Link building of the future
July 18, 2008 | Link Building, Uncategorized, page rank
In the previous posting we asked the question does traditional Link Building work? The answer is no. The question is then how do we Link Build not just for today but tomorrow?
First point to make is traditional link building is no longer that effective because it deals with the web of yesterday. In fact if we look at the why our link building experiment failed the main problem is that directories deal with creating quantity, quantity in combination with other factors works but quantity in itself is not something that provides us with success. The overwhelming problem with web directories is they actually provide a way of passing link juice or Page Rank on mass but as we saw in the experiment most of the pages on most of the directories are totally ineffective at actually getting spidered by Google, they basically fail at the first hurdle.
If we go back to some previous posts about Page Rank. Recently we’ve had Guy’s PR rant and a great quote I read from Google’s Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik on Page Rank and there’s also an older post Better Page Rank.
If we look at Adam’s great quote then he states Page Rank was relevant to the web of yesterday, he stops at there are more factors but stops short of saying Page Rank is irrelevant but if he didn’t work for Google that’s where his quote would have naturally taken him. In Guy’s rant he asked the question do Google really care? If you look at our web site the answer is no. The answer to why that is get’s back to the point that they know it’s no longer relevant. We know our Blog should be doing much better than a 0 and our site much better than a 1, our rankings in Google tell us that.
Page Rank is dead! The king is dead, long live the king! So who is the next king?
Adam says a few key things that give us and idea of what that is:
- Relevance / Quality is now important not quantity.
- In fact the goal of the query is relevance.
- Audience factors are also key.
You may have heard the term Trust Rank before. This sumises the fact that Google is instead looking for links it trusts. What does that mean? It means Google are basically looking at four factors:
The site - does Google trust the site? Again if we go back to our experiment and we call this the first Google hurdle then web directories are mostly failing at this first hurdle. You may have heard sites described as Authorative or Hubs, these are the two key factors in determining trust for a site. Authorative sites have lots of links, particularly of quality to them and Hubs are sites that have lots of links to other sites again particularly of quality. Going back to web directories how many would we say are authorative hubs?
Content is the second factor, what’s the relevance between the content of the two sites is the question Google ultimately asks on this point. It doesn’t matter in what context you see a link, you may be reading a great piece of copy on a great site but if the content suddenly turns and say oh btw I know this great site selling viagra, then every web user on the planet, including Google defines that as spam. If it’s not in context don’t put it there.
Then there’s the link itself, why is it there? Again what’s the relevance.
Lastly we have age factors, no one knows exactly what the exact factor of age and timing is in the Google algorithm. We know age like a fine red wine is good. We know if new links are suddenly disappearing that’s not good. We also know that if your getting a bunch of links at the same time from the same old site that’s not good, in fact if this in combination with other factors comes back negative, again Google consider that spam. It’s old web, one link is no longer one vote. A bunch of links from the same web site in today’s web is one vote if your lucky. Lets put it into “web 2.0″ context say there is a user on Technorati that is only liking to the same blog, no one else links to it and they don’t link to much else either, do you think Google considers that spam? Well not really because Technorati also consider that spam as well as all their users, think about this your not just hacking of Google, your hacking of Technorati and your probably most important of all hacking of the people in social networking sphere - that’s a whole lot of hacked off people! What would you assume in this sitatuin? Well if your me your a user voting for your blog, more than that your not commiting to the ideal of social networking and what you can’t do is take and not give. Given that situation do you think one user still equals one vote. Well actually in these situations Google is going to give you a negative note. That’s right Google will take away one natural vote you’ve rightfully earned. Harsh? Not really!
We’re almost forgetting what I think is the most important element of quality link building. That is if you don’t have quality content who is going to want to link to it in the first place? Quality content not only makes generating quality links a whole lot easier but actually there’s a point where that process becomes natural. Ulimately if you want to link build and you want to do it properly in todays web that means focusing on your content should be your first step.
Page Rank by a Manchester SEO - Hurry up!
July 4, 2008 | Link Building, SEO
Page Rank is really starting to get on my nerves! Does Google actually care about it anymore. It seems to be way out of date, and Google seem to be in no hurry to do anything about it.
As I’m writing this host, the king of Manchester’s seo scene, WMA’s Head of Search Tim will but ‘tutting’ away. He tells me page rank is not so important anymore, but I want that green bar on the Google tool bar to grow, and grow big time. You can imagine the conversation…”Tim, how long before we get a Pagerank of 7″…”Guy, go flying or something, I’m busy!”
So, what can we do about increasing our Pagerank? Who knows if it ever works, but if it did, here is what I would do!
1. Get a good link high up on the page from a website which has a high Pagerank its self. Pagerank is actually shared out between the links on a page, so the less links as the higher the link the better!
2. Make sure there are internal links within your site so Google can distribute the Pagerank of your site between the pages.
When it comes down to it, that about it. Incoming links, and good internal links – the rest is just waiting! This Manchester seo is not known for his patience!
Have a great weekend!
Link building harbours insanity!
June 4, 2008 | Link Building
Reading my emails last night, I saw a great piece from one of those internet guru types. You know the ones! As it happens I have met this one and his content is good.
His plan was to run a competition offering a prize to the person who generates the most incoming links to his website. He then listed three of his sites he wants to raise up the search engines. However, he has missed the point.
Simply linking to sites or receiving links into your site with rubbish link text such as ‘click here’ does not really help you. This link text or ‘anchor text’ needs to put the link into context with the information which will be on the page. This is when the real link juice magic starts to happen. The best way to do this is to tell people what you want the anchor text to be. Really, it should include the keyword you are trying to promote.
Try again Mr Internet Guru!
Authority Sites and Anchor Text
May 28, 2008 | Link Building, SEO
Within the SEO Company world, there are two key terms which will come up a lot – Authority sites and anchor text. So what are they and what do they mean?
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the word or phrase which appears as the link. The anchor text you will probably have the most appreciation of is ‘click here.’ If you look at it from a search engines eyes, what this is saying is if you follow this link, the information on the page will be about click here. Search engines don’t really understand the relevance of click here and come to think of it, neither do people!
The anchor text provides context for the link. So when you create your next link, use one of your keywords as the link/anchor text and make sure the keyword is repeated in the actual page where the link goes to. This is also classed as ‘topical link vectoring’ but its far to early to be talking about that. One final point is to know that as well as the anchor text, the search engines also take into account the words around the link, so make sure they are relevant to your anchor text and landing linked page as well.
Authority Sites
An authority site is a website which ranks well in the search engines, is updated regularly, has lots of inbound links, may have an active community or forum attached to it and may have a high Pagerank. Really, you need to be generating links to your site from these sites.
There is far more to linking that generating authority site links, but it is a good place to start. The key piece of advice is to make your linking strategy to look as natural as possible, as the search engines are getting clever. A large influx of links in a very short period of time can look very suspect.
Go forth and linkbuild!
