eCa$hTalk

Each day that goes by, Google gets a bit more sophisticated. And, five years ago, you could call someone up and just say, “hey, bud, we have cool sites. Let’s swap some links.” Not so anymore. Getting link juice from others is still possible. But, it just requires a little more originality.

You can still get link juice by “triangulating” your links. Let me throw in this little diagram to explain what I am talking about.

It is a well-known fact that Google is getting “smarter” about reciprocal linking. What worked just a few years ago does not work today. Contrary to what some might say, reciprocal linking will not hurt you. It just will not give you the bang it used to. In fact, it probably will do very little for you - if at all.

Instead of wasting your time with reciprocal relationships that do not work, invest your time in good directory strategies, or triangulate your link building relationships. I would recommend that you become very involved in your niche. That is the mistake that I feel a lot of people make. I have been guilty of this. You want to do too much at one time. You scatter your fire - when, in reality, you should probably focus on one area, build relationships with site owners, and invest time in working with people who you can establish link building relationships with. Then, you can triangulate your links. Instead of saying, “hey, I’ll link to you if you link to me”, instead say “I have site X, it will link to you. You, in turn, link to my other site Y.”

And, the more sites you can include in this the better. In reality, we should talk about another point. So, perhaps instead of a triangle, we should be talking about a square. This should be beyond a triangle. Because the more sites that are involved with this link exchange, the more likely it will be that Google will not lessen the power of these links. But, as I said, this involves getting involved within a niche and even having multiple sites in that niche. Who says you have to scatter your fire over many niches? Get good at one area, build relationships in that niche, and start your little empire from there.

As a Business Development Director for a .com company, I am constantly having to locate phone numbers for a face-less web. Some website owners are easy to find. They post their phone numbers on their site on
a “Contact Us” page. Too bad that is not the case for most smaller sites.

If you have tried to find a site owner to establish a partnership or a link exchange, you feel that pain of what I am talking about. Well, I have a little methodology that I work through in finding someone on the web. And, though it is not full-proof, it can certainly lessen the pain associated with finding website owners.

Here’s the process:

1. Go to the site itself. Sure, most site owners don’t want to be badgered on the phone by ramdom people who found them on the web. But, they still might place that phone number in a “Privacy Policy” or within the website’s “Terms & Conditions”. And, if not, you may be able to get a mailing address or name that you can use to do a Reverse Lookup, via Whitepages.com.
2. Go to AboutUs.org. About Us is an outstanding directory of site information. I would say that 60% of the time, I can get a phone number through Aboutus. It’s a gold mine of information. Not only can you find contact information, but, most of the time you can find some very good general information on what the site is.
3. Go to Whois.net. Most people know about this. Whois retains a record of the domain owner (though not nearly always accurate). And, it is a good resource. But, I place it #3 because I find the previous ways to find people to be much better. Many times, through Whois, you will find outdated information (thought it is supposed to be constantly updated). And, you will also find simply proxies - and not the actual site owners. But, it can still be a valuable resources, if the first two means failed.
4. Whitepages.com. If you have a clue on a city/state, you can enter that name here and get a good phone number.
5. Search on Google. Go back to the Terms & Conditions and find the name of that site’s business entity. Search for the [name of the business] + [LLC/Corp/LLP, etc.]. If you are actually dealing with a business entity, it amazes me just how many times that you will not be able to find a phone number for the site, but, you will be able to find a phone number for that business entity.
6. Use “site:[insert website name] phone]”. Place this query in the command line of Google. This will search all the pages on a particular domain and look for “phone”. You can also use “contact” or if you happen to know an area code for the site, substitute that in for “phone”.
7. And, next, the biggest pain in the a#$ - the Secretary of State records for a particular state. Let’s say that you know where the site is … and none of the other ways can help … then, I would go to the site entity’s Secretary of State’s website … look in the “corporations” registration section. And, there, you may have a very good chance of finding that number.
8. Linkedin - Right, I know what you are saying… but, not everyone is on Linkedin. Exactly. That is why this is last. But, I have had some success in finding site owners using Linkedin, too.

By going through this process, I am able to locate 85-90% of the site owners on the web. Happy hunting!