30 Links in 30 Days Linkbuilding Campaign - Day 13 - Scribd

Filesharing and Linkbuilding

The simple sharing of files (which granted, can become quite complex) represents a significant opportunity and challenge. The complexities are as follows and raise the question of the value of links and link-building:

• A link as a reputation verification opportunity (aka PageRank)
• A link as a traffic generating opportunity (aka visitors)
• A link as an ecommerce transaction opportunity (aka money)

Opportunities, opportunities, opportunities. They abound! But let's be clear, you don't get any of these without focus, focus, focus. It will not be raining PageRank, visitors, or transactions anytime soon.

Scribd as a Market for Documents

Scribd is really a marketplace for documents, first and foremost. I may have started as social media, but it has become a marketplace and that is how we need to think of it. Brilliant. It is important, therefore, to use Scribd in that way, as a marketplace.

• A marketplace is where you can sell things
• A marketplace is where you can advertising things
• A marketplace is where you can build your brand (namely visibility)

Scribd Sells Documents

In addition to Amazon and other ebook and pdfs for sale Scribd supports ecommerce. Recommended.

Scribd Hosts Documents for Free

But also think about using Scribd to give away documents (the original concept was sharing). Along with Docstoc and Slideshare, Scribd is a great place to house your pdf documents for external use. Anything that an organization makes available to customers, either on websites, downloads or regularly emailed attachments can be nicely placed online in these document sites, all the while increasing reach.

Scribd and PageRank

The Scribd homepage has an impressive PageRank 8. Clearly there is lots of valuable inbound linking going on. Individual pages can gain healthy PageRank.

Scribd and Links

The Scribd user profile handily provides a nice follow link on handy username URL. No anchor text. However the profile supports a variety of information and can become SERP-competitive if the right document titles and descriptions are uploaded and available for the spiders.

Related posts:

1. 30 Links in 30 Days Linkbuilding Campaign - Day 14 - Docstoc
2. 30 Links in 30 Days Linkbuilding Campaign - Day 19 - BluehatSEO
3. 30 Links in 30 Days Linkbuilding Campaign - Day 10 - Blip.TV