Pete, this is an exceptional post. In Marketing 101 we are taught the four Ps of "traditional" outbound marketing (product, price, place, promotion). What you have defined here are the four Ps of inbound marketing — Profiles (directories, social networks), Publishing (articles, optimized press releases, etc.), Participation (in blogs, forums, social networks) and Publishing (great, multi-media content). And yes, I know Publishing is in there twice, but it's that important. Inbound marketing comes down to continually publishing great content. Nice work!

Thanks Paul. I agree that "publishing" deserves a second mention. Did you just make this 4 P thing up? I think that'd be a good guest post.

Pete, 
 
I appreciate how you broke the idea of link-building down into tactical "grades." Nice idea! I also agree fully that having a corporate blog should be a major portion of any web strategy, though the reasons for blogging and the way the blog is managed may differ among B2B and B2C companies. I just posted a newsletter on blogging, specifically targeting B2C professional services companies.  
 
Best, 
 
Chris

Pete - this is great. Not enough people break down the ideas we're all hearing about into actionable plans. WRT SEO'ing your articles and releases, how many marketers have been able to "train" their existing agencies on doing this, versus finding a new PR agency that takes a more comprehensive social media approach? Is it worth it, if you have? 
The other thing that would be so helpful for this guide... Time estimates, especially for the underclassmen. For example, when you transition to HS, there's an emphasis on time management, guiding students on how long they should spend reading, studying, etc. This transition to link building can be overwhelming; there's so much noise and so many distractions. Should you set aside a window of time, a certain amount of it each day? Or a certain number of comments or posts or links that you try to achieve each day? Should you designate some percentage of a headcount on your marketing team for just this? (I see that HubSpot is hiring a FT person just for this, so I guess I know what the answer is!) That gives a real target for people.  
 
Thanks so much for doing this. Really interesting stuff...

Great questions, Katie.  
 
I'm not the best guy to talk to about time management. I get distracted easily. (I'm in sales actually, so I should be calling people instead of using Twitter and writing blog posts.)  
 
But, in principle, what you're suggesting about time management is necessary. It seems that people "never get started w/ link building" because they have a million other things to do.  
 
There are some smart people at HubSpot trying to make it easier for our clients to do link building on a regular basis. But, at the end of the day, the marketer or biz owner has to have some discipline to create content, interact w/ people online and build links.  
 
Re: training a traditional PR firm to do online PR, I start by sending them to Press Release Grader. I have one client/partner who is an SEO consultant and she works with a traditional PR company who is very good at traditional stuff. The SEO consultant does keyword research, guides blogging content production, reviews press releases, and runs social media marketing w/ traditional agency oversight.  
 
I think teaching old dogs new tricks is hard, personally. But, sometimes it is necessary. Traditional agencies still add a lot of value with TV, event, print and radio exposure.  
 
Paul Roetzer wrote a really cool article the other day called, The Dawn of the Inbound Marketing Agency. 
 
At HubSpot, we're seeing a lot of demand from traditional agencies who want to "learn internet marketing". I think they'll need to adapt or at least broaden their offerings to include online marketing, if they want to survive.

Katie, 
 
I saw your comment and thought I'd throw in my 2 cents there, too. Time management is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for most of our clients when it comes to adopting new techniques and procedures for marketing. I recently posted an interview with Lee Erickson, founder of Erickson Barnett, who had some strong comments about this. She said, "It has to come from the top down. If management doesn't believe in it, then client work will always come first." This conviction led them to restructure several roles internally, including her own, in order to support some of the strategic initiatives that they wanted to adopt. You can read the interview here, but I think they serve as a great example of a B2B that was willing to fully invest in these new marketing strategies. 
 
Chris

Interesting round up guys! Thanks for the link back to my SBM link bait article.

I am still learning a lot about SEO, so this article is great for me. Can anyone reccommend a good place to look for the directories you mentioned in the 9th grade section?

@Abby. Are you a client? Our internet marketing training program provides a nice list of directories worth spending time/money on.

Interesting you have mentioned "law of attraction" in your post. Recently I have decided to intend for one major / high traffic blog to link to my website each week. Last week, one of our blog posts got picked up by another blog that drove more than 500 people to our website in 2 days. That is independent of the regular traffic we get.  
 
This was my blogging law of attraction experiment.  
 
Networking has worked surprisingly well too, but it took months to get to the right people. Most people who are networking are not into online marketing. Networking in the tech crowd seemed to be most effective for generating links.  

Interesting feedback, May. I've had the same experience. Networking amongst internet marketers, tech crowd and a few other categories through blogs and linking back and forth is prevalent. But, I've noticed that a lot of other industries don't get it. I think it's part of our job to educate people that we all will succeed when we collaborate. I get a lot of resistance amongst my clients when I try to get them to help each other. Their typical excuse is that "he's a competitor - even though there in two different parts of the country" OR "they target a slightly different market than I do" or "why would I want to talk to someone who isn't my target client".  
 
In business, collaboration isn't always the modus operandi. And you certainly wouldn't collaborate on traditional marketing or biz dev unless it was very mutually beneficial. But, when it comes to the web and blogging and seo, it's certainly true that collaboration makes everybody more successful, especially the people we're all trying to help. I think the web is slowly teaching the world this lesson. But, I think it's going to take a while for it to kick in - atleast in most industries.

@Abby, you can do a search for all the links a website has by typing into Google 
 
 
 
site: mywebsite.com 
 
 
 
(make sure to put a space after the colon) using whatever url you want. You should do this for a competitor or a similar website in your industry and geographic region to show what kind of inbound links they are getting and see if you can submit your own url. Some of my free favorites are: 
 
 
 
AboutUs 
 
Minority Professional Network 
 
LinkedIn 
 
StartupNation Marketplace 
 
Kellysearch 
 
Delicious 
 
xomreviews 
 
DMOZ

Excellent! Excellent! I keep telling people that the strategy is not as difficult as they think, but most people are too ill informed or procrastinate taking action. Another challenge is that many folks don't have their act together enough yet, in the form of compelling content, to begin driving all this traffic to their site. it should come easy for multi-taskers who can crank out magnet content and execute on the linking and networking strategy. Another really big thing is time, you cannot shortcut the process as the author said, unless you are already famous. This takes time and commitment. 
 
 
 
Excellent post, and I enjoy following your blog!

Pete- Great list you put together and I like how you structured it in grade levels. I think one of the most important parts of your post is when you mention the importance of developing real relationships with others through networking. The importance of this is brought up often but I don't think that some really take it to heart. But, this is a common need whether online or in-person. Meaningful networking is extremely important.

These are great - simple, straightforward and most importantly, very effective. Well done!

thank you for ur sharing

why,what ,where go to zhidao1.cn

support you website ,thank you for ur sharing

Heyy, great stuff this article, im just starting up to sell t-shirts and im having a problem with people not coming to my website but ill be following this school process and ill let ya know how it goes, btw if you want a night out t-shirt, go to  
 
 
 
www.simplytopuk.com 
 
 
 
FREE Worldwide delivery.

I'd like to suggest people use your website grader to track their progress. It has been a tremendous help for us to determine what we need to do and how we are doing vs. our competitors. We have 10 times more inbound links than some of our competitors who have been around much longer.

I'd like ...

I have no idea how, but my blog has over 26,000 inbound links already. I must be doing something right. ;)

Thanks for the great article. Very helpful. Hope to increase my links at www.grafsata.com.

Good post.. hopefully this will help my site break the 80% score on website grader.  
 
I find my Drupal sites are a little different then sites not built on a CMS

good post, i've found it very useful

Thanks for the follow-up article. Who would've thought creating links could be such an art... 
 

Great post. Good to see someone saying it how it is . . . there are so many cowboys out there offering impossible quick fixes for a few hundred quid.

I like this idea, i use website grader loads and I have learned a lot and helped loads of other people with sites make changes for their sites... thank you!

thinks man the post

Thanks for your PageRank

Hi great article. I'm setting up a photography web site and of great help. So if you need any photo's taken please visit: 
 
Htto://www.lizkavanaghphotography.com

Hi, 
 
 
 
Good articles. 
 
 
 
thanks

Good information to increase traffic.

thank you for your great tips.i've hired a seo company in greece for my hotel, and the same time building my own second webpage with my own seo,so i hope i can compare the results and not spend so mucu money for no reason.

This was one of the most helpful articles about linking to other websites. I will start over at 9th grade and see what i can do over the next year or so.

Always useful information on this site and this one is no different

This is a great article and extremely informative. We are new to this style of promotions and found it very helpful to have your insight. Burrell Colour is just beginning to tackle how we can draw more attention to our Optical Printing, Digital Printing & Film Development website. Thanks! 
 
Burrell Colour Imaging

Excellent article. A client of mine turned me onto Hubspot. I have been reading through your website to see if your services are something which may benefit my clients. I am impressed so far! As a Website & Multimedia developer, SEO is always an issue, yet not something we always excel at - so I thank you for your recommendations. 
 
www.mediamechanic.net

Thank you wo much for the great info.  
www.aerpro.com.au

Thanks for this fantastic tool, I love it and use it very reguarly!

Extremely useful post on link building Pete! I like how you broke down the details into the 4 high school grade levels.  
 
You are so right when it comes to newbie internet marketers thinking they can have an immediate impact with a blog. Patience, persistence and putting time into it on an ongoing basis is key. It is just like traditional networking...creating good and lasting business relationships take time to build. The same principle applies to blogging, except it is online and not face to face.

One thing we all can do as we are educating our clients is to teach them how to find these conversations in the blog posts. By using a simple tool such as Google alerts, it allows us to see exactly who, what , when, and where conversations are about and they can be proactive in the betterment of their link building strategies.

One thing we all can do as we are educating our clients is to teach them how to find these conversations in the blog posts to help in all of these link building strategies. By using a simple tool such as Google alerts, it allows us to see exactly who, what , when, and where conversations are about and they can be proactive in the betterment of their link building strategies.

Very good post Pete! I have to agree. It can sometimes feel overwhelming when a client looks at the number of inbound links it is going to take to make them competitive online for their keywords. By taking this approach and breaking it down into smaller "grades", I feel it will be perceived as something more attainable. I also hope that more clients begin to realize the importance of blogging and other social media to their SEO and SEM efforts.

Very nice post. Not only have you given us a very clear step by step approach for link building but also great advice. Be persistent, strive for quality and build relationships.

I want it is Very nice post.I feel it will be perceived as something more attainable.Patience, persistence and putting time into it on an ongoing basis is key.

Great information. How do I know when I am ready to move to the next Grade? Is there a magic number to know when to go from grade 9 to 10? 
 
 
 
Alan

Great question, Alan. 
 
You should know when it's time to move up a grade. Once you've mastered all the activities of that grade, it's time to move on to the next. Kinda like math, though, you're always using the stuff you learned the year before. You should never stop building 9th grade links. They're the easy ones and they still bring value.

Thanks for the information. I am still new to seo but everyday I find something new to look into. 
 
warren