Yesterday was Day 1 of my self imposed domain authority challenge. I’d have to say it was a success. I spent 3 hours, just as I’d hoped to, and found 3 solid prospects. Two of these links should definitely happen and one is a bit more on the fence.
If I can have 2 more days like yesterday this week then I’d say this little experiment is going to be really profitable for us. Today’s tip is this: don’t be afraid to make some phone calls. I tend to beat this to death but it’s how I tracked down all of the prospects yesterday.
Making telephone calls is definitely a pain. If you’re going after .edu’s then it’s guaranteed you will spend a half hour on the phone just to get to the webmaster or somebody with some authority. But, in my opinion, this is time well spent in building your status as an authority in your industry and building a higher barrier of entry/moat around your niche to protest your SERPs.
Recently I’ve been working a lot to find, build, and finagle “authority” links to create more trust for our main domains. As you all know, the right authority links can mean BIG money for your sites. The sites I’m working on are very established in their markets but we’re a very proactive team and we spend a lot of money to make sure the SERPs don’t turn on us. This week we signed an agreement to get on a pretty major media site and we’re currently investigating a few more similar possibilities.
Why should you care?
Well, I’m self imposing a little domain trust project. I’m calling it the “One Week Authority Challenge,” (stupid name) although hopefully it turns into an ongoing, organized thing. My plan is this: spend at least 3 hours per day for the next 5 business days email, calling, and searching out relevant links.
I’m not going to be buying links from skeezy .edu blogs off DP or any spammer stuff. I will be seeking out high quality, relevant links just as I would any other day of the week, except solely .edu and .gov websites. I’ll update every day about my progress and hopefully I can pass on some wisdom about how you can build some trust for your sites. Although I likely won’t give away the urls of where I’m finding these links, I’ll let you know how I found the page and what (if anything) it cost us.
Follow my progress by subscribing to my RSS feed.
