I’m so tired of spam, and I’m not talking about the kind that comes through your front door, or even the kind that comes into your email inbox every day. I am sick of internet spam that is pawned off as ‘linkbuilding SEO’.
I’ve already talked previously about how Google page rank works and yes, this is based on linking. What I also said, (but probably not clearly enough) is that links do NOT equal positions. So many people think that in order to optimise their sites, they need to go out there an sign up to every social network imaginable and spam them to hell with links back to their site. Not only does this not help with search engines, but it hinders you with traffic, as you will become known for being ‘yet another spammer’ - causing people to ignore/block you altogether.
Having links will NOT get you positions, if you are already ranking for a key phrase based on other SEO elements, then yes PR may help you that extra little bit from Google’s point of view because you are considered to be an ‘important’ site, but again this cannot be achieved through spam links.
Where’s The Pitfall?
If you are doing the SEO, then the pitfall is that it will get you nowhere, you won’t see much benefit from it in the short run, and in the long run it may get you banned from certain sites, blacklisted, or even penalised by Google themselves depending on how extreme you get. If you are paying for the SEO, then the pitfall is that you are paying for a service that a 14yr old could accomplish, dropping links into random sites, and it still isn’t helping! Link building is NOT SEO.
What is Linkbuilding Then?
Linkbuilding is just that, building links. It should be named as no more or less than acquiring links from other sites, you should not charge or pay a premium for this service as there is no skill, knowledge, or qualification required!
But Then… What is SEO?
SEO is clean code, SEO is using the correct code, SEO is key phrase research, SEO is targeting your online marketing demographics through specific pages on your site, SEO is usability for both users AND search engines, SEO is coding and designing your website how it should have always been in the first place.
SEO does not mean tricking search engines having you rank highly.
Search engines work by looking for the best sites to rank highly.
SEO means IMPROVING your site until it’s good enough to rank highly.
More from the ‘Real SEO:’ series to follow… here
Good as a general introduction. If you built inbound links it helps of course if they are somehow related to your sites topic, thus just having inbound links as such doesn´t really help you to drive the traffic and gain the ranking you are looking for.
VoiceHero
April 19th, 2008
I think you’re right for most of what you’re saying but the fact is that Google does treat a link to you as a vote.
“Having links will NOT get you positions” I don’t think I can agree with.
You could have a site with the greatest on-site SEO possible but if you have no links pointing at you then you’ll be nowhere.
But, I see SEO as having a site with lots of fresh, relevant and popular content with relevant links pointing from other relevant websites. You shouldn’t have to pay for the links - make your content good enough and the links will come.
Sadly, many SEO companies go for the lots of irrelevant links pointing at sites method, which I think is what you’re arguing against here and about which you’re spot on!
Gregor
April 25th, 2008
Nice post, am agreeing with Gregor, the worlds best optimised website would get absolutely no-where without an active linkbuilding campaign. Though
Google has started dumping sites with heavy irrelevant back linking but still counts back linking as an important factor in their algorithm.
Backlinking is basically a website marketing tool. It is having other sites that are in the same niche as yours, linked to your websites. These sites act as your advertisement agents giving you good exposure through their websites. The more the number of sites linking to your websites the better will be your ranking in the various search engines. A better rank assures you maximum exposure and in turn more traffic.
The best way to attract quality relevant inbound links is to write something that people will find useful.Write killer content that people want to link to, optimize the content and the page it is on to the best of your ability.
A good SEO website is a site with unique, quality content and with quality related links.
Temi
June 7th, 2008
Extremely good SEO vs. linkbuilding article. The lines get blurred around these topics and everybody is throwing out acronyms: SEO, SEM, backlinking etc. It’s still writing quality copy and getting good backlinks that works well, that an a good optimized website.
Judy
July 25th, 2008