The Death Of Link Building?

The Google Penguin update last year has, one assumes, had the desired effect - it has got the SEO community running for the hills, abandoning black hat tactics in droves, and heading for the safety of the white hat content marketing fold. Some have even announced the "death of link building" (though I think it is slightly wide of the mark).

Certainly the days of spammy, manipulative, black hat SEO seems to be over. Here are some well-worn tactics that are pretty much no-go in a post-Penguin world:

1. Link farms/blog link networks.
2. Spamming and over optimisation of anchor text.
3. Forum spam.
4. Comment spam.
5. Pretty much any link building tool that generates links automatically.

For broadly white hat SEO's like me, the Panda/Penguin hit over the last couple of years has been welcomed - I welcome anything that will significantly improve the relevance and quality of my search experience. Whereas many SEO's tend to panic when the Google updates come out, thinking "are my sites next??" my view is, great, get rid of the bad guys - it means a level playing field for us good guys.

Despite the algo changes, I do see white hat link building as broadly ethical, promotional tool, does have a future, in my opinion.

I saw a SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday today, called "The Death of Link Building and the Rebirth of Link Earning." Rand's general point is that with the Penguin update, and the movement of the industry as a whole, the days of going out and manually building or placing links are limited. The best links, he says, are earned; this has always been true, the trouble is, earning these great links and citations to effect page one rankings for your clients is really hard.

In the video Rand gives some examples of old skool vs new skool link building/earning tactics; I've given a few here:

Link Building	Link Earning
Link exchanges/reciprocals	Cross promotional/partnerships
Email blasts for links	Social sharing that leads to links
Paid links	Earning links with content
Submit to directories	Request inclusion on curated lists
Article directories/article marketing	Getting a guest post on "picky" sites/blogs
Getting links on forums/guestbook/comments	Participating in active communities
Mining competitors backlinks	Using OSE to find most linked to content on competitors sites
Building a blog link network	Building a social network of followers and fans

So it's clear that, broadly speaking, link earning, rather than link building is the future of the industry. Now begins the hard work - convincing our clients to invest in content!


About The Author: Centreline Air are a leading private air charter firm in the South West UK. Visit http://www.centrelineair.co.uk/ to find out more.

Did you like this article? Please let me know by leaving me your valued comments.

Related articles:
5 Helpful Tips To Recover From Recent Penguin Update
SEO Link Building Techniques That You Should Avoid
A Guide To Guest Blogging For SEO In 2012


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SEO Link Building Techniques That You Should Avoid

To promote your website successfully, it is better to use manual and quality SEO processes considering the guidelines of search engine algorithms. Getting high page ranking and increasing the network traffic to your site should be your ideal goal when promoting your website to the global market. There are many techniques for building links to your website, some white hat methods and black hat methods as well.

If you want high page ranking that does not waver, you need to use white hat strategies to build links. You have to realize that proper link building takes time. Do not be fooled by the appeal of getting massive backlinks at once, this only makes Google and other search engines suspicious about the quality of your site.

Buying and selling backlinks is becoming a top way for webmasters to make money off other webmasters, though there are some genuine SEO companies out there that offer unique services you must be aware of the dangers of using such services. Often times the risk is greater than the reward. Here are some important SEO link building techniques you should avoid:


Getting Links from Websites with Many Outbound Links

Though buying links from any of the huge network traffic sites is a good idea for increasing your website value, you should choose a site that doesn't have numerous unrelated outbound links. If you must buy outbound links from other sites, choose sites with content related to yours and make sure this site does not have too many outbound links. You don't want your site link lost in the maize.

Webmasters should try to avoid this link building technique if they wish to build valid backlinks that stick. As an alternative, you can offer to write a guest post on a popular site in your niche in exchange for a permanent link back to yours.


Using Spun Content for Article Submission

Submitting articles to topmost article directories will help your website gain some quality link juice. These sites have already established Google page rank and you will benefit from linking to them permanently. Some webmasters after submitting original articles to top ranking directories will reuse the same by spinning the content for mass distribution.

Article spinning saves time and mass submission gets you noticed fast. But this might seem harmless at first until when Google decides to go through another update or check backlinks manually; your site will definitely come up and be penalized. Beware of spinning and submission services because most times the quality of the content put out there is horrifying.


Blasting Comments on Numerous Blogs

Building backlinks by commenting on related or high value blogs is an excellent link building method. It is also a good traffic getting strategy. There are some tools that can blast comments on over ten thousand blogs in a very short time. This is very unnatural as no webmaster is capable of writing that many blog comments at once.

Be very careful with this black hat technique as the consequences are usually negative. Be sure not to use this method if you are running Google Adsense ads on your site because this may result in your account being suspended.


Building Links for Competitive Keywords and to Wrong Anchor Text

A common mistake made by most webmasters is choosing a high competitive keyword for their website and promoting that keyword by undergoing various SEO techniques. Making this mistake early on can be damaging to your success. You should link with long tail keywords and to posts on your site that have a chance of getting ranked faster.

Another problem is linking with the wrong anchor text. Remember not to link to the same phrase all the time, you want some diversity in your backlinks.


Keyword Stuffing

This is when the keyword your article topic is based on is overused in the article. You must learn to balance your keywords with the number of words for each article on your site. Aim for a 2% or less keyword density and sometimes it is best to just write a well informed post without concerning yourself with keywords because this will make your site more user friendly.

As a webmaster, you must aim for quality and not quantity. Avoid SEO techniques that will get you in trouble and run your business with integrity.


About The Author: Rahul Makhija is the online manager for ChemFree. Rahul consults companies on online marketing, product development, and strategy. During his free time he enjoys reading about human behavior.

Did you find this article helpful? Please let Rahul and myself know by leaving us your valued comments below.

Related articles:
How To Improve Your SEO With Backlinks
9 Questions To Ask After A Site Links To You
Why You Should Avoid Link Exchanges
Optimal Linking For SEO: 10 Useful Tips For New Sites


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5 Steps To A Great SEO Campaign

The first real step to anything is research, and lots of it. The most important step to any SEO campaign is keyword research.

The first step to consider is the niche you are in, and the products or services that you are promoting. You should come up with a list of potential keywords that your customers would use to find you on the web.

After that you could use the Google keyword search tool to analyze your list, checking the competitiveness, number of monthly searches and the strength of the competitors currently on page one.

A competitive market analysis is the next important step you should take. After you have your final keyword list, create a spreadsheet with all the keywords, and then list all the competitors from page one of Google.

You could use a program like SEO quake to collect some of the data that you will need, such as their page rank, number of indexed pages, inbound links, whether or not they have a site map and much more. This will tell you how difficult and how long of an SEO campaign you will be embarking on.

Next step should be the on page SEO factors of your website.

First and foremost is content, if you are not providing quality content that solves people's problems then your efforts will be in vain. Great content will keep your visitors coming back on their own which will greatly assist your SEO efforts.

Make sure all the on page dynamics such as header tags, meta tags, alt tags for images and HTML code is done correctly.

These are the simple things that improve your 'findability'. You also want to ensure that you have a proper site map created and submitted to the search engines, this will increase your chances of all your pages being properly indexed.

Number four is off page SEO strategies.

The biggest and most important overall here is back linking. Google views every back link your site has as a vote for your site from someone else. The best back links you can get are called one way links. One way links are where another website links to you without you having to link back. Good examples of this are article marketing, blog commenting and directory submissions.

Reciprocal linking is where you link out to website a and website a in turn links back to you. These are also good links but you should only focus on the ones targeted to your niche and those having a higher page rank than you. Good back linking takes time and effort, this cannot be accomplished over night.

You should also avoid any link scams, link farms or questionable linking strategies. If you have to stop and wonder if it's ok to do it then it probably isn't.

The last step that is very crucial to your SEO success is the overall promotion of your website. There are several ways of effectively promoting your products and services via the internet.

1) Video marketing
This can be promoted in conjunction with your website or separately for added exposure.

2) Email marketing
This allows you to keep track and communicate with your customers and potential customers.

3) Web 2.0
These are blogs, hub pages, wikis and such. Also a great source of quality back links for your site.

4) Article marketing
If done correctly this will establish you as an expert and help you to generate back links and additional traffic to your offers.

5) Local search marketing such as Yahoo local and Google places
If you have a business in the offline world you certainly want to use this method to promote your business. Google places for instance typically will come up first in the search results.

These are just a few of the strategies that you can use to begin a successful SEO and web promotion campaign. The most import step you will take is to take action. Everything you do should be with the intent of growing your business.



About The Author: Byron Cole Smith - Learn how to take your website to the top of all major search engines, contact Columbus SEO Services. Click here to see how Professional SEO Services can help you achieve the results you want.

Why You Should Avoid Link Exchanges

Here's a great article from Neil Holley-Williams of HW marketing, explaining why actively participating in Link Exchanges could negatively impact your site's ranking in search results...

Why Link Exchanges are Bad for Your Site's Health

So you've got yourself a website and are all excited about it. You tell your friends, colleagues and business contacts and the first thing they say is "Oooh.. that's great, you can link to mine and I’ll link to yours"… and everybody involved thinks this is a great idea because hey, the more links you have the more popular your site is with Google.

Now this is all very well if you are talking about a few links between 'networking businesses', but in the bigger picture, exchanging reciprocal links is not a good way to ingratiate your site with Google.

Be wary of joining Link Exchange Schemes or you could catch a nasty cold!

If reaching Page 1 were that easy, all we'd have to do is put a couple of hundred (or a thousand) links from our web pages to other pages and ask them to do the same. Websites would immediately become 'huge link banks' rather than sources of information which is essentially what they should be in every case, even commercial sites.

Google views 1 to 1 reciprocal linking very, very low in importance, for just that reason.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do your friends a favor and they not do the same for you, but just think about what Google thinks is important or you might just experience a long-term negative impact.

Google LIKES inbound links to your site where there is no reciprocal link back. Why? Because that scenario is a neutral (and therefore more valuable) editorial vote for your site's content.

Google ABSOLUTELY LOVES the inbound (and not reciprocated) link where the link is from a site that is relevant and complementary to your own, ESPECIALLY if that site is regarded highly by Google already. So if you do arrange that reciprocal link with a business friend, just consider that your visitors may find their site irrelevant to what they are looking for. e.g. don't link to your friend's Doggie Washing Service if your site is about Commercial Property Investment for example. Keep it relevant.

So how do you go about getting quality links?

What about Link Exchanges? You know, those people who drop an e-mail into your inbox, offering a campaign where your site offers other sites (with similar relevant content to yours) a link, and in exchange they add a link to yours.

Well, we've just blown reciprocal links out of the water, but schemes that promise hundreds of links are not a good idea.

Don't take my word for it. This is what Google has to say:

"..Excessive link exchanges, could negatively impact your site's ranking in search results."

"Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or Page Rank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or 'bad neighborhoods' on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."

"Some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results."

"The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it."

So ok. If you can't use Link Exchanges, how do you go about getting quality 'votes' for your site?

Link exchanges used to be popular, but are the old way of getting links and although links of any type to your site are still counted, there is always the risk that you could catch a very bad cold if you actively participate in link exchanges.

Start to look at the social networking sites and get your site out there. Social networking sites such as Digg, Twitter, Delicious, Facebook, and StumbleUpon are able to drive massive traffic to your site; but only if you have unique and interesting content.

The more interesting your content, the greater the chance that someone else will find your content useful to their visitors and link to you. Always consider your outbound links as part of your content.

If you link to sites stuffed with irrelevant adverts or to a site that tells you how to Wash a Dog (and your site is about Property Investment), then visitors are going to question your motives and will not link their sites to yours.

So focus on good quality content and then look at using social networking to drive visitors to your site. If you have good content, then other sites will start to link to yours.

If you ARE involved in Link Exchanges, visit the reciprocal links as often as you can and make sure you don't have an unhealthy neighbor and that you still have a link back.

Always remember that the risks of a Link Exchange system far outweigh the benefits.



About the Author: Neil Holley-Williams runs HW marketing, a Chichester web design company providing very affordable websites and SEO for small and medium sized businesses. Neil has worked in the IT industry for over 25 years for companies such as IBM, Carnival UK, Invesco Perpetual, and Skandia Life. For more information visit www.hwmarketing.co.uk/seo.

Optimal Linking For SEO: 10 Useful Tips For New Sites

The way you link, both internally and externally from your site, is crucial for achieving results in today's competitive market. Getting help from an SEO Agency can give you the advantage you need when it comes to search engine ranking and those all-important hits on your site.

As SEO experts are bound to point out, it's a process that needs to be carried on over time and considered whenever you make any changes to your site. As a new site you'll need strategies to assist you in climbing the ladder to good Internet ranking placement as quickly as possible.

Here are 10 very useful tips on links and linking architecture for anyone with an interest in SEO, and if you're involved in marketing of any kind over the Internet, then that's you.


1. Think About Who Links to You

You'll already know the value of reputation when it comes to marketing your product or service. If sites that are associated with good quality products are clearly seen by users and search engines to link to your own then this will reflect well on you.

Pay close attention to the number of .com and .co.uk sites that link to you, for example, and think carefully about ways in which you can encourage others to do likewise.


2. Think About Who You Link to

The same rules as before. Linking to good quality sites reflects well on your own. Keep up to date with innovations and developments and stay relevant with fresh links on your pages. Try to develop a balanced portfolio of links on your site.


3. Avoid Broken Links

As part of ongoing site maintenance for SEO you should be aware of any links that are no longer in use and remove them from your site.


4. Think About Relevance

This is very important. Link to sites with a clear relevance to your own only. Search engines pay special attention to this, as do users, and every irrelevant link on your page is detrimental.


5. Internal Links

Think about internal links and whether your site is user friendly. Make the most of internal links and get some advice from SEO experts about ways to link internally that will benefit your site's ranking.


6. Maps

Think about linking back to homepage and site maps. Make your site as easily navigable as possible. This will encourage users and benefit your site as search engines see these links when they probe it. A map is a useful way to introduce internal links and make the site easier to get around.


7. Link Building

Think about the use of exact match terms for link building. Build links using exactly matching anchor text. Remember though, don't get carried away - an excess use of keywords can be as bad as a lack. Using terms you want to rank for and that summarise the topic referred to, in moderation, can strengthen the ratings of your site by search engines.

Find a balance and use your senses. If you feel that you've gone overboard with repeated words or phrases in your internal links then you probably have.


8. Avoid Cloaking

Search engines are increasingly sophisticated at detecting 'black hat' or unscrupulous SEO techniques. While it may be tempting to improve your popularity on the net by attracting unwitting visitors to your site, be aware that techniques that accomplish this can get you into trouble.

Users and search engines are alike in their approach to cloaking - they don't accept or tolerate it. Stay within the boundaries to avoid problems.


9. Look at Where Your Competitors Link

This is legal and it can give you an advantage or at least level the playing field somewhat when it comes to links. Go to Yahoo and type in link: www.competitorsite.com to get access to useful tools for viewing your competition's linking activity. Remember that knowledge is power.


10. Strategise

Have a solid strategy for linking to, from and within your site. Think before you link and use every intelligent strategy at your disposal. Getting advice from website optimization specialists can really help.

To conclude, it's hoped that some important considerations about link building were highlighted for you here in our list.

Some areas were only touched upon, and in an environment such as computing where change is a constant, it pays to stay abreast of developments. Remember that if you're short on time, search engine optimisation specialists are available for SEO and improving your ranking and your profits.


About the Author: Sam Desilwa - SEO Consult provides SEO and Search Engine Optimisation Services.