Earn Your Links

I've seen a lot of posts here on topics like 'Do linkwheels work' or 'what's the best way to do article submission for links'.

It's got to the point I felt compelled to write this post... I know I'll likely get quite a few negative replies, but I feel this needs saying, especially as there are lots of newbies on these forums who come here for advice... the deserve more than just 'linkwheel' style posts (there are a few folks here that are better than that I admit... I've seen some good posts from people like @ Nigel Lew for example.

Anyway, on to the topic...

Link building tactics like 'link wheels', 'link pyramids' article submission, mass blog comments etc all focus on one thing. FAKING a website's online popularity in the eyes of Google in order to try to trick it's algorithm into ranking your website higher.

Now, do these tactics work? Maybe. Maybe SOME of them, if you try hard enough, could have a positive effect on your rankings.

HOWEVER many of them no longer do work and, more importantly, fewer will in the future.

The rub is this; Google is getting better, MUCH better at differentiating between 'link manipulation' designed to fake online popularity and links gained organically DUE to popularity.

Whats more, I feel that Google is getting better at using non-link based metrics to qualify the validity of any given backlink. Be that social signals, G+ authority metrics within a specific industry - whatever... To some extent the metrics are not that important, the important thing is they are getting BETTER at spotting the fakers.

The solution?

Focus on BUILDING relationships and EARNING links.

Not easy I know! But what made you think ranking in the most popular search engine in the (english speaking) world would be easy?!

Getting Started. You need good content... REALLY good content.

To start with you'll need great content. Now, I don't mean content that's cost you $0.90c per 100 words on Fivver! I mean content thats designed specifically to answer the needs and problems of your target market. What problems do your potential customers have? - Write solutions to problems and you're on to a good start.

Content doesn't even have to be purely textual these days either - multimedia is good - dedicated or embedded within content (I prefer embedded multimedia personally).

Building Relationships

I've seen a fair few arguments about social media effecting SEO. I know for me social media HAS driven organic Google rankings, but not how you might think!

On more than one occasion I've managed to strike up a re;ationship on social media with a leading authority in an industry - the sort of site that would NEVER answer a cold-call email requesting a guest post. I've then managed to get a guest slot on the site - gaining a link that would be extremely hard to 'buy'.

Now, without the social interactions with this person, there's not a cat in hells chance I'd have managed to get that link. A link that, I might add, sends relevant, interested visitors (as well as being a link form a VERY high DA domain).

Another point is about 'Guest Posts'. Forget trying to score guest posts on 'xyz' number of low quality spam blogs (splogs!) per month. Instead try to communicate on social channels with a handful of REALLY good blogs in your industry. Build up a relationship and try to score a regular guest column on a couple of those sites. This will do more for your authority in an industry than all those 'splog posts'.

The internet is growing up folks - Google is focusing more & more on semantics - What did the user mean by their query? How does this website fit in the industry they're in and what authorities appear to endorse their content?

BUILD relationships, EARN links and be the best in your industry... Google will like you for it now and love you for it in the future.

Now - queue the flaming from those selling link wheels...

 

Hear, hear! Well said, Mike. I think it's really the only way to build a sustainable business these days. God knows what the next Google update will bring, so it only makes sense to build your relationships now. People buy from people, not companies, so make a connection, offer value and you'll have a loyal follower, despite what G brings in future.

Really, it's all getting back to basics, like brick and mortar businesses have always done to promote customer loyalty.

 

Thanks Annea

I agree 'people buy from people'... I think to some extent, it's the 'human' factor that's been missing from SOME SEOs tactics for too long. I made this post knowing that there'd probably be quite a few folks disagree with me and flame in their replies, but HOPING that nonetheless, the thread would be read by a few new folks that come here looking for advice... and hopefully they'd be at least made to stop & think about the sort of 'seo' and link building they think they need So it's a pleasant surprise to find the first reply is a nice one Thanks Annea!

 

To add to my above argument: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/

Google are only going to get tougher on lower quality link building! BUILD online relationships & authority NOW to avoid problems down the line!

 

Sponsored ads can help you gain links legitimately. I do agree, however, that we all need to be careful about what kinds of actions we take to make ourselves more popular.

 

I totally agree with you Mike. There are examples of many link networks that were penalized during the last months, some of them even being mentioned by Matt Cutts in his vblogs. What is strange is where you start to make the difference between the link network and fake link network - here is the catch that I'm sure is still troubling Google as well the others 2 big players in the searching engines (Yahoo and Bing). I'm sure that a fake link network can be easy discovered but still should be taken in consideration until a point where have to be penalized.

 

Hola Rosu! Muchas Gracias!

I agree, telling a fake link profile from a real link profile is where Google focuses a fair bit of energy I think.

I suspect that's where Google Authorship will (slowly) start to come into play in the future. I mean, we've already seen them trying to 'clean up' authorship snippets, with a 15% cull on authorship profiles... I suspect that's just the start and, once they have it worked out better, they may well use this as part of their organic algorithms. I think at first they may just test this with a small amount of 'weight' applied to the metric, but in time it would not surprise me at all if not JUST organic social shares, but also if those shares are from known 'entities' in an industry... if a URL gets lots of backlinks from related sites but gets significantly less G+1's etc in comparison to other URLs in that SAME INDUSTRY, then this may be ONE of the things they could use to evaluate a 'real' backlink from a fake one. I say ONE of the things as I suspect they will have many, many MANY other metrics too, of varying weight. It's easier to fake a link than it is to fake several industry relevant authority profiles on G+, so in time I think it will be used as at least part of the measurement.

Mike.

 

Mike, de nada, pero tenemos muchas cosas de ablar
Google started the 2014 exactly with what you mentioned above, tho the "touched" percent I do think that is a bit higher than 15%. I saw sites that were never used a SEO method penalized up to 50% of their authority and that was really a bad move from Google. Now they're slowly backing up and reconsider their position and the actions of the last update from 11 January 2014. Still, I consider that Google is realizing that they can't have an accurate search without taking in consideration the backlinks.