Link Building – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Link building has always, and as far as the foreseeable future is concerned, will always be a highly effective and useful marketing tool any SEO strategist has up his or her sleeve, often outsourced, huge amounts of sites can be programmed to ‘promote’ your site at a relatively small cost, offering direct links at the click of a button.
However, SEO companies are being forced to find new and innovative ways to make their links ‘Google-effective’ as a result of the gradual change in search behaviour, trustworthiness and of course, Google. Although they are still an integral and important part of any online marketing campaign, some of the most reputable SEOs promoting today agree that there is almost too much spam, hence, in 2011 Google assigned less value to links and some more value to social signals. A survey carried out by SEOmoz suggested that links used to amount for 65% of the ranking factors in 2009 and now they account for around 40%.
Compounding the demise of the ‘traditional’ link, Google’s Farmer and Panda updates in 2011 are effectively penalising sites for ‘thin content’ - i.e. several paragraphs jam-packed with keywords. Not only this, but the sites with the negative links also being penalised, especially if the link is traced back to a link farm.
It’s Only Getting Better
The good news for searchers, clients and all of those wonderful potential visitors is that the process is becoming a lot more effective. The fact the Google actually once rewarded sites for a large range of links suggests that new ways of link building will benefit the user – as dominant as they are in any SEO campaign, the promotion of more organic campaigns makes for more trustworthy clicking and, a lower bounce rate as the quality of sites with links is on the rise.
Link-Building Strategies for 2012
So, to make the most of this change it is worth considering alternative practice to link-building. Employing new strategy in building quality backlinks can be a struggle at first but here are a few tips and suggestions to help you optimise your links in 2012 -
Links need to look more natural than ever - Get links from a variety of different sources – blogs, directories, forums, article sites, social bookmarking sites, news and editorial… the list goes on, but get all of the above… and more!
- Vary your anchor texts. Use the exact anchor text you want to rank for, for example “shower curtains” for 40% of your links. Use that text mixed with something else (e.g. “vinyl shower curtains”) for 20%. With the remaining 40% can be used to link to deeper pages such as product pages, use a small percent for phrases such as "click here", "learn more or the web address itself.
- Vary the number of domains linking your site. This is more important than the amount of links you have – it’s better to have 100 links from 1000 domains then 1000 links all from the same domain
- Writing guest posts for blogs or articles. As well as your own blog, building up a relationship with other blog owners who you desire to write up your articles - This requires being very knowledgeable… and interesting!
- Find helpful and related sites and add a link or page suggestion – this avoids spam and if successful regularly contribute to the site with advice or additional information
- Discussion forums – with background information and advice offered you will become a trusted contributor. Even the tiniest pieces of information and advice in reply can convey trustworthy links. Make your signature your link.
- Sponsor Events – Online charities, personal sponsorship, competitions – there are dedicated websites which reflect positively to any contributor
- Encourage, and promote products and services on review sites – ask for the reviews with a link back
- Promote articles and/ or blog posts via paid sources such as sponsored Facebook Ads, Tweets and Stumbleupon ads.
The list goes on… As you can see it’s not simple and changes to happen overnight (as making the changes will take much longer...) just keep in mind, the better quality link: the better quality visitor. You can guarantee that the individual at the top of the engines has a masterpiece of link-building built over years and that’s what’s keeping them ahead.
Joe Burford
SEO Consultant
SEO Clinic
