Link building is one of the most challenging aspects of SEO and it doesn’t appear that some people really get it, but that is no different than most SEO concepts.
A lot of people find a nugget of SEO wisdom, apply thought, reason and ride it like a horse until it can easily become apparent to a search engine (because they can assume your behavior based upon the fruit these efforts bring). This usually draws direct criticism through removal of any increased value, causing you to be relegated you back to your old SERP position or even worse, dropping a penalty or even going as far as removing your sight from the index.
It is easy for search engines to see and take notice when link building efforts step outside of what could be considered as natural.
What does this mean?
Search engines are frequently crawling websites to find new and updated content to ad to or update their index. Included in these content crawls is seeing links from this content to other pages, both internally and externally. So, it is reasonable to say that they see the links coming to your website from other sources, that’s the point of link building. They too, can apply thought and reason to see when and how these new links are being added. This helps the engines to determine you inbound link profile (ILP) which will give them insight into if the links pointing to your website are natural (user-generated, authoritative and such) or done in an unnatural manner (paid, exchanged or otherwise). It is this ILP that impacts the value the search engines give to the links pointing to your site.
So, if your ILP looks unnatural, as an example: because they have determined that you have purchased links in the past, they may apply reasoning that links, not paid for, might also be purchased and should not pass authority and/or value. This is the type of risk that you should consider determining if you should purchase and/or sell links. This doesn’t only apply for purchased links, it can also be reasonably applied to link exchanges and other unnatural behaviors.
This is a very large topic, so I am going to tackle holistic link building in a number of posts to follow this one. Here is the outline:
Holistic Link Building 101
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Directory Submissions
- Content Development to Build Links
- Direct Link Requests
- LinkBaiting
- Link Building 2.0
Stay tuned! You can find these articles by following in your favorite RSS reader or by coming back to this post, as I will update each of these topics in the outline with the post that will follow.
Related Posts >>
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Link Building 2.0 – Link Development in Web 2.0
- Baiting the Waters for Link Success
- How to Win Links and Influence Webmasters
- Link Building Strategies – Eric Ward
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
i agree with you. alot of people dont understand that seo is not a one time thing. seo has to be consistent and ongoing. whatever your link building strategy is, make sure it is something that is sustainable for a long period of time.
Stephen
Pleased you are going to go through this in detail because I for one am hugely confused about the whole linking piece. I just installed a link plugin to help my inbound link structure and it was just crazy…ened up having the word ‘business’ being linked everytime it appeared in one of my posts (11 times in a 1000 word article) and I couldn’t appear to change it! Be great to have a masterclass on this.
You are correct that many people find a nugget of SEO wisdom, apply thought, and ride it untill they get banned or penalized by the search engines. I’ve worked with so many people who just outright violate what the search engines say you can do. In one instance I had a website owner contact me and ask me why they got banned from Google. Had a quick look and the site was full of spam, had obvious link schemes going on, and was abusing meta data. When I asked him about this he also informed me that he purchased almost $3,000 dollars in links. I helped him clear it up but its been about 7 months now and the site is still recovering.
Just adding a tip for everyone here, read the webmaster guidlines of Google and Yahoo before you start doing any SEO.
I am always looking for some good explanations on how to build effective backlinks that works. After a time I recognized that nearly all articles about such a topic repeat each other, so I am very glad to read your article! Thanx a lot fot it.
It was good to find your collection of posts on holistic link building. As an SEO, I try to make sure I keep all my methods white hat, and it’s refreshing to find someone who believes these are the proper ways to go enough to detail them. Thanks!
My two sense worth on link building:
1. Write well researched academically underpinned overwhelming good articles. Write articles as opposed to blogging which are usual too short.
2. If you comment or participate in someone’s blog, forum or website; to and be creative and articulate; leave a comment that adds value.
3. I try and locate and call webmasters and establish a human connection before discussing links.
4. Write articles and post them to article submission websites – that works a treat and links from your article are more relevant to your site.
Ive spent years trying to do the right thing. The main word in SEO is “relevant”.
By this I mean:
relevant content to
relevant keywords and meta keywords to
relevant backlinks.
Although backlinking to a high ranking website is usefull, it is better to back link with websites who are covering the same issues and subjects as your site.
It will always be difficult for search engines to determine whether a link is free as “a vote” or actually paid. This is because it may be even both, a vote and paid lol.
A natural link can be through a blog post I write about your site because I think it is a interesting resource for my website visitors but you may as well pay me for this link.