Meetup (www.meetup.com) is a really great resource to find interesting groups and initiatives in London for every taste and like. Through this site I found my first blogger event in London: “Bloggers: Link Building, Article Marketing & Monetisation Guide w/ Lisa Myers”. I was really excited to see how this kind of event works out in another city and country as well as to learn something more about the important business of link building.

The guest speaker Lisa Myers is the recently voted search personality of the year at the UK Search Awards 2011. She is the CEO of Verve Search as well as founder and partner of the very cool SEO blog “SEO Chicks” – so a very credible person to teach us some lessons in link building. Her speech was very lively and entertaining (I just love when people talk free hand and pepper them with some anecdotes).

So here the main lessons:

1. See every link as vote for your site. Thus, if you want to find people for link-building you have to think about who is your target group. Those people are the most likely link builder because they are similar to your site. Also build up your keyword list.
2. Invest in some good tools which support link-building:
   • Majestic SEO http://www.majesticseo.com/ – the largest Link Intelligence database on the planet
   • LinkDex: http://www.linkdex.com/ – make the most out of your existing links
   • Raven Tools: http://raventools.com/ – a platform for SEO agencies and professionals for link management
3. There are several strategies to increase your SEO importance:
   • Link Bating means creating content that is likely to create links (e.g. a blogpost about a blogger event which mentions other attending bloggers ;-) ). To make others aware of your content go to people who have the power to spread the word. Ideally those people use a link text that relates to the topic or the keyword (anchor text).
   • Article Marketing is about finding those sites with the highest link authority that might be interested in your content. When you contact them, be direct and ask, don’t beat around the bush ;-) A good way to find relevant blogs is to search for keyword + “blogs* on Google. Furthermore, mom bloggers are a very good source in spreading the word.

I had an interesting evening and I also met some very nice blogger and twitterer from London: Brad from Receptional (http://bradj.co.uk/) – one of the organizers, Alexandra (www.salaorganica.co.uk) who is about to start her own blog about organic cosmetics, Nat – fresh from Thailand and Rahul with great love for Prenzlauer Berg.

Looking forward to the next event,
Toni

It has passed half a year since we decided starting our own online magazine during a phone call between Munich Train Station and Leipzig Gohlis.

Since then a lot of things have happened. Each one of us has her own favorite moments. The list of Toni definitely includes the moment our name was born, the hour when sisterMAG went live with its website. Or when we reached the magical number of 400 Facebook Fans and were lucky enough to sit next to each other that day. For Thea a special moment was the first mail of a stranger offering her help – in the meantime she has become quite a good friend. Furthermore the mail with the final .eps-file of our logo. Of course we will never forget that crazy December with daily advent calendar posts, many events and a photo shooting on Christmas Eve.

Our whole live has changed through the idea of sisterMAG. However this is just the beginning. We are thrilled to be working on the first issue, so that the magazine which is right now only existing in our heads finally takes shape. The idea to form a community of like-minded people – open for many things, interested in the well-tries but also newly-developped, always in search of the beautiful – is definitely right.

We thank you all for the support you’ve provided: every word – whether critical or enthusiastic – means a lot to us.

Yours, Thea & Toni