“Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.“
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this. Reading between the lines, I’ve long thought this is better seo advice than most of the stuff MC video blogs these days.
If you are a brand!
Open up your site. Sell stuff on it. Got a PR7 or PR8 site? Add a store and make a fortune – god I would love a crack at doing something like that.
Google wants to rank your stuff at the top because it trusts you won’t spam it and fill results pages with crap and make Google look stupid.
That’s money just sitting on the table the way Google currently awards massive domain authority and trust to particular sites – I mean, a newspaper is no2 for “online dating” in the UK and there are plenty of other examples.
If you want to be a brand?
Get links from brands that aren’t overdoing the above!
Identifying brands are pretty easy too:
- Content – most brands publish lots of it
- A brand has a lot of links
- It has links from relevant sites
- It has lots of links from other brands
- It’s KNOWN – well cited
- It’s probably got a PR7 – Pr10
Trust? That’s a different matter and at the moment – as long as it’s well cited, that’s good enough for Google it seems.
Article marketing, widget marketing, social media and directory submissions are on the whole lower quality links that will let you take small steps towards ranking better – but I am always thinking:
“how do I get links from brands to a site?”
- brands in niches can mean quality links. Easier said than done, for most, of course.
Brands are making Google search results safer and with safer comes boring search results that make it harder for the smaller business owner – though that’s not to say there isn’t plenty of opportunity at the moment if you read between the lines and take a gamble on some of the type of sites Google needs to keep in the serps for variation – think well cited exact match domains and very niche, intelligent microsites.
But the aim with your main site should always be to become a online brand. Good luck.
[...] Brands Are How You Sort Out The Cesspool, Hobo [...]
Hey Shaun, I read in your linkbuilding guide about news site, and other authority sites. You called them the “Holy Grail” of sites to get links from, but you didn’t elaborate on the best ways to get these types of links, or did you? Are you working on techniques, and resources about dofollow links on .edu and .gov sites? Isn’t this the best way for the little guy to get branded, granted that you have a well built website with plenty of great content on it. And what about nofollows on these powerhouse sites, can backlinks from them still help our websites? Thanks and God bless.
I hope the branding does not ruin the web the same way so many national corps have ruined so many small local businesses. It probably will except socialization and user content will survive.
Well some stuff you’re going to have to work out yourself. I don’t talk publicly about specific places you can get links – ultimately you need to try and get brands (websites of companies, organisations, institutions, groups etc) to link to you, and it is a skill to try and convince them to do that. I touch on some of them here: link building methods.
Okay Shaun, Thanks for the follow-up, and the link to some more great info. I’ll start right away with honing my skills with getting the top notch links. I guess I was being lazy, and wanted everything handed to me on a silver platter. I went back to page 32 of your book for the nofollow issue. Thanks for the wake up call. God bless