Link Building Vs. Premier Link Publicity With a plethora of online businesses competing for your online market share, it’s become increasingly critical to incorporate solid link building strategies into your online marketing--and not just any links will do. We’ll show you why.
It’s no secret to anyone who has taken even a brief glance into the world of Search Engine Optimization that incoming links are one of the most important factors (if not the most important factor) in search engine rankings. The major search engines use "bots" (sophisticated software that scour the Internet) to collect, index and organize information from around the web. Links help these bots in several ways:
• They inform the bots that a web page even exists—Links create a roadmap between websites and pages. The more links a new webpage has from already indexed sources, the easier it will be for Google and Yahoo!/Bing to discover. • They provide a "description" of what the web page is about—In the simplest sense, the anchor text of a link is generally regarded as the subject of the page it points to. If someone links to your site with anchor text that reads "Doctor Who Merchandise," It’s not hard to guess what the bots will think your site is about. If the link is coming from a page on what is widely recognized as the world’s largest Doctor Who fan site, it helps drive the point further and help the page rank higher for related search queries. • They help determine the value of a page—In greatly oversimplified terms, the more links a page receives, the more important it will appear to the search engines. With these factors in mind, it may be surprising when we say that anyone who is looking to carry out a high-quality link building campaign should take a moment to stop thinking about the search engines all together. In fact, pretend that (as was once the case) there are no search engines to help people find the content they are looking for. Why would we ask you to forget about the search engines in what has become an arm of Search Engine Optimization? Because the importance of links to the algorithms hidden behind each engine’s user interface is not so different from the importance they had for web users in the early 1990s. A link from a relevant, trusted source is a huge vote of confidence for your website.
Anyone can tell that a link to a new acai berry miracle supplement is out of place on the home page of a home foreclosure specialist who also links to mystery shopping schemes and Canadian blackjack sites. Google’s algorithm is sophisticated enough to recognize these patterns as well, and gives no credit to such links. Even if you manage to squeeze a few weeks worth of improved rankings from thousands of mindlessly built links, your site will eventually face the cold, unforgiving scrutiny of the big search engines… which will undoubtedly devalue all the links you’ve "earned." When people build links with nothing but search rankings in mind, they often end up participating in underhanded tactics that will, in the long run, do more harm than good; Tactics such as blog spam, low quality directory listings and article submissions. In bulk, these may yield marginal results, but the inevitable penalties your site will receive make these tactics a huge time and money trap. That’s why it is crucial to take a step back and forget about the search engines. Approach link building as if it was an old fashioned advertising and public relations campaign. Who are your clients? What sites do they frequent? What kind of content can you provide to make sure these sites link to you? Not only will you gain more direct traffic by gaining links on sites that matter to your audience, but the search engines will also notice that you are gaining permanent links from sites that matter. In terms of search rank, that is worth more than 100 placements gained from bulk "link building."
Link building expert Eric Ward has been working in the industry for over 14 years. "When I started, there were NO search engines to submit to," Ward says in a post titled "Linking and Publicity Campaigns for Brand New Sites" on his site ericward.com. "So now, all these years later, we have 1000’s of directories, search engines, portals, vortals, blogs, vlogs, feeds, guides, zines, links pages, tags, lists etc., around the world," he continues. "Some are good, some should be ignored, and some should just go away." Unfortunately, there are countless SEOs who fail to heed the message Ward presents. To many, link building entails posting as many links on as many sites as possible, regardless of the sites’ quality or relevance. Take a look at a few blogs with small to medium sized audiences. You’ll notice that, in the comments for many posts, there are at least a few vaguely worded responses with links to pharmaceutical affiliates, online gambling sites and other fly by night operations. Or maybe there’s a list of "Favorite Sites" in the side bar that have obviously been purchased. These are just two of the half-cocked strategies that would be link builders use to sap a little link juice from any PageRank 2 site they stumble across. But, as Ward warns, "Link building activities performed just to improve search rank will not work over the long term, unless you use some very subtle strategies that few people know and understand." The search engine bots are no more easily fooled than the human users they serve.
Rocket Clicks is an online marketing agency specializing in Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization and Quality Link Building