If you think of the one keyword you would like your website to rank well on, do you rank on the first page in the search engine rankings for that keyword? I would guess 99% of us would say we don’t rank for that keyword. That’s because it’s probably very competitive and there’s only 10 spots on the front page. The majority of the sites linking in the top page are probably quite a bit larger than your site. If you’re tired of being outranked by those huge sites with SEO budgets that likely exceed what your site generates in an entire year, you may want to try Barnacle SEO.

Barnacle SEO isn’t anything revolutionary. In fact Will Scott of Search Influence coined the term back in 2011. However the strategy is making waves again, especially as Google recommends that you stop link building.

The idea behind Barnacle SEO is simple; attach yourself to a larger site then use that site as a vehicle to get noticed in the search results. However the goal isn’t necessarily to increase your search engine rankings, but rather to increase your exposure and brand awareness when those high ranking results are clicked.

The strategy is pretty simple:

• Identify the highly searched keywords relevant to your business (don’t pick niche keywords)
• Identify the sites ranking for the those sites
• Identify linking opportunities on those sites
• Execute your linking strategy

Now you may think that the only real opportunities are to setup profiles on sites like Yelp and Angie’s List. If you have already set these up, great! There are other opportunities though like adding annotations to Wikipedia. The name of the game is to increase your site’s exposure, not necessarily link building. If you do get link juice, that’s definitely a bonus. Just remember to be creative when identifying your linking opportunities!

Marketing Your Business