Search Engine Optimization Drives Link Building Campaigns

Research conducted among 101 webmasters showed the following results:

• Respondents rated search engine optimization as the most important marketing activity they undertook in order to meet their business objectives, scoring 4.6 out of a possible 5. They rated email campaigns as the least important with a score of 2.9.
• Respondents stated that the most important benefit of a linking strategy was search engine optimization scoring 4.5 - perhaps surprisingly ahead of driving more traffic to their sites.
• 3 out of 4 respondents had formally asked an external site to link to theirs.
• 89% of respondents intended to put more effort into link building in the year ahead. Only 1% said they would definitely not be putting more effort in.
• 73% intended to use in-house staff to implement their linking strategy. Only 6% said they intended to outsource their link building.

Notes

The research was conducted among people who were actively exploring the Linking Matters site and were therefore likely to place a high importance on linking. However, their answers are interesting in comparing the importance of linking to other marketing activities.

All numerical scores, e.g. 2.9 are given out of a maximum score of 5. Where percentages are given, these may be less than 100% because insignificant percentages were not reported.

Linking Survey - Full Results

Q1. Please rate the following marketing activities in order of their importance in helping you achieve your business objectives.

Here are the overall scores for each marketing activity (all scores are out of possible top score of 5):

Search engine optimisation4.6Linking Strategy4.2Email newsletters3.4Online advertising3.3Offline advertising/promotion3.1Email campaigns2.9

Comment: SEO and linking strategy are the most important marketing activities for our sample. There is an interesting divide in that the top 3 activities are largely content related while the least popular are likely to involve cost.

Scores for each individual activity are shown below:

Q2. Do you monitor the link popularity of either your own or your clients’ sites.

• 41% of our sample monitored at least once a week
• 37% monitored at least once a month.

Q3. Have you formally asked an external site to link to yours?

76% of the sample had formally asked an external site to provide a link.

Q4. Please rate the following potential benefits of a linking strategy to your site.

Here are the overall scores for each objective:

Improve search engine rankings4.5Drive traffic to your site4.3Build trust in your site4.0Provide a useful service for your users4.0Become part of an online community3.6

Comment: It’s surprising that “improve search engine rankings” scores ahead of “drive traffic to your site”. This suggests that webmasters are focusing on search engine optimization and perhaps underestimating the other benefits of linking. As the ultimate purpose of any website marketing is to drive traffic we would have expected this to come top.

Scores for each objective are shown below:

Q5. Do you intend to put more formal effort into building the link popularity of your site during 2003?

• 89% of our sample said that they intended to put more effort into link building.
• A further 8% said they would possibly put more effort in while only 1% said they would not put more effort in.

Comment: Not surprisingly, respondents intended to put more effort into building their link popularity. Their visit to the Linking Matters site was likely to be driven by a desire to find out more about linking.

Q6. How do you intend to improve your link popularity in 2003?

• 73% said they intended to use in-house staff
• 15% said they would use in-house staff together with an external expert or service
• 6% said they would exclusively use an external expert or service.

Comment: Respondents mostly intended to do their linking campaigns in-house though some intended to seek the help of an external consultant. Only a minority, 6% intended to outsource the work.