Not be sneaky, be manipulative, be crafty, be deceptive. Not even be brilliant. Just Be Smart. Let me elaborate.

There are lots of ways to trick the engines and get ahead of the competition. Believe me, I know. I’ve seen the results via my clients’ competitors. And not just for those long tail keywords, but for big money keywords as well. There are lots of ways to try and circumvent the system. And Web pages are becoming disposable. Buy an aged domain with lots of links, buy some links and Voila! You have top 10 rankings for some big keywords. Sounds easy, right? And it has some serious short term (aka “flash in the pan”) results.

But that’s not how my team does it. We are interested in long term gains. We work for links that stand the test of time and add value to both users (being our primary focus) and search engines (secondary). Yes, we build links to build rankings, but more than that we want to give every user the best user experience possible.

When you’re creating a strategy, be smart. When you are choosing sites to request links from, be smart. When you reach out to that site and make the request, be smart. Don’t try and do something underhanded to get quick results. If you need quick results, try PPC. Above all else, use your head. You’ll be a better link builder for it.

I was really intrigued by this email, so I started to do a bit of research. I found several mistakes within the email that no link building company / team should make.

1. The long-tail keyword. It isn’t relevant and it shows me that they have no idea what the business goals of my client are.

2. They own 1000s of Web sites and get you 100s of links. Wow, if that isn’t SPAM and black hat, I don’t know what is.

3. They make mention of “ALL your keywords” but don’t list any of them out. Again, no idea of business goals and certainly not demonstrating any interest in finding them out.

4. They’re sending it to my client’s competitors. Scare tactics don’t work. What if more than one in a set agrees to the services and you’ve promised them “top rankings” for the same keyword? What happens then?

5. I searched “professional link building” and they are nowhere to be seen.

6. Their site isn’t even optimized. Yet they hammer on about “doing all the things the search engines love” to rank. Build links but screw the rest of SEO?

When it was all said and done, we all had a good laugh about it. Then we went back to building links the right way.

I love the fact that I work in a search engine optimization firm with a full-fledged team of strategists, technical experts, and industry experts. But there are times that we are doing link building without having input into the keywords that are being selected, the pages that are being optimized, and the overall business strategy. Some lessons I have learned from this are:

1. Have a clear understanding of the pages you are building links for. When you jump from page to page on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, it’s hard to see true progress. Agree before the start of the project on which pages will be the primary focus of link building efforts.

2. Outline tactics that will be undertaken. Changing focus halfway through a project will not help the site nor your linking efforts. If a change of direction is requested, understand the goals that are driving the request.

3. Have keyword discussions. If your SEO-instinct kicks in that a keyword that has been selected is too competitive, too broad, or not as relevant as it could be, open the door for those discussions. Be prepared to have other options ready for the conversation, so do some keyword research before you begin to talk.

4. Have your strategy written out as best as you can along with a timeline. This will keep everyone on the same page as you work on the project.

5. Have open dialogues with the internal SEO team. Make sure that you are being kept updated on keyword changes, URL changes, or anything else that will affect your link building strategy.

6. Most importantly, define goals at the onset. This needs to be priority #1. Is it conversions? Traffic? Increased link popularity? Whatever the goals are, make sure that you are setting realistic expectations within the confines of the project and what you and your team can reasonably do.

There are lots of ways to do link building whether you are part of the actual optimization process or not, but having everything clearly spelled out is the biggest factor in not only a successful linking initiative, but in a successful relationship with your contacts for the site you are working on. It certainly presents its challenges when all you are doing is link building, but it can work and it will so long as you prioritize correctly and everyone involved is on the same page.

1. What do you stand for? Not the same as a brand positioning statement, this tells me what is truly important to my client. Is it educating your customer base? Is it providing high quality products that could save their life or otherwise improve their quality of living?

2. Who are you looking to reach? Age, gender, socioeconomic background, status in life… all of those things will guide my strategies in the right direction.

3. What are you doing to better the world? Sponsorships and partnerships play a huge role in this. This also gives your humanitarian position a spotlight. If you’re not doing anything, what do you want to do? Hopefully, the answer isn’t “nothing.”

When you look at these three things and combine with an overall picture of the site (current sources of link popularity, content inventory, etc) you can create a strategy that is not the standard cookie cutter approach, but is tailored to your client, their industry, and their goals.