Link Building at the time of Web 2.0
SEO February 27th, 2008
Do you know anyone who lost his job because of google algorithm updates? I know. And I do have a guilty feeling in that. I was the one who came to an assumption that the traditional link building is not doing any good for any website anymore. So the guy who was working on reciprocal links lost his job. The company told him that they will get in touch with you once they have a vacancy for him. Typical corporate way of saying “you are fired!”
So what was it? Google and other search engines are no more giving any importance to the links to a website? What happened to the famous PageRank equation Larry Page and Sergy Brin explained in their research paper?
I do think that major search engines are playing down the importance of reciprocal links. But that doesn’t mean that links are no more important. Links can be useful for a website in a number of situations:
- Links embedded within the content. article marketing comes very handy in this situation.
- Links corresponding to the content they are embedded in.
- Links created by individuals and rated due to their relevance and value.
- Links consistent with the original website.
- Links that appear to be originally posted.
- Links posted on sites where the content is user generated.
All these points are concluding to the integration of the Web 2.0 tools into link building. So, if I have to do link building today, I might use the following steps. Remember, this is not a fool-proof strategy or anything. I myself may change it tomorrow morning.
Research & identify social sites that fit the criteria for valuable links
- Check the site has been properly indexed in search engines.
- Try to find out whether there are social media websites which deal with your particular industry sector.
- See if other members in the network are active. If none of the users posted anything in the last two days, forget about that site!
- The site should allow putting in our links. Even if it is a “nofollow” or redirected link. At the end of the day, what you need is the traffic!
Authentic, Active Participation
It is very important to reveal your human face if you want to promote anything on the world of web 2.0. Creating a detailed profile in the social media websites you are planning to use is very important in this case. And try to use almost all possible types of websites in your campaign. Maybe you have to fine-tune your methods of promotion in each website. But to gain that knowledge, what you have to do is to test it. I am planning to write about the promotion techniques in some major websites. But that’s not all. You may get your best results from some other websites. So, keep testing…
So, what is going to happen to my friend who lost the job? I think he should go back to the company and convince them that the link bulding is still on and we can use it even in the Web 2.0 era. And ask the CEO to give him the facebook password so that he can promote his company!
About
Your blog is an interesting lead. I remember when we discussed link building and how it’s an outdated avenue to promote website ranking. The decision to ‘fire the guy’ was one taken without much delibration. It was an immature management decision to cut costs rather than a review of the task’s objective and importance.
The employee who lost his job has probably found a better career path by now. If you remember well, he was just completing a task assigned; he had no knowledge, expertise or even an inclination towards ranking the sites higher. Don’t beat yourself up about it. It was one of those things that happen.
Back to the importance of link building; it’s qualified / relevant links that matter. It was a quick promotion strategy for ranking sites and it worked wonders and I believe as you say, still does. Link farming is also something that works although it has been severely criticized as a Black Hat SEO technique. Nonetheless, several websites have benefited from link farming.
Still, it’s better to just go with good content, relevant keywords and links that are important to the website’s readers. This may be the safe way to do things, but the pay off will come in time.
Black-hat SEO techniques has always been an easy way to get good rankings. Black-hat techniques are nothing but some tricks which take advantages of the loopholes in the search engine algorithms. But the black-hat SEO techniques give a better chance for your site to get blacklisted by search engines. I remember the time when people used to offer 1st position in google and stuff like that. Now if you see, those types of offers are less and people hardly fall for it.
If the site gets blacklisted, the cost of recovering from it is quite high. The reciprocal link building strategy is not a black hat technique. But I don’t think that is going add any value to the site anymore.
The methods I explained here are also not black hat techniques. But when people start to misuse it, these techniques also might become irrelevant. But if you see the overall structure of social media websites, where they promote user participation in moderation as well, the chances are less.
So here also the key is not to overdo it. And do it sensibly. Otherwise you will be letting your competitors to win over you!
You are absolutely right, dude. The people who think these black-hat techniques work, are putting their websites at risk.