We’ve done everything but open it up to SEOs . . . until now!
We’re excited to announce a free beta test of Attributor for SEOs looking to build links. Find more information and sign up here. To save a trip to our FAQ, here are some answers.
Is it really free?
Yes, no cost to you. All we want is your feedback.
Why are you opening this up to SEOs?
We believe in the link economy and can’t think of a better group to help us improve our service.
Does Attributor guarantee links?
No and anyone using our service to obtain paid links will be politely asked to leave. What Attributor will do is automate your backlink prospecting and track your success.
Do you only find PR7 and above sites?
We wish. Last month, Attributor identified 25,000 link opportunities with a PR5 or better. With your help, we’ll improve this number and deliver the right link candidates for you.
Is your vision to be a SEO service? Our customers consist of many large publishers including folks who are using us for Link Building. We will soon be providing services for all types and sizes of publishers, including bloggers.
Louis Gray analyzed his referral traffic trends, saw that blogs were delivering a declining percentage of traffic to his site and came to the conclusion that blog linking is less important than it used to be; instead he argues that social media sites are increasing in importance.
While I agree with the ultimate conclusion that waiting for Scoble or Mashable links is a flawed strategy, Louis’s statement of links being less important is way off-base. Links are an online currency and a key driver of your search engine ranking - a statement backed up by experts such as Debra Mastaler and Jeff Jarvis - and no one can claim that search traffic’s importance.
If Louis is like other top blog sites we’ve analyzed, he’s missing a huge link and traffic opportunity. In the month of June, we loaded the publicly available RSS feeds for several top blog sites into our service to analyze how much re-use was occurring, and more importantly for this discussion, the percentage of re-use that did not link back.
As you can see from the figure below, many of the top blog sites are leaving (link) money on the table.
Louis (and anyone else), let us help you increase your blog link traffic by giving you a web-wide view of your link opportunities and the tools to secure them.
I have a love/hate relationship with SEO. I love its promise of getting traffic for “free.” I hate that many SEO tactics resemble a Potter-esque “Defense Against the Dark Arts” lesson. But now with our link-building platform, marketers can embrace SEO and accurately measure its success.
With evidence that search is now the primary navigation tool to reach branded content, ignoring link-building - a critical component of any SEO strategy - puts your brand at serious risk. If you produce high-quality content, you are sitting on an SEO gold mine. Your content is your greatest asset online and it’s time to use it to your advantage - Patrick Altoft at Blogstorm calls it a link building machine, and I couldn’t agree more.
The New York Times realized this last year when it removed its subscription content barrier and saw traffic from Google double. And recently, Sports Illustrated unleashed its 53-year old archive of articles and photos – all the words that Sports Illustrated has ever published and many of its images and videos. As John Squires, executive vice president of Time, Inc., told the New York Times “The real hidden value of this is what it does for search. The move quadruples the site’s volume.”
So what does all this mean to marketers? Think differently about your content assets and the value of links. Unleash your articles, images and videos and allow them to drive traffic back to your site. Track those that are linking back. Correct those instances that aren’t linking back and increase your traffic and brand awareness.
Internet trends come and go but creating unique content has always been a key component of a successful online strategy. Back in 2000, it was all about the 3 C’s: Content, Community and Commerce. Fast forward to 2008 and Techdirt’s Mike Masnick declares that banner advertising is dying and companies should treat their content as advertising.
I’d take this a step further - content is indeed advertising, but content also drive links. In the Google Economy, adding links is the best way to drive traffic back to your site.
Savvy publishers understand this - in September of last year, The New York Times boldly unleashed its subscription content making it available for free. The Times has been handsomely rewarded by doubling the amount of traffic received from Google. Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated jumped in, releasing every article, image or video published in the last 50 years in order to “pop up” in search rankings.
Improved search rankings will certainly boost traffic back to your site, but there are additional brand awareness benefits, particularly if you have image or video content. Google, Yahoo and MSN are rapidly integrating multi-media results into their Search Engine Results pages, often referred to as blended or universal search. According to comScore, 17% of searchers received universal search results in January, 2008.
So what does this all mean to marketers? Unleash your article, image and video assets and allow it to drive traffic back to your site and increase your brand awareness. Without a doubt, it’s a more effective way for you to penetrate social media than blinking banner ads.
For all but the most egregious cases, we’d like to suggest an alternative: Link Requests. Link Requests are notices sent to a web site re-using your work without giving you attribution. The notice asks for a link back to the site where your work was originally published. Attributor can monitor whether the link was added and report back to you.
Here are 10 reasons why Link Requests should become the new standard practice.
10. More Direct Traffic. Every link that points back to your site will result in more traffic to your site. Think of it as an affiliate program for your content – only you don’t have to pay for the clickthroughs.
9. No one wins when a DMCA notice is sent. First, unless you have an open and shut case, a DMCA notice can be a PR risk for the DMCA sender. Next, the site hosting the content has to deliver the bad news to its user putting them in an unfavorable spot. Finally, consumers lose overall because the result of content removal is one less place to find quality content.
8. Except Lawyers.
7. More Search Engine Traffic. Inbound links are the backbone on which your search engine rankings are built. If you get more links, your search engine rankings will improve. And no dodgy SEO tactics are required – you just make sure that all copies of your content link back to your site.
6. Freedom to Put Your Best Content Online. With the ability to harvest value from all copies of your content, you will no longer need to hold back your best stuff.
5. More Brand Awareness.Over 120,000 new blogs are created every day. By allowing your content to proliferate through this rapid growth channel, you extend your content’s reach exponentially.
4. The Link is Mightier than the Take-Down Notice. While it’s true that reusing text, images or videos without permission is basically theft, sending takedown notices to blogging moms won’t win you any new customers.
2. Enter the Social Media Arena. You don’t need to take chances on viral videos taking off every quarter; instead, allow your linked content to proliferate – it’s your best asset.
1. Links are Currency in the Google Economy. If Marcus Aurelius were alive, he would say “A man’s worth is no greater than his inbound links” . . . and he’d be right. You’ve already earned the right to rank highly in search engines. Securing links guarantees your credit.
But don’t take our word for this – just read how smart publishers like CondéNet are recognizing that content proliferation is a strategic exercise. Executing this strategy is now possible by gaining web wide visibility of how and where your articles, images or videos appear. Link Requests are the new standard response to your content being copied.
What do you think? What other ideas do you have to resolve the current impasse?
If you’re a celebrity, having your image copied across the web may be a good thing – people are talking about you and reinforcing this conversation with an image that, in most cases, puts you in a flattering context. So we thought it would be fun to look at celebrity images as a means to showcase Attributor’s web-wide monitoring capabilities and the opportunities this visibility uncovers.
This study does not attempt to make light of the issues that photographers face when confronted with unauthorized use of their work – if Lane Hartwell’s images are proliferating at even a fraction of the rate of the images on Maxim’s, FHM’s and People’s hot lists, there is an obvious impact on her business.
Attributor found 2,547 copies of the images across the web.
Problem or Opportunity?
There is plenty of evidence to suggest an untapped opportunity for publishers. The facts:
Are the copying sites commercial? Yes, a whopping 73% of the copying sites had ads on their pages.
How much traffic did these sites receive? According to our friends at Compete.com, about a third of the sites containing copies of the images were visited by more than 50k people in December, 2007.
Are any of the copying sites linking back to the original site?Very few – only 13% of the copies found linked back to the original or related celebrity site.
How do copies of the images rank in search engines? Very high. In fact, of the top 10 females, a copy outranked the original image in Google search results 100% of the time.
Implications for Publishers and Content Creators
Opportunities abound to harness value from your content as it leaves your site.
First, incremental revenue through new licenses of commercial image usage is available and ready for the taking. With web-wide visibility, finding new leads and billing existing licensees gets a lot easier.
Securing links to drive increased traffic is another untapped opportunity. Link building is the backbone of SEO best practices – using Attributor, you can now increase traffic on their destination sites by securing links.
Lastly, the findings are another reminder of images’ viral potential, waiting to be propelled by new viral content strategies. Implementing, measuring and optimizing these strategies requires web-wide, contextual visibility of where your content appears.
For many, the last option is clearly best. Your content leaves your site but you continue to get paid for it, either through ad share or a license fee . . . regardless of where it appears or which ad network is monetizing it.
Unfortunately, not everyone can afford a sales force, and, frankly, the market for your content may not as established as Reuters. Or maybe, they are only using a portion of your content.
But wait, there is another option – securing a link back to your content for each instance of re-use.
Why are links important? Google, Yahoo and MSN all base their search results on the number of inbound links to your site. If you aren’t paying attention to the number of links you receive, you’re probably not ranking highly in the search engines and you’re definitely losing out on traffic and customers.
How much is a link worth? It depends, but probably more than you think. According to Mesa-Ariz.-based Text Link Brokers, clients pay between $15 to $1,000 a month for a single link and $600,000 for a full service link building campaign.
And guess what - if your content is similar to categories we’ve analyzed, we’re not talking about a single link or handful of links. It varies by category, but in most cateogries we’re finding 10+ copies of every article that we track. In a search economy dominated by Google, this represents a tremendous traffic building opportunity.
Do search results impact traffic for other media types? Google announcement of universal search results – showing images, videos and text in a single result set – has already been embraced by Yahoo and indicates that search will become an increasingly more important channel for traffic across all media types.
So, I submit to those who know their content is being copied and care about it – there are new ways to act upon reuse so you can capture value for your content. It starts with links and, based on our product roadmap, will lead to even more direct monetization.
