The Rebirth of Link Building!!??!!
- SEO |
A few weeks ago, I noticed that Link Building died a horribly bloody death. You should have seen it!
It was terrible. A giant Panda and Penguin that reeked of animal urine came out of NOWHERE and LITERALLY tore Link Building to pieces with their long metallic claws that they probably inherited from Wolverine. There was blood splattered all across my screen, and I was so shocked at the sight that I fainted and was confined to my room for days on end.
People everywhere were talking about it. In the Warriorforum, in blogs, on SEOMoz, on CNN, and even in the local newspapers. I think even this week, many people were still discussing the topic. They mourned the demise of Link Building and welcomed Link Earning as the new ruler of the web.
But, by some miraculous occurrence this week, it seems that Link Building was reborn out of the ashes! Amazing.
I'm one of the SEOers who have benefited from this timely rebirth, and I thought that it would be a good idea to share with my fellow Warriors concerning how you can take advantage of the newly reborn powers of link building as well and use them to explode your online SEO web traffic...
But before we go into that, let's take a very brief look into why Link Building died in the first place so that we can avoid a repeat occurrence...
The Death of Link Building (A Tribute)
SEOers have for some time been benefiting by ranking a variety of content in the search engines by artificially building their own links pointing to their sites. The sites with more links rose quickly in the search engines, dominating the top search results and raking in passive income like a flood.
Over the years, various techniques and tools have been developed in order to mass produce quality links all across the web. Google saw this as a 'no-no' and decided to implement some algorithm changes in the form of Google Panda and Penguin, as well as other subtle penalties.
Links from many different sites started to be devalued, and people started to lose their rankings in the search engines that were gained through link building. With all the constant changes, SEOers started to gain a new fear in their hearts.
They feared that if they continued to build links themselves in order to somehow manipulate the search results slightly, they would just be penalized and hit again and again as the search engines got smarter and implemented more algorithm changes. They were further discouraged by the evident drop in rankings and income that came about as a result of the algorithm changes.
Thus, people started to get afraid of link building, and the rumor spread that Link Earning was the new king of SEO. Google itself welcomed this new trend as a sign that their algorithm changes and penalties did the trick.
But in truth, Link Building itself is not dead. It is still alive and well. The thing that is dead is... Link Building as a strategy.
Let me elaborate more on that...
Link Building (Strategy or Tactic)
A strategy is a big plan that consists of several smaller moving parts within the plan (tactics) that are combined together to achieve a particular goal.
A tactic is a small part of a strategy. It is just a small plan within a big plan.
Now that you're familiar with the differences between a strategy and a tactic, it gives me the freedom to tell you that link building as a strategy is dead, but not link building a tactic.
The complaints about link building today go somewhat like this...
There's no point doing link building anymore. Google doesn't like it. Even if you just continue doing link building and find new ways to accumulate links, Google is going to catch up with you, find ways to penalize and discredit your links, and it's going to do a massive number on you, Gangnam-style:
The conclusion that most people come to is that link building is only a short-term strategy, one that is not worthy of being mentioned in a plan for long-term financial success.
It is true that link building is more of a short-term strategy rather than a long-term one. I totally agree with that.
However, the problem is not that link building is a short-term strategy. There's actually no problem in that whatsoever. The problem comes when people use link building as their one and only strategy in their online marketing endeavors.
People set up webpages filled with content, use some automated tools to create a flood of backlinks back to their webpages, and expect to watch those pages rank on the top of the search engines and stay there for the long-term. That's all they want to do, and that's where their strategy ends.
Link building, and that's it...
If link building is your one and only strategy, then once you lose your results to search engine algorithm tweaks, you're back to square one. You have nothing left to stand on.
However, if you use link building as a tactic that is part of a larger strategy instead, then you're in a good place. You can use link building as a short-term strategy and leverage it for long-term results.
And that's what I want to share with my fellow Warriors today. The rebirth of link building (and how you can take advantage of it) is through leveraging the short-term results of the process in order to build long-term benefits
Leveraging Short-Term Results for Long-Term Benefits
So you've built a ton of nice backlinks to your website and it's currently ranking on the first page of Google. You've updated your link building strategy to account for the latest Google algorithm changes and you're doing well with it so far...
You're getting a lot of traffic and views to your content, and you're making a nice passive income on autopilot...
Until the next algorithm change that is.
Once that algorithm change comes into play, you might lose your rankings, your traffic and your income. But that doesn't have to be...
With all the results you've gotten from link building, you can leverage the results and the traffic you are getting to get even more traffic that is Google-proof. Traffic that will keep multiplying even if Google changes their algorithms. And if done right, that traffic will even help you to prepare and Google-proof your rankings during the next update.
Here's 3 ways you can take advantage of the link-building traffic you are currently getting to get more traffic, and to establish yourself for long-term results in the eyes of the search engines.
01. Creating Great Content
Creating great content is the basis of link earning. Link earning in itself is a good practice. You create great content, and people link back to you and talk about you because of all the great content that you create. You are thereby 'earning' backlinks.
However, there's a problem here. In order to earn backlinks, you need three things:
- Great content that can earn you links
- Targeted traffic that will view that content
- Your traffic sharing and spreading the content after reading it
So you've got great content that can earn you links. How are you going to get targeted traffic that will view that content and share it in order to earn you those links?
Why...
By link building of course...
You create great content, get it ranked in Google quickly by link building, and get a flood of people viewing that content. If your content is good enough, people will be compelled to talk about it, share it with their friends, and link back to it.
Thus you are getting the quality 'link earning' experience that Google is putting so much emphasis on these days, and you are going to continue getting traffic from people talking about your work for some time to come in spite of any Google algorithm changes.
02. Implementing Viral Technologies
There are so many different types of viral technologies available today, that the time would not be enough for me to talk about it. But implementing viral technologies is something that you should consider implementing in your website if you are doing link building.
Let me give you an example of how this can benefit you, and how it has benefited me in multiplying the traffic I get from link building into a more long-term continuous flow...
Let's say you have a brilliant article on a particular topic regarding an area of interest. You rank it quickly in the search engines using link building. A flood of people come to your website, read the content, and are partially satisfied.
They are only partially satisfied because you reveal all of the content except one very small closing piece at the end. In order to view this closing piece of content, visitors will have to share the article with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, or even their own blogs first. The viral Wordpress plugin will then reveal the full content to them once they have shared it.
So you have taken advantage of the traffic you have gained from link building by enlisting them to help you 'earn' more natural backlinks and visitors to your site. As more visitors come to your site, they will continue sharing the article with their friends because of the viral mechanism, and the process continues. You will continue to gain quality, natural backlinks, and your traffic will continue to grow in spite of any search engine algorithm changes.
But don't let it stop there. Let me share with you the last method. Something which works so well, and which you have heard of so much...
Are you ready?
03. List Building
This is something that you don't need me to elaborate in great depth and detail. It's something that you have heard of so much, and very often. There are millions of threads and discussions about it, so you should know the importance of list building.
Drive some quick and easy traffic to your site using link building, offer them a free gift in exchange for signing up to your list, and you now have a portable traffic machine that you can unleash at your disposal in future.
Use this traffic machine along with a viral technology plugin as mentioned in method two, and you will be able to multiply your traffic anytime you wish.
Several years ago, famed blogger John Chow was once ranking top on Google for the words "making money online". He got a ton of traffic from this. Unfortunately, he got that ranking using link building methods that Google didn't approve of, and he got Google slapped.
Fortunately for him, he was very active in building a huge list from that short-term link-building traffic, and he was able to survive, grow and continue building up the income from his blog even until today. Because of this massive list he got from his list-building endeavor, he never had to worry about traffic regardless of the search engine penalties.
Personal Experiment: Link Building vs Link Earning
In order to further solidify the idea that "Link Building Has Been Reborn!" further in your minds, let me share with you a small personal experiment that I conducted previously. The results from this experiment spanned the period after the implementation of Google Penguin.
I did two experiments. For the first experiment, I was doing only link earning. In other words, I did no link building of my own. The only thing I did was to post articles on Wordpress blogs. Good content articles of course. And on a regular basis. You can still rank in Google even if you don't do any link building at all. Just set-up pinging, and let Google be notified each time you create a new post.
For the second experiment, I created great content articles, but I did link building in addition to it. After a period of the first few months, the results are as such:
Experiment 1 (No Linking): 10 to 500 visitors a day
Experiment 2 (Linking): 5000 to 15000 visitors a day
Even after Google Penguin, Experiment 2 is still doing well steadily with the traffic, and the remarkable thing is that the visitors to the site are building very high quality backlinks to it on a daily basis because of the good content (PR 4 to 7 page backlinks). Even though I'm not doing anything and not link building to it much anymore. I do build a list from the traffic of course.
But what I want to say is, it all started with link building. It's amazing the power of link earning, but it is most convenient when it is first initiated using link building as a catalyst. Utilize link building as a short-term strategy in order to gain long-term results, and you will be amazed at the results you can get.
Conclusion
I hope that this information I've shared will come in useful for my fellow Warriors who are on the border of the path between link building and link earning.
Let me know your thoughts, and if these experiences have helped you in your online marketing endeavors.
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