Ok, technically anyone who hires an SEO to do link building is doing paid linking. They are paying someone with expertise and dedicated resources to do link building and much of the time it is specifically to manipulate Googles search results. It does not make good business sense to rely only on organic links to compete for search results. This may work for Brand related searches. If you are interested in ranking for any generic terms however, you will need some help or to spend your own resources doing the link building; neither of which is free. Paying someone to do link building is different than paying for a link, but both have the same goal.
While Google may want all links to be organic, I believe that they know that is not even close to within the realm of possibility. They know that non-organic link building will always be a part of the search landscape and have begrudgingly come to terms with the issue. Understandably however, Google has to draw a line somewhere. Its up to us as SEOs to understand where that line is and for the sake of our clients, not to cross it.
So where does Google draw the line?
Normally I would say intent. This is the ad hoc metric Google uses to determine whether something is evil or not. If the intent is obviously to manipulate their results, then more often than not it gets a busted. However, since almost all link building is done with the intention of improving a pages/sites position in search results, intent cannot be that line.
Par for the course with Google, the line is a little fuzzy. They can tell us something is not acceptable on one hand then on the other, SEOs show us that it clearly has impact. Google does not think it is fuzzy at all by the way. They tell us what they expect and lead us to believe they have the technology to enforce it. SEOs have shown over and over again that their enforcement tends to have holes.
Examples on both sides of the line.
The recent J.C. Penney paid linking issue uncovered by the New York Times was an instance where the intent was obviously to influence rankings. Its a great example of either not understanding where the line was or not caring if it was crossed. The search firm who handled the Penneys site either allowed the creation of or actively created thousands of links using paid link networks. With what I personally consider a gross disregard for the basic principles of link building, these links were place on totally non-relevant sites which was the cause of the overall JC Penalty debate started in the New York Times. Google has told us that paid link networks were stepping across the line over and over again.
When was the last time you saw traffic from the Yahoo! Directory in your sites referrals? Thats a $299 a year link and the only reason most people even bother anymore is because of the strength of the site and the potential link juice it can pass. I just checked, those links are still without the no-follow tag. How far would the sales drop if Yahoo! decided to add no-follows; pretty far I am guessing. Quality directories are a rather safe bet from a paid linking standpoint. When a directory is hand edited and is full of useful links across its categories, Google will normally see value in a link on that site and give it a pass.
How to deal with the line.
Lets face it, many clients and unfortunately many SEOs dont have a clear understanding of how much work goes into building quality links. Its a time consuming and expensive process. Remember, I said quality links, sure you can get links cheap, and paying for links is an easy way to get the job done efficiently, hence its popularity. But in this case, cheap and easy usually equal dangerous and risky; just ask J.C. Penney. The tactic of quantity over quality is not viable anymore.
Dealing with the far side of the line is easy. Just stay away from link networks and brokerage houses. If a company has a List of Publishers you can choose from then its most likely not a list you want anything to do with. If a company has an exclusive network of sites, they are probably not sites you want anything to do with. Use common sense, any service that automates a link is probably not a service you want anything to do with. Quality link building is neither cheap nor easy. If a company or service disagrees with this, assume they are on the wrong side of the line.
Draw your own line.
A few weeks ago, Michael Martinez of SEO Theory wrote an article similar to this one. It was somewhat tongue and cheek, but focused on the point that since all linking is paid, its hypocritical to allow some and not others. And it may be, but there is a point at which Google decides that SEOs have gone too far and its at that point that the site or page gets slapped. As SEOs its up to us to decide for ourselves how close to the line we are willing to venture and since its a fuzzy line its a subjective decision. Some SEOs dont mind pushing the limits while others stay as far from the line as possible. In the long run its up to us as SEOs to draw our own line remembering that in most cases it is not our sites which will be in the Google crosshairs if the line is crossed.
Personally, my line was pushed to far beyond my comfort zone where I was before, I am glad to be at a place like SEER where the line is mine to control once again and all the people around me have the same regard for the clients and their sites as I do.
This was my inaugural post here on the SEER blog. I am glad to have both the time and a place to write about the industry I love once again. If you are coming over because I mentioned this post on the SEO101 Radio show, thanks for dropping by.
Ok, technically anyone who hires an SEO to do link building is doing paid linking. They are paying someone with expertise and dedicated resources to do link building and much of the time it is specifically to manipulate Google’s search results. It does not make good business sense to rely only on “organic” links to compete for search results. This may work for Brand related searches. If you are interested in ranking for any generic terms however, you will need some help or to spend your own resources doing the link building; neither of which is free. Paying someone to do link building is different than paying for a link, but both have the same goal.
While Google may want all links to be organic, I believe that they know that is not even close to within the realm of possibility. They know that non-organic link building will always be a part of the search landscape and have begrudgingly come to terms with the issue. Understandably however, Google has to draw a line somewhere. It’s up to us as SEOs to understand where that line is and for the sake of our clients, not to cross it.
So where does Google draw the line?
Normally I would say “intent.” This is the ad hoc metric Google uses to determine whether something is evil or not. If the intent is obviously to manipulate their results, then more often than not it gets a busted. However, since almost all link building is done with the intention of improving a pages/sites position in search results, “intent” cannot be that line.
Par for the course with Google, the line is a little fuzzy. They can tell us something is not acceptable on one hand then on the other, SEOs show us that it clearly has impact. Google does not think it is fuzzy at all by the way. They tell us what they expect and lead us to believe they have the technology to enforce it. SEOs have shown over and over again that their enforcement tends to have holes.
Examples on both sides of the line.
The recent J.C. Penney paid linking issue uncovered by the New York Times was an instance where the intent was obviously to influence rankings. It’s a great example of either not understanding where the line was or not caring if it was crossed. The search firm who handled the Penney’s site either allowed the creation of or actively created thousands of links using paid link networks. With what I personally consider a gross disregard for the basic principles of link building, these links were place on totally non-relevant sites which was the cause of the overall “JC Penalty” debate started in the New York Times. Google has told us that paid link networks were stepping across the line over and over again.
When was the last time you saw traffic from the Yahoo! Directory in your sites referrals? That’s a $299 a year link and the only reason most people even bother anymore is because of the strength of the site and the potential link juice it can pass. I just checked, those links are still without the no-follow tag. How far would the sales drop if Yahoo! decided to add no-follows; pretty far I am guessing. Quality directories are a rather safe bet from a paid linking standpoint. When a directory is hand edited and is full of useful links across its categories, Google will normally see value in a link on that site and give it a pass.
How to deal with the line.
Let’s face it, many clients and unfortunately many SEOs don’t have a clear understanding of how much work goes into building quality links. It’s a time consuming and expensive process. Remember, I said “quality” links, sure you can get links cheap, and paying for links is an easy way to get the job done efficiently, hence its popularity. But in this case, cheap and easy usually equal dangerous and risky; just ask J.C. Penney. The tactic of quantity over quality is not viable anymore.
Dealing with the far side of the line is easy. Just stay away from link networks and brokerage houses. If a company has a “List of Publishers” you can choose from then it’s most likely not a list you want anything to do with. If a company has an exclusive network of sites, they are probably not sites you want anything to do with. Use common sense, any service that “automates” a link is probably not a service you want anything to do with. Quality link building is neither cheap nor easy. If a company or service disagrees with this, assume they are on the wrong side of the line.
Draw your own line.
A few weeks ago, Michael Martinez of SEO Theory wrote an article similar to this one. It was somewhat tongue and cheek, but focused on the point that since all linking is paid, it’s hypocritical to allow some and not others. And it may be, but there is a point at which Google decides that SEOs have gone too far and it’s at that point that the site or page gets slapped. As SEOs it’s up to us to decide for ourselves how close to the line we are willing to venture and since it’s a fuzzy line it’s a subjective decision. Some SEOs don’t mind pushing the limits while others stay as far from the line as possible. In the long run it’s up to us as SEOs to draw our own line remembering that in most cases it is not our sites which will be in the Google crosshairs if the line is crossed.
Personally, my line was pushed to far beyond my comfort zone where I was before, I am glad to be at a place like SEER where the line is mine to control once again and all the people around me have the same regard for the clients and their sites as I do.
This was my inaugural post here on the SEER blog. I am glad to have both the time and a place to write about the industry I love once again. If you are coming over because I mentioned this post on the SEO101 Radio show, thanks for dropping by.
Hey Guys & Gals,
Here is a recent video on how to determine if you are building links in an un-natural way. Even though I have seen it work over and over again, you have to realize that it is a risky proposition. Long term I am going to build an alert system that tells me any time I fall outside of the high and low “ranges” that the other top 10 listings show for my critical metrics – but that is for another day :)
Now that I have my first blog post under my belt, I am starting to feel a little more confident. So much so, I decided to take my small amount of industry knowledge and start up my own coconut water company. Okay, Im only joking, but lets just say I wasnt. Lets say I was so into coconut water that I wanted to start up my own company and I wanted to gain exposure. My site has already been created and my products are all ready to be shipped. Theres only one problem nobody (and by nobody, I mean the search engines) knows that I exist. Without saying one word to anybody about my business, how do I get people to come to my site and buy my coconut water? The answer is linkbuilding.
Here is a (simplified) overview of how linkbuilding works
I have a site
I promote it
People see it as a valuable resource and then link to it
The more quality links I get, the more the search engines like my site
The more the engines like my site, the higher I should rank
The higher my site ranks, the more traffic/conversions I should get
Okay, so now I have my site, my tasty products and the above information that the SEO fairy whispered in my ear. Now, all I have to do is get some quality links, but where do I start? I dont know any bloggers that I can reach out to. I dont know any directories where I can submit my site. All I know is that I want to compete in the coconut water industry and that I have access to some cool SEOmoz tools.
The first thing that I do is type in coconut water in Google to get a list of competitors. Im pretty familiar with the industry so I know that Zico, VitaCoco and O.N.E are the big boys/girls in the space. So, lets see what they are (or are not) doing that I may be able to learn from. Running each of these competitors through the top pages tool, I can see that I caught each of these competitors sleeping a little bit.
VitaCoCo 404 Pages
Zico 404 Pages
O.N.E 404 Pages
VitaCoCo is not getting credit for (at least) 3 links since the linked to pages return 404 status code
Zico isnt receiving credit for (at least) 5 links
O.N.E isnt receiving credit for (at least) 16 links
I use at least here because there were more examples of these types of pages for each one, but I couldnt screenshot multiple pages
So, the easy part is done. I know that my competitors have links pointing to pages that dont exist, but how do I take advantage of that? I know if I had a website and I was linking to a page that didnt exist, my readers would be upset with me and may not read anything else on my site. So, are you thinking what Im thinking? What if I contacted the sites that are linking to these pages as a courtesy and said something like, Hey blogger, I noticed that you were linking to a page about coconut water that doesnt exist. Since you will already be editing that post anyway, I wanted to let you know that I also have a company that sells coconut water and the product is delicious and nutritious. Would you mind linking to my site instead? Now this wont work all the time, but it sure beats the heck out of hey blogger, can you link to me, Im neat-o?
So, you are probably saying to yourself, thats a cool idea, but how do I know which pages are linking to these 404ed ones. For that, I will be using OpenSiteExplorer (OSE). Lets take the O.N.E example since the most links are pointing to that one:
I copy the link location of the 404ed page that has received 8 external links
I drop that into OSE to find out which sites are linking to it
I filter the results to only include the followed external links pointing to this page only
I take the top result and I end up on this page
Coconut Porridge Recipe
It looks like this blogger has included a link to O.N.Es coconut water site as part of a recipe. Think about how upset I would be as a reader if I was making a Coconut Date Porridge for my in-laws and I couldnt access the page to see which coconut water I should buy. I would be devastated. So, I would shoot an email to this blogger and say hey, youre readers cant view that page because it no longer exists. You should update it and, oh, by the way, I sell coconut water and its freakin sweet. Would you mind linking to mine instead? I would recommend going down the top pages list and compiling a spreadsheet of all of the 404 pages for each competitor. Once you have that, you can start digging. Even if you dont get all of them, you will still get a few and you will at least make the web a better place.
Now, this strategy wont work every time, of course, but when thinking about where to start your linkbuilding, its always a good idea to take a look at what the competition is or isnt doing. You just may learn something. Do you have any other ways that you use competitors for linkbuilding? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments section!
Now that I have my first blog post under my belt, I am starting to feel a little more confident. So much so, I decided to take my small amount of industry knowledge and start up my own coconut water company. Okay, I’m only joking, but let’s just say I wasn’t. Let’s say I was so into coconut water that I wanted to start up my own company and I wanted to gain exposure. My site has already been created and my products are all ready to be shipped. There’s only one problem – nobody (and by nobody, I mean the search engines) knows that I exist. Without saying one word to anybody about my business, how do I get people to come to my site and buy my coconut water? The answer is linkbuilding.
Here is a (simplified) overview of how linkbuilding works
I have a site
I promote it
People see it as a valuable resource and then link to it
The more quality links I get, the more the search engines like my site
The more the engines like my site, the higher I should rank
The higher my site ranks, the more traffic/conversions I should get
Okay, so now I have my site, my tasty products and the above information that the SEO fairy whispered in my ear. Now, all I have to do is get some quality links, but where do I start? I don’t know any bloggers that I can reach out to. I don’t know any directories where I can submit my site. All I know is that I want to compete in the coconut water industry and that I have access to some cool SEOmoz tools.
The first thing that I do is type in “coconut water” in Google to get a list of competitors. I’m pretty familiar with the industry so I know that Zico, VitaCoco and O.N.E are the big boys/girls in the space. So, let’s see what they are (or are not) doing that I may be able to learn from. Running each of these competitors through the top pages tool, I can see that I caught each of these competitors sleeping a little bit.
VitaCoCo 404 Pages
Zico 404 Pages
O.N.E 404 Pages
VitaCoCo is not getting credit for (at least) 3 links since the linked to pages return 404 status code
Zico isn’t receiving credit for (at least) 5 links
O.N.E isn’t receiving credit for (at least) 16 links
I use “at least” here because there were more examples of these types of pages for each one, but I couldn’t screenshot multiple pages
So, the easy part is done. I know that my competitors have links pointing to pages that don’t exist, but how do I take advantage of that? I know if I had a website and I was linking to a page that didn’t exist, my readers would be upset with me and may not read anything else on my site. So, are you thinking what I’m thinking? What if I contacted the sites that are linking to these pages as a “courtesy” and said something like, “Hey blogger, I noticed that you were linking to a page about coconut water that doesn’t exist. Since you will already be editing that post anyway, I wanted to let you know that I also have a company that sells coconut water and the product is delicious and nutritious. Would you mind linking to my site instead?” Now this won’t work all the time, but it sure beats the heck out of “hey blogger, can you link to me, I’m neat-o?”
So, you are probably saying to yourself, “that’s a cool idea, but how do I know which pages are linking to these 404’ed ones.” For that, I will be using OpenSiteExplorer (OSE). Let’s take the O.N.E example since the most links are pointing to that one:
I copy the link location of the 404’ed page that has received 8 external links
I drop that into OSE to find out which sites are linking to it
I filter the results to only include the followed external links pointing to this page only
I take the top result and I end up on this page
Coconut Porridge Recipe
It looks like this blogger has included a link to O.N.E’s coconut water site as part of a recipe. Think about how upset I would be as a reader if I was making a Coconut Date Porridge for my in-laws and I couldn’t access the page to see which coconut water I should buy. I would be devastated. So, I would shoot an email to this blogger and say “hey, you’re readers can’t view that page because it no longer exists. You should update it and, oh, by the way, I sell coconut water and it’s freakin’ sweet. Would you mind linking to mine instead?” I would recommend going down the top pages list and compiling a spreadsheet of all of the 404 pages for each competitor. Once you have that, you can start digging. Even if you don’t get all of them, you will still get a few and you will at least make the web a better place.
Now, this strategy won’t work every time, of course, but when thinking about where to start your linkbuilding, it’s always a good idea to take a look at what the competition is or isn’t doing. You just may learn something. Do you have any other ways that you use competitors for linkbuilding? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments section!
