Times have changed in SEO, more so during 2012 than ever before when it comes to link building. The SEO “sphere” of knowledge is awash with good advice from respected SEOs on how people and brands should be building links moving forward. The majority of these strategies rely on a few recurring areas:

• Building relationships
• Generating good content
• Utilising social media to proliferate and leverage opportunities

Now I’m not disagreeing that this is what businesses “should” be doing, but there is a far more effective way to generate links while ticking all those boxes at the same time. Offline events are by no means new. In fact, big brands run them all the time; they invite PR contacts and journalists while agencies run forums and round tables to discuss tactics when new products launch. This is essentially part of everyday business.

So, with all this discussion of building relationships and interacting with people, why can’t this apply to link building strategies? I’ve personally witnessed a few failed big brand events that were designed specifically with SEO in mind and I believe the cause of failure was obvious: they were announcing to bloggers rather than involving them.

Case Study

I joined my current high-end retail company, Farfetch.com, about three months ago and within the first few weeks of being hired, I was told about an event they had planned. The concept was to invite influential fashion bloggers from around Europe, who may or may not have heard about the brand, to a night in London for something called the “#digitaldressup”. The bloggers were chosen for a number of reasons. Focus on tools such as followerwonk was important, but more than that, our internal employees knew who the influential people in the fashion industry were. On the night of the event, these bloggers were able to try on a large selection of high-end clothing and could also dress models in whatever outfits they put together. We had a professional photographer on hand to snap their photos and had a roving camera crew filming the event. We created party packs to take home, had a DJ, free drinks and all the other extras you would expect.

Not so ground breaking yet? Well, no. It was the use of digital and the interaction factor that made this event special in terms of SEO and link building returns.

Images

Most events will have someone with a camera walking around and that’s great, but what is this good for besides a few photos being displayed on the website? Our own concept was to take photos and then create animated gifs (as well as stills) of each blogger and send these to them after the event. This provided the bloggers with high resolution images of themselves and something different they could use on their own blogs. For those who have never worked in retail (especially fashion), note that images are very important to these bloggers and their readers because it's such a visual niche.

Digital Integration

In addition to bloggers being able to dress themselves and models up, we provided iPads with an application that allowed them to preview what the models could look like with different combinations of clothing.

As well as its practical application, this feature acted as another reminder that this was a digital event, that these images have been taken from the farfetch.com website and that the clothes featured in them could be purchased by both bloggers and their readers. We also tied in the iPad functionality to the website by creating a mini widget/application that users could test out on the website, though some opportunity was lost here by failing to make this widget available through some sort of "grab and share", which I'm sure many bloggers would have used.

Social Integration

The name of the event was “#digitaldressup”, which is obviously digitally focused, and we really wanted get the bloggers talking about the event online while they were at the event. There were signs strategically placed around the building reminding bloggers to tweet, post images on Instagram and to discuss whenever possible. In terms of social results, you can see our output from Instagram and Twitter:

• Instagram - On the evening of the event, 60 photographs were uploaded with our tag, reaching an audience of 15,434 people
• Twitter - There were 96 #digitaldressup tweets posted, reaching an audience of 83,935 people

The numbers of tweets and retweets were not what you would call massive in terms snowballing or going viral, and while that would have been great, it really wasn't our goal. It was meant as an event to involve a select number of influential bloggers to give them a personalised experience that they would remember and then take home with them.

We made sure that the photographer had taken photos of all the bloggers so we could run a competition after the event on Facebook. Whatever styles the bloggers had made up, we divided them into male and female groups and then let our fans choose the winner. The winner was then posted on our #digitaldressup landing page (see bottom) and this generated higher-than-average engagement levels. See the results from 5 related posts:

You can see in the above results that community engagement grew as we posted more and more information on Facebook. This not only provided exclusive content on our social networks, but it also acted as really useful "blogger bait". It was a way to get bloggers interested in what we posted on the social platforms.

Results

To clarify, this was originally created as a PR event and so, there were many success metrics, but the following results show the direct SEO impact. We measured the post-event results over a 2 week period, as we estimated that if bloggers were going to share or write about us, then it would happen within that timeframe. The output resulted in 15 good quality blog posts from highly influential bloggers in the fashion industry. You can see the exact link metrics below:

The average mozRank came to 4.03, the average mozTrust score came to 4.2 and the domain authority came in at just over 40. A worthy haul of links, I'm sure most of you would agree, considering we did not specifically ask any blogger to write about our brand or the event.

The next point truly emphasises why offline link building really does outweigh any online efforts: two months after the event, we checked for follow-ups by the bloggers (i.e. how many times had each blogger linked to or written about our brand) with no communication whatsoever after the event, and here is what we found:

Normal guest blog posting or content syndication is often not sustainable on the same location over long periods of time. With these results, we discovered that the fifteen different bloggers would write an average of two blog posts after the event. At the top, two distinct blogs linked to our website on four separate occasions, indicating the longevity of the value of these kinds of events.

As well as generating more occurrences of content linking back to our brand, the number of links in each blog post also varied. Our highest number of links was eight in one post. This may seem quite a high number, but in the fashion industry, people often talk about clothes "sets" and "outfits" and will link to multiple items each time, creating a natural, pleasing side effect.

How to get the most out of offline events for link building?

• Speak to your PR department or agency and get their ideas; they're focused on how to connect with your audience in the "real world".
• Do your research well when looking at who to invite to your event. While social statistics are important, don't neglect simple metrics like how often a blogger posts and whether they get referenced/linked to by other authoritative locations.
• Ask your employees and colleagues who they think should be invited; this will provide an excellent starting place for an invite list.
• Use a hashtag - not only is it a way for people to relate to the event in the digital world, but it's easy to track across multiple platforms.
• Let your audience participate in the event in a way that results in them having/creating something that they can use on their blogs. We gave animated gifs, but we could have done much more. A "goody bag" is a great way of giving useful, tangible content to the bloggers. If they decide to write a post about your brand or event, be sure you've provided the tools that generate a good experience (and potentially link to the right areas in your business).
• Put physical signage around your event prompting social interaction; remember, you've probably invited these bloggers because they carry weight in their niche and their followers will be interested when the blogger talks about your brand.
• More often than not, bloggers won't travel far without at least having travel and accommodation paid for; don't be tight - these guys don't owe you anything.
• Integrate with social media and promote your events across all platforms; competitions are a good way of drawing the real world audience to an online platform for a specific reason
• To complement your offline event, provide digital content for each blogger. We could have done a better job of this at our event. If you can build something that will add value to a blogger's potential review, then it will be worthwhile to make the effort.

So why is offline link building the NEW online link building?

• You will establish longer lasting relationships with bloggers.
• You will receive more links but they will look more natural because they ARE natural.
• You will receive higher quality links.
• You will receive actual targeted traffic to your website and that could lead to conversions (although you need to invite the right people).
• The cost of running offline events is quite similar to, if not cheaper than, employing an agency or link builders for the same period of time.
• Your brand will receive offline benefits in print, as it's essentially a PR event.
• This is a sustainable method of building links for any business.
• All these methods are within Google's guidelines for building links and they promote the idea of syndicating good content.

None of what I've talked about is ground breaking. The way Google is changing requires businesses to start building contacts and creating relationships with bloggers who can be transformed into brand advocates. I believe that this is one of the only sure-fire strategies available to brands, and they must learn to employ these methods, if they aren't doing so already.