On page 114 Eric Ward speaks about link building as the fundamental essence of the web. The World Wide Web is basically a web of links. Although this may seem very trivial, Ward did manage to get me thinking when posing the question, “does a website exist if nobody links to it”? I found this to have something of a philosophical cling to it, something in style with, “if a tree falls down in the forest and there's nobody around to hear it fall, does it make a sound”? Okay this is kind of wandering into the roam of philosophy and the topic of existence, but I still find it to be somewhat relevant. Can something exist without being perceived? As this however is a topic that can be discussed forever, let’s quickly bring it back on track and leave it at as Ward puts it in the very beginning of the chapter: No matter how much time or money you spent on it, a website is invisible until somebody links to it. Users can only get to a website if they know that it exists. This mere fact makes link building as fundamental as the links themselves and Ward manages to emphasize the importance of link building in the online world of PR and marketing. In the offline world a store's at least something physical, so even without any publicity it could still catch some passing-byers and then rely on word of mouth to make it's existence known. In the online world, there are no passing-byers. If a website isn’t linked to the web, it simply isn’t part of the web; it doesn’t exist. Of course the URL could be entered directly, but again the same problem, the user has to know the URL to be able to enter it. It has to be made known, whether it be through online or offline advertising or word of mouth.
Ward mentions two different approaches to link building, the white and the black hat approach. I’ve never really understood why the black hat approach, more known as spam, is still being used until now, especially when everybody hates it. But after reading Wards thoughts about link building, it suddenly makes a little bit more sense why spam is still kept alive. As long as somebody clicks the link, and there will always be a couple that do, no matter how few, it can be seen as success. Cause if the users that clicks through find the website to satisfy their needs, the website owners can rely on word of mouth to make the website known, turning the black hat approach over to a white hat. I'm sure that finding the right channels for building your links is strategically better choice, but I can imagine the desperation of just wanting to get yourself out there. Link building is basically just making your website known and connecting it to the web.
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It's interesting to see that there seems to be so many new practices developing around the Internet, such as search word optimization, writing press releases directly for customers, link building and so on.
Anyway, I agree that black hat strategies are not worth relying upon, especially today when communities and user comments are appearing everywhere. It's very easy to just put yourself out there through these sources.
For example, if you want to launch an online camera shop, you can just find a photographers' community and post your link around where relevant.
Web 2.0 decade, Communication is the key word. These days online marketing is more expecting interaction between costumers. The reason that many portal sites have space for communities is information. People are link to the site in many reason. If site has many informations, more people will link to it. That is why link building is important issue for business. Even there are many black hat marketing but many people gradually knows how to find information so black hat marketing gragually ignore.
I think many corporate home pages in web 1.0 style didn't build that much links even from their own employees. Reasons? Because, it is simply pushing facts or bragging, not about engaging with visitors. I think link building really starts from the social media and in a sense "link" and "social" are within the same context and maybe same meaning.
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