Building the types of links that help grow your online business and organic search traffic is getting harder. It used to be fairly straightforward, back before Google worked out how to treat links with different levels of quality and trust. However, the fact that it's getting harder doesn't mean that it's dead.
What does the future hold?
I'm going to talk about links, but the truth is, the future isn't really about the links. It is far bigger than that.
Quick sidenote: I'm aware that doing a blog post about the future of link building the week of a likely Penguin update could leave me with egg on my face! But we'll see what happens.
Links will always be a ranking factor in some form or another. I can see the dials being turned down or off on certain aspects of links (more on that below) but I think they will always be there. Google is always looking for more data, more signals, more indicators of whether or not a certain page is a good result for a user at a certain moment in time. They will find them too, as we can see from patents such as this. A natural consequence is that other signals may be diluted or even replaced as Google becomes smarter and understands the web and users a lot better.
What this means for the future is that the links valued by Google will be the ones you get as a result of having a great product and great marketing. Essentially, links will be symptomatic of amazing marketing. Hat tip to Jess Champion who I've borrowed this term from.
This isn't easy, but it shouldn't be. That's the point.
To go a bit further, I think we also need to think about the bigger picture. In the grand scheme of things, there are so many more signals that Google can use which, as marketers, we need to understand and use to our advantage. Google is changing and we can't bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is going on.
A quick side note on spammy links
My background is a spammy one so I can't help but address this quickly. Spam will continue to work for short-term hits and churn and burn websites. I've talked before about my position on this so I won't go into too much more detail here. I will say though that those people who are in the top 1% of spammers will continue to make money, but even for them, it will be hard to maintain over a long period of time.
Let's move onto some more of the detail around my view of the future by first looking at the past and present.
What we've seen in the past
Google didn't understand links.
The fundamental issue that Google had for a long, long time was that they didn't understand enough about links. They didn't understand things such as:
- How much to trust a link
- Whether a link was truly editorially given or not
- Whether a link was paid for or not
- If a link was genuinely high quality (PageRank isn't perfect)
- How relevant a link was
Whilst they still have work to do on all of these, they have gotten much better in recent years. At one time, a link was a link and it was pretty much a case of whoever had the most links, won. I think that for a long time, Google was trying very hard to understand links and find which ones were high quality, but there was so much noise that it was very difficult. I think that eventually they realised that they had to attack the problem from a different angle and Penguin came along. So instead of focusing on finding the "good" signals of links, they focused on finding the "bad" signals and started to take action on them. This didn't fix everything, but it did enough to shock our industry into moving away from certain tactics and therefore, has probably helped reduce a lot of the noise that Google was seeing.
What we're seeing right now
Google is understanding more about language.
Google is getting better at understanding everything. Hummingbird was just the start of what Google hopes to achieve on this front and it stands to reason that the same kind of technology that helps the following query work, will also help Google understand links better.
Not many people in the search industry said much when Google hired this guy back in 2012. We can be pretty sure that it's partly down to his work that we're seeing the type of understanding of language that we are. His work has only just begun, though, and I think we'll see more queries like the one above that just shouldn't work, but they do. I also think we'll see more instances of Googlers not knowing why something ranks where it does.
Google is understanding more about people.
I talk about this a little more below but to quickly summarise here, Google is learning more about us all the time. It can seem creepy, but the fact is that Google wants as much data as possible from us so that they can serve more relevant search results—and advertising of course. They are understanding more that the keywords we type into Google may not actually be what we want to find, nor are those keywords enough to find what we really want. Google needs more context.
Tom Anthony has talked about this extensively so I won't go into loads more detail. But to bring it back to link building, it is important to be aware of this because it means that there are more and more signals that could mean the dial on links gets turned down a bit more.
Some predictions about the future
I want to make a few things more concrete about my view of the future for link building, so let's look at a few specifics.
1. Anchor text will matter less and less
Anchor text as a ranking signal was always something that works well in theory but not in reality. Even in my early days of link building, I couldn't understand why Google put so much weight behind this one signal. My main reason for this view was that using exact match keywords in a link was not natural for most webmasters. I'd go as far as to say the only people who used it were SEOs!
I'm don't think we're at a point yet where anchor text as a ranking signal is dead and it will take some more time for Google to turn down the dial. But we definitely are at a point where you can get hurt pretty badly if you have too much commercial anchor text in your link profile. It just isn't natural.
In the future, Google won't need this signal. They will be much better at understanding the content of a page and importantly, the context of a page.
2. Deep linking will matter less and less
I was on the fence about this one for a long time but the more I think about it, the more I can see this happening. I'll explain my view here by using an example.
Let's imagine you're an eCommerce website and you sell laptops. Obviously each laptop you sell will have its own product page and if you sell different types, you'll probably have category pages too. With a products like laptops, chances are that other retailers sell the same ones with the same specifications and probably have very similar looking pages to yours. How does Google know which one to rank better than others?
Links to these product pages can work fine but in my opinion, is a bit of a crude way of working it out. I think that Google will get better at understanding the subtle differences in queries from users which will naturally mean that deep links to these laptop pages will be one of many signals they can use.
Take these queries:
"laptop reviews"
Context: I want to buy a laptop but I don't know which one.
"asus laptop reviews"
Context: I like the sound of Asus, I want to read more about their laptops.
"sony laptop reviews"
Context: I also like the sound of Sony, I want to read more about their laptops.
"sony vs asus laptop"
Context: I'm confused, they both sound the same so I want a direct comparison to help me decide.
"asus laptop"
Context: I want an Asus laptop.
You can see how the mindset of the user has changed over time and we can easily imagine how the search results will have changed to reflect this. Google already understand this. There are other signals coming into play here too though, what about these bits of additional information that Google can gather about us:
- Location: I'm on a bus in London, I may not want to buy a £1,000 laptop right now but I'll happily research them.
- Device: I'm on my iPhone 6, I may not want to input credit card details into it and I worry that the website I'm using won't work well on a small screen.
- Search history: I've searched for laptops before and visited several retailers, but I keep going back to the same one as I've ordered from them before.
These are just a few that are easy for us to imagine Google using. There are loads more that Google could look at, not to mention signals from the retailers themselves such as secure websites, user feedback, 3rd party reviews, trust signals etc.
When you start adding all of these signals together, it's pretty easy to see why links to a specific product page may not be the strongest signal for Google to use when determining rankings.
Smaller companies will be able to compete more.
One of the things I loved about SEO when I first got into it was the fact that organic search felt like a level playing field. I knew that with the right work, I could beat massive companies in the search results and not have to spend a fortune doing it. Suffice to say, things have changed quite a bit now and there are some industries where you stand pretty much zero chance of competing unless you have a very big budget to spend and a great product.
I think we will see a shift back in the other direction and smaller companies with fewer links will be able to rank for certain types of queries with a certain type of context. As explained above, context is key and allows Google to serve up search results that meet the context of the user. This means that massive brands are not always going to be the right answer for users and Google have to get better at understanding this. Whether a company is classified as a "brand" or not can be subjective. My local craft beer shop in London is the only one in the world and if you were to ask 100 people if they'd heard of it, they'd all probably say no. But it's a brand to me because I love their products, their staff are knowledgeable and helpful, their marketing is cool and I'd always recommend them.
Sometimes, showing the website of this shop above bigger brands in search results is the right thing to do for a user. Google need lots of additional signals beyond "branding" and links in order to do this but I think they will get them.
What all of this means for us
Predicting the future is hard, knowing what to do about it is pretty hard too! But here are some things that I think we should be doing.
- Ask really hard questions
Marketing is hard. If you or your client wants to compete and win customers, then you need to be prepared to ask really hard questions about the company. Here are just a few that I've found difficult when talking to clients:- Why does the company exist? (A good answer has nothing to do with making money)
- Why do you deserve to rank well in Google?
- What makes you different to your competitors?
- If you disappeared from Google tomorrow, would anyone notice?
- Why do you deserve to be linked to?
- What value do you provide for users?
The answers to these won't always give you that silver bullet, but they can provoke conversations that make the client look inwardly and at why they should deserve links and customers. These questions are hard to answer, but again, that's the point.
- Stop looking for scalable link building tactics
Seriously, just stop. Anything that can be scaled tends to lose quality and anything that scales is likely to be targeted by the Google webspam team at some point. A recent piece of content we did at Distilled has so far generated links from over 700 root domains—we did NOT send 700 outreach emails! This piece took on a life of its own and generated those links after some promotion by us, but at no point did we worry about scaling outreach for it.
- Start focusing on doing marketing that users love
I'm not talking necessarily about you doing the next Volvo ad or to be the next Old Spice guy. If you can then great, but these are out of reach for most of us.That doesn't mean you can't do marketing that people love. I often look at companies like Brewdog and Hawksmoor who do great marketing around their products but in a way that has personality and appeal. They don't have to spend millions of dollars on celebrities or TV advertising because they have a great product and a fun marketing message. They have value to add which is the key, they don't need to worry about link building because they get them naturally by doing cool stuff.
Whilst I know that "doing cool stuff" isn't particularly actionable, I still think it's fair to say that marketing needs to be loved. In order to do marketing that people love, you need to have some fun and focus on adding value.
- Don't bury your head in the sand
The worst thing you can do is ignore the trends and changes taking place. Google is changing, user expectations and behaviours are changing, our industry is changing. As an industry, we've adapted very well over the last few years. We have to keep doing this if we're going to survive.
Going back to link building, you need to accept that this stuff is really hard and building the types of links that Google value is hard.
In summary
Links aren't going anywhere. But the world is changing and we have to focus on what truly matters: marketing great products and building a loyal audience.
I agree with most of this, especially the drop in the importance of deep linking. I also agree that there are increasing opportunities for small to beat big, like it used to be.
However, the distilled example is a pretty expensive piece of content by most standards - design, coding, research and the brainwave. Also, while there may not have been 700 email requests, there was without doubt some form of promotion. Some emails, some social and probably more than a few phone calls. Also, as anyone who has tried to build this sort of a page knows: some work, some don't. To the initial cost of building that page, you need to add the cost of the flops in order to calculate a truthful ROI.
As someone who does a lot of "content marketing" (that's what it's called this week) I have explained to quite a few professionals exactly how I manage to get so many good links. I can think of only one that has managed to execute something similar. We need to be careful in saying "anyone can do this", because, frankly, they can't or won't.
Another point here is that businesses have brands, but other people just have websites. I'm an affiliate marketer (There! I said it!) and generally I build websites, not brands. It's not that I couldn't build a brand (tried it once; didn't like it) but it doesn't fit with my aims, or the aims of many. I, and many other people who read this blog, have to wash, rinse, repeat when we find something that works. Generally, you're right: anything that's scaleable is usually bad long term in SEO, but hard work and a bit of creativity can go a long way.
I couldn't agree more, in particular your final point about creativity and hard work.
To be clear on one point - yes we did promote the piece of content that I referenced in the blog post. I don't want to give the impression that you simply need to publish content and the links would flow on their own. That definitely isn't the case for most of us! There always needs to be an initial nudge whether that is organic outreach or paid promotion / seeding.
I also agree that big, interactive pieces of content aren't achievable for some websites. I think that the underlying principle is still the same though - scaling isn't the solution anymore. We didn't approach this project with a goal of scaling link building. It wasn't about that. It was about doing something that connected with the target audience of the client and ticked a lot of boxes which meant it was likely to be well-received and sharable.
Very good article. Thank you, Paddy.
I agree with most of the statements made here. About this one, I am not sure:
"Smaller companies will be able to compete more."
Why? If the links and signals that will earn you good rankings are mere "symptoms of amazing marketing", it will yet again be easier to open up the pockets and create just that amazing marketing for the big players:
Create some really cool content that is useful, funny, inspiring or emotional - easier for big brands with big marketing budgets
Spread that content on lots of platforms - easier for big brands with big social media and PR budgets
create diverse signals for search engines to understand that your site is an authority (mentions, co-occurrences, co-citations, etc.) - easier for big, well-known brands
Correct me if I am wrong, please.
I agree with you Andreas. Unfortunately the facilities for small businesses are always greater facilities for the Biggest...
I think that Paddy refers to local SEO, where local businesses could be more competitive, but it depends on the market sector because there is a lot of Big companies with local stores that have important marketing teams behind them.
Thanks for the post!
Hi Andreas,
Ruben is right in that I'm referring a little bit more towards local SEO. My point is that despite the bigger budgets of large companies, Google will get better at understanding when a big company is the right result for a query vs. when a smaller company is the best result for a query.
Hope that clarifies things a little!
Paddy
I think content+outreach will be the long term white hat link strategy left. Whether that is broken link building, resource link building or just link begging, it is the only thing where there is no exchange of value other than the content itself
Russ, I hate to sound negative -- but "content plus outreach" is just PR by another name. Public-relations executives have been doing that since long before the Internet existed. :)
I don't see where Russ claimed that content+outreach was something new or unique to internet marketing. What does the fact that it is similar to what PR pros do, have to do with it being the only white hat link building practice
The thing is their has been so much cross over between PR & SEO in the last 10-15 years. It has always been an argument who had ownership on what. For example we have clients who build content via our assistance in house and then have our team do "outreach only".
If you go to a PR agency and ask for "Content out reach only on links" most will stare at you with a blank look. So many PR agency's focus on getting brand mentions only they do not focus on links. Due to the fact that many large publications do not want to link in the first place. Don't get me wrong I LOVE PR agencies and always look to train up their teams on what SEO and how we can work together as soon as we start projects we also know the Good PR agencies from the BAD =) In most cases SEO's are usually the more for acquisition on high quality link targets.
I agree with everything above EXCEPT the statement that smaller businesses will be able to compete more. The only caveat here is for geo-specific queries where there's a brick-and-mortar location that has the same products as larger retailers or e-tailers. SEO, by default, is geared towards big brands with natural link equity and the capacity to create truly great content (ie, the budget to do so). Excellent write-up overall though and good points on how Google is better understanding links. I've followed you for a long time Paddy and will continue to do so!
I'm happy to disagree :) Just to clarify my point though, I feel that Google will get better at understanding user intent and expectations to the point where smaller businesses are the best answer for certain queries. Yes, geo / local is one factor here which they've used for years, but there are so many more signals that they can start using which favour both big and small companies,
Paddy,
I recent years, we've heard more and more about link earning, which is far from novel but sounds a lot better than link bait. Many small and midsize business, believing they have chosen the more noble effort tend to follow this link earning path in hopes of getting shares and mentions on the way to links. This typically works fine. At first. Or the first few times. But it's not sustainable.
I see the problem as two-fold:
1. Link earning might be a better overall approach than creating link bait, but the links-first approach is hugely flawed. Gaining links should occur naturally, after creating amazing content. As you make clear with the Distilled example, most people would be amazed to find out how most link baity content actually garners far fewer links than well-targeted content that delights the audience.
2. A focus on links takes our focus away from what it should be on: knowing our audience and creating worthwhile content. While I do think content should be link-worthy, it should first be well-aimed and have delight at its core.
Thanks for this post, Paddy.
RS
Thanks for the comment Ronell.
I just want to comment on one point - yes links should occur naturally, as they did in the piece I referenced above. However, there definitely was a lot of hard work that went into the promotion of the piece. Content doesn't just get links on it's own, there always needs to be that nudge for it to gain traction.
I hate hearing that link building is dead. It's not. Google has never come out and said "don't build links". However, the approach has definitely changed. Create great content that people will link to and look for opportunities where your target audience is spending time. Build links for traffic and visibility first.
The thing with link building in coming years you really do need to focus on quality and you really do need to focus on a brand driven strategy. I agree that anchor text will be less and less in coming years it is still crazy that you see some link builders pushing exact match generic anchors as a strategy so heavy it is very worrying. We run plenty of test campaigns in different markets to monitor what is working and what is not working. It would be safe to say link building is far from dead yet the game has changed that is for sure in the last few years.
Another thing about the big piece of content Distilled made it is a great and it shows how a amazing piece of content can generate buzz and drive backlinks. The issue is SMB/ Mid-size companies are not able to tap into a resource of designers and outreach people to get the process started because it is not a low cost campaign. I agree content does work 100% with link building you just need to set the expectation with client budget vs what can actually be done. That been said SMB's can still win with content it is just usually not at the same rate as larger businesses who have the budget to promote the content to get it into the market. For every campaign that does well their are 10 which fail due to poor promotion or the content just sucks.
Hey Paddy
It's an interesting week for this post for sure. Where I am based (Birmingham) there are several SEO companies and I know or know of most of them in one way or another. And, in 2014, on the verge of Penguin 3.0 they are all still predominantly link building companies. Now, this is not natural, helpful links that are user focused but rather private link networks or engineered mini link networks for individual sites (usually using expired domains).
You know what though, we see it working well for some folks - well, for now at least.
What boggles me is that this still works. In my mind Panda should clean up the linking sites and Penguin should at least disable the potency of these links. Or, the algorithm as a whole should do a better job of separating the good from the bad from the impotent.
Ultimately, our approach for small / local businesses is different and more focused on trying to build links that may help the business from an inbound perspective and may have a secondary benefit in increasing overall traffic but this can be slower and less effective short term than plugging into a link network.
I have been working in search for about 15 years now and have seen a lot of businesses hurt by these kind of tactics (not by myself I hasten to add) so I have a real ethical problem with these strategies when they are sold to small businesses as safe. Sure, if you know what you are doing and want to spin out some churn and burn sites in a big money industry go for it but the selling of 'SEO' as purely link manufacturing in 2015 and beyond simply has to go away.
I think it's useful to get posts from big, well regarded firms like Distilled that acknowledge that this is hard as it helps folks keep on the straight and narrow. The real wins, the long term wins are never, never, never the quick and easy wins.
Cheers
Marcus
This junk happens everywhere, even in Australia you see so called "Trusted" SEO companies who spend big money on PPC to acquire customers the main strategy they use are low quality blog networks. They also use other forms of spammy link methods such as using existing clients sites to build links to other clients it is LAUGHABLE!!! They add 100 clients on a DA 20 site and trow up junk content and run on a "churn and burn" methodology, any client who wants to sign up at $399 a month + a set of steak knives is welcome to sign on the dotted line. I really do feel sorry for the honest business owners who get wiped out after using XYZ spammer SEO and they call you crying for help.
Yep, seriously, it's kind of mind blowing this still works (short term at least).
Oh... in Bulgaria we have other story. There is company called TheSEO (no kidding!) that do Google search on popular terms. Then they start calling companies and complaining how existing their SEO company is screwing whole SEO process and things could be do better. If client isn't prepared for this he can change mind and abandon existing company to join new one. Result - clients going from 1st page somewhere in 5th or 6th page within few weeks.
So is there anything to do about them? How do we get a big public awareness campaign going so "everyone" understands? It could just be an eternal problem - the knowledge gap between those desperate for more business and the hucksters who hold the "keys to success". For instance - do any of us know if we are being duped or overpaying for the expensive bottle of red wine at the corner store? Only wine experts would truly know it's value.
Well Joe in Australia a suspect SEO company was actually on prime time tv recently for doing bad quality work and destroying a business. I hope more shows like this come into play. Like anything you always need ensure that you REVIEW the company before you sign onto any contract example of a "seo selection process here - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140725060...
More of this type of content needs to be promoted into the market so business owners are aware of good vs bad.
Paddy, great piece on linkbuilding -- as always!
Links aren't going anywhere. But the world is changing and we have to focus on what truly matters: marketing great products and building a loyal audience.
I would just add another caveat: The best links come as the natural results of just doing good marketing and PR. That has always been true, and that will never change. Plus, you'll almost never be at risk for Penguin penalties for unnatural links. I always advocate that people not think about getting links but rather think about how to get publicity instead.
I know I probably cite that point here on Moz too much -- but it's just a heartfelt issue for me. :)
Are you sure that the "best links come from the natural results of marketing" I disagree with so many large brands over the years you can spend millions on Marketing and PR and the links will be so-so. If you do outreach to a super high end .gov who is relevant or a high end industry partner which is relevant these have proven to be the BEST links not only from a authority point of view yet also from a conversions and traffic point of view. And they were via outreach to the right people. These are links that you would never get via marketing or PR because those targets do not view that messaging. The best LINK is also a interesting statement, that could change based on industry.
I think content+outreach will be the long term white hat link strategy left. Whether that is broken link building, resource link building or just link begging, it is the only thing where there is no exchange of value other than the content itself
Building resources seems to have a lot of benefits for link building. Thanks for the read.
Oh boy. I read and re-read your article, because it had meat. I like meat -I'm carnivorous after all. Here's where the chew gets tough for me: 1) I no longer "get" Google. In other words, I really don't understand the mindset of Google as a company at this point. So, I'm of a mind currently where I tell clients not to please Google. Period.
2) I think the Internet is still a good ole-fashioned web of linked documents, right? Ergo, "links" will always be important -to the World Wide Web, if not to Google,,but remember, I don't care what Google thinks any more. Frankly, most of what they do nowadays seems to directly or indirectly contradict their core Search business. (And, don't even get me started on "Glass" [eye-roll, head shake])
The comments about Public Relations, compelling and/or useful content were all solid. If you need awareness and eyeballs on that great stuff to begin with, well then, you DO have to work hard, especially if you have no real marketing budget to speak of. Heck, I'd probably sleep with an editor at Wikipedia and be done with it.
Thank you so much to share your great opinion.
Great article , but it makes me kind of sad . At the moment I am starting learning to build link building , you prophesies that he is nearing the end . I hope this takes a while.
Paddy,
Great stuff as always!!! Any chance you will be updating your Link Building Book anytime soon? Or maybe a second book all together?
Hey Paddy,
I bought your link building ebook a when it came out. You mentioned "Stop looking for scalable link building tactics". I use Buzzstream to help scale email outreach. Sometimes I send emails for a blog post (with a backlink) while sometimes I send them just to land a client (sales email).
You used to be a big advocate for Buzzstream. Is this changing?
Also, regarding ecommerce pages rankings, Google Trusted Stores and 3rd party review sites (Shopper Approved, Trust Pilot, Reseller Ratings). will have more of a ranking factor over time.
Hi Francisco,
Firstly, thanks again for buying the book :)
I feel there is a big difference between what BuzzStream helps you scale vs. the types of link building methods that can scale. For me, BuzzStream helps you scale part of the process of link building i.e. prospecting and outreach. It doesn't scale the actual placement of links and it has enough flexibility to allow for personalisation of outreach. For me, this is very different to looking for tactics that generate you lots of links with little or no effort.
Does that make sense?
Yes that makes complete sense. I don't use anything that scales the actual placements of links because it's just too risky. I'm going to continue link building as shown in your ebook. I know that link building may become a smaller ranking signal, but it won't be going away anytime soon.
For anyone wondering about Matt Cutts opinion on links, here are two good short videos
Is there a version of Google that excludes backlinks as a ranking factor?
Will backlinks lose their importance in ranking?
I don't agree with you that link building is dead for ever. Yes, We can go for high quality link building that will help more frequently for our sites.
Hi Seema,
To clarify, I didn't say link building is dead. I actually say the opposite:
"Links will always be a ranking factor in some form or another."
Hope that helps clarify things.
Cheers.
Paddy
Thanks Paddy Moogan .....its true & Yes its nice thought to know about LINK BUILDING..its nice to help all seo person to done self work.
Other considerations for the future link building IMO:
Thanks for summerizing the trend! I was at the most recent Pucon in Vegas, and talked about this with some of the big agency folks,a nd we had a consensus that google was indeed refining a methodology of creating a value for inboind links. By necessity, thre must be a positive/negative grading in order for them to be able to ramp up enforcement and penalty responses. (It certainly can;t all be done by human review.)
We all know what factors determine a good linke from a bad link, right? So it is only logical that they can evaluate links based on geo, domain, and content relational to the linked site to determine weight and relevance.
My guess, is that Pagerank figures in as a multiplier in the formula somewhere. (.edu and .gov are high multipliers, obviously.)
Don't forget, Google's basic assumption is that a website should not be selling something, but rather should be a resource for the visitor. That's why relevent content is so huge, as well as links. Their idea is that a third party who has a certain level of authority on a topic is in a better position to evaluate content, and their stamp of approval is a backlink to that content.
I am doing SEO of a Job portal (ResumeOn.com). To create its backlinks whether should i make a subdomain of several pages (jobsearch.resumeon.com) or should continued it in subfolder (resumeon.com/jobsearch). Which is best method for link building?
I am getting good traffic from partner websites but my site is not ranking on Google. Although, it has good alexa rank.
Please give me some suggestions.
I suppose that Paddy refers to native SEO, where local businesses could be more competitive, however it depends on the market sector as a result of there's lots of massive firms with native stores that have necessary promoting groups behind them.
Thanks for the post!
Thank you for the insightful article. What are your thoughts on submission to online directories? (what ones should I spend my time on, best practices, etc.) Is there a MOZ article you can direct me to? Thanks!
Great article. I agree the key is successful SEO is engaging content. You can be sure I will share this with some of my clients to help them understand why I am recommending the changes we are making to what had been tried and true practices. Thanks again for sharing.
Hello Paddy,
I was searching for some new ways to build links when I bumped into this article. As always, very good information.
I found a small typo in Point #1. second Para - I'm don't think we're at a point yet.
Great share. Thanks
A great post, being and seo person,i enjoy reading it and this is something which only enhancing knowledge.
Great article. Due to the ability for end users to manipulate links, I can agree with the devalue of links when it comes to rankings. I really feel as if social media signals will become more important in the time to come.
Link building is one of the most important concept about SEO. Goolge is getting smarter. Ways to promote SEO is getting much harder.
Nice post. Thank you!
Links are always an important part of optimization. But, it all depends whether you do it the right way or you just do it with the notion to get links overnight. Their is a thin line here and Google is the watchdog to monitor and punish if you violate the line. I would like to add here is entity based link building tactics. Information connects each other after HummingBird update. So, even if you are going for content outreach, make sure you connect them with relative entities and possible ways they can be searched for a particular query in the search results. Broken link building is also based on supplementing information for the broken links existing on the web and they too somehow semantically relate with each other.
Great points here... If the presuppositions are correct here, it seems like Google is rewarding big, compelling content that is often produced by large companies. This means smaller companies that don't have the resources for creating this content should definitely be optimizing for local keyword queries (i.e. Columbus Accountant Services).
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Love the article, Paddy. Some very good insights. Just a few thoughts to add:
Great link building, and marketing in general, is about putting the right message in front of the right people at the right time. While having awesome content helps, it isn't the only way to build quality links. There are many other reasons why someone would be motivated to link to a site. After all, the most linked to page on a site is likely the home page, and in most cases, the content on the home page probably isn't that exciting. So why is it being linked to? The answer to this question would help us better understand the motivation behind a link and the type of people who are likely to link naturally. The question then becomes "how do we get the brand in front of more of these people?" And that's a much more productive conversation than "how do we get more links?"
I also liked the comment about smaller companies being able to compete but I am not sure how true it is. [I hope it is true!] Yes, for a brick-and-mortar niche small business, location of the searcher might be a helpful signal. But for a small company that competes with big players worldwide, it seems like it would be easy to get drowned out in these other signals as well, because of issues of less money and fewer available resources.
As someone who also started out with greyhat I would say this article is spot on. Google is getting much smarter about recognizing great content. This is encouraging, because it helps us SEOs who respect clients websites and aren't looking for easy shortcuts.
Also, I liked the idea that small businesses are going to be back on a level playing field with the big corporations. Some solid logic and I hope you are right!
Hi Paddy Moogan,
Really good insights about link building. I know optimizing website or building links for rankings is old fashion moreover it may work for sometimes not in the long run.
Most of webmaster's are limiting themselves to build quality links to fulfill current algorithm trends (simply they try to follow), but the fellow webmaster will fail in optimizing website and building links for users.
This is only the cause that people thinking SEO is dead, but they are unable to understand that #SEO still the key to win hearts of your customers. Going with big budgets is different when it comes to SEO, as it will give you the first impression to avail your services.
Simply the more and more we act natural in terms of link building we will get more and more exposure even though individuals are new to the industry.
Thanks.
The funny thing is that it all makes sense and I can't agree more with your statements, but the issue remains. It's really hard to explain how to your customers that you need to invest really good money if your competitors are tough. What I'm doing is building a few easy-win links just to show my customers that my SEO campaigns work and then I'm doing my best to convince them that they can't achieve much (overcome their competitors) with this sort of SEO campaigns. I make my point proving that they need to pay by a long shot more (pretty much shell out) in some cases. Sometimes this approach works, but sometimes it doesn't. Would you agree that it's the right approach or there's a better way to do it?
These "Future of links" conversations always come down to the same results. Don't think about "How can I get links?" Think "how can I add value to the user/customer?" When you start to add value the links will follow. (pun intended)
I think visualization of valuable data across a variety of devices will determine the how enthusiastically a piece of content will be shared on the web moving forward. It's one of the reasons why data analysis and visualization has immense outreach potential. Google Search is already making headway in this regard and going by the astounding increase in the mobile search predicted, how seamlessly you present your data across the devices will be an aspect that is going to be factored into by Google.
"Device: I'm on my iPhone 6, I may not want to input credit card details into it and I worry that the website I'm using won't work well on a small screen."
iPhone 6 includes ApplePay, so they'd probably be more likely to make a purchase, since they don't have to input any payment details.
I believe link building for rankings is already dying but saying that it’s the time for link building to die will not be true I believe people will still be building links and this is because they still need endorsement from other reputable places on the internet.
I have to agree with Russ, Content + Outreach is the best strategy when it comes to link building. Obviously you have to monitor the quality of website but if you need the best quality links that looks natural, you need to go with Content + Outreach approach!!
Great stuff by Paddy as usual!!
You nailed it, Paddy. Oh, and a super-awesome link-building tactic you should have mentioned is blog comment spam like the two folks above just tried :-). Two people who (a) don't understand that your URL in text and a link aren't the same, and (b) their spammy comments will get nuked in minutes by you or an editor (they'll probably be gone by the time I click Submit) :-).
Great article Paddy. With the rise of using mobile devices and using natural queries to search, I can see how search engines would want to put less emphasis on anchor links and give more weight to context.
With your statement "Deep linking will matter less and less" I am not really sure what you mean by that? :(
Hi,
I mean that links to deep pages of a website (not the homepage) will matter less and less in terms of those pages being able to rank. I think that Google will have lots of other signals which means that the weighting of links to a deep page vs. other signals will decrease. I don't mean that deep links don't matter, just that other signals will be available which mean we will see deep pages ranking with few links.
The connection is amazing! I mean, currently I’m going through the HubSpot’s classes on inbound marketing and they are actually echoing the same concept – focus on content and context at the same time to attract (or reach out to) right audience at right time via right way.
This post till now has got 43 likes (incl. lots of social shares)! And I’m hoping that those were all informed decision. Only then the real reason behind writing such articles can be fulfilled!
\m/
When always follow the will of the search engines, certainly there will be no end :D . For me the link building still useful :) . Do not be too focused on making backlinks, more focus on making the article with the ideas of self :D
Most Important steps to learn link building the whole concept is very good
Thanks for the very useful article. link building is the most effectly thing in seo : )
In 2015, link building is a tedious practice. If it is wrong, you are exposed to the wrath of Google.
You stated a solution that seems very sensible to me: "Whilst I Know That" doing cool stuff "is not actionable PARTICULARLY, I still think it's fair to say That Marketing Needs to be loved In order to do marketing people That love,. you need to Log have some fun and focus on adding value. "
Your conclusions are inaccurate IMHO. Anchor text is extremely important what has changed is Google ability to determine that fake 3rd party anchors are being leveraged by the owner and thus are unnatural but Google stresses site architecture as a major issue for SEO Practitioning and that's where you can have control over the anchors.
Your deep linking is also inaccurate. It is the only way to brand or call-to-action link anchors to keyword references the landing page is not the ranking page.
You don't need unnatural external links so long as your natural internal links are used appropriately.
But you absolute need to think about anchor text as internal navigation and because of that deep linking. Google's guideline cleverly points that out if you thoroughly parse their meanings.