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.