Links, paid or otherwise, are great. They can provide you with a lot of information, none of which has to do with Google.
http://searchengineland.com/070709-125900.php
From SEL:
Quote:
From competitive link analysis I learned that
1). My client's largest rival was going to be an exhibitor at a food industry trade show that was months away. My client had no idea, but by discovering it they now have time to react and respond in a strategic manner.
2). My client was doing business with over twenty different food industry groups that had web sites with links pages—many of which had not linked to my client's site, because it was at a new URL and those regional food industry distributors had no idea. Those twenty sites have all been contacted and the new links have already started to appear.
3). One of my client's competitors was sponsoring several high end content food blogs.
4). Another competitor had recently launched on online sweepstakes and placed targeted links on high interest niche content sites.
5). Several competitors had created corporate Wikipedia pages and others were being quite aggressive with Wikipedia topical link insertions.
Have you spotted the one common thread to all of the above discoveries? None of them have anything to do with search rank.
|
Linear Mode
