Article by Pierre Zarokian.
Eric Ward, one of the major thought leaders in the field of link building, has passed away. Eric is known for preaching the value of links as a method of building traffic, as opposed to traditional search marketing. I personally met with Eric at a few Web marketing conferences, where I’d seen him speak and asked him questions. He was an important individual with a true presence in the SEO community.
Eric died at the age of 58, and had a storied career of unique content generation and link building strategies. His work with Amazon, PBS, Disney, NBC Sports and others helped to influence a generation of thinking about SEO and link building. His peers often affectionately referred to him as “Link Moses” due to his deep understanding of the value that came with diversified link building.
Here are some words from Danny Sullivan, another important voice in the field of SEO that will give readers some idea of Ward’s work and its far reaching impact in SEO:
“Eric Ward was legend. He was the link in link building. He understood that it was about making the right connections with people and resources to create the web connections so important to marketing. He passed along that knowledge to others with thoughtfulness and kindness. He was so old school of the old school that Jeff Bezos hired him to publicize Amazon when no one knew what Amazon was. That Jerry Yang personally created a marketing category at Yahoo because of an email Eric sent him. When I asked for voluntary subscriptions to support my site about search engines in 1996, Eric was the first person to send a check. When we started Search Engine Land, he was the first to reach out and suggest writing as a contributor — and became our first columnist, with Link Week. I’m stunned and still trying to process the terrible thought that this person who was there before virtually all of us in digital marketing is gone. It hardly seems believable. We’re going to miss you, Eric. You made such a mark. And our thoughts are with your family.”
Eric Ward will be dearly missed. We are thankful to have worked with him, and for his contributions in this industry.
Eric Ward was a pioneer thinker in the SEO space and his family has started a YouCaring page to help them during this time of grief. These funds go directly to helping the family, who ask that any who were touched by Eric’s vast amount of knowledge contribute any amount they can see fit to give.
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Pierre Zarokian is CEO of Submit express. You can reach out to him on Pierre Zarokian’s Twitter account.
To Read more articles by Pierre Zarokian visit:
Pierre Zarokian @ Search Engine Journal
&
Pierre Zarokian @ Search Engine Watch