Today, I'm going to try
something different. I'm going to go out on a limb here
and make a blind assumption about you.
"You think that the Q-square formula (quality + quantity)
of getting inbound links (reciprocal or one-way) is
the best way to increase your search engine rankings."
Just about right, eh? And unless you are a complete
newbie to search engine optimization, this is exactly
what SEO experts have been telling you time and time
and time again. And if there was any doubt that search
engines were being spammed, paid links put rest to those
fears. The SEO experts make money, you get a boost in
your rankings, everyone's happy.
Or so they'd have you think.
Over the past year or so, search engines have started
to take serious measures to combat spam against them.
Search engine spamming usually occurs in one of three
ways:
- Multiple submissions of
your web pages (you d be surprised to learn that people
still do this).
- Keyword spamming in low
quality content.
- Link spamming (building
tons of links to a new site REALLY quickly).
On the other hand, you've
probably heard about the need for quality content ever
since you started learning about search engine optimization
(hopefully). Either way, here's a refresher:
Search engines are looking for unique and useful content,
information that is accurate and important to the people
interested in that field. Search engines also look for
fresh content, regular additions to your website, etc
(this is why blogging became / is such a huge craze).
So let s put that all together:
Search engines are working towards fighting SEO spam
bad, keyword stuffed content and link spamming by:
Devaluing the "ranking boost" that these elements give.
Penalizing the websites that are obviously spamming
search engines.
The end result?
Traditional link building is no longer your best bet
to get high search engine rankings.
That s not to say that you should dump your link campaigns
all at once and scamper for the hills, links will continue
to have value within search engines and until the search
engine algorithms develop well enough to distinguish
between "organic" linking and links generated through
a link-building campaign (not easy to do at all, even
with Google's or Microsoft's resources), getting inbound
links will stay the easiest way to bump up your search
engine rankings by several pages.
However, for SEO purposes, that brings us back to square
one. We like things to be easy, but we also want things
to work well. If link-building is a good tactic, but
not the best tactic (especially when everyone and their
mother is getting a few hundred links every month to
their 30-page AdSense websites), then where does it
leave the rest of us?
The answer lies with what the search engines have been
saying all along quality content, wrapped
around quality, organic links.
Let me explain that.
Search engines have taken two specific measures to improve
their results and reduce commercialized spam from their
search engines:
Link pages are being "identified" as such and therefore
are being considered as low-quality links (you'll remember
from Link Building 101 that the quality of the link
is a big factor in how much it improves your website
s rankings). Some of the identifying criteria for a
link page are: the number of links on that page, the
ratio of text to links on that page, and relevance of
the link, which I explain in the next point.
Search engine algorithms
are now looking at the context that the links are placed
in (i.e. surrounding text as well as the page's keywords)
to measure the relevance of the host site to YOUR website,
in other words, checking the text of the page your inbound
link is placed on to find out whether that site is relevant
to your industry / niche.
This leads us to the following conclusions:
The linking page must have as few links as possible.
The links should be focused on as few sites as possible
(to funnel the value of the link page).
The links should be surrounded
by "relevant" content.
The linking page should contain "quality" content (written
for human reading rather than written for search engines
there's a sharp difference between keyword optimization
and keyword stuffing).
Now you must be wondering....
is there a point to all this? And I respect that,
because this is exactly what internet marketing and
SEO gurus have been saying these same things for a long
time now. Just like I often ask myself:
So WHAT?
So...
What if I told you that you could use a blindingly simple
marketing tactic that will not only bring you relevant,
powerful and valuable inbound links, but that it will
ALSO bring you regular visitors?
How many SEO techniques can promise visitors from other
websites?
Now I m not trying to sell you a product here, so I'll
cut to the chase.
Take a single page. Take ONE core keyword describing
your industry / main business, and a few more keywords
for a couple of main category pages. Write 350-550 words
of unique, quality content that gives the reader useful
information. Each paragraph should be tightly focused
around one keyword, and should contain one link (not
more) to a related page (for your main keyword, link
to your website, for your category keywords link to
your category pages). Use keywords (but not sentences)
as anchor text.
Once you've completed this page, contact link partners
in YOUR niche, not direct competitors obviously, but
complimentary businesses (if you sell information books
on candle-making, your ideal link partners would be
informational websites on candle-making), and make them
this pitch:
"Are you looking for a quick and easy way to boost your
search engine rankings? Search engines demand relevance,
they demand quality, they demand freshness. I'd like
to offer you the chance to do a valuable exchange
I'll provide you with an optimized article on a subject
relevant to your business, and in return all I ask is
that you allow me to place some links to my website
on the page. In fact, you can even plug in your own
links affiliate, to your own website or
any other website."
Of course, you'll probably have to write a more sophisticated
approach letter than those 6 lines, but the intent is
clear: write quality content, and then place it on websites
relevant to your industry. Usually, the website hosting
the page will want some monthly payment in return (after
all, you're effectively buying a page on their website).
If you've followed my advice and picked well-ranked
websites with quality content, the money will be worth
it. In addition, you'll probably be paying less than
an out-and-out link purchase as you're also giving them
something in return (quality content to boost their
search engine rankings).
Got all that? Congratulations. You've just learned about
what I like to call a Hosted Marketing Page. Don't be
fooled by its simplicity. What I've explained in 4 paragraphs
(318 words) will probably be the subject of endless
marketing campaigns and short $49 reports over the next
year.
Now some of you might be saying: I know, isn't
this just another version of marketing your website
through articles (where you write articles, submit them
to article directories and have webmasters pick them
up to post on their websites)? What's so great about
this? We KNOW this.
The question isn't that you know this, the question
is: are you doing this? Article submissions are shots
in the dark, article farms do give a better boost in
search engine rankings than simple links, but most article
directories are too general to help you rank well on
the relevance factor. If your article gets picked up
by a few webmasters, the extra links will be dampened
by the fact that now the content is "duplicated"
thus reducing its value.
Search engines are wising up to article submissions
just as they started combating link spam an year and
a half ago at any rate, article submissions
are marketing tools / branding tools, not pure SEO tools.
Experiment with a Hosted Marketing Page of your own.
If you don't have the time to contact link partners
directly, talk to your link-building expert (or company)
and explain what you are looking for (heck, you can
forward this article to them).
The beauty of Hosted Marketing Pages is that they compliment
your regular SEO strategy. Link building, if done right,
is still a quick and cheap way of getting higher search
engine rankings. However, if you are looking to make
a HUGE splash instead of just poking around, then I
urge you to seriously consider the power of Hosted Marketing
Pages.
If you would like help with your "Hosted Marketing Page"
campaign, visit Textlinkbrokers.com. They are the leader
in link popularity building programs and are the only
company offering this particular service.
About the author: Brad Callen - SEO Specialist and Internet
Marketing Consultant for http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/
http://www.seoelite.com/ |
