When you build a wall, you do it bit by bit, with the same kind of identical bricks until you have a lot of bricks that all look the same… presto, you have a wall. That’s building. My mate does that.
You can’t build links that way and EXPECT to win the ranking wars in Google as Google is actively fighting you. Your bricks kind of need to be different brick to brick.
There’s a thought out there. Get 200 or 300 or 400 links and you’ll rank. So it’s natural that you think I’ll buy some links from that mob (and I mean mob) for $200 and I’m sorted.
You’re not.
Those links are s*&t (sorry no other word to describe it). Depending on how good the search engine optimisation company is of course – there’s different varying colours of s*&t but generally speaking you stand in it when you open your email and it says:
We noticed you dont rank for any of your keyterms. We are an expert linkbuilding company…..
They’ll come from spammy blog and forum comments that might hurt your brand, or web hosting companies with an obvious paid link profile. Even if they are decent at their job – a competitor will just report you for buying links if you do it too much. It will stick out like a sore thumb you’re buying links and that’s against Google TOS.
Stop thinking about building links. Start thinking of promoting your useful content.
Here’s how I built links the past 2 months to the Hobo site.
First, I understand building links (YUK) is about relationships with real people and trying to get links from real sites.
- I refocused my internal links (I’m testing a few things)
- I created my
- SEO Guide For Beginners which Matt Cutts sphunn (V Cool) – a thanks to Edward Lewis of SEO Consultants who gave me the confidence to publish.
- a PDF of my SEO Guide (along with an email burst telling my subscribers and Linkedin buddies it was ready (latter, a bit spammy, sorry about that!)
- a month of linkbuilding tips on my blog (about one a day – spending no more than 1/2 hour each article) – more for beginner subscribers to the blog than to garner links at this time.
- An online press release or two
- I sent out a couple of email requests for links to sites I thought would actually benefit by linking to a particular article on this site – no, really!
Syndication (!) – I really don’t care who republishes my content if they link back(NOT in 2013!)- I pointed out to a few people their blog rolls looked a bit thin without Hobo on it lol
- A couple of other minor things…. one of which was a mistake I’m reversing.
- I told the world about my content (and in doing so my online buddies) via Twitter (mainly – it costs nothing to promote my content or others) hoping they’d help me give it a push (as I do theirs – in fact I have been asking a lot of them lately… next month will be about helping them push their stuff – it’s all me, me, me at the moment it seems!)
I didn’t ‘build’ one anchor text rich link.
(I will go into all that above during the course of the month). I’m finished with all that 2005 seo crap – it’s depressing, not lucrative and in some cases, a total con, even if you do lose rankings on some narrow terms that are pure vanity.
The results were WordPress itself linked to me, SEroundtable linked to me, SEOconsultants linked to me, Sphinn linked to me, Search Engine Land linked to me (a couple of times), I got a couple of links on PR7 and 6 pages, and I got a couple of blog post links out of the blue from buddies and people I’ve just became buddies with lol (not becuase they were buddies, because the content was worth a link and not just a Twitter). On top of that, Smashingmagazine.com and some Brazillian version of Techcrunch linked to posts that where over a year old that largely went unnoticed at the time. For a small company in Greenock, Scotland, that’s a lot of attention. I also got links from some other really authorative seo sites (I’ll reciprocate later).
As a result, my subscription count has went from @1,500 in a month or so to nearly 3,000 which will make the whole process a lot easier next time. Oh, I got a lot of traffic too and I’ve been asked to do a couple of guest posts on blogs I read which is V cool. That will help in the future too.
What did I do? – I just helped people out with some free stuff that helps them achieve their own goals in the hope similar minded folk will help me to achieve mine. Easy. I created content and I told people about my site:
Tell the world about your site. Google
It’s clearly not rocket science but it takes a lot of effort.
(I even got to chat briefly with a Google Spam guy (Not MC) who wished me luck with my SEO Book) :)
This post might seem a little serve serving – appologies for that.
I just wanted to ensure this month I said Stop ‘building links’ and Start promoting your site. It’s easier and more rewarding.
hi – I love the stuff you write as I am new to this. I am just wondering how much you think this point will hurt with google and its agressive duplicate content issues? Syndication (!) – I really don’t care who republishes my content if they link back Regards matthew ps. I am one of the new 3000 perople.
As long as the syndicated versions link back to your website, and you’re Pinging Google blog search, you’ll be OK. Let the spammers and scrapers and republishers wory about dupe content issues ;)
Shaun, I used, to my regret, 2005 techniques through xxxxxxxxxxx (removed i don’t out people unless they are actually con-men – Shaun) at the start of this year. Will this be holding back my rankings? I now realize that these are classic s€£t links. Anything I can do now? I think these links are why I am still sandboxed p.s. Have you checked out the wptouch plugin? It’s cool for your readers via a mobile device.
Think the main point here is the real sites one. I know quite a few people who built rankings 1-2 years ago via links purchased through emails and SponosredReviews. The thing is with those sort of sites is: 1 – they get de-indexed, 2 – they get PR stripped, 3 – they disappear or get re-born; because the only reason they exist is to pass around link juice. When they stop making money there is no reason for their continuing existence. So, these people’s rankings are now starting to slip. If you’re going to tap into that gutter, you really need to be doing other things as well to give some longevity to your SERPs.
Matthew – you should also try and put at least one link in each of your blog posts, linking to another of your posts. Then if the full thing gets scraped, hopefully the link will stay in it and at least you get something from it.
i’ll be talking about syndication shortly ;)
Shaun, quality post about spending your time doing quality promotion. Should be read by all. Cheers mate!
Nice points. We’re having a SEO Meetup tonight in Charlotte North Carolina and I’ll be referencing your article to everyone who attends. Thanks!
Shaun – I really like the essence of your post here… basically that “link building” is not about simply “building links” but rather its about making connections, building relationships, etc. that in turn produce quality links that drive traffic and search rankings. I could not agree more. In fact, my “SEO company” recently hired a social media / PR person for this very reason. Rather than submitting to directories or buying links, etc. we’re building relationships and doing what really resembles traditional PR, just via online channels. That said, I’m not a big fan of your example site here. Building links for an SEO service – or for anything related to social media, internet marketing, etc. its very, very, very different than building links for most other sites. The reason is that with SEO, even though its a niche topic – there is a HUGE percentage of the audience that are very strong users of social media, blogs, etc. Basically if 10 people read your article about SEO, chances are 8 or 9 of them are in a position to quickly Tweet, Blog or otherwise link to your content within 5 minutes if they were so inspired. These people “live” online. I am one of them, as is pretty much everyone likely to read this comment. By contrast, take a site totally not related to internet marketing. Let’s take accounting. I just searched for a local accountant and found one in Google last week. I met with the guy, and hired him. He got me as a prospect b/c his site ranked well. If you look at his site’s backlinks you won’t find any from Digg, Twitter, etc. Basically there is zero “social media” buzz about his firm. Nobody blogs about his company. Most of the links to his site – while they are indeed relevant and not “crappy links” – they were indeed sought out and obtained. There are footprints that a decent SEO company did a little work here. My point is that there are many ways to build links, and indeed its helpful to frame it as building relationships rather than “building links”. That said, relying on viral marketing and social media may work well in some situations but it may produce very poor results in other situations where the market and/or influencers are simply not utilizing those mediums.
If I ran an accountancy firm I’d make a lot of friends in the online marketing community and do exactly what I’ve described – I’m a great believer in it’s the business owners repsonsibility to create a buzz about their business. A SEO can help, but I would never employ somebody else to create the enthusiasm for my brand. No matter what company I ran, I’d have a website that reflected my enthusiasm for my industry and my product. I’d make friends with online influencers in my industry (journalists, bloggers etc) – EVERY industry has these I believe. I have an ecommerce project on at the moment and the guy has actually LISTENED to me. he sells boring stuff, but he’s got a national comedian (who was a previous Youtube phenomenon) in and made a video about his product that’s funny as hell (and another informative video). That’s going to get him some links while I ninja linkbuild and get his site in Google Products etc…. Great comment Jon :)
Very good post. I must say this 10X per day: create good content and promote it – the links will come. The best part is they are quality links not s@#t links.
That’s great. Congratulations. However, I couldn’t agree with Jon Payne more. Talk like this is idealistic and short sited at best. It assumes that everyone shares your same knowledge and perspective, and I’d like to assert that they don’t. Really, I’d like to see you write this article from the perspective of an ecommerce site that sells adult toys, viagra, or a credit loan company. My point is, what you’re saying makes total sense, from a tech savvy person who’s in a field where 99% of your audience is as savvy as you are. But as Jon Payne stated, a lot of those things are simply not going to work for other businesses. So what about link building for all the other guys?
Howdy Ralph i can only right from a marketers view of course, so this will make it easier for me to market a business I was running. But it still took me a hundreds of posts before I got a few of the industry authority sites linking to me at the same time. “sells adult toys, viagra, or a credit loan company” In these instances I’d stil recommend searching for journalists and making alliances with particular folks in the know. I wouldn’t waste time on directory submissions etc if I was starting a site that sells viagra tomorrow (why do what everyone else hads been doing for ten years”?) I’d narrow my focus and try and do something was different and I would probably find my self going off topic a lot to get links. The more I operated in that industry the better I would hope I got in it. It would depend on how much I was getting and how much time I had on the job to think creatively. I mentioned I am a content focused seo – I prefer to do with content what you can do with links. That being said, in some industries (I don’t work in) I’d certainly take a gun to the gun fight and do everything they were doing and more of it and try and do it better. If thats idealistic Im sorry it’s how I do things – sometimes its a long haul. Thanks for joining in :)
Shaun, Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I was just joshing you about being idealistic, because the truth is, I am too. I think everything you’re doing is great, and we’re making a real effort to educate our clients about using the exact same strategies you discussed in your article. There is an over-emphasis on getting links over building relationships, and although it’s more difficult in some niches, as you’ve pointed out, there are ways to make yourself stand out. Keep up the good work!
Phew I thought you were giving me into a row! I see you focus on linkbuilding on your site, perhaps we can have a private chat at some time in the future (not this week Im off on holiday tomorrow) ;) I’ve really fell out of love with linkbuilding of late (in it’s truest forms)
I sent you an email with my contact information. I look forward to building a relationship with you ;-)
@ Phil – Thanks for the tip and thats a good point. I will make that change. Matthew