) the welcome message area, or (c) the vBA homepage, by specifically focusing on getting compelling content in those areas to help boost user activity/conversions, etc.

For those reasons combined, I decided to post the link here for others to see. As a result, AdminFusion gets an unsolicited linkback from a highly reputable site.

Key take-aways: Your site's quality, brand recognition, and engaging content will all make the link building process much easier.

Start out with a weak brand (think domain name/logo), low site quality (think bad template/poor organized), or non-engaging content (think site announcements on vBA page), then you are going to make it much more difficult for yourself than it needs to be.

PromotePoker · #3 03-26-2008, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

As a result, AdminFusion gets an unsolicited linkback from a highly reputable site.

If you add them to your whitelist correct? I remember reading you have all external links setup as nofollow by default.

Great article by the way, thanks, I've bookmarked it and plan on re reading it again.

Jason

Joe Ward · #4 03-26-2008, 11:23 PM

I checked the page source. The link does not have rel=nofollow applied.

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Be the Devil's Advocate to Get Linkbacks and User Activity :)

Be the Devil's Advocate to Get Linkbacks and User Activity :)

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