About Debra Mastaler

About the Author:
Debra Mastaler is President of Alliance-Link, a link building company in business since 2001 focused on providing relevant lists of sources and media outlets to content developers. When she's not working for Alliance-Link, Debra can be found refinishing furniture or working in her garden.

How To Repurpose Old Content With New Images For More Links

Reusing old content, also known as “repurposing” or “recycling” or “refreshing” content, is a great way to make the most of your content marketing dollars and efforts.

Updating written content is pretty straight forward, add new facts and examples and you’re good to go. If you have really awesome new statistics or facts to share, that written content will probably attract new attention and links.

But… what if you don’t, what if you just want to repurpose a nice article that got so-so play in hopes it draws more attention?

Look at all your old content and see if any of it would be a good for a “then and now” focus.

Add as many then/now images as you can, cut some of the written content or change it to support the new pictures/cinemagraphs etc, and relaunch that sucker. Boom!

Who doesn’t like to reminisce or chuckle over how things have changed? Most people love this stuff, find some great then/now images and do a little historical perspective when you relaunch your old content. It’s a great way to get more mileage out of what you’ve already written.

Image from www.boredpanda.com/before-after-star-wars-characters/

Ten Podcasting Tools and Resources For Link Building

Podcasting, while less talked about than video, is a unique way to spread content, engage customers and attract links. There are many easy-to-use podcasting tools available, most are inexpensive and come with minimal learning curves. I download podcasts to my smartphone and listen while I walk or drive, it’s a great way to catch up on what’s happening, take a short class or hear about a subject in-depth.

If you have a lot of written content, consider turning it into a podcast and adding to spots like iTunes and the niche podcast directories as an additional way to broaden your brand’s reach and attract links. Here are some resources and tools to help you use podcasting as a link building tool.

Podcast Resources

1. Podcasting Legal Guide on Creative Commons. “The purpose of this guide is to provide a general roadmap of the legal issues specific to podcasting…and covers US-based legal questions only.” Know the legalese before you get started, avoid issues as you record.

2. How To Start Your Own Podcast (Step by Step) Easy to follow guide detailing how to set and broadcast, types of equipment and submitting your podcast to iTunes.

3. PodCast411 This is a directory of directories, sites listed here do not charge you to list your podcast.

TIP => Have a new tool or service you’re promoting? Send a press release to the podcast owners and offer a sneak peek or discount code to their listeners if they have you as a guest.

Podcast Tools

4. Audacity. Considered the most popular open source digital audio editor, Audacity is compatible across Windows, OSX (Apple), Linux and more. Audacity only provides functions for capturing and editing, there are no publishing options. Free.

5. BlogTalkRadio – Host your own live talk radio show with any phone and a computer or listen to thousands of new shows created daily, can be posted directly to Facebook. Paid/offers a free trial. (search on “BlogTalkRadio coupon code” for discounts)

6. SnapKast – A Windows desktop software solution for fast, easy MP3 audio and MPEG-4 video content creation and delivery. Sessions shared online, delivered via RSS podcasts, and played back on any computer or mobile device. Free demo, one paid option.

7. Hipcast – Create and manage audio and video podcasts from the cloud, post directly to your blog, to iTunes, and into their large on-site directory. Has iPhone App, record and publish new episodes straight from the App. Paid/offers a free trial.

8. PodOMatic – Create a podcast and mini cast (adding images to podcast) from their site, upload to their directory. Easiest service to use, no bells and whistles, however. Basic service is free, upgrades available. Trail offer available.

9. TalkShoe – The host picks a topic and launches a community call where up to 250 people can participate. Guests join in via computer or telephone, they can listen or join the discussion. When the call is finished, TalkShoe records the call as a podcast and makes it available to the host. The podcast can be added to your blog, website, or Facebook via a widget plus added to iTunes and podcast directories. Free and paid plans.

10. Podbean – Has two options, one for Publishers (paid) and one for Subscribers (free). Publishers can create professional podcasts in minutes without programming knowledge. The Podbean interface allows you to upload, publish, manage and promote your podcasts with just a few clicks of the mouse. Subscribers – Store your podcast subscriptions online, access from any computer and add new subscriptions from anywhere. You can also download and play podcasts on your mobile phone.

Interested in having more tools and resources? Check out our Podcast Tools page in our Link Building Tool Directory.

How To Use Flattery To Snag An Influencer

There’s a trend right now to find “influencers” to help promote content, the idea is to figure out who in your industry has large followings on social media and get him or her to retweet/push your content so it is exposed to a wide audience and picks up new links.

Nice idea and it does work now and again but like anything that’s promoted publicly, the strategy is overused and abused. Doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, there are only so many “influencers” out there, trying to get your infographic or article noticed can be a challenge.

So how can you snag an influencer so s/he notices you and (hopefully) becomes more receptive to your outreach? Flattery may be an option:

Nice way to get yourself noticed. Now ask me again to help promote your article! 🙂

Will Google Devalue Links? Will I Win The Lottery?

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of shoulder shrugging when I read titles like “State of Links”. I generally skip over them since I assume the article will be about the death or dying process of links and their ranking influence on Google.

Pardon me while this long-time link builder yawns. My apathetic attitude is not personal, some of those articles are written by people I adore, I’m just tired of rehashing yet again why links may or may not be helpful or devalued in today’s ranking algorithm.

Will knowing links are being devalued change the way you work?

I mean, really?

Are you going to produce subpar content or crappy website copy if you knew Google was dumbing down the importance of links in the algorithm?

Are you going to spend time getting “easy” links, which generally means they sit on low ranking web pages, and expect a boost in traffic or ranking?

Or will you stop your outreach campaigns and just pray people find your content? (aka what Google wants you to do) 😥

Probably not. Spending time trying to figure out if links are losing their usefulness is like spending time figuring out where the socks in the dryer go or how belly lint grows. It’s not worth your time. It’s never been about link building anyway; it’s always been about link marketing.

Even way back in 2003, when all you needed was a bunch of links to rank a page, that’s all you needed, didn’t matter where they sat. Fast forward and now you need a bunch of links on quality pages. What changes if they devalue links?

The link itself is just a conduit, the page the link sits on is the secret sauce even if you use the smartest anchor text in the world. Brands won’t stop being brands, quality content is still what makes a page part of the Knowledge Graph.

If you come back at me and say “we need to know so we know where to put our efforts”.

On the off chance of sounding like a broken record… I mean, really?

The Net/Web are made up of two things, links and web pages. No rocket science there, good SEO’s understand how to market both.

Did you change the way you work when Rank Brain was introduced? Come on, be honest.

From Google’s perspective that was a big deal but from the SEO community? I saw article after article after article talk about it but not one of them offered new tactical insights or strategies.

Sites hosting good content are rewarded, spammy sites are not. More rocket science.

The fact the vast majority of “Do Links Still Matter?” type articles are written as a way to generate links and do a little chest pounding means the authors understand links are still a necessity in order to rank.

You will never be able to figure Google out or control what they do, control what you can! Do less link building and more link marketing and you won’t have to worry about the state of links.

p.s. Read Russ Jones comments here and here. The man is spot on.

Link Building With Newsletters

Why Use Industry-Focused Newsletters in Link Building?

Three reasons:

1. Newsletters are either topic or geographically focused which means the people reading them are interested in those topics, link building with newsletters

2. You have an opportunity to put your content in front of a lot of people who have opted in to read the industry publications,

3. The content is algorithmically relevant to your website.

A Newsletter Example

Here’s an example of a site sending newsletters by topic: SmartBrief.com/subscribe

Try to get content on the newsletters in your niche, it will build exposure for your site and be a different outlet hosting your content. (don’t just use blogs, boring!)

Read through past newsletter editions and make note of sources being mentioned, try to get content in these newsletters as well.

Backlink the newsletters to see if they have inbound links, if yes, reach out to sites linking to the newsletter and offer your website as a resource.

Make a note of the images and video’s being shared, try to use similar images or create a video on related topics.

NoFollow is OK

If you find a great, high traffic newsletter using nofollow attributes on their links, no worries, just point your links to your social media profiles instead of your site.

Getting your link-filled content published on industry newsletters builds a brand and showcases your company. People are more apt to link to a company they “know” or know of over those they don’t. Make every effort to find a newsletter in your niche and work to get content published on them.

How to Find Newsletters

Start by finding the people who run them. Go to Linkedin and general search:

“newsletter” + “your keywords”

People who handle the company newsletter usually put that designation in their profiles.

Run a general search on:

“newsletter” + “long tail keyword”

for smaller but targeted newsletters. Use the news site of your choice (I prefer Yahoo News) and search for

“newsletter” + “new” or “launched” + keyword

to find new publications. New publications usually welcome fresh content and writers.

Newsletters are not always in written form, search on YouTube for the terms “newsletter” and your keywords. Offer yourself as a guest on next video.

Backlink the videos to see who is linking to them, reach out to people linking to video and offer your content.

Write a review of the video newsletter, see tips from above on outreach.