That we live in the ‘age of earned media’ is not my idea, but something I heard once and have come to understand as the truth.  Today, like never before, business has to earn impressions by being newsworthy and relevant. Sticking to a subject and becoming an expert is how individuals can dominate search engine result pages (SERPs) ahead of corporations, and marketing new products and ideas online now requires originality, and good old fashioned storytelling.

The search for experts drives the internet, and trustworthy data seems to be the most important currency of the web.  When I check my traffic stats I can see that 99% of my readers find me in Google search, because of the things I’ve written and the pictures I’ve taken, and the keywords that I own in SERPs.

Before 2006 the word went out at blog conventions and in SEO workshops that “Search Engine Optimization now revolves around link building”. And that fact has created the new business of ‘link brokerages’  that employ link farmers, sneezers, solicitors and spammers to leave their client’s URL in every nook and cranny of the web, and by whatever means possible.

Today in June 2009, off-shore link farms and weighted indexes are not effective link building solutions because although they still count for a link, the page rank juice has dried up. These places are simply becoming less and less relevant. This is the age of earned media and now you have to deserve the link; Smojoe believes that the best links should be issued from contextually similar web copy that’s filled with niche keywords beside a picture with similar alt text on a page with a very high usability.

Smojoe indexed Canadian Discussion Forums in June 2008

In my list I marked the forums in which it was possible to leave do-follow links right in the post, and the ones that only allowed signature links, and the ones that were stupidly complicated or too heavily moderated. I still have this list, and it’s valuable to me especially when I’m contacted by businesses that need some presence in a core niche. I use the list properly, and leverage my reputation for good ‘on topic’ posts full of relevant info.

While indexing sites, the most popular themes encountered were local events forums, followed by sports, movies and celebrities, coupon mom, and travel. My favourite discussion forum is UrbanToronto.ca and I respect the acidic barrage of witty banter that erupts on Stillepost.ca but God help marketers that try and post links there; they’ll never be able to show the resultant conversation to their clients, and they’ll soon be forced to worry and hope that Stillepost’s extremely web savvy membership doesn’t contact their clients and get them fired.

When Discussion Forums Die

On the other end of the spectrum, while I was indexing Canadian discussion forums in June 2008, I encountered multiple sites that were fighting a daily barrage of Rolex watch ads, Nike Air Jordan ads, perfumes and cosmetics, teeth whitening kits, swimming pools, MP3 downloads and cut-rate cell phone ring tones and cheap long distance plans.

Discussion Forums Filled With Spam

Some webmasters simply give up. Today the internet is filled with free discussion forum templates that someone started for a local hockey team, or a drama club, or a beauty pageant that are now completely overrun by these insidious spammers. The entire index, in every category is filled with user submitted threads promising name brand running shoes, shirts in all sizes for $9.99, DVDs, ring tones and ‘cheap phone cards’ and of course there are no posts with any replies, and only a few have multiple views. These discussion forums have become 100% spam, and somewhat unique portals wherein spammers are spamming other spammers because every genuine user has gone away.

Anonymous Asian Robots

There is a company in the Philippines called Goowall.com that sells fifty links for about $50 US dollars. This firm has a big white room filled with computers and staff. The employees work off spreadsheets posting ads in discussion forums all over the world, making them look like real conversations sparked by a sincere request for help on a particular subject. For example, a freshly planted request for help finding used cars will be visited by another employee hours later with a link to their client, a used car dealership website. The quality is low, and their English is poor, but the links work and are indexed by Google.

How To Create White Hat Social Media Solutions

So if inbound links make your website stand out more prominently in SERPs, how do you acquire them, legally? Matt Cutts, a Google insider, describes how good social media solutions can come in the form of funding some creativity, in a recent interview with Eric Enge.

And again Matt Cutts describes how blogs and specifically how Wordpress can help your business SEO in an article on WebProNews.

Today every business deserves a Wiki chronicling their origins, a Flickr photostream showing company picnics, a Twitter account, profiles on TellOscar.com where they answer consumer queries, and their own YouTube channel and most importantly a Wordpress blog to tie it all together. Instead of buying links, now they have to write articles and publish stories, photos and ideas that are linkworthy, in this new age of earned media.

Tags: Earned Media, Goowall, link farms, Matt Cutts, storytelling, white hat

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Actually sharing secrets, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.