Some people may not have gotten the message I was trying to get across when I “introduced” the idea of Pink Hat SEO. (Hey Danielle, I actually did it! Haha! And your pink teddy bear had a special appearance on my powerpoint *winks*).

Truth be told, I had second thoughts adding that part in my presentation. I was afraid some people will find it juvenile and inappropriate for a serious and prestigious event such as SEMCON 2007. But I had to squeeze it in to drive a point, and to somehow put my personality into my talk. I mean, seriously now, if I’d be remembered at all, I don’t mind being remembered as that girl who had a pink presentation. Haha. Okay, fine, not really. But, well, you get what I’m saying.

Now once again, I didn’t mean “girly stuff” by Pink Hat SEO, which, if I remember right, I pointed out several times during my presentation. What I wanted to focus on was using social media as a means to build link networks for the purpose of SEO. And well, perhaps adding eye-catchy stuff (not necessarily pink) on your site so that people will link to you. The only reason why I related it with being a girl is because girls do love to socialize and attract people.

It’s true what they say — SEO techniques can simply be classified as either black or white, period. But just like choosing between what’s right and wrong, sometimes, there really is no black and white. SEO Hats that are Green, Blue or Pink, perhaps, are just used for the purpose of discussion, to set apart certain techniques from the ones we usually do. Basically, that was what I was trying to point out.

Anyway, I promised some people that I’ll upload my powerpoint presentation on Advanced Link Building Techniques, so here goes. Warning to those who weren’t there at the SEMCON, you’ll see a lot of pink in here: Download away. :)

I cannot match the Great Aaron Wall’s unconventional link building checklist, but here’s a few more suggestions. After all, you can never tell which ones will work. I once said that women have what it takes to RULE the SEO industry, and here are a few link building tactics we can do that men can’t. Ha! :)

1. Offer free dates on your site. Get your male visitors involved in a contest of sorts, require them to blog about why they think they deserve a date with you, and require them to blog about your date right after. Sounds familiar, you say? Of course, Lauren did it. Ask her yourself, or, head over to her blog and see for yourself how well it worked. Heh.
2. Attend those blogger events and get drunk. Make sure you’re around bloggers (the likes of Mike Villar, TJ Cafuir, and well, The Man Blog, I suppose) so that when you puke at them, you know you’re guaranteed a link, plus maybe an entire paragraph documenting how you made a mess of yourself. (Or how cute you are when you’re drunk. Hah.)
3. Attend those blogger events, be a social butterfly, smile and say hi to everyone as if it’s your birthday. Make sure you have a bunch of business cards ready to give away
4. Post pictures of yourself wearing skimpy outfits. Fine, this might not get you links, but at least you get traffic.
5. Walk around the office wearing a plastic tiara, and wave your hand ala-Binibining Pilipinas. This really works if you’re working in an internet marketing company where most of your officemates have blogs or twitter accounts.
6. Twit the whole day, even when mobile. Announce to everyone you’re in love, or you’re depressed, and other emo stuff. You see, Emo kids are IN these days.
7. Wear matching pink outfit all the time. The kind that will make people think of care bears, or alice in wonderland, or strawberries. (Uhm, wala lang. Papansin lang.)
8. Be annoyingly sweet online and offline. Especially with guys whose sites have high pageranks. (Hi, Mikey. LOL.)
9. Keep linking to Aaron Wall until he notices you. Or, Yugatech. (Hi, Aaron. Hi, Abe. Hi.)
10. Marry an SEO guru. Exhibit A: Aaron Wall’s marrying a Filipina. Exhbit B: Sharmskee’s got a permanent sidebar link from Macalua.com. Get the picture? ♥

Okay, don’t listen to me. Just taking a break from all these link building stuff. Back to work now. Heh.

One of the things I realized as I prepare for my talk on Advanced Link Building Techniques at the much-awaited SEMCON 2007 is that, the “advanced” part of it is pretty basic. True enough, the more you dig into what you thought was a complicated topic, the more you realize how simple it is. Apparently, this idea applies to link building too.

Link building is not like a complicated chemical solution that would explode if you didn’t follow a certain step-by-step procedure. Yes, some techniques may be detrimental to your search engine rankings, and could either pull your sites up or down drastically. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try and test ways to build your link network and see which ones will work for you.

Also, the one thing I like about it is, you can put your personality into your link building strategy, couple it with some standard techniques, and the right combinations could easily make your project flourish before your eyes. And while there are gazillion ways of doing link building, in the long run, it all boils down to the basics.

Let me tell you more about that on October 9. SEMCON Philippines 2007.

And let me just add that there is such a thing as Pink SEO. Yup. ;)

More at SEMCON 2007. Be there.

P.S. Trust me, don’t believe everything she says. You see, she’s a very good friend of mine. LOL.