Surgical Link Building FTW
- SEO |
We can all argue about white hat and black hat all day.
You'll have the people that are always preaching - 'just create good content, the links and rankings will come!'
/\ I hate those guys.
Sorry if you are one of those guys but, come on... Have you ever done SEO for a small forklift company in the West Midlands? Who are you working for? Apple? Spotify? eBay? Of course SEO is easy for the big boys.
But then on the other end of the spectrum, we have the people that are 100% spamming the net with absolute crap. Crap sites, crap links.
I fall somewhere in the middle, and NO it isn't GREY hat, blue hat or red hat...
Here's my REALISTIC VIEW on SEO.
Unless you're a big brand, that's known quite well in the real world (apple, coca cola, mcdonalds, dell, moneysavingexpert.com, gocompare etc) you are going to find it hard getting found in google by simply doing your onsite SEO and 'creating good content'.
Don't get me wrong, you should make sure your onsite is squeeky clean. And you SHOULD be creating good content (good product, good blog, nice site, easy to navigate etc). And you should be getting friends/partners/manufacturers/suppliers/other sites to link to you, by asking them. And you should get listed in all the right directories, consider a couple of Paid ones too like Yahoo, BOTW.
But then what...?
Keep creating infographics and top 10 lists in the hope that the linkerati one day generates you 1000s of links?
No. This is business... you can't afford to be waiting around.
So, this is how I justify building links. It helps Google a little bit, and in turn helps visitors find what their looking for... YOUR SITE.
It's called surgical link building. It's that bit you do after you've laid down your foundations and done everything else.
This can be building Web 2.0 Hubs about your industry and linking to yourself. Blog commenting. Social Bookmarks. Link exchanges. Maybe a few link purchases...
Don't think too hard about WHAT you do. A links a link. Think any harder than that and you'll get spots.
Just don't build links in big numbers. Diversify the anchor text massively.
I'm not saying google owe you a living, or you should rely solely on SEO. But SEO as a traffic source is gold, and most small to medium business can benefit greatly from it, and save a fortune on paid search.
You'll have the people that are always preaching - 'just create good content, the links and rankings will come!'
/\ I hate those guys.
Sorry if you are one of those guys but, come on... Have you ever done SEO for a small forklift company in the West Midlands? Who are you working for? Apple? Spotify? eBay? Of course SEO is easy for the big boys.
But then on the other end of the spectrum, we have the people that are 100% spamming the net with absolute crap. Crap sites, crap links.
I fall somewhere in the middle, and NO it isn't GREY hat, blue hat or red hat...
Here's my REALISTIC VIEW on SEO.
Unless you're a big brand, that's known quite well in the real world (apple, coca cola, mcdonalds, dell, moneysavingexpert.com, gocompare etc) you are going to find it hard getting found in google by simply doing your onsite SEO and 'creating good content'.
Don't get me wrong, you should make sure your onsite is squeeky clean. And you SHOULD be creating good content (good product, good blog, nice site, easy to navigate etc). And you should be getting friends/partners/manufacturers/suppliers/other sites to link to you, by asking them. And you should get listed in all the right directories, consider a couple of Paid ones too like Yahoo, BOTW.
But then what...?
Keep creating infographics and top 10 lists in the hope that the linkerati one day generates you 1000s of links?
No. This is business... you can't afford to be waiting around.
So, this is how I justify building links. It helps Google a little bit, and in turn helps visitors find what their looking for... YOUR SITE.
It's called surgical link building. It's that bit you do after you've laid down your foundations and done everything else.
This can be building Web 2.0 Hubs about your industry and linking to yourself. Blog commenting. Social Bookmarks. Link exchanges. Maybe a few link purchases...
Don't think too hard about WHAT you do. A links a link. Think any harder than that and you'll get spots.
Just don't build links in big numbers. Diversify the anchor text massively.
I'm not saying google owe you a living, or you should rely solely on SEO. But SEO as a traffic source is gold, and most small to medium business can benefit greatly from it, and save a fortune on paid search.