We've all known someone who got hit by Google's algo updates. Whether you've personally been affected or you know someone who has, it's not fun to bounce back from and can can impact your SEO efforts if not addressed appropriately
This week, Rand discusses the egress of old link building practices and the ingress of new (old) link earning strategies that will help your site stay relevant in the SERPs and drive your traffic with a better user experience.
Video Transcription
"Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk a little bit, philosophically, about something that's happened with the Web, that's happened as a result of how Google is keeping up with webspam and how their algorithms are evolving.
You've likely seen that this year has been an incredibly active year from Google's Webspam Team, specifically focused on a lot of linking stuff with Penguin, now the exact match domain updates. We saw some other updates that look link related that weren't specifically Penguin, but appear to be penalizing certain types of links. Article marketing, article directories getting hit. A bunch of the directories, like general web directories and pay for submission directories and SEO friendly directories getting hit earlier this year.
And, because of all this, I am really getting the sense that what Google is trying to say is, "Stop link building and start link earning." Literally, I feel like the message coming out of Google is, "If this is a link that you go out onto the Web and acquire as an SEO person trying to build a link in the way that links have classically been built or gotten, we don't want you to have that link, or more likely, we don't want to count that link, and if that's all you do, we might actually be penalizing you through an algorithm filter like Penguin.'
So I'm kind of seeing this as a return, a rebirth of the link earning ways of the Web. Remember, early on in the Web, sort of mid to late '90s, before search engines became huge and link building was a big part of SEO, so you can kind of think like '94 to '97, '98, that kind of thing, it was really about earning links that are going to bring me relevant traffic. That's the only thing that mattered, because search was bringing some valuable stuff, but most of the search engines had some directory bases or it was a lot of keyword stuff.
So getting traffic from those relevant sites that could send me people who would actually convert or do something on my website that I wanted them to do, that was what the game was all about. Then, Google comes out, Alta Vista and some of the other search engines kind of switch over to this link model, and now it's, "Oh, I really want high PageRank links. I'm looking for that little green bar that's filled up all the way. When I see that in the toolbar, I know that if I just get some links on there to my page, I can start ranking for all sorts of stuff."
So Google gets a little smarter, right, and now it's, "Oh, yeah, anchor text." That really started emerging early 2000's. Now as they're getting more sophisticated, it's sort of, "Well, we have to get certain types of authority links with the right balance of anchor text," and these kinds of things. Now, really the last 12 to 18 months, and even more heavily the last 9 months since that first Penguin update, we've been sort of seeing a return to this, "Man, I better get good links that I've earned, rather than acquired or gotten, because if I don't, those acquired, those gotten, those built links seem to be able to hurt me and that's dangerous stuff."
Let's try to imagine this. I want to go link building. These are sort of the old-school link building tactics and their equivalent in a link earning world, a world where we are going out and trying to earn the links that we acquire rather than building them, buying them, getting them, forcing them, pushing them, dropping them, all these kinds of things.
So imagine, like, link exchanges and reciprocal links, which happen a lot. To my mind, the new version of that is the cross promotion, the partnership, where I say essentially, "Oh, you know, SEOmoz has a partnership with Distilled, and so there are lots of links happening back and forth in a very sort of natural, non-manipulatively SEO sense." No one's dropping anchor text. No one is putting links on specific pages. It's, "Where does it make sense, and how can we drive traffic back and forth in the right kinds of ways? If we promote DistilledU and they say,
'This is a really good blog post by one of our consultants,' then great."
That stuff sort of naturally happens, and it's that relevant traffic story.
E-mail blasts, you still get them, sadly. I'll tell you a funny story. Story time. So funny story, we got an e-mail from one of our PR people. We do some PR where we've actually hired a PR company, a company called Barokas here in Seattle, and they sort of do these PR pitches. So they were pitching some people, I think this was for our funding back in April, and the crazy part was that they got back responses from a couple of, I'm not going to name them because I'm not sure if Barokas would be upset with me if I did name them, but a couple of big press outlets that you've definitely heard of here in the United States that said, "We don't write about SEO companies." Oh, okay, don't write about SEO companies.
I think, I'm pretty sure that the reason for that is because they get so many press releases and e-mail blasts that are like, "Oh, write about this latest SEO company. SEO-blahblahblah." Junkie stuff and so they associate it with low quality. The new e-mail blast for links is social sharing for links. I share things socially. I hope that message gets magnified across social and that will lead organically to links. I will earn the links that I get by sharing them socially across my network and across the social platforms. People will see them and hopefully link back to me if that's relevant and interesting.
Buying links directly. Yeah, that's dumb. Just don't do that. You shouldn't have done that for many years. That's been gone for a long time. But I think the new way to do this is earn links directly with content. You can earn links very, very directly if you create the kind of content that you know someone wants to share, wants to link to, would embed, would write about or blog about or include in their press or their research or in something that says something nice about them. Yeah. That testimonial, right? All that kind of stuff can be directly earned with content. That's the new buy directly with dollars.
Submitting to directories. Yeah, well, that also hasn't been smart for a little while now, and Penguin has made that situation much worse. There was an interesting interview - you'll find it on inbound.org - with an ex-
member of the Webspam Team, the team that Matt Cutts is head of at Google. This guy is in Australia now, working on a new site, new project. There was an interview of him by an SEO guy, and he asked some questions about this. He said, "Yeah, you know, there's this myth that directories are entirely dead. If it's a curated list, where someone is maintaining a resource and something is included there, I still think those are very valuable."
I would agree, if you can get on to those curated lists. So think of, like, the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies in the US list or the Better Business Bureau directory in your area or Yelp's list of "Thai restaurants in Seattle." Those are curated lists and portals. That's a great place to get onto.
The article directories and article marketing. So this was never a particularly excellent idea, but it did work. Tragically, it totally worked for a while. Now it's actively hurting people like many of these other link building techniques. I think the link earning way to do that is to get a guest post featured on picky sites and blogs. This is very important. When I say "picky," what I mean is, people who care a tremendous amount about what's being put on their sites as opposed to those who accept nearly every type of guest post or guest article. That's really the article directories/article marketing world, and it's dangerous, bad stuff. They got hit by Panda first, then they got hit by Penguin later and just ugly. You don't want to mess around with that. But, if you can get your stuff featured on picky sites and blogs, what's beautiful is one link from a great blog in your industry or a news site in your industry, this is worth a hundred, maybe a thousand of these, even back in the day.
Old-school, super old-school link building tactic was leaving links on guestbooks, forums, open comments, do follow blogs, do follow links, all that kind of stuff. Obviously, you can see the results of that today, which are not good. I think the new version of that is participating in communities like these that are active and authentic and have real participation and real membership, in such a way that members of those networks, of those communities will notice you and then link to you organically. They'll find your stuff. They'll be like, "Oh, this Randfish person looks interesting. I'm going to check out his content. His content looks interesting too. I could use some of this stuff, or I'm going to reference this or I'm going to write about something, and I'll pull in a reference to something, a citation of something that he's made in the past." Great. That's terrific. But you better be authentically participating, or they'll think you're spam, and you better have that great content to back it up or you're not going to be earning those links.
Mining competitor's backlinks. I would not say, "Don't do this anymore." I still think this is valuable stuff, but if you just go through your competitor's backlinks and you try and get all of those links, a lot of the time, particularly in SEO heavy sorts of industries, you're going to see a ton of the rest of this stuff. A lot of people have a lot of these links from the classic days when these sorts of things were how people got links.
Now, the new thing that I always think about is going to Open Site Explorer or Topsy and looking at, "What is the content that's gotten the most links from my competitors or from people who are competitive in my field?" They don't necessarily need to be directly overlapping businesses. Looking at Topsy and seeing what's the most socially shared content, what's getting hot from this site, this blog, this research, this market leader, whoever it is, and then doing it better, oh, that's beautiful. When you do this, then I think it pays to go look at, "Hey, who was it that was linking to the interesting content that that site produced?" So mining in that fashion is valuable.
There used to be this practice where people would build up private networks of websites that could be called link farms sometimes. Or they built up public networks that were called link rings and link circuses and blog carnivals. I remember blog carnivals, which weren't always spammy, but then got used in very spammy ways for SEO. Those network links of sites, the new way to do that is to build a social network, building a social network that is actually made up of influencers, of people who can link to you, the linkerati, the people who own websites and who have a presence in Twitter, Google+, Facebook that can influence other people, that will get people paying attention to you. If you build this up, you'll accomplish far more than what this would do for you today.
So I am not saying that all of the link building tactics of yore are gone. There are certainly some that still exist. I mean, directory stuff, there could be some curated lists that still make sense. But, by and large, Google is trying to end the practice of link building and renew the practice of link earning. I think that's why you see so many SEOs embracing content marketing, and I think this shift is going to happen even more heavily over the next 6 to 12 months. So if you get ahead of the curve now, you're going to be in a good place next year.
All right everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. See you again next week and take care."
The downside to this of course is that google is forcing companies into a little box where they are all now required to build very content heavy sites. For certain business types this isnt really relevant for the intended user. Its also pretty exclusionary for certain types of businesses that aren't really set up to scale content. I really don't like this thing were google says "all sites must either be content resource sites or they must buy adwords, there is no room for straight sales sites in the organic serps". Its very rare when Im shopping online that I want or need the site that sells the thing I want to have a huge blog or infographics or anything like that. For example I just recently bought a pair of danner boots. I bought it direct from the manufacturer (not like an amazon or something). I couldn't tell you if Danner has a blog or not because frankly as a consumer I don't care. I just want to go there and buy some boots. Reviews on the purchase page are probably of interest, but reviews directly on the product page are very rarely ever going to get you links. Im not dissing this video at all. Its honest and on point. I am however irritated with google for basically forcing all websites to become content mills.
I completely agree Kris, Google are making it harder and harder for small businesses with "brochure" sites to show anywhere in the SERPS without have a Google Places page and a Plus account and a Facebook account and so on. A lot of small businesses don't have the time or the know-how to do social marketing and to churn out blog posts every few weeks and have very little "newsworthy" output for a blog post or even a tweet that will get shared.
However Rand is just telling us like it is and doing it fantastically as always. I love WBF!
In all honest, I think a small business who cannot produce one post every few weeks is not really that concerned about their online presence. Setting up a Google Places page, a Facebook account, a Twitter account and a Pinterest profile can be done in less than a morning.
Personally I think that's an incredibly worthwhile investment of any small businesses time.
There are hundreds of posts out there about producing content in industries where news is scarce. Encourage people to think outside the box!
I agree that Google may have been a little heavy handed in recent updates and not considered that content doesn't always equal quality.
Great job putting that into perspective, Sam. I would totally agree with you. While some SEO companies have destroyed small/local businesses, I think most could dramatically improve by just doing some basic networking on social sites and helping their customers through their blog. The best way to earn a following and gain links is by helping people or giving free stuff, something Google (and to a point) SEOmoz has done to create a huge following.
You can set UP those accounts in a morning, but to make them useful in ANY capacity you need to devote time (read: money) to making them worthwhile. Having an empty or crappy facebook page is worse than having none at all.
I meet tons of small businesses who would LOVE to devote more time and energy (and finances) to their online presence, but just don't have the ability given how many other things are on a small business owner's radar.
Merely blogging or posting isn't a viable link building strategy anyways. These are generally transactional posts - people come in (whether through the site or through search), get the info they need, then bounce.
SEOmoz also operates in an industry where their entire audience is active and engaged online. They are a terrible case study to compare to, say, a scaffolding company or a mom and pop muffler repair joint.
I'm not trying to be snarky, but the reality of the matter is that the content-centric approach Google wants to try and promote simply doesn't work for all businesses (as Kris pointed out)
It may be frustrating but the reality is we need to accept that Google is a business.
True, the consumer doesn't care if an eCommerce site has a blog or amazing content, but only because very few consumers care which eCommerce site they get their products from in the first place.
As long as it's for a decent price and the product is good, they are happy. They could care less if they get there via AdWords, the organic results, Google Shopping, or Amazon. (In fact, most of them are going straight to Amazon these days, no wonder Google is pushing Shopping).
I believe Google is trying to send a clear message to the consumer. If you want to buy something, use AdWords or Shopping. If you want content, go to the organic results. It is not in Google's best interests to do it any other way, and the only reason they haven't done it sooner is because the computing capabilities weren't there yet.
Let's face facts. SEO is not going to be about commercial content in the foreseeable future. If you want to be visible in front of a highly commercial audience, you'll need to pay for it. That's how the "real world" has worked for a very long time. It's a wonder the internet worked any other way for this long. It really is.
This isn't to say SEO isn't going to be beneficial for commercial purposes. It's just that it's going to be used to build loyalty with consumers and influencers, which will lead to positive word of mouth that translates into customer retention and longevity. It's going to be a different game going forward.
My two cents, anyway.
I totally agree, How can you make a screw driver ,stencil marking, radiator cabinet interesting, also noticing that since 2011 all the major brand like amazon, ebay etc.. are appearing in top 10 position they are taking majority of the SERP on various industries and killing small businesses. These big boy can afford TV , media etc. Online was the only source where a small business like a single working mum, etc could get business not any more.It needs a lot of time and effort to create quality content
Sorry just expressing my feelings also think small business should start looking at various other form of traffic sources, I think amazon will benefit from this.
I think that Google is trying to make a real push to reward strong brands in its search results. The positive to that is that I know that if a link is on the Amazon, Microsoft or Ebay website it has less chance of being a spam site. The negative is that establishing a brand takes a long time and makes it difficult for the small businesses to compete. It is a doble edged sword for sure.
But with HootSuite, TweetDeck and all the other tools at your disposal, I really don't think it's too much to ask!
If you're business doesn't drive sales through the Internet then I grant you, it may not be worthwhile.
However, we are in the information seeking generation. I'm struggling to think of a business scenario where having at least a basic social media presence wouldn't be advantageous.
I know others will disagree but as the old British mantra goes:
'If you don't buy a ticket, you don't win the raffle...'
What you create, you must manage. A mere presence on a social network tells users that they can EXPECT you to respond to them in that medium. What if someone were to contact these companies via social media with a complaint or question, and because they were devoting the bare minimum time they could to the medium they missed it, in turn making their users/customers angry and making perception of their brand WORSE?
Social media is not a light switch. You don't just "flick it on" and get involved. You need to have a plan of attack and resources to devote to making the most of it, or it stands to hurt more than it helps.
'If you don't buy a ticket, you don't win the raffle...'
Or you keep your money - which is the safest bet... sorry for the silly nitpick.
By making a social site that clearly states that it's primarily for the users to share their thoughts and feelings.
"I meet tons of small businesses who would LOVE to devote more time and energy (and finances) to their online presence, but just don't have the ability given how many other things are on a small business owner's radar.
...
SEOmoz also operates in an industry where their entire audience is active and engaged online. They are a terrible case study to compare to, say, a scaffolding company or a mom and pop muffler repair joint.
I'm not trying to be snarky, but the reality of the matter is that the content-centric approach Google wants to try and promote simply doesn't work for all businesses (as Kris pointed out)"
Whether you're running a scaffolding company or a "mom and pop" muffler repair joint, your customers are online looking for you. If you're not willing to devote the resources to being where your customers are, your business will fail. Most people look for everything on line these days, and if your small business isn't there, you don't get those customers. You wouldn't set up a fishing business in a desert where there was no river, lake, pond or ocean within 500 miles and expect to sell bait and rods would you? If you're not where your customers are looking for you online, you're doing the same thing. We devote a lot of time to being online as a small business, and showing our customers what we can do. It's reflected in how many people contact us from our online presence.
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I don't agree Sam. Some small businesses don't care about online networking and to a large extent, I agree that they should not.
Example. I have a client that runs a small roofing company. Although we set up a Google Places page, getting him to tweet or post on a Facebook is totally out of the question.
The question is then, does my client become less relevant to the searcher? Obsoletely not! How does my client get found? Google Places, Yelp, Angie's List, BBB and company directories such as yellow pages and Super Pages is as far as he will go.
But that is all he will ever do. No blogging, no guest blogging, no Twitter or Facebook, or Google +, or whatever the next fad is. No one is going to mention him on a blog of any importance.
At the end of the day, you have the top roofing companies that will spend big money to achieve the above, while smaller companies, that are just as relevant, don't have the time or desire, or knowledge. The big issue is that they don't know what they don't know. And unless they hire someone (if they even know to do that), then they won't know to invest in the above.
So if Google is going to heavily mandate this Social Network to determine relevancy, then I will say Google's days are more numbered.
Whiteboard Friday's are the best! I've implemented them into our marketing departments Friday schedule as a required task every week.
I do feel that having unique and awesome content does add value to any business, but it is tricky when it comes down to eCommerce owners that are reselling branded item. I think a site's trust level should come into heavier play when it comes eCommerce stores.
On the flip-side, if you are selling an item unique to your own brand then give us more info please! From a consumer stand point, I love knowing a brand's story :)
Word for word almost exactly what I was going to say, I run a small start up floor sanding company and I'm getting killed. The only way to cost effectively advertise is to put yourself where people will find you when they try to find a floor sanding co, that means seo.
Another great vid from rand but I'm supposed to be sanding floors not working hours for 1 link. :/
Ben, you are exactly right.
1. How much content can a small business like yours put out? There are only so many things you can write about sanding a floor.
2. What small business can afford to hire a writer to come up with 10000 pages of content about sanding floors in order to compete with the directories that I am sure are being shown on the first page for <your town> Floor sander.
Basically, what Google is doing, it making it impossible for people who are looking for a service like your directly. They have to go to the BBB or Angies list site that is on the front page. And then dig down into the results hoping to find someone to actually take care of their floors.
Relevance doesn't seem to matter, I did a test with a keyword on a well trusted forum, but not at all related to the industry. That forum page showed up in the SERPs way above ANY local business for that same keyword. So even though those sites may have had hundreds of related pages for the topic, the one poorly written forum post with 10000's of thousands of pages, but none of them related to this topic and keyword beat them out.
In fact, I am willing to bet if we put <your town> Floor sanding, in this post, it would beat out your site as well.
Everybody talking here about small business ,but there is other side ,a small factory that try to find big and small business (not retail customers ),what this factory can offer in her Facebook pages or in plus ?
o.k some pictures and some article ,but that it ,they people in Facebook or in Google plus will never link to this company.
Kris,You make a good point here that brings up how perplexing it can be with something like ecommerce. At the same time, I am not sure it is simply "depth" of content at issue but more of the each site saying exactly the same thing. So, with a major sunglasses brand, the better ecommerce site will endeavor to present it without the same content all others have. I am like you. If I know I want to buy a specific item, I do not want to have to wade thru a bunch of writing to find it, the right size, color, etc. (and especially price.) I do think a positive is within the arena of PR with the avalanche of PR releases by those few companies who have made that their business model. I tire of professional practices sending out the release with The Jones Law Firm has just affirmed the use of computers in their offices. Mr. Jones has .....Again, good point. Still have to applaud that at least some of the web trash may go down the drain.
Granted, not everybody can have traffic like Amazon.com or Ebay, but content marketing and onsite optimization with those sites, compared to others is like night and day. It's not so much that they have an active blog, but look at the product pages. They're massive, they give details, they have pictures and they have user reviews out the heiney! Some would argue that it's bad for conversion, but I'd venture to bet both of those companies have teams of CO pros.
It is always a good sign if companies complain that they have not the time for something that is basically very necessary. This means that this might be a gap in the market. Maybe it would be good to offer this service. Content building for them. You just need to employ more people and offer it to the market. And don't try to convince the customer to do it when it clearly shows that customers usually don't like to do it by themselves.
And we go round again. Now we are just hiring people to print content for us. I understand that Google needs to filter spam, but everything will be manipulated at some point.
This is why I like Google Places. Simple, you don't even need a website to show up, and the only factor is that you are actually in that area.
I have to totally disagree. I work with many clients that have solid content but don't produce it in a regular basis. They are hardworking mom and pop shops who do a lot in their community and naturally build links without knowing. They volunteer, sponsor community events, and many other community growing activities. If they have a good looking site, SEO friendly architecture, and some ongoing advice they usually do great in the rankings. There is SEO work that needs to be handled, don't get me wrong. But to say they need to have the same content generating capabilities as a national company is not a reality. Unless an owner is just set on having a really active blog for reasons other than SEO I don't see any reason to have it. I don't see Google "penalizing" them if they don't have a blog. We are talking local campaigns for the most part. Doing real company stuff offline that gave a return is becoming a reality online as well. It isn't easy doing real company stuff (#RCS) offline either. That's what makes so many businesses fail. SEO's just need to have a different mentality than trying to be the Incredible Oz behind the curtain spinning out crap and turning it into gold for our clients to supposedly cash in on.
I largely agree with Kris. Google is making it near impossible for small start-ups to introduce their products or services to a national market. The point BenRWoodward made about "local mom and pop shops" works fine for local business. Unfortunately, if your products or services aren't tied to a small geographical area then you are stuck competing with all the national brands who have teams of full-time SEO and content writers.
Someone like me (start-up CMS vendor) has little chance of getting Google's attention without hiring at least one full-time SEO expert to write and publicize content. Since I don't have that kind of budget (or enough time to do it all myself), my best chance for building my business is PPC and direct mail.
Right now, I show up on page 3 of Google when searching for my company name. I plan to improve my SEO by revisiting the basics (on-page optimization, keyword targeting, etc) but relentless content publishing for the sake of "link earning" is unrealistic for my business. Maybe someday I'll be able to afford $70,000/year to hire an SEO / content writer / social media manager. Until then, my best chances for good ROI are in other forms of marketing.
With the greatest respect, sitewizardseo, I disagree. "Google" isn't doing anything but ensuring their customers get what they demand: Entertainment, knowledge, and answers to their problems. Google is not trying to make life difficult for the little folks. In fact, as a little guy, I benefitted greatly from Google’s changes - and I don’t really follow the rules everyone claims is so critical.
You don't need lots of content. You need good content, or better yet, great content.
A blurb from an article I recently published: "In sub-contracting an article, whether to employees or content writers or their sister, content buyers often aim to be on the content NFL field. Do they get to the NFL by littering their website with volumes of Pop-Warner content? Surprisingly, many content buyers believe so. How to educate a client to recognize the difference between Tom Brady’s 99 yard pass and the amazing spiral my ten year old threw last Saturday in the back yard if they just don’t get it?"
Consider writing your notes on what you think is important for an article, and then give your notes to a writer to perfect. If you can afford one article per month, by the end of the year, you'll have 12 great articles. I know the recommended new blog posts is 3-4 per week, but creating volumes of second rate content won't help you, so why bother?
I completely agree.
I'm a SEO copywriter and blogger. Some of my clients only order four blogs a month. It's not particularly expensive for them; I'm fairly sure that a poorly-optimised AdWords campaign would cost far more.
I don't think small businesses should worry about posting content every day. Focusing on quality is more important.
I agree with Kris. Also, even besides commercial sites, some of the most useful websites out there hardly have any content in the form of many text. Sites that let a user create an output from an extensive database for example, weather sites for example. Or onpage tools and software sites.
For startups like those sites especially, but also for content filled websites, it has become harder I think to get off the ground as they won't get ranked without juice links, but often you won't get natural links if you're not ranked; because no-one sees you. Sounds like an increasing selling point for AdWords.
All that Matt Cutts has to say lately is 'content, content, content'. But value to a visitor is not necessarily in words.
Also, if it is that much about the content of a specific page, then why does Google give so much value to Domain Authority? Why should someone with a new blog who has written a 1000 word article have so much trouble getting ranked while a 200 word wikipedia page easily gets the top listing... just because it's Wikipedia. I read an article that wikipedia is in 99% of the top 10 google search results. And Wikipedia depends on external resources, yet they give 0 acknowledgement by nofollowing those links.
It seems all Google did was favor the established websites. If Google really is about content, they better be working on sophisticated AI robots that rate the quality of the websites they crawl and rank based on that and just stop using links to rank pages all together. I suppose before we get there Social Media endorsement will become big.
I might be way off here, as I'm pretty new to the SEO game, but this is the feeling I have after a few weeks of exploring the field.
Yoyster:
" But value to a visitor is not necessarily in words." -- I agree, especially as Internet readers don't really read, they skim.
On Wikipedia: I'm trying to figure out what happened. I outranked Wikipedia within 2 months of having my blog up for the key phrase "seo content writer". One SEO expert told me it could be a geographical search thing, but his explanation didn't make sense. In any case, I know it can be done -- I took a snapshot of the results and published it!
Google has no obligation to serve the "mom and pop" that just wants to sell stuff, and has no content. Their purpose is to provide relevant, quality results to users. If Amazon or Zappos has a better page, then why shouldn't Google rank these big players higher?
For Google, it's all about the end user!
Exactly. Google doesn't care if new companies have trouble breaking into page 1. Did the searcher find something s/he liked? Then Google is happy.
You are right, Henley, but do you blame Google? Google has to meet their customers' demands. The best thing to do is forget about SEO and write something compelling.
I think the question should be: "how can I benefit from building a stronger presence through the social web". Not about what amount of quality content I am willing to invest in.
I agree with this too, but content could be anything. It can be text, it can be video, it can be awesome pictures. All websites have those, some use them more strategically than others. I think Vat19.com has this whole "content marketing for an ecom site" nailed down perfectly. Works well for conversion too!
I don't totally agree that "content mills" is the only way this can be done, but I do agree that this forces the web that wants to appear in Google to do things that may be artificial and/or unnatural for their business function. Exceptional and amazing content is only one way a business can be exceptional and amazing, and it would be very cool if Google could find ways to recognize and reward the others (problem is - those don't usually give off web-based signals).
Since e-commerce is a lot different than most other parts of the web, I wouldn't be surprised if recently introduced Google Trusted Stores service would become somewhat of a ranking signal. Something that's not a link but indicates the quality and speed.
Yeah, I am not sure I agree with you. As an SEO copywriter I think it is the collective burden of the industry to produce content that is viable and accurately portray's the client that we are respectively hired to compose for. This does not mean we have to write drivel laden with valid search terms. This post and data validates, to some extent, my own reluctance to use out-linking, so thank you Rand.
I somewhat agree, but...
Danner Boots doesn't have a blog (to my knowledge). They make good boots and lots of people link to them. They rank. Danner is not a content mill, but they succeed. There are 1000's of companies like this online.
Forced content is a poor substitution for real company shit.
(hat-tip to Will Reynolds)
Yes quality product in this case is awesome! I have a pair of Danner thats 12 yrs old.
So focusing on the quality of the service/product will more than likely have the customer raving about it naturally online. (natural links)
That's true. Building large ecommerce is a nightmare, and to create every page as some sort of a link magnet might be simply undoable for some valuable merchants who don't have whole SEO team behind them. But that's the name of the game. Just like to run a shop on high street you've got too pay business rent, electricity etc, in tomorrow's ecommerce you'll have to pay guys to make your product pages link worthy.
I disagree. Blogs and "content" are sources of value. If you have a product to sell and it is the same as your competitors then what value are you creating to sell your product. You can either sell for a lower price, build a better product or get brand recognition. In your case you went with the value that they built a better product for you.
In other cases the blog adds value to a page by building a community. If you don't need this community to sell your product for you then don't have a blog. It really isn't needed. Think about a dentist. They don't really need a blog to be the best dentist in town. The service they provide is valuable to people who have teeth issues.
Google is asking that people provide value. And to be honest it is because we are asking people to provide value and stop the spamming.
Uh and how do you propose google will know which is the best dentist in town. Do you ever rush home from the dentist to link from your blog to their site talking about what a great job they did cleaning your teeth? How would you compare? Do you get your teeth cleaned by several different dentists each year just for sheer comparison? Do you hop on yelp and write about your dentist? of course not. You don't do any of these things.
In the case of danner boots I do like thier product. But that isnt helping them rank in the SERPs because the chances of my writing about my shoes in a blog post is pretty much zero. Cyrus says they rank well, except they actually kinda dont. They aren't in the top 10 for
boots
combat boots
tactical boots
hiking boots
hunting boots
you get the idea. And for every one of those that they aren't in the top 10 for, there is at least 1 site who doesn't manufacture anything (reseller) at all but has a blog and cranks out content about boots that no one will ever read ranking where danner likely should if google didnt have a crush on content. Damn now that I think of it, I should call danner and see if they need an SEO.
Sites that not might be very linkable still may be very sociable. So when you go to a company's site and buy something, a customer will most likely tweet it, like it, etc. instead of linking to it. If Google incorporated data like this more into their algorithm, sites that are not content heavy can still make up some lost ground in the SERPS.
Amen.
Good Point Kris !
A general user who used the online shopping sites, just compare the product with others, checked the quality and then simply order for that. There is no room for long paragraphed content, If so who care.
After the fiasco with Google earnings leak yesterday, halting of trading of Google stock, the dropping CPCs and slowdown in Google global growth, getting web spam right is a critical to Google's continued dominance and valuation.
Google search is changing at an unprecedented rate, even beyond Penguin and Panda, with Google+ personalization and authorship having large impacts to the SERPs. Earned links seem to favor brands and hurt small companies who will struggle to get visibility based on inability for their content to be discovered, regardless of quality.
I am sure that the best content doesn't always wins in the SERPs simply because of what I see as a chicken and egg problem i.e. - need quality content to earn links necessary to rank in the SERPs, but for that content to be discovered, then earn links, it generally needs to be in the SERPs!
This challenge will put more emphasis on publishers promoting their content in unique and innovative ways through social channels, especially Googe+ along with more traditional RSS and email marketing.
The importance of organic search in Internet marketing won't be de-emphasized anytime soon based on its role in driving conversions, but earning and maintaining ranks, especially for the small business, is getting harder and harder by the day.
I agree, even if a small/local biz does do some content marketing and puts a great piece on their site, it's likely that it'll never get seen in the serps 'cause of the low authority factor. On the other hand, the mentality of "if they build it, they will come" also is never going to work. These small businesses need to promote and take some pride in their work and spend the time to reach out to blogs that might also find it helpful, hence building links.
I am a big fan of a lot of the SEO advice that comes out of this site, it's how I learned SEO, but I think this WBF is a little off. There is a gray area between earning links and building links. I still go for permanent static links to drive rankings. List link building is a phenomenal tactic, if you create content, you can then reach out and get it listed on some of the oldest domains out there.
Content marketing earns links, but just because you are creating content doesn't mean you can't do old school valuable link building tactics to your worthwhile content.
The challenge comes when you start talking to a small budget client, who doesn't have the capacity to create interesting or useful content. They're usually about 5 years behind the curve in SEO too, which makes explaining the importance of doing something of value a real challenge.
All too often they're keen on the fast and easy and don't want to hear about content creation and improved design. I love getting a client that's passionate about their site, but it's unusual.
Fast and easy is, well, easy.
Avoid them at all costs, or try to sell them PPC. ;]
If it's hard for them to create quality content by themselves, perhaps it's best to try a semi-outsourced approach. There are several ways to come up with a quality piece of content by asking experts via an interview, or by curating different articles and adding your own take to it.
I don't think that earning links ever really went away but other easier methods to obtain links were discovered and so naturally taking the path of least resistance SEO gravitated towards those easier methods. Google is now just closing up some of the loopholes in order to try and make search results more relevant again.
I think that's a great way to put it!
Great article. I just don't agree with not manually go about getting links. We have to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges. For those who live in the blog world, yes that would be more true...You can earn more links by writing well, getting social shares etc etc...
For mom and pop stores that sells boring products like for example mattresses, who is going to link to them and what can they possibly write about without running out of topics? Some businesses are not made for seo in this way. Google's propaganda with earning links by writing more content just helps them grow their machine to sell more adwords. Dont buy into that. So for those mom and pop or any industry that is not blog driven you still need links (and high quality links). If you are in one of those industries and think that you can earn your links, you really live in a dream world. Matt cutts has said this all along, "produce great content" and we can already see that this wont work unless you are in some sort of charity or blogging site. Of course they want more content cause it makes them more money....Why should we buy into that? If we manually pursue high quality links, I believe these will always count for a very long time....So keep building your links but just be smarter abt it....
Exactly right. We can't buy into this notion that Google has the user in mind. Google wants "content" so that we'll use Google and not Bing.
Having said that, if your business depends 75% or more on organic Google traffic, then you need a marketing rethink, and this is where SEO consultants tend to fail. The SEO pitches I get are about content, keyword niches, etc. That's all fine, but it is only a piece of the overall marketing mix.
This really highlights the need to deeply understand your target customer, then delivering "content" in whatever form and media which makes the most sense.
I agree, there are some industries or sectors which just aren't that interesting and are incredibly difficult to continuously generate compelling content for.. In these cases I believe you don't really have a choice but to pursue high quality links.
While Google is doing so much stuff to keep spammers out of their search results, I have been observing a decline in the relevant search results in my niche .. Technology. I have somehow, downheartedly, moved to DuckDuckGo for better relevance and search results.
Oh it's not just Technology. I'm regularly banging my head against my keyboard when in the search results, regardless if it's for a term I'm trying to rank for or not either!
Another immense Whiteboard Friday Rand!
The quality of content you produce, week in, week out is amazing.
There have been a load of comments here about small businesses 'not having the time' to produce content.
My opinion ... make time.
Exactly!
In the end, what takes more time...
1) Trying to stay one step ahead of the engines, engaging in veiled-linking practices of questionable merit that will most likely be devalued, evaporate, and/or possibly penalized.
Or
2) Building valuable online relationships, participating and communicating with like-minded people, and creating content that will benefit and attract your target audience -- oh, and will also help your organic and social results.
Unless you have your own army of PhD's and nearly unlimited resources (not likely for small business and many giants as well), the second will undoubtedly be a better use of time and resources for both short and long term gain.
I completely agree, Sam. Many small business (busy-ness? haha) owners (myself included a lot of times) stay busy on purpose. It helps us feel productive, in control, and distracts us from any feelings of fear that frequently occur running a startup. Outsource, hire, wake up earlier, go to sleep later, buy an espresso machine- make time!
I agree that they should make time but I think the real value of an SEO is to connect the online interaction with the current workflow of the business. Give them the tools and strategies to relate online in ways they are relating offline already. As SEO's we can't just through our hands up in the air in disgust and say it is just because their odiots or lazy. Let's use some compassion and creativity and use what we know to help them merge real online company stuff with the things they are already doing.
The problem is that too many clients don't deserve links and have no interest in doing the work to earn them. But yes, this is how SEO works now.
And also, nobody links enough anymore. So, even if I like what SEOmoz Member #17 posted on his blogspot, there's no reason I'm going to link to it.
Great post - some really useful insights here about acquiring links. I would say however that (now you have opened this can of worms) tools such as OSE & Majestic SEO won’t prove as useful as these tools are specifically created to show backlinks of competitiors who 8-9 times out have been adopting the ‘link building strategy’. Realistically it is not really possible to find competitors that have been adopting a good ‘link earning strategy’. The problem I find with these tools is that more cherry picking of good sites through competitors backlinks is needed but is also becoming more time consuming. I really think tools should be able to aid you with more of these link earning strategies. The tools like OSE & MJSEO need to be more specific and show exactly in what way the link may benefit your site. For example, a tool that can just show competitors with hot content on their site that have earned lots of links, external content that has been placed on other sites and got links, a tool that can show a social network of influencers in order to help us contact and engage with. I think domain authority/page authority isn’t enough any more and we also need to measure the power of content rather than just links.
I think this Whiteboard Friday echoes what Tom was saying at MozCon 2012. The value received by reaching just one Influencer can be so much more than the combined efforts of all the old-school link building tactics of yesterday. Good stuff Rand, thanks.
This is great, thanks! I have clients who insist they know how to "do SEO" so they take it upon themselves to get into the black hat, spammy methods of the old days and then show it off to me like "look what I can do!" and it drives me nuts because most of the time it is email blasting or copying articles and submitting them to anything they can. I'm glad you covered this change in link building to link earning because I have been trying to get this into a translation I can use for my clients for a few weeks now and this summed it up perfectly.
Thanks Rand!
You've earned my link on G+!
I always find your articles very insightful. I totally agree with you on outsmarting your competitor and writing better content through competitive research. I think these days you have to be the best at what you do. There is so much of content being created daily, but we have to ask ourselves how much of that content is really wholesome, packed with information and beneficial to the person reading it. Everyone has been affected by Google Alog changes, I believe change is good and it will force us to think more creatively as marketers instead of milling out the same old strategies
Great comment. I completely agree. Poor content for content's sake is a problem, and I think Google were right to stamp it out.
Yeah, kinda we are forced into the 90's and as the saying goes, Old is gold. Seems like we need to do quality works, strengthen relationship with blog owners, promote our services in every possible and reduce our dependency on Google.
"Find what people are linking to in your niche and do that better" - that's the shizzle right there.
Do that, contact the people who link to these other resources and point them towards your new and improved resource.
Another great WBF. Unfortunately, link building is still working really well for some of our competitors. They are ranking better than us for our top keyword and their links are so obviously bought. Very frustrating for us because we are working hard to earn our links. Hoping it's just a matter of time before Google catches on.
I think Link Earning is a sustainable long term strategy, and in the long run it should be much more cost effective and have far greater benefits that link building. But like Ben says there are clear examples of others using very spammy practices and ranking highly,
Hopefully Googles latest Disavow tool could show it these link networks and bring down these sites!
Agreed, it's just a matter of time. Rand tweeted, 'Wondering if disavow tool is just a crowdsourced way for Google webspam to ID manipulative links disguised as a webmaster tool' and I think there may be something to that, whether it was designed with that in mind or not as links from crappy sites are going to be recurring in numerous disavow requests.
Interesting concepts Rand. Google has been hitting different types of "link building" pretty hard over the last year to 18 months. Will they completely kill all "link building" and force us to go back to "link earning"? Maybe they will. But I like how you said that some types of "link building" can still be of value. I think that if you take the approach of building links to drive traffic and build brand recognition instead of just to pass some "link juice", then you will be playing on the safe side of the fence.
One more time some interesting value Rand from your end! Incredible White Board Friday!
I agree with strategy that having interesting content each and every time can build viewers or audience according to https://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-anatomy-of-tomorrows-inbound-marketing-strategy-today, but one more crucial segment in this strategy and that is building audience from niche industry. I would like to bring update you that employing guest posting for guest web platforms or blog is good enough strategy but the crucial thing is that audience from that web platform or blog should be relevance which should be potential to be customers.
Content Marketing is really an effective for long term strategy but its really tough sound in order to create unique content each every time for each guest platform.
Anyways! really enjoyed it;) Thanks for sharing, Have Great Weekedn!
I really love the idea of actively participating in communities. I have found that one of the great non SEO benefits of this is the ability to build relationships with people that could be potentia clients. It seems like once people know you, are comfortable with you, and know what you do for living they will naturally recommend you to others through direct introductions. Works even better than SEO in a lot of casess because of high conversion rates with personal recommendations.
So true. Online and offline communities and relationships are the way to go in order to get noticed.
Just wondering when Google is gonna handle the commenting spam, it's obviosly works since people still doing it but it's really annoying as a webmaster to deal with all the spam. Hopefully Google will come up with something that decrease value of those kind of links.
I have a personal blog which was absolutely hammered with spam over the last couple of years (I neglected it). Now, guess what? I'm getting hammered with emails from companies begging me to remove their spam comments!
"Remember, early on in the Web, sort of mid to late '90s, before search engines became huge and link building was a big part of SEO, so you can kind of think like '94 to '97, '98, that kind of thing, it was really about earning links that are going to bring me relevant traffic."
This really hit home. Thanks Rand. A great way to sum up how things have come full circle.
YESS! So many people are still concerned, even after penguin about building tons of links. It's time to focus on earning quality, indispensable links, rather than links that are a dime a dozen. #RCS
Rand,
I couldn't agree more. I think many SEO's have been "preaching" this all along...the problem was that so many of these tactics, even if limited, were still working or appearing to work, or maybe just enough people were promoting the "easy path" that it drowned out everything else.
But absolutely agree that Google seems to have really doubled down this year in a way that I don't think we've seen for sometime to force a cosmic shift around linking and link profiles.
I might have to dig out some of my old linking decks...perhaps the message will finally resonate!
Cheers,
Brian
I was addressing a peer question earlier related to link building, mentioning G has begun to 'catch up with itself,' meaning it has now had the ability to observe, get feedback, let time pass, and get a better handle on the opportunities it first created, which were quickly abused to some extent.
At face value, G's engine is a service provided by a business (google). [It's a bit tricky because this business is a b2c service provider, while making most of its revenue from b2b interchange.] G wants to serve user queries properly. If it serves the audience well (consumers), it can impress advertisers with its traffic (as it does).
The more shoddy URLs and marketing endeavors clogging the web, the less appealing, laborious, and contradictory the service becomes to users. If users leave, ultimately advertisers leave. G doesn't want none that.
I think if it had it's way, G would love to be an "informational" resource, allowing advertisers to gain headway on user attention through advertising. But it allows for equal opportunity. Brands that wanted to use the Web as a inert advertising board can act as a publisher to make the most of SEO and organic search.
As this post demonstrates, these days it's not a manipulated mechanical process as much as (dare I say) an agile process. Brands must be nimble in using available opportunities of search and the entire web.
I think average users/consumers are becoming more selective/online savvy; therefore, G must be more selective/savvy in serving them.
That meant spanking commercial efforts, but as alluded above, maybe G's strategy is to satisfy the b2c promise while making it a no-brainer for advertisers (who either have to adhere to organic regulations, not making G look like poop to its customers, or pay to play, which it most definitely does not mind at all.)
Sorry for the rant - I dig how you broke things down succinctly. I would give it to a client who needs to understand what an online marketer actually does these days..
Hi Rand
Do you really think that this is an end to Link Building??However, the way I can see you yourself have answered my query in your this particular topic of discussion which is '
"The Death of Link Building and the Rebirth of Link Earning..."
Isn't this sentence itself saying that Link Building is still present or have its own existence no matter how many updates Google rolls out.??
In order to do 'Link Earning' one has to get involved in Link Creation process, it is just the matter of how you look things around yourself and what term you use for that particular thing. It is just that you termed it 'Earning' what used to be 'Building' earlier.
Thanks!!!!
Google have to comeback with backlinks because their business is with information. If they think they will throw the information which are being creating by millions of sites, they will lose their business.
Great video. Let's start working on this now! let's act!
As a link builder its really hard to earn those links, it's really hard to convince webmasters that your article is really interesting plus you need to promote it to several social media sites in hopes that it will be noticed. It is really a matter of resources and time you spend promoting your site. Old spammy ways will be penalized and I think the key take away on this is, when will we start doing quality link building for longer lasting position on the serps. =.>
This blog really takes "repetition for emphasis" to the next level!
Create good content to earn links you say??? Wow thanks Seomoz, I nearly forgot that tip from last week’s posts.
The link based algo has always been about earned links, nothing new there. The change, as we all know, is Google's ability to distinguish between earned links and unearned links. The challenge for businesses is they are not accustomed to earning attention, even small businesses are more used to buying it.
When talking to most businesses about the link based algo I see a glazed (and dazed) expression from the person I'm talking to, often followed by "well these guys are number 1 for **insert phrase here** and they haven't got great content".
Link earning is anathema to most non savvy business folk and people like us who try and educate them are often banging our heads against a wall, and the reason why? People (including me) love Google but Google is fundamentally flawed just like PR (public relations) is fundamentally flawed. In PR the company with the biggest mouthpiece (and deepest pockets) often wins, in search it's again coming down to deep pockets because great content isn't something many small businesses can stretch to.
As others have said, it's not likely to change any time soon but it's tough and getting tougher and although killing off cheap link schemes is great, perhaps all this means is expensive link schemes will work take over. After all, if a company invests in great content (because it can) resulting in links and dominance on the SERP's, does that make its products the best/best value? Does that make its services the best/best value? Nope.
Rand spoke of curated lists and perhaps people will head back to these curated lists as their faith in what they thought was an unbiased list (Google's SERP's) starts to wane.
d
Do you take pictures of the whiteboard when you are done so that we could have it? It would be much easier to reference than the transcription (although those are very nice to have). Thank you!
I also agree that those curated lists are still valuable. But they need to be specific to your business and your niche, not just a spammy directory where any site can get listed. You don't want to build links for the sake of a link, but try to build links that actually mean something to someone and will send traffic to your site.
Remember the "Article Marketing is mostly a scam" WBF ? There was alot backlash from greyhatters over that. They'll keep quiet on this one because this year and continuing into the next Google is actually doing something about these "easy to create" links.
Another awesome WBF!!! Personally I like the new(old) way of getting links. I have not really had the chance to do much link building, but I think those methods are more natural. The idea of contacting webmasters to try and get a guest post, or worrying about how many directories is too many, annoys me. It feels more like your just "surfing the web" and re-posting interesting content, like you would normally do when not working!
Some of the comments above have mentioned that some sites are being left out of the search results due to lack of content cause they only want to be a brochure site. Think about snail mail, and how many brochures, flyers, and such you get that you just throw out, maybe glance at cause of a good design but don't actually read. Its kinda the same idea that Google has been pushing for. More content, and better user interaction. Personally I love finding a new site through social networks, or search results (cause Google felt that some site had better content, and user interaction) Also more content leads to better relevancy(unless you keyword stuff,in that case good luck to you!).
That's my two cents!I'm at the bottom, do people read down here?!?
Yes they do. ;) especially on this article and comment thread.
This is very encouraging. As Google (and other engines) rely less and less on simple link quantity and more on quality, it's going to make our industry better.
People who operate almost solely as "link-building crank factories" give honest SEO a bad name. As the search engines get better, more humanistic metrics, the folks who just run formulaic schemes to get big numbers won't compete as well any more. The companies that help people serve their customers with an honest, quality web presence will be more likely to see their hard work pay off.
With less of their short-term wins in play, the spammers won't bring as much negative attention to the business as a whole.
I think.
I am glad that spammy link building tactics aren't working anymore and content marketing is rewarded. If SEOs are forced to produce quality content, then the web will provide more valuable and relevant information as it was intended to.
@Randfish, I have a question for you that has been on mind. Guest blogging as part of content marketing has done well for me, but should location diversity be part of my strategy? As in, should I be careful not to publish too many guest blogs in the UK when I'm trying to target the United States?
Well, I would not say none of the methods work now but you're totally right in terms of that it's future :)
I see many complaints here about small companies not being able to generate content. This is just not true. If you take any industry then take a small player you can always structure your site like this:
Primary Service #1:Related Long-tail subpage Related Long-tail subpage Related Long-tail subpage
Primary Service #2: Related Long-tail subpage Related Long-tail subpage Related Long-tail subpage
These old ideas of "minimum 500 words" are also not true. It comes down to: Is this a well written page which helps and is informative.
We took this change on from the start and improved all of our client's websites.
Just meet/speak with your client and find out how they would break down each service intelligently as if a customer was asking them about it.
My 2 cents...
Excellent comment. I also find that short content is fine in many cases, as long as it's of a good standard.
However, I would suggest that longer blog posts tend to be more thoroughly researched, and that in itself attracts more interest and shares.
Audience building is the new link building. Building audience to earn links, social shares, leads and sales.
Wonderful thoughts, Rand. I wish it would be that easy ...
Exactly, it seems to me an academic discussion where the limit between building and earning is.
I started in the old days when search engines becomes a key factor for the world wide web, before Google was invented and give link popularity the role it have since this year until Penguin.
For me is a good switch, not to deal so much anymore with all these backlinks paranoia, because my way was always "Content is King", but as i was back since some years, taking SEO as my main income, i found me in this battle of links.
Take care,
Great presentation Rand.I recently read the interview with Andre and was blown away (and awaken actually) by how simple things really are. There is no some game out there to be played, but it's rather way more simple than that. Everything that makes sense from a user point of view is definitely worth pursuing. Glad that you mentioned curated lists and directories. I've been trying to stay away from directories altogether... There is no point in continuing with such practice...Thinking about links from a user point of view, the trends are definitely shifting under our feet. And with things like the EMD algo Update this is actually linking together with what you said about building brands, making connections, earning authority... A whole different direction of movement of the search industry and search marketing as a whole.
Links are like the measuring scale. Without that, it is impossible to weight and rank the websites. Without link building and online marketing, there is no internet business can survive! People would not give links naturally. they don't want to, actually! Links are like a vote in the election. Leader is selected based on the votes. I feel strongly that link building will never, never, never die because it is the back bone of internet, traffic and marketing.
Hence the correction: Only spam link building techniques would lose its efficiency. Link earning is impossible. It is similar to collecting pebbles from the great ocean! Please, Please do not mislead people.
You are absolutely Right. When I want to earn a link from high PR site they will not agree because of my low PR. Then what should I do. Link building is only way front of me . I am not a good content writer I have no other way without link building.
i just finished watching matt cutts where he hints that although link placement may not improve your SEO but you can also see if it increases traffic as it not always about SEO . your final goal is to build traffic.
I guess balance is key . i just started in SEO so dont now which way to take.
Link building still works manually when done right. Going on link building campaigns however is pretty much a waste of time when it comes to SEO plans these days because scaling up is too hard (due to smart algo changes). When I say campaigns, I mean hunting down 20 cheap directories, article directories (you get the point) and submitting your link. That type of link building, is dead.
That being said, scaling up guest posts still does work - it's just a question of should you do it. Your looking to spend about $20K on link building if you want to rank #1 for a term with about 20-25K exact searches a month (a bout $1 per search per month). Once you get there however, you usually stay there. Age of links is a big factor when it comes to rising in the SERPs as Google looks at lost links as a possibility of a paid link. So lets say you want to rank for something like "link building service" (e.g.)
Your looking at about 200 guest posts in a span of one year and looking to spend about $20K to do it. So does that sound worth it?
Once again, I'm not saying you should do this. In fact wouldn't recommend it. But link building is not dead. And when you try to get as white hat as you can possible be and go on individual link build campaigns where you are diversifying your links and doing tons of webmaster to webmaster outreach, the link building has even better results and it become less of a numbers game.
Do you think Google may be opening up a gap in the market for another search engine to fill the gap and make it easier to search small mom and pop shops to be searched? Sites that have valuable information but they don't have time to produce 1000s of pages of content?
I think you are spot on this one. The signals are pretty clear now that link building is over and the era of link earning has begun. Very interesting way of looking at it and I think you are absolutely right. So does this mean, that you do nothing at all, is there anything we can do to build links or should be leave it to others?
Earning a link is much harder then adding a link. I love this analogist approach!
Just wondering when all those folks who fill my inbox with emails promising a "a FREE, quality post with NO COST TO YOU with one unobtrusive link" are going to read this...
The sooner the better.
I have read that 40% of all links in forums are from Linkbuilders. Why should Google or who ever take this serious any more.. There will be a new way to get your arrows/links to you website.
Viva the Revolution! Been a long time coming. It may be more difficult in some cases but way more meaningful to everybody.
It's better to start now to stay ahead of the game. I watched a course on Mixergy the other day. Zeke talked a lot on the same topic. He shows a lot of interesting ways to "earn links". I would like to share it with the SEOmoz Community. You need to be a premium member to watch it though. https://mixergy.com/master-class-course-link-building/
I really enjoyed this video so much that it got me thinking of easy ways of 'Link Earning' to hopefully replace the whole 'Link Building' spam that a lot of SEO companies continue to work with, I created a post with 3 simple ways to earn links rather than build them, please let me know what you think:
https://www.specialist-seo.co.uk/blog/news/link-earning-three-ways-to-earn-links-rather-than-to-buy-or-build-them
I loved link earning tactics. It's like you are doing SEO for your users, not just for your rank on search engines. BTW please write texts on the board more readable. Thanks :)
Thank you Rand.
Basically the post is great but what do you mean by rebirth of link earning.
I think Linkbuilding and even a tiny linkfarm for fun and educational reasons, are fine
during the earliest stages for new sites to get things going. But it ends after that.
It's rare these days, but i think i enjoy this algo change from Google.
Turning on creativity and let’s start earning links, perfect video Rand absolutely love it!
Great WBF as always Rand.
Another timely WBF that addresses the reality of SEO. Everything I have seen up to this point supports Rand's ideas, and our company has already started moving in this direction.
Really nice post Rand as always.
But what about the links we already have for my site. There are so many anchors, articles, classifieds and lots of spammy content having link for my site. From where I start, should I remove the links first or start link earning process.
Thanks!
But still Content Marketing or Writing are the most important factor not only in the world of SEO but in actual life. People go surfing the net because they want to read and learn. There are only two drawbacks when you are doing a content writing and that is when people say like an ordinary kid who likes your idea and copy it to your blog that is a big problem and other is choosing what site to post your content, google trust sites that are not that spammy and have much adult contents somewhat like the Semphi site.
Yeah for link earning! In the spirit of giving away my best work for free; We've started experimenting with long-term link earning strategies. Our latest strategy is to create head pages (for example: https://withnoble.com/local-seo-citations/) that will act as a resource for local SEOs. We are literally giving away our best local SEO tips on this page for free. In a few years, after we've earned links from enough high-quality websites we are going to transition that resource into service page.
This is a long term strategy and it requires a lot of work, but I think it will pay off in the end.
A little late to the party, but great video!
You mention that when it comes to guest blogging, it is important to have your article published on "picky" websites/blogs. Would it be a good idea to guest blog on a relevant website, but who has a page promoting the fact that they accept both sponsored and guest posts?
Also, in order to be transparent, if the post was written on behalf of a marketing agency, would it be a good idea to include a link to the agency's website within the byline while using a non-branded targeted phrase as link text?
It's give and take. The videos are always great though.
I think this is absolutely 100% correct. As an agency we've completely stopped building links, and have really started doing just 100% content marketing - NOT ARTICLE MARKETING OR SUBMISSIONS. We are building super relevant content on our own site. It gets us links naturally, but our link graphs, especially for new sites, no longer look like a logarithmic line. For our clients, particularly those in e-commerce, we're getting them one or two links a day rather than 500 links in a swoth of article submissions. And while we do ask other for links, especially for good links, generally, we're getting our links completely naturally. PEOPLE LINK TO GREAT CONTENT, IT'S JUST A FACT. It's a bit harder getting rankings for extremely specific keywords, but we see incredible results in the longtail.
For anyone struggling with content, check out my article on building a QA system using Google Analytics. This is the sort of content we've been building with incredible results.
I was linked here from iPullRank's whiteboard Friday and I must say - not only is this a great article but the discussion in here is fantastic. The anger towards Google forcing small businesses to churn out consistent, high-quality content is legitimate - especially in industries that don't have a giant online presence.
I go back and forth on this. To me, it's a false dichotomy. You can earn links with great content and do things like outreach to build them.
Another incredible Rand's Friday video. Love it!
For someone relatively new to SEO, this was an amazing article. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the heads up! As a new-comer to SEO its relieving to learn that I have missed the old window of bad habits in SEO tactics.. Its also great to hear how google continues to evolve its regulations in means to the authenticity of the internet and its culture.. Big daddy cats like google are calling people to a higher standard/work-ethic both on and offline.
Let's face it. Google is a corporation and they want to make more money all the time. So of course they want everyone to push more great content so that they can sell more adsense. So start blogging like crazy and get us all to work hard in creating content and posting. Ok here is one big revenue stream for them which will just keep growing. Now for the local guys selling mattresses down the street, should be now start blogging? Are you kidding me???
This revenue stream is not commercial in nature because all the blogging is all informational usually. So now they make the keywords encrypted so they can get everyone in the SEO industry confused so dont push the head terms but use Adwords search instead for this....So just these moves will increase in the billions for Google. The issue I see is this. Google is becoming a big monopoly in the market and can pretty much do whatever they want. Referring this to communism where the government control the most things, Google is very close in being such an entity in regards to the Web....We need more bigger search players and a true market. I hope facebook, Yahoo, Bing and the other social media and search sites, will prosper in the next coming years. It would create a fair market for all and less risky for the small business owner who may by accident have lost lots of revenues due to Google updates. That Google is controlling this much pretty much turns this industry to a complete joke and nonsense and we have to follow them like a stupid buffalo.
So they are telling everyone to not manipulate anything and play 100% pure but Google themselves can manipulate the market big time and they are not accountable. This I feel is not a fair market at all. There should be antitrust lawsuits against them due to these facts. They are simply too big. They push their own agenda and only their agenda. They come across as the nice guy but then in the back they are just another greedy corporation afterall serving mamon. I am not saying that Google is all bad but definitely there should be justice in the market. The other search players have no say and that is not a true market and against the US constitution in regards to fair competition.
Great whiteboard, thanks for the direction.
Wow, seeing this in 2016. How relevant it is right now. I think that link building is entirely dead now, and we have a new reborn era of link earning. Which is great, if you ask me. :)
Can anyone refer me to someone that can fix my link diversity? Or does someone has a product/solution that is feasible and can fix penguin issues? Thanks
Somet times I pickup on these whitboard sessions way to late... starting to rethink our strategy :-) Thanks RAND!
Hello Rand,
This is an excellent link building practice overview. Thanks for graciously sharing your views regarding the shift implications. It really boils down to bringing back the good old times. It may be quite more advantageous nowadays that we can additionally use social media as a powerful distribution tool to propel content.
Totally clear delivery of the post idea. I like your work.
Lol, It's a good topic to think about. For small and medium sized markets link building is unnecessary anyway. If you call a FaceBook page and a Twitter account link-building then... ok, a little link building may be required. What type of site are we trying to optimize here?
Although i can not understand what you said completely, but all comments here are very useful! Thanks !
So you're telling me that if I earned my links in a span of a year, it would be considered legit than if I link build across 5 years? Like what many of us have had done legitimately (assuming pure and great content) and yet been penalized by a group of non intellectual spam teams? Just because... they felt like it? How about cutting to the chase of the problem and admit that Google is becoming a biased corporation market? How would you implement this to Bing? We can't possibly depend on one engine or should we?
A precise definition of link earning would be useful. Also useful would be a description of how a link appearing in an "earned" sense differs from one appearing in content that was not earned.
Great post and nice presentation. You are right Rand. I think guest blogging and social media sharing will be the future SEO.
This is my first whiteboard Friday and won't be my last - thanks for the great info Rand.
Link building is sort of like the tortoise and the hare parable - we all want to race to the finish line by building tons of links, but as we all know, slow and steady wins the race.
Thanks for sharing this post with us.It have got many great ideas.Iam looking forward for your new articles.
Simply great as always Rand. We all know that we are not living in a purely black (like ever-spamming black hat) or white (like a site with great content but without any contacts to the outside) world. Even with the best content on earth there is still some need and sense for outreach and I know you agree.There is quite some advice around of how to separate spammy sites from good ones for linkbuilding. What's your advice? Which ways do you suggest to decide if a link from a given site would be a good link? And which are your ideas about a list of good directories like your own one?
To be effective in the SERPS, do you really need to be producing totally new content constantly?
Can you not rework, revamp, bring up to date to keep content fresh and relevant - and then spend more effort marketing and promoting that content?
For those small/local businesses struggling for fresh content ideas, have you considered making content around reviews and testimonials, upcoming local events, sales, upcoming holidays, stories around your business - how you solved problems, dealt with tricky customers, donated to local charities, showcase photos of your product or services in action, create content around discounts, or coupons, or sponsor competitions, develop a survey or questionnaire about what your local market needs or wants from you, ask for suggestions for improving what you do... a lot of this type of stuff shared on social networks gets commented on, and gets shared.
Over time you will amass Likes and +1s and shares and backlinks...
Goggle is changing its policy over time. New dimensions are being added. So what is good today, can be bad tomorrow.
Please publish another post on how to earn links. You have touched the ways here, but more specifications of the ways would be highly appreciated.
Last word and I'll let this be :)
If Google is going to discount all forced marketing, then they are hypocrites, as this is what they sell, forced marketing. What is the difference between me buying a link on someone's website (I don't, but) and paying Google to place me there?
Should my direct mail not be sent because it is not sent by the right direct mail company? Should my TV spot not count because it was not cut by the right ad agency?
The only way to market online is to buy it. I don't care if you outright pay dollars for it, or pay someone to write content that gets shared by people you pay to share it.
If this is the direction Google is going in, then your search results will consist not what might be relevant to you, but who can get the biggest ground game going.
Very few people on the internet that sell a service or product has a big enough grass roots effort to build this kind of relevancy. Anything else is astroturf, and we are grazing where Google leads us.
llinkbuilding replace link earning
link exchange/ reciprocal cross promotion/ parnetship
anyone can please explain why our compitator or same industry website will place cross promotion /partner with our website in free.
Rand.This is really a great post I am 100% agred with it but please tell me how google will crawl my site new pages or links, if I stop link building.
Rand, you have hit the nail in the coffin! Wow..i truly enjoyed the video on how you compared the classic link building techniques to the new techniques that are based on one single metric; Great content.
Even Matt Cutts has mentioned in a video on google webmaster blog, encouraging webmasters to earn their links and not build links. Even though it may seem difficult to adjust to this holistic way of doing link building, it is definitely the best way to go and hopefully that will make the web a better place to source for great info.
So I guess Link Building is not really dead, it has just gotten harder. And that is the point, right? Work harder, produce quality content, build relationships. Great WBF!
Hey there!
Glad to know of the re birth of link earning to attract relevant traffic to your website.
Looking at the difference of link building and link earning today.
I would say that it takes more time and effort to earn the links for SEO.
Most of the time when we are doing SEO, we have the tendency to measure and to see how fast the keywords are rank up in search engine. When penguin and panda visits us our keywords drop like hell.
So why not be safe and earn links, though takes more time to earn links, it stands as a long term quality links. I can say SEO teaches to me learn, think and give valuable lessons.Time for us all to learn to earn links.
Thank you once again Rand! :)
hi there. Thanks for useful insight Rand.
I might be a little bit delayed with all that's happening right now. I know penguin is about punishing bad (not earned) link profiles. I also heard about a new feature in gwt called "disavow links" or something (I'm back from holiday and about to get into this) . My first issue with whole Penguin thing was addressing the problem of poisining competition with bad links. Is there anything done about that? Let's say I'll create a huge link volumue from old link farms, article directories and what not, leading to my competitor who doesn't even know about it. Let's say he's making $1000/day sales with his well optimized magento e-commerce site and he's all of sudden punished by google for having "bad links"? Or I'm missing something very important here. If I got it well, whole "disavow links" bit was done by google to allow people to remove poisonous links leading to them, but to do that they first have to KNOW that there are such links pointing to them. Even if using some sophisticated analytics programs will warn you that there are hundreds or thousands of crappy links leading to your site, it might be too late. Too late in this case might mean bancrupcy.
So my question is - how is this issue addressed by google? How am I supposed to deal with malicious actions from my competitors?
My apologies if it was addressed in one of the earlier posts - right now I'm going through them all and will eventuallyl get to it if it's out there. But I'm really, really curious how to protect my self from those types of practices.
thanks,
JJ
Awesome whiteboard Rand, I think everyone is slowly going to started accepting the new "proper" techniques and that's a real win for SEO :)
Great Job Rand you Rock!
Its getting harder and harder for new websites to rank well. The old practices of directory submission, article marketing & buying/exchanging backlinks are gone.
Awesome Whiteboard Vid Rand!
I personally get a lot out of side by side comparisons like this and even though I have about 75-90% of these already in action this is great to see. Having this side by side comparison really just puts it in simple black and white of what needs to be a future course of action vs past and somewhat present.
I love the ideas of pushing your content out to social media and getting that attraction and really making it not so push-marketing as it is pull marketing instead of blasting email lists. Even though email is considered inbound marketing I feel pushing some promotions is nowhere near as "clean" as social mentions are.
The best part about these lists is that they are actionable, any SEO loves something they can take action on!
Cheers man!
Google is a mess right now. They opened up a big Pandora's Box with Penguin. The fact that links can now hurt a website is very dangerous. Also, it's almost laughable that Google thinks they can even judge "quality content". Just look at the SERPs.
So... you create the great content. It's wildly popular. Sure, that content gets a lot of credible and trusted links. But what happens if that good content gets a lot of links from low quality sites/pages?
Does my good content get slapped by Google's imaginary animals?
Great WBF rand! these points are the need of every SEO these days. So, we all should stop building links and start link bating. Create something special so every one link to our content in a natural way.
great stuff as always Rand!
I've been in an endless struggle to get my company's blog properly set up so in the meantime, I've been submitting our site to a few directories here and there. I wasn't FULLY aware some of these recent algo changes. Thanks for the news and have a great weekend!
Ben
Great video thanks! It gave me some ideas, so that's always great. I now do only in house SEO (as well as Social Media) and it seems like SEO agencies are having a harder time doing SEO for companies that aren't their own, now that all of the cheap, easy ways are disappearing. What do you think?
This is a lot easier said than done. There is no way you can control rather or not another website decides to link to yours. You can produce the best quality content but without some type of marketing, no one is going to see it. Or link to it. Therefore you should have some different ways to market your content other than just social media sites. Or am I missing it completely?
And what about those who have multiple clients? The amount of research that your suggesting for one website is over whelming alone, now multiple that by 10 and we have a serious problem because somebodies website will be neglected.
I think every thing that Randfish is saying in theory sounds amazing but in the real world from an agency perspective is close to impossible without the proper man power. And for the smaller Agencies, forget about it.
This is what I enjoyed about some of the older tactics that the SEO industry was onboard with because it was more manageable and made sense. What Google is doing is putting the SEO industry against a rock and a hard place. You now have two choices, by Adwords or market content and hope for the best.
I totally agree with this post. What Rand says is all good in theory but often businesses haven't got the time to dream up amazing content and mess around on forums trying to be friends with people in the hope they will link to their site naturally. Time is money and businesses want results quickly. They don't want to wait in the vein hope somebody might link to them. Lots of bloggers sites have poor domain authority so won't pass much link juice anyway.
I agree that social sharing is a good way of attaining links and I think guest posting can work as well as PR Web and the alike but it totally depends on your clients' products. If they sell hoovers it might be difficult! As for requesting inclusion on curated directories, few webmasters will do little for free, and why would they when they know they can make money out of it.
It is also harder enough getting SEO budget out of businesses as it is these days with few willing to spend lots of money on it, especially when the SEO landscape is constantly changing with a Google update every other week. Link building is clearly changing but some of the old tricks still work.
Fantastic post Rand - definitely a lot of food for thought and I imagine there'll be further tweaks and changes in the months ahead!
Great share Rand!
I've been preaching this for a while now. Everyone around me is so focused on backlink building without building quality content. Our goal has always been to build traffic versus backlinks and from this, the backlinks will come :)
Great WBF! Partnerships for small businesses sounds like a genius idea!
Thanks for the WBF Rand!
Question: If we should stop acquiring links and switch to Link Earning, how can we guarantee a specific number of monthly links to our clients who focus on this KPI?
We say that we will dedicate "x" amount of time to high quality link building. I will now be changing our term to Link Earning; I love that phrase!
We take the time to explain the value of earning those quality links, and the dangers of obtaining a ton of low quality links.
Thanks Ashley. But what would you answer if all the client wants to know is: "How many links can you guarantee a month?".
I'd point them towards this post! And hopefully they then won't expect hard (and largely irrelevant) numbers.
We simply do not guarantee a quantity of links. Quality > Quantity is what our clients get. I've never had anyone disappointed with this approach.
Even if you earn links, how can you be sure they won't hurt you down the road? I mean, the site that's linking to you might be credible and trusted now, but what about a year from now? That site might start paying for links, get slapped by Google, and that backlink to your site might be toxic
Hi Rand. Great WBF! This is a theme I have been picking up in your videos for a while now. I do have a question though. What about old sites that have lots of low quality links?
Surely Google is still giving some weight to them and ranking them highly. Our studies for one of our clients showed that our client had more hight quality links than their competitor. yet the competitor was still ranking higher in the SERPS.
The site is well SEOd and has a small blog, basically we were ticking all the boxes, as far as we could see, the competitor had some 20,000 spammy links though, there must be some weight to them still. When do you think google is likely to start penalising these sites, allowing only sites with quality links to reap the benefit?
Hey Tarantella, don't be naive. Maybe it's different in America but in the UK we have design agencies with SEO consultants operating with multiple clients. Our job is to get the client site ranking. I don't use spam techniques and I don't condone, I even fight against my boss who wants to go down that path but I'm getting annoyed by the constant "great content will do the job" line. And don't be so dumb as to think we are not manipulators...of course we are! We are trying to work within Google's guidelines to massage a result in Google. It's not natural because none of it is happening on it's own is it!? So dial back the direct attack and the B.S PR message, if Google loved SEO they wouldn't be making it consistently harder to get a site ranked, even if it is for "making the web better"...really. They know they can't kick it out completely so they are giving us just enough scraps to get by but let's face it, there are lots of sites that rank and they shouldn't. So keep it shut if just because I don't bow down to the almighty MOZ on every point. I challenge...there is no one definitive answer in SEO.
Rand i agree with all points you have discussed but here i want to know one thing. Let suppose someone working in an old traditional way but always consider OBL of the page and authority of the page, so will that links still hurt for them?
Yes.
Great WBF. I have been involved in SEO for about 3 years so many of the topics were before my time. The people that say they don't have the time or the money for quality linkable content. I can imagine it taking more time and money to fix bad links.
Great Stuff thank you so much Rand. I have some questions regarding link building tactics if you are giving answers of the same then it would be great for us.
1. As you told that directories and article marketing in old article submissions websites will not work any more, Agree with you. but still have questions for others link building activities like social bookmark, business listing, country specific classified submission and Feed Submissions are all they are still working after penguin update to drive traffic and getting higher ranking in Google?
2. We have often used directories list of https://www.seomoz.org/directories and doing the submission on relevant website which are match to client websites. so is this fine to refer this directories list or need to update same list?
3. After Google Penguin update I have seen many people offers the software which are finding unnatural links for our website and also trying to remove the same links. but my doubt is is there any software is really work fine as per your knowledge or all are just there for earning big bugs in short time?
4. We all are knowing that "Open Site Explorer" is one of the great tool to check the links pointing to our site and our competitors. but as you say we need to be careful even in competitor backlinks analysis so is SEOMOZ have any plan to includes some extra features in "Open Site Explorer" which can easily find out unnatural links for our websites as well as highlight lower quality links when we are doing competitor analysis?
Thanks You .
Awesome WBF Rand, so great to have somebody as respected as yourself clearly laying it all out on the table. Really helps to back-up what I've been saying for ages, though to no avail. Hopefully this video will start to convince others in my world that times have changed, so link building needs to be replaced with link earning with an almost completely different way of acquiring links; earning them! Good job :-)
Informative video and quiet aspirational work...
Rand's stuff usually is freaking amazing ;)
Thank you so much Rand!
Then i think the major source for "Link Earning" is social media marketing.
"Earn money by saving - Earn links by sharing"
I also agree that those curated lists are still valuable. But they need to be specific to your business and your niche, not just a spammy directory where any site can get listed. You don't want to build links for the sake of a link, but try to build links that actually mean something to someone and will send traffic to your site.
I haven't done link building in a very long time for for 2 years was a "link monkey" for a huge company.
It is very tough when you have a janitorial client, or other boring segments to "earn" links but I do hold strong to the saying:
The best link built is the one you DIDN'T build.
Great stuff Rand - and I love the:
Goolge Zoo comment!
your pal
Chenzo
With all the experimenting that Google has been making, it's hard to keep up with what's the latest "rule" and what's the best way to go about things for optimization, let alone for those who are not in the SEO know-how. Thank you Rand for providing great insights on how we can explore other techniques and showing us where we can and should direct our efforts.
I can see this being a problem for SMEs...
A good recent article I read on the subject of link earning (ie, putting together some cool content knowing it will earn you some links naturally) was this one: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-big-content-is-worth-the-risk
Great post, thanks for all the tips. We have been using a white hat link building company, but I'm seeing actually a drop in the number of "organic" links and am dropping the company. Some keywords have gone up, but the trend was much faster before. Definitely going to put the practices you mentioned into use from here on out.
I'm having an issue. I haven't been able to do opensiteexplorer.org for two weeks now and get a redirect loop. Can you help?
Since link building is becoming a strategy of the past and link earning is becoming more effective what does this mean for using anchor text and trying to rank for specific keywords?
I think keyword anchor text is still good, but must be used sparingly. Make sure to have a good mix anchor text with business name, URL, keyword, etc.
So the answer to everything seems to be "social," which from Google's perspective primarily means Google Plus...One ring to rule them all...
I think this means a de-emphasis on Google and more diversification to other search engines, email marketing, and snail mail (postcards can be very cheap!). After all, you can set up a strategy today like Rand suggests, only for Google to change the rules again in 3 months. Then they'll be another WBF video explaining the "new" rules, which will change again...
The irony is that as Google's tactice drive people away from Google, the poorer their financial performance.
I'm a bit of the mindset that, if you have built your business around a great quality product or service - it shouldn't be as difficult to succeed in generating excitement about it. If you find yourself with a website that is hard to connect to organic interest, in some cases it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
Obviously in heavily saturated and competitive markets this is difficult, but often small businesses are unique enough to connect will with their local and/or niche market. In other cases its all about focusing on the differentiators of your business in recognizing your interest generators. If you are selling paper... what are those? Cost? Inventory? Quality? Emphasize those well enough online and offline and some of the links will come naturally.
Great as always Rand. Did you know that every Friday I watch WBF at my desk and pretend that I've lost my headphones so that everyone on the marketing team has to listen to you? :-)
The other upside to Link Earning vs. Link Building is that it actually helps to build stronger businesses because we are all learning how to build better relationships with our followers, customers and colleagues in order to earn those links.
My only frustration right now is that every day I see one of our major competitors still participating in a Blog Circus (what a great term - I'm going to get a lot of use out of it!). They continue to outrank us, by a lot, with this tactic. I keep telling my CEO (I am in-house SEO) that it's only a matter of time before they go down, but so far they are holding their ground and in some cases still moving up. It's hard to stomach.
WOW, nice tutorial, good video, describes some new seo concepts, Thanks
Not to be negative, but is there anyone here who ever disagrees with a post, especially by randfish. :)
Great video, I've been at a loss since the algo updates this has kind of made sense to me and got my cogs turning as to what I should be doing :)
Didn't quite get the last part, about creating a social network of influencers rather than a network of sites.Obviously, i object to creating a network of sites either way, and I would not ask for a link from such sites either,But what do you mean by a network of social influencers? They won't share or link to your content by themselves, are you talking about somewhat of a win-win co-operation with social figures from your industry?
Rand,
Another excellent topic and post for Whiteboard Friday. Very informative. It actually raises a question that I have thought about regarding link building/earning in general.
That question is as follows: As it relates to inbound links, I have a client that wants to get as many inbound links as he can possibly get, he has mentioned on many occasions that upwards of 1 million inbound links would not be enough. That being said, my question to you and anyone in the community: Can a website get an unlimited amount of inbound links or do you reach a level that the links start to hinder or hurt performance?
Logan,
Getting one million links all of a sudden will definitely raise a red flag. Yes, as it stands now, that would go against you. If your client start listening to seomoz webinars he will quickly realize that he would have to change that mindset....
Try to appear more natural and get a consistent flow of back links. I have tried on different domains and they are all different in terms of building back links that work but if it's a new site I would go slow and ensure that the back links you get are of really high quality or else the trust of that site will go down quickly..again, thats my personal experience playing around with it...The penguin updates is all about the back links where google penalizes sites for low quality back links...
Great video, thanks Rand.
My head is going to burst ... well anyways thanks a lot for the new approach of earning links Rand.
Rand I have a question I've checked the page rank of all my pages and not one is higher than 30 but when I input just the URL into OSE it is 42/100?
Very interesting Whiteboard Friday this week!
Nice video, I agree with your comment about the Link building procedure, Content farming, as well for the competitors research.
It's been enough of link spamming and treating most SEOs as spammers. I hope that G will close all spamming businesses with algo changes.
Rand, Great post and couldn't agree with you more on what SEOs "should" be doing. But guess what? I've been doing most of, if not all of, what is listed on the right side of the board but I am getting 0 results.
Its truly driving me mad. I think that for those who were too heavily involved in the "old school" ways(such as myself)...there might be a hill to climb before getting results, even if you are NOW doing the right kind of SEO (and have been since Penguin and even before that) .
Rand always rock :)
but in every presentation he is used to say that old link building practices are not dead but could be better by applying new tactics.
Any ways nice presentation.
This video makes the whole 'new' link acquiring concept very clear. I wonder how much people will jump on their disavow tool and start over again with more passive link-acquiring techniques.
Your argument is very good
Regardless with linking or social shares..they can all get manipulated anyways. So Google has to sort that out as well. Anyways, not promoting bad link building but think of your business first....Some of you guys should probably give up on Google and use other more effective marketing for your business...Its not worth it for certain industries especially if 100% of your traffic or close to it comes from Google......
It is simple avoid bad links in any cost.. and make a link which get you good rank in future..
Earn links and trust ?
So Google will sooner or later want every website out there( ~320 million or more) to make quality articles, not just any articles huge 1500-2000 word articles. Make articles every day to keep users hooked and get links from them in return.
I dont think Google has made such a plan. There are many sites with not a single description in their pages and ranking over 1500 in alexa. These sites dont even have to do any SEO or even a social bookmark. Google favours large contents no matter what the quality as long as users love it. Depends on returning visitors which Google seems to take into consideration. Links are earned automatically when the website is big, small websites & business will have a tough time.
Small business will always have a rough time to get themselves in serps. They dont have large amount of money to invest in making videos for youtube which i think is the first step to earn real visitors in your niche.
Awesome explanation of old era of link building and the transition that happened this year after Penguin update. Link earning and building social network of people who can actually share your content or link to you organically, helps 100%.
This is a great computation of old link building to new era. The Topsy suggestion go me thinking. This would also be an easy way to find out what types of content people want to hear about. Thus getting you past writer's block on what topic or subject you should make your next blog post about.
Great WhitebordFriday Rand! I've immediately shared it with my fellow team mates (and especially some of the new ones :)) because I think you've drawn such a clear picture of how link building used to work and is going to work in the future. Very helpful, Thanks!
So dont let Google scare you off. They just inject fear to make you not build links manually cause it makes it harder for them to figure out...Again that is quality links....
Thanks rand for the great WBF, this is exactly what we need to know about the link building, i am agree with you that now we have to start link earning instead of buying. Article marketing nad gueswt posting is latest method of link earning and i think it is best for our site and getting visitors. We have to stop that old ways of link building to making safe our site from Google updates like penguin and panda. I am glad to hear this WBF you have provide us right direction of re birthing our links.
Google is a mess right now. They opened up a big Pandora's Box with Penguin. The fact that links can now hurt a website is very dangerous. Also, it's almost laughable that Google thinks they can even judge "quality content". Just look at the SERPs.
So... you create the great content. It's wildly popular. Sure, that content gets a lot of credible and trusted links. But what happens if that good content gets a lot of links from low quality sites/pages?
Does my good content get slapped by Google's imaginary animals?
Inbound marketing to replace SEO and link earning to replace link building, wonder what term's next :)
This is really a good stuff from Rand. I really agree what he said. After Panda and Penguin update life of SEO's became miserable. These two algorithm update hit SEO badly. The most effective SEO tactics proved to be useless and rater harming. So, Rand Fishkin guiding SEO's to the changing world of SEO. There is hidden suggestion in the post for SEO. The suggestion is make new content keeping in mind about visitors not the Search Engines. The alternate SEO tricks for almost backdated SEO Tricks are very useful i think. I am already following them and trying to continue.
Nice stuff, I just want to discuss all points.
Stop Directory and exchange link with other website? No its Bad Idea just think how can one company put link for other relevant company? Understand? No?
Just think if you have Printing business then you say to other printing company put my website link to your company they will put? No never....! I think now understand.
My second point , You want to say stop article posting and start relevant guest posting? I just want to say this in the market you can never post on relevant website then how we can do this?
3rd Point. Competitor links: You say stop work on competitor link and work on Content, Yes right..! We want to work on Content but we must need to get competitor and then we must increase or PR link and traffic then we can improve ranking .
Some point are good but mostly i dis agree with this video.
I think Mostly people don't watch video and just press like button. and go.
My Last point, In the last Google update mostly website from USA, UK , and some other country website got spam you know why? All white man just believe on this type of video and stop work and done some wrong work that's why go spam.
But thanks for sharing this video.
It' clear , that Google is looking these kind of link building strategy now by its latest algorithm updates.But Ran, you mentioned here link building through communities and real membership will possible to get valuable backlinks, but,most of the communities are not provide 'do follow ' links then how we will get backlinks from this ?
You're still thinking about it the wrong way. The minute you start wondering about dofollow/nofollow, you know you've gone off track.
Thanks Klarke for clearing the root of success way.
there algo changes have cost them big!
We need a 64-word tournament for "SEO keyword of the year."
Last year's Grand Champion may have been "Penguin."
I would submit my nominations for this year as "Content" and "Curation."
(Just to get a jump on 2013, make sure we denote that "Rich Snippets" will be in the running.
I think content marketing has totally risen as the buzzword of the year.
+1 completely. When we're eliminating spammy tactics from this word, I think it's probably the best type of link/brand building/earning. Whatever you want to call it, just earn it and stop being a spammer!
@ Henley
I think you're absolutely right! We @ SEOWiz have focussed on providing the right mix in keyword optimization and more over proper content. The use of Headers, titles, em, strong often gets under estimated. Poor a little Social Media juice of this concept and you're well on your way.
"Content Marketing" would get my vote
Most of the User from USA and UK like to use software for SEO, what software make them spammer , But I think no one have Idea, What is software and what is work which we done by hand.
I prefer to work with hand , If you done work by hand then what? You will do only few links per day ? Then What no problem if you done only few link but Quality link that is much better for your business.
I see now day many software in the market for link building and like Manage WordPress from one admin panel , or some like Handle webmaster on one point. I totally dis-agree with these type of software.
Why you use any software for webmaster? You don't like Google Webmaster? What is this? I always prefer Google tools and manual work. Never prefer any tools.
Sorry for these type of comments but i just want to say please just believe on Google tools if you need ranking in Google for long term. Thanks for reading my comment.
There's little difference between building junk/fake links "manually" vs doing them with the help of software. The "manual" building gets you there slower, but the result will eventually be the same.
Absolutely right, Klarke. Manual actions and link building will be alive for years...
About time.
Hi Rand,
Again you came up informative WBF. But one linkbuilding technique you missed that is social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Stumbleupon etc. how this link building technique should be used to earn links?. At my company Gowebbaby.com we creates a link baiting, controversial, informative content and share them on this portals. Do you vote this as an link earning?.
Worst SEOMOZ post ever.
Attacks methods that work and are legitimate (Directories, sorry they aren't glamorous). Furthermore paid links continue to be a legitimate form of advertising if done intelligently (even with disclosure) in EVERY niche.
This is just sanctimonious crap.
Start reading or listening correctly - a very good WBF i watched it - and than read it completly - a good one. And I agree with Rand's opinion - mostly all over the post
Came back (caused by a post today), saw again and now i have to say one of the top 5 WBFs I saw... cant beleive what u wrote. Calm, watch again, think about it...
Argghhhh! It's becoming more frustrating when authority sites like this come back saying that link building is dead. Well SEO is dead then. Come on, once again I'll repeat myself, we are manipulators! we try to fix the search results. it's what we do. This repetitive grind about "sharing content" and earning links, it doesn't happen in the real world. We have multiple clients to SEO for and most of them don't want shed-loads of content on their site. They want it clean. And why shouldn't they? Besides I've seen horrid sites rank higher than ours on several occassions when they even have hidden CSS`d content users can`t see and they are STILL ranking high! Google are inconsistent and let's face it, it's luck a lot of the time. I really want to believe that great content helps but great content I write on a blog site or Word press site of my own, linking back to the site or a guest post linking to the client site, is not the site I want to rank, it's the client site I want to rank. The content is purely there for the link. This has worked occasionally but again, it's random.
Do not buy SEO from this man. Little cute exotic animals will get you, eventually. These values are why Google is a mess sometimes these days. Google's trying to implement ways to avoid all the Charlie's here from manipulating the SERP's.
Way to go SEOmoz!
This is the way to get the message out there.
This kind of comment never ceases to amuse me. "Old spam techniques don't work, so here are some techniques that do work" != "SEO is dead."
SEO has not died. What has happened is that SEO's ROI has changed dramatically. It takes more work to get results.