Warning: this content is older than 365 days. It may be out of date and no longer relevant.

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 7.12.29 AM.png

The king is dead!
Long live the king!

This cry from medieval times at first appears contradictory until you think about it:

The former king dies: the king is dead.

The new king ascends to the throne: long live the king!

The same is true of marketing techniques like link building. Old link building was:

  • Send mass emails to webmasters, begging for links
  • Spamming blog comments
  • Making widgets with automatic links back
  • Buying link placements
  • Submitting crappy guest blog posts
  • Auto-syndicating your content on thousands of low quality domains

Link building is dead! Google has even said so.

The new link building is:

  • Writing content so good that journalists and publishers pick it up
  • Connecting and building real relationships with influencers and journalists
  • Creating tools that people want to share
  • Guest posting for direct traffic, not links
  • Buying no-follow ads to reinforce your content’s visibility
  • Frequent social/email engagement with your audience, sharing your content and encouraging people to share with their audiences

Long live link building!


You might also enjoy:


Want to read more like this from Christopher Penn? Get updates here:

subscribe to my newsletter here


AI for Marketers Book
Take my Generative AI for Marketers course!

Analytics for Marketers Discussion Group
Join my Analytics for Marketers Slack Group!