Eric Ward, a pioneer in link building, has passed away

Eric Ward who was one of the pioneers of link building and preaching building links to get traffic rather than SEO, has passwed away. I personally had met him at some web marketing conferences and seen him speak. He was a great individual and had wast amount of knowledge in SEO and link building.

Here is what Danny Sulivan, another SEO guru, had to say about him:

“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.”

He will be dearly missed, and we are so thankful for all his contributions to the industry.