Launching A Brand: Link-Building Stage One

When I launch a new brand, link-building is one of the first steps in the process. If you haven’t yet read HotelCritic.org – Building A Brand feel free to read it and come-back to this post so you have a bit of context.

There are a few stages to my link-building process and stage one is what I like to call the “Above The Fold”  links. For this step I type “hotel critic” into Google and look at what appears before I have to scroll.

I then look at the corresponding sites and determine if I can get a link to my site from one of those sites since Google considers them the authority on the subject. With Hotel Critic I’m in luck – Yahoo Answers is above the fold which means I can add a comment to the Yahoo Answers question with a link to my site.

When you do this always make sure you are actually providing real information and not spammy advertisements. In this case the person is looking for a way to start-out as a hotel critic and my site is actually a perfect fit!

Next I see that HoboTraveler takes the next spot – this is a site I should get involved with since they have the top spot in Google when searching for Hotel Critic. I’ll do some more research here and get in contact with the owners of the site to see about potential partnership opportunities.

Below that I see videos that are tagged as “hotel critic”. As I add videos to my site I’ll make sure to tag them in YouTube as “hotel critic” so over time they will display in this section. Video can sometimes be the quickest and easiest way to appear above the fold on Google.

I will follow the same process with Yahoo and look for the same kinds of opportunities. In the next stage I’ll be looking below the fold and finding good potential link partners. At the end of the day there is no reason HotelCritic.org shouldn’t be above the fold – but as with anything it is going to take time and energy to get it there!

More to come – looking forward to sharing each step of the journey turning HotelCritic.org into a full-fledged online business! The idea here is a business that can be build-up and then grow organically as more and more people add reviews.

As I said in my video yesterday – I’m not looking for projects that require me to work full time for them to make money. Instead I look for ways I can setup a system and create a business that generates passive income! It doesn’t mean there won’t be a lot of work up-front setting-up the system but in the end the system should run whether I’m spending 8 hours a day on it or not!

Stay tuned for more updates – this is my one and only development project right now and it feels good!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton