Kevintomlinson.Com: Links Case Study

Overview

Kevin Tomlinson, a veteran Realtor in Miami Beach, Florida, asked Fathom SEO to help establish as many legitimate incoming links as possible to complement our natural search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

The payoff this year has been dramatic:

• 93% increase in referring links in 2006
• 83% increase in referring website traffic in 2006

Links can deliver traffic, but they also are known to influence rankings. Link building coupled with natural SEO helped Kevin land scores of top 10 rankings like:

• Miami Beach Condo - #2 on Google
• Miami Beach Condos - #3 on Google
• Miami Beach Realtor - #4 on Google

Kevin Tomlinson's Dilemma

A website is at risk of being banned by search engines when it's saturated with duplicate links on many pages (especially deep in the source code and not in the visible text). Kevin agreed to avoid any appearance of a link farm.

What is a link farm? It's usually a large collection of unrelated links clustered together on websites without much care about organization or relevance to the website content. Since links can influence rankings, some websites did everything they could to get links. But the influence of links is about the reputation or authority of each link, not how many links you get. In other words, their value is based on their quality, not the quantity.

Fathom SEO's Recommendations

We analyzed Kevin's existing link program and he agreed to move in a new direction to get links from other additional websites rather than stick with the ones structured behind the scenes of his website.

Fathom SEO targeted free and paid links from relevant websites, including business and specialty industry websites and directories.

Link Plan Highlights:

• Researched business directories to include client's listings

• Researched industry-specific directory listings
  Fathom SEO found approximately 100 real estate-related business directories and submitted Kevin's site. Most of these industry-specific directories required a back link from Kevin's website or a small fee.

• Developed News Release
  Fathom SEO worked to distribute Kevin's consumer guide, "Condo Buyers: How to Avoid Paying Too Much," through websites and Internet syndication feeds. Nearly 2,000 Internet users, including journalists, accessed the news release.

• Broadened reciprocal link building program
  Realizing this technique has been used improperly by many websites, Fathom SEO decided to refine a strict reciprocal link building campaign within ethical SEO practices. Today, Kevin has nearly 90 relevant reciprocal link partners.

• Local directory submissions
  Because Kevin is a Realtor in Miami Beach, it was essential that we submit Kevin's website to Miami Beach and Florida local directories.

Next Steps:

Link building is not a process that will give a client immediate results. Kevin's link popularity is growing steadily and will continue to build as new links to his website are added and indexed by the search engines.