Monday, June 21, 2010 at 10:00 AM
A popular question on our Webmaster Help Forum is in regard to best practices for organic link building. There seems to be some confusion, especially among less experienced webmasters, on how to approach the topic. Different perspectives have been shared, and we would also like to explain our viewpoint on earning quality links.If your site is rather new and still unknown, a good way marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic. Interact and contribute on forums and blogs. Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it. If you offer long-lasting, unique and compelling content -- something that lets your expertise shine -- people will want to recommend it to others. Great content can serve this purpose as much as providing useful tools.
A promising way to create value for your target group and earn great links is to think of issues or problems your users might encounter. Visitors are likely to appreciate your site and link to it if you publish a short tutorial or a video providing a solution, or a practical tool. Survey or original research results can serve the same purpose, if they turn out to be useful for the target audience. Both methods grow your credibility in the community and increase visibility. This can help you gain lasting, merit-based links and loyal followers who generate direct traffic and "spread the word." Offering a number of solutions for different problems could evolve into a blog which can continuously affect the site's reputation in a positive way.
Humor can be another way to gain both great links and get people to talk about your site. With Google Buzz and other social media services constantly growing, entertaining content is being shared now more than ever. We've seen all kinds of amusing content, from ASCII art embedded in a site's source code to funny downtime messages used as a viral marketing technique to increase the visibility of a site. However, we do not recommend counting only on short-lived link-bait tactics. Their appeal wears off quickly and as powerful as marketing stunts can be, you shouldn't rely on them as a long-term strategy or as your only marketing effort.
It's important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site's reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they're likely to have no positive impact on your site's performance over time. If your site's visibility in the Google index is important to you it's best to avoid them.
Directory entries are often mentioned as another way to promote young sites in the Google index. There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes.
It can be a good idea to take a look at similar sites in other markets and identify the elements of those sites that might work well for yours, too. However, it's important not to just copy success stories but to adapt them, so that they provide unique value for your visitors.
Social bookmarks on YouTube enable users to share content easily
Finally, consider making linking to your site easier for less tech savvy users. Similar to the way we do it on YouTube, offering bookmarking services for social sites like Twitter or Facebook can help spread the word about the great content on your site and draw users' attention.
As usual, we'd like to hear your opinion. You're welcome to comment here in the blog, or join our Webmaster Help Forum community.
172 comments:
I don't presume the preceding comments from an SEO company will do much for their Google rank :-)
It is funny that at the bottom of an article about not using spammy techniques someone posts duplicate spam entries where half of the things named really have no significance.
Nice presentation. I'm one of million pople of the world that like seo. in my opinion SEO is mystery and the mystery is known only by google. thanks for google that share little secrets about seo in this article Quality links to your site
regards,
T.A
Nice article and it all makes sense basically good content and being nice win the day. As i am sure is also true in real life buying friends is never a good idea.
Kaspar - Very relevant artice. I lead the SEO strategy for a Fortune 200 company and I get cold calls on quick turn linkbuilding all of the time, it gets especially frustrating when someone above my pay level catches wind of "linkbuilding" and how this "great" new strategy can get you to the top of Google. It takes a lot of time educating my internal stakeholders that the key to generating quality links, that are going to have any effect, is great content and interaction with our consumers and KOLs online. I'm glad you wrote this post so I can reference it in my presentations... Straight from the source. Thanks!
living comment on other site that allowin do follow links, make a dummy blog..., submit to directory, link exchanges are useless?
and what is the real secret
do not buy links unless from google adwords and try and get people to go to http://www.twmg.com.au
Simple strategy for SEO is LINK LINK LINK and LINK.
I have few more ideas to generate more qualified links visit my blog for more information.
www.what-is-seo-sem.blogspot.com
Thanks,
Google. This is getting way out of hand.
Look at most of the high traffic blogs and you get companies posting irreverent, unrelated and garbage comments.
This is the reason why Facebook is gaining ground and may soon trump your usefulness because you can't manipulate who your friends are....
If you don't do anything soon, something revolutionary will come along and make you another Microsoft.
Don't get me wrong, I'll always love you, Google...
Nice post.
Tx for re-emphasizing on the good link building techniques.
Not a lot of topics discussed are new but they have been in the talk before and Matt Cutts always mentions them on his famous videos ;)
I've never been in favour of link exchange.
Great post. I certainly find that my clients who are thought leaders (e.g., book authors) in their fields get far more links to their websites than the others. Nothing trumps quality content.
Build links links links, and what does a small maybe one or two person company do that has to take care for a few other things too but posting on blogs and forums, on facebook and twitter or google buzz all day long? Not to mention writing articles, which takes it's time too if the article is supposed to be a quality article and not just one of the already 100 times spun articles and if you want prevent dupe content. Oh yes, that small company could hire a seo company I bet. There is just one small problem that in most cases is called money. Building backlinks would be even easier if Google wouldn't have started that whole page rank issue that makes every blog or website owner being scared the hell out of them of losing a little bit of their PR and so all links are tagged rather nofollow or outbound links are prevented as much as possible.
just my 2 cents dear Google and maybe worth to think about and remember the small businesses a bit too, they do not have the big money for advertising and paying for seo in their budget.
Well, is this really a good article. Are we just being fed what we already know?
Don't buy links, don't get reciprocal links, don't go for high PR sites as PR means nothing????
Give us some soulful tips. Tell us how to get link bait on your site. How to get natural links, what are the methods of doing this and give us sites that offer some good examples after all, linking out to good sites and articles is what the web is all about right :)
Reference the comment below that says, "Build links links links, and what does a small maybe one or two person company do that has to take care for a few other things too but posting on blogs and forums, on facebook and twitter or google buzz all day long? ... "
This is so true. I work with a number of small one-man band clients that simply cannot afford nor have the time to compete for links in their respective markets. Quality content alone will not get you to the top of Google especially in competitive areas where link buying is common-place.
What are we to do when the sites ranking #1 has the exact match top level domain and only three back links and one of those is a hefty page on a local site that is set up as a 301 redirect to their site.
We've spent two years trying to make our site appeal to crowds that want to link to it and can not beat out this site even though they only have three back links and in two years we worked very hard to get many more than three.
I agree with Tobing Andika's opinion. SEO is a mistery because the how-to is still well-kept by Google. Eventually, Google will open the secret one-by-one.
All this makes my head spin, SEO sucks !!!
There is no easy way, no short cuts -- but it's not brain surgery either! Build good content -- be a bit clever about including the sorts of things people like to link to. Build good relationships with other quality relevant site owners -- using social media networks or not. You gotta put in the work people if you want to see a long term return!
Good overview on this topic. Have been seeing a lot of posts on link building lately - time to get back to basics!
thanks for the info, this will help out the novice web masters who are looking for quality links
Great article for a novice. It said make it easier to share like YouTube does, so I thought of sending this to my SEO guy and as I looked to the Share button......
But everything makes perfect sense, one should be on Google's first page because (1) one is good at what they do, and their website content should reflect that, and (2) one should contribute to the internet community. I spend my time networking in person, and I build links with that, so the internet should be the same. It is a person on the other end of the computer.
What a great philosophy! This should be everyone's way of business, website marketing and life in general...
1. Make a lot of true friends
2. Build a stellar reputation
3. Don't cheat/ lie/ steal/ (or buy links)
*I think Sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer says it best, "Give value first, without measuring or expectation." This advice will take you a long way with internet marketing, sales and life!
People in different coutnries have different styles.
For example people in US like to share a lot of information through online but that is not the case for indians.
Indians would like to gather information from forums but they don't contribute or share information.
So the suggestion in this article won't work for indian websites.
I think google need to understand this and respect the different cultures. Google need to come out with a method which can be used for indian websites.
Hi,
I just want to be clear about the Niche Directories. As I have seen most of the niche directories are paid directories only. Neither they use rel="nofollow" attribute to the anchor tag nor Redirecting the links to a blocked intermediate page. If they do so I bet None is going to submit a website their.
Now my Question is:
Should I submit my site to a Directory which is Paid Only?
Regards
Amjad Khan
Excellent article I have to agree expeciay when you referred to becoming active in the area of intrest this can be very very usefull and extremely beneficial to your site and the consistency of your visitors. Http://tech4000.blogspot.com
wow, very informative instruction for all of us. thanks a lot!
blog comments do bring initiative traffic to our sites,as well as forum posts.
directoies submission, according to this article, is still worth doing it - but must be more targeted.
of course there could be more way to build links, but thanks google, for confirming the above for us.
hi,
I'm new in the SEO thing, and I find this very useful..Thanks for posting..
Getting good related links has always been my weak spot because I do not like to write so much.
I love to join some SEO forum to get quality links
Nice to get some verification from Google on what contributes to page rank.
I didn't learn anything new, but what I read here confirmed some of what I have read in other places.
interesting to here what google thinks.
All this stuff about avoiding spammy links amounts to nothing, since many spammy sites have PR4 or even higher, without any useful content.
Funny enough I've seen quite a few spammy comments on this blog post! But I do like that Google is again stating how link exchanges are not quality links and are most useless. I've been saying that for a while now myself why link exchanges are devalued
The other thing that can be taken from this is that blog post/comments and forums are actually good for link building. So for those of you that say there is nothing new here there's a tid-bit of something!
It means forum posting would going to be on high demand from now on.
Thanks for posting.
How we get good rankings with a quality link?
It's great to have some advice from Google that we can follow. Much of this has been rumoured in the past but it's always good to have it confirmed!
Agree, having good content on site is the key.
Other techniques generates results too, but if you don't have good original content that interests to your visitors, then no other technique will work.
Very nice presentation. Thank you. This should clear up the doubts of many webmasters.
An informative article pressing webmasters to let their websites earn true points @ web.
80% of the effort should be on-site. you must have good HUMAN content, and a good web site.
if you have 10 visitors you need to maximize the ROI from these 10 visitors, before you go after 1000 web visitors (PPC, link building etc).
Build a good web site, and good content.
Hi ,
Thanks for the great information. This can be only had from google as you keep getting these mails from all these link vendors promoting their systems in the garb of SEO.
By the way..the verification image is throwing an SSL error. :)
thanks
This article basically says: "not to be read or taken seriously by small companies (or anyone for that matter)".
The fact is that most of today's major online players are where they are because of spammy or borderline illegal practices.
Nothing anyone says about how great and friendly web 2.0 is will change that.
When you are looking for quality links some people are confused as to where to go to find them? There are many social sites that you can join and there are meet-up groups for just about everything where you can meet professionals who are working in similar areas. I use a new business directory that offers optimized mini-sites as your business ad. It is called Trova Business Directory and since there are many small businesses featured it has helped my business. But content is extremely important. We are committed to consistently providing important, interesting and relevant content on our blog for professional women and we are excited about how often our content gets reposted by others who like it and want to share it.
The way I phrase it is "have something useful to say, then say it". Kudos on your continued work sorting out the first part. Those Bing commercials accuse Google of returning unrelated babble - but I still find G does a pretty good job of finding relevance, especially considering the volume of useless repetition out there.
It's a nice post.
Shame of it is though - the short term may well pay off ... and as G doesn't actively slap down small amounts of cheating ... there's no real deterent.
Further - people don't have the time to invcest in the suggested actions in a lot of cases.
They are busy working and running their own business ... the idea of then having to spend an Hour+ each day or so isn't that viable.
(Nor is them running with half a dozen "meMeME!" profiles/sites etc.
Suggesting folk also join communities is also nice.
What you don't mention is the majority of them apply NoFollow,
so there is no Direct benefit from such actions.
The least you could have done was cover the concept of 1st generation links intending to get traffic, and that may result in 2nd generation links being more natural and benefiting (Indirect benefit).
I agree that Google needs to make more 'public' examples of sites that engage in these activities. Lots of fake ecommerce sites are spamming the way to the top of Google and succeeding in manipulating the algorithm. When that site is banned they just do another domain. Over 70% of the results for many designer terms are web spam results. Just look at these results
http://www.google.com/search?q=herve+leger&hl=en&prmd=s&ei=fXoiTOyNK-SKnwf6_YXNCw&start=10&sa=N
The other funny thing is that they all use one or two Google Analytics accounts. Maybe Google should use a Google Analytics ID as a trust signal?
This is such BS in so many ways.
First, try any competitive term like "gps tracking" and then run a link analysis on the top 2 pages of results. Filled with marketing gibberish sites that buy links and spam social media sites for quantity over quality. There is no way realistically compete and have any chance to rank well on this page using these tactics. None.
Second, 99.5% of all community (social media) sites are no follow. YOU are the one that implemented that and have made it clear how it impacts rankings. So why now are you suggesting these no follow links will provide value?
I could go on.. but you get the point.
Nice article. Thank you for sharing this information. It is great article for new webmasters. :)
I believe if you are an SEO for a client, you can still built links as stipulated in this article.
The important thing is not to do it in a flooding way, but natural growing way and this is done if u put yourself in the client's shoes.
I was waiting for any word on link building from Google..and I got it.. Alleast I can trust google and can work accordingly.
I am a young Web-master looking for way to uplift my skill.
here is my first website will need suggestion from experienced web-masters
www.greenitweb.co.za
Very good punch on seo spam service provider.Really eye opener for the organization who understand that mass submission is the key to success in attaining top ranking.
Useful and informative article but I agree with the poster who said there is a risk that Google becomes another Microsoft due to sites like Facebook..
This is such a loaded topic. Many pure SEOs (I'm not an SEO, I consisde myself an Internet Marketer) lead dual lives fearing google will discover their secret linking sites.
But damnit, it works for them! It may only be for a short-time but gaming the search engine works...all the while mucking up the web with meaningless content.
FINALLY Google is speaking up!
Really, there is no golden nuggets in here and nothing really new if you're listening to true white hat marketers.
What I don't understand is Google is always really promoting 'quality marketing', I mean offering value content to users, answering problems, providing humour.
So why do they still suggest we have a link building campaign? Isn't this just working backwards? Kinda of confusing.
Kinda like their philosophy, offer a great search engine, people will come then we can figure out how to make money.
Having a link campaign is like having the monetization strategy before building a good search engine that attracts organic traffic.
Glad to see Google is opening up a little, but they still have their technical hat on.
What about providing nice or fun applications or services to your visitors ?
You mean links from my american idol fan blog to my business lawyer website aren't good?
I completely agree with the author of this article, but the SEO loopholes are there and being exploited constantly. In competitive markets, it's virtually impossible to 'play nice' and make a dent on the first page of Google. It goes to show that if SEO is your only strategy, you're going to have to play dirty and end up p$$ing off Google, or spend tons of money to do it right. Either way, it's a tough road. Great content is the key, but that's easier said than done.
I really enjoyed this article. I have found it difficult to organically gain quality links. I must assume community interaction would help immensely!
At the end of the day, focusing on strong content in combination with some creative marketing techniques can yield positive results.
For example, our bakery developed a facebook application which allows users to send our cakes to their facebook friends. Each time a user users our application is also includes a link back to that particular cake on our site.
While not all facebook links count as link equity in google's eyes because of facebook privacy settings, this approach at least helps drive more traffic from facebook.
quality links make your web ranking very good its make a repute in searchengine indexing.
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No matter what. Google is in the business of providing it's customers with useful, quality, relevant, usuable, meaningful, knowledge worthy, reuseable, educational content so they can continue to bring quality to the Internet. That's why Wikipedia almost always comes to the top in a search query. Learn how to do that and I bet all of you will succeed. Peace...
The article is a lot of sentences but not much usefull info. When you publish a site and no one knows about the site then you need SERPs. But you wont get SERPs because that requires pagerank and pagerank requires inbound links. You won't get inbound links because you don't have SERPS and no one knows about you.
Its a chicken and egg problem - which came first?
So the article spills the beans and suggest posting in a forum or doing a blog. In some fields (at least mine) high competion prevents you from posting in a forum to drive trafic to your own site. So you do a blog - but what if a blog is not a form of communication fit for the field you main site is about or what if you are an expert in the field and expert at building that service you site offers but suck at doing pr through a blog? Is adwords the answer? I don't have money for that so I'll keep searching for an answer till a get a user on my site :)
@Doolally
I totally agree with you - great content won't get you SERPs. Twitting, facebooking, blogging, commenting will eventually get you there but in a small company finding time to do that every day for months is going to be problematic.
When these techniques are the primary way for other to discover you site (as now acknowledged by google) it also poses the problem for the web and google itself. A lot of blogs, comments etc will be very low quality seo driven. This google blog illustrates the problem - it carries a high ratio of seo driven comments that are just noise..
I think it is a good post, because a lot of new webmasters asking about it in the webmasters forum.Some particulars, ways how to promote my website and how not.Of course details are important, but each webmaster must learn himself at least several years.It is an experience.
Not sure what to make of the article. It is well written, some of it might be useful to first time Webmasters, otherwise...
Ive read other articles where google employees emphasize the importance of "quality" when it comes to content, but anyone that uses google on a regular basis knows a big percentage of google's search results shows poorly written, uninformative and/or otherwise useless or dated information. The only way google would be able to make this claim is if they personally reviewed every site that was submitted to their search engine, like dmoz. I do battle on a daily basis with Web sites that maintain top search engine position with Web sites that have no more than 20 lines of html code on their index page. And most of that code is completely useless. It's frustrating.
Things that I have found help search engine rankings: linking to and from local directories like citysearch, hotfrog, craigslist, backpage, etc. It also doesnt hurt to buy a few domains and set up links between them. Write a couple of 200 word articles, submit them in reputable directories is a good idea. Used to be imperative to have your site listed at dmoz. IMO, the biggest factor that influences where your site shows up in search results is TIME. Unless you want to jam your index page with a bunch of garbage links, you just have to wait. Usually up to a year, sometimes longer.
It is hard to have quality links. But the battle is challenging. Good luck everyone for getting quality links. :)
Bing sure has kept you on the toes eh? We wouldn't have this kinda post a year back, but now that Bing is being very open, Google has no choice.
Good Content with the proper search engine optimization helps for Google Ranking :-)
I am working at Villas Agent company in Bali. As any other stores, Villas can be put as products.. and it is very hard to write unique content on it.
So agents just copy and paste villas description and create duplicate content and Google declined it on their index...
So how to solve this problem, Uncle Google ? I dont believe that Matt can write unique content for each villas.. hehehe (kidding)
I wonder why aren't Google taking any action for selling links against the big sites? This authority news site for example
http://www.bharian.com.my/bharian/articles/400wargakotapelbagaikaumgotong-royongangkatrumah/Article
is selling tons of links at their pages and Google is doing nothing at all. I think its unfair while small bloggers are penalized immediately when we make such mistakes!
Great article. It always comes down to three words, Content, Content Content.
good point google.This seemed to get me really close to what to attain.
http://mobilenumberspk.blogspot.com
its a nice nice presentation given by google as I am into promoting my company's website, it has given me a good knowledge how to start with the best and how to get the best results..
think it only appropriate that someone explain the difference between a follow and no-follow tage...
But in reality, many people (even companies) still use a lot of tricks ( like spam) to gain traffic for their site as a common thought for site start-up. I think the problem is from the short-term thinking. Anyway, what an inspiring articles from king of search engine ^_^
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This is what they say, but when I analyze top ranking sites, I see that link spamming seems to work anyhow.
Yeah! It is really true that SEO needs a lot of patients and you should go with the rhythm. Going against the flow? It will make you down!
This is helpful information - something that I have read time and time again. It helps to solidify some of the things I have read before regarding SEO when google writes about strategies. I think the 'big picture' is that businesses should build their site to suit the customer's needs. I find it hard to contribute to forums with any significantly helpful informtion though and I'm not sure where to post or even what to post (finding topics involving my business are difficult as well). So I'm still trying to figure out how I manuver around this issue.
very useful information for new blogger. Thanx
It is really informative post. But i would like to address the issues i have been experiencing in webmasters specifically related to "Links to your site". I have been following a question on webmaster help forum and a blog post regarding un predicted behavior of webmaster tools for links to your site.
Can you please guide us, what actually is happening.
hi thank you for the information. Can any one suggest me how to get links to my website http://www.TheMetalmachine.com/index.html
And when will google assign rank to my page.
That for the information on google buzz. I am going to have to check it out
Whatever you read over other sites does not influence as much as from an official site like this blog from Google. I have read countless articles containing the same info but this single post explaining quality links building virtually authenticate it.
In my own experience (After great content) "Interaction with same niche blogs via comments" is the best and fast strategy to build quality links and a social sphere.
Thanks, this will help tremendously.
I was a little confused about the article mentioning having social networking sites linking. Are they insinuating that if I have a blog post, for example, on my site, I should have those "add this" buttons on there so people can easily put a link to my article on their facebook page or delicious or one of those?
I opened an acupuncture clinic 1 year ago and have spent hours and hours and hours of my time submitting to directories and writing articles in an attempt to drive traffic to my clinic web site. This has worked to some degree and I hold the number 1 ranking in my geographical location for acupuncture which is nice but I would love to figure out how to get people linking to my site naturally....
Hey Kasper,
Love the post. Makes me feel better about some of the links my site shows in Webmaster tools. However, I'd like to quote your second paragraph for a webdev client of mine and was hoping you could adjust your grammar a bit to make the first sentence in the second paragraph read more clearly.
Basically, should it be?: "If your site is rather new and still unknown, a good marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic." Remove the word "way."
Sorry for being so picky. Anyway, keep up the good work.
Peace,
Phil
Surely a good content becomes the king. generally it is a good advice for publishers.
Very helpful. It's the strategy we've been trying to lead around master data management and technical translation, so glad to hear it.
So many aspects to SEO, by the time you learn something, there are new changes.
Ivan Cavric
ok, we are supposed to get good ole honest links to our sites because everyone loves us and get to the top?
I own a small local carpet cleaning company. The top site in the local searches have hundreds upon hundreds of pr7 and pr8 backlinks which are not natural at all. Many of these sites are national chains which have links from other sites they have in other cities and blogs they have created with links to all their different site.
How can we honestly compete with this? It needs to be one way or the other, they need to either end the self promoting link building or let everyone do it.
Always good to hear it from the top.
So now you tell us about the dangers of recipricol linking! There is just too much to keep up with these days - I agree its all getting out of hand, why cant things just be simple...where's the yellow pages lol!
Thanks for the post.
Google is looking for credibility as the bottom-line, if I "read" this correctly.
I am thinking about adding value to people, and so they would link to the website. Approach I am thinking is to have content that would help people, companies in the industry of interest, and they will come to the website, and link to it.
One Q - how much does volume of traffic matter when it comes to SEO? Or, does it?
In my opinion SEO is mystery and the mystery is known only by google.It can provide many help ful links and quality link provide
I like the Google presentation and am going to try to design and implement some of these techniques.
I have to agree 100%... I don't like the idea of buying links... it is sometimes tempting, but I don't like the idea at all.
I believe everyone should work hard to get their pagerank up... like I'm doing now ;)
Thanks for the info about link building. Google webmaster is the starting point for any new website to know their site analysis.
It means we must try to get more extendlinks, or get a nav.
Is this webmaster spamming? www.bettercredit.co.uk. The site has lots of links from domains which appear to have been bought to link and pass page rank back to the original site. Linked domains (from yahoo backlink checker):
http://www.doyen-recordings.co.uk/
http://www.itheatrestudies.co.uk/
http://www.plymneuro.org.uk/
http://www.shonaanddamien.co.uk/
http://www.newharpinn.co.uk/
http://www.bowelcontrol.org.uk/
http://www.bountybayonline.co.uk/
http://www.tynesalmontrail.co.uk/
http://www.pgtg.co.uk/
http://www.aberdeengeolsoc.co.uk/
http://www.nplife.co.uk/
http://www.rawasupporters.co.uk/
http://www.prestonworkers.org.uk/
http://www.synergies.org.uk/
http://www.majorstations.co.uk/
http://www.sing2008.co.uk/
http://www.sgsa.org.uk/
http://www.searah.co.uk/
http://www.14mortgages.co.uk/
http://www.bloggingforbedford.co.uk/
http://www.robert-ludlam-theatre.org.uk/
http://www.xmlwebservices.co.uk/
Nice article , especially for some one like me who r new in blogging. Thank you
SEO is not a mystery, it just takes a long time to get it right, then when you understand it, it changes, but that's OK, it keeps me happily employed and makes it fun and challenging. who likes a job where you do the same boring thing everday anyway? Google is awesome at sharing tips and insights for SEO but reading some books don't hurt either!
Seem's like I have a lot of work to do here...
well this was very helpful and the comments from other users is interesting to note also ...i want to be noticed and gain customers... i suppose i will have to devise a strategy to be clever and responsive so people will notice my www.idesignkitchens.net site ....but sometimes it seams i spend more time on line than on the work ...i guess a web master would be in order ...thanks for the info google great as always
Remarkable content. Everyone knows creating remarkable content is the best way to get links. But Google is still perpetuating a scenario in which the rich get richer and poor stay poor. Because even if you write remarkable content, if you do not have the traffic first, you cannot get people to discover your remarkable content in the first place. So the sites that rank in the top ten get all the traffic, and they thus also get all the new links for content they have, because theirs is the only content that gets discovered. So the very thing that Google is about - remarkable content - is being hidden from our eyes because existing sites can coast on their top rankings and get all the new links anyway.
All of this advice is good but unless Google starts taking extreme actiosn to anyone who sells text links and yes that includes paid directories then the "bad guys" will win in most cases.
So what is Google is going to change on the way it penalizes sites that sell links?
What about Google doing mystery shopping? It can hire other sites to do mystery shopping on each behalf... just an idea...
You can have a great blog with a brilliant content ( what is absolutely important) and still have no traffic. The content marketing is the key - creating and giving away original media content, ebooks, information.
I have read a post at http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/i-listened-to-google-and-failed/ and stated that what Google says here did not work. What do you think?
One does not need to contribute useful information to a forum.
One just needs to be polite and interact.
Ask Questions.
Leave comments.
A link in ones signature is all that is needed.
I had good ranking till I changed my domain name now it really sucks!
Up and down!
How I'll ever become the next web millionair is beyond me.
I cant even get my whole site indexed so my own site search works!
Hey if any of you find this link interesting please link to it!
http://socalrecordexchange.com/bajas_playtape_page/index.html
And if you can tell me what is wrong with it feel free to send a note.
Mike
I disagree with many of the comments here. Google just explained in plain English what is the best way to get links but there is a specific tactics you can follow to get the best of it. I love Google, Google helps people. The only problem is that people to lazy to read and study what Google give for free. Majority of people prefer to go and spend money at Gurus. But the Gurus get all the info from Google's first hands. They have time for it. Want to know more? I don't charge for it, I just help people.
Thanks for the info WebMasters. Yes I highly agree with prioritizing valuable contents first than link building. Also, using social sites to help spread the word about my articles.
i have tried adding a back link on my site specialfact getting quality content and links makes a site special
My friend owns a printers and by combining a useful blog, informative and humorous twitter account and links to the website they managed to move up on to the front page and become number one in the Google searches. See it in action Indigo Litho:
http://www.indigo-litho.co.uk/
So it can work!
Can't say I buy into this article. I have been concentrating on getting a higher ranking on a keyword phrase which is not very popular. The site which ranks number 1 for that phrase has very little backlinks while I have in time built many. It seems to me that Google maps determines more than backlinks as this other site is closer mileage wise. That site shows on Google maps and number 1 on search position both for that key phrase. Should it get a ranking simply because its closer?
http://houndcomputers.com
thx for the article,,
its makes me to see from the other side of links building
Linking is such a mystery and hard work, we do have to resist the link building software for auto linking though. Oh well, get working and stop commenting
Good point about massive submission services which are pointless and useless.
Completely agree with all the above except regarding twitter which rarely brings visits to our websites so far.
I'm sorry but it is much harder to get relevant links for a small business that has a very narrow focus. Easy to say to go join forums etc, but most forum now days don't even let you link as they consider it advertising or spam even when you are within topic. Much easier said than done. At the end of the day, you must fork out cash to get this links.
You say to submit to quality reviewed places, yet you don't routinely update from them like from DMOZ which hasn't been updated into the Google Sites in around 6 months. That's fairly hypocritical.
create a blog, creat a website, get quality links to your website, make a funny blog, do viral marketing, link to social media, all of this to get a good page rank...hard work always pays off...but to be held hostage is another thing altogether...when someone else is in control they call the shots it's as simple as that...and being new to all of this thats what it seems to me...a big chief that controls the indians...who reviews google? and how did this sort of power happen? thanks for the article but i think i've heard the same advice from every so called expert on the internet...so i guess i'll do the blog...i'll do the humor..i'll do the social media...i'll do the.....and on and on and on
I agree with everything however we have a lot of sites in 1st place in google research - So the problem is that you need a lot of time and knolodge to get your site listed in the top 5. PAVIQUAL consultores
I don't understand. I posted a valuable comment with helpful information, and you didn't approve it. Sure, I had a link in the post, but you nofollow links first of all, and second of all, you have approved other comments that had links, and some didn't even contribute anything to the conversion. Then you also approved some comments that are completely nothing more then spam. What's up with the moderation of this site? You write a post about encouraging commenting on blogs, and then you approve spam posts and reject helpful comments.
Really a very helpful information for link building, Thanks to Google webmaster team.
I don't feel like quality content means much. You go to reddit, and unless you are part of the mob, quality content means nothing there either. They say, write a catchy title. My titles are far better than bozo who has friends. It is useless. Then Reddit and Digg are used by Google to rate webpages. Sure, what gets rated is what people read in the controlled press. Google gives alternative news, the most important news, really low PR.
I have seen exceptions to the content issue, as Shalampax is brilliantly funny. But funny won't make you a living most likely.
We just need more advice.
Thanks for posting this:
I learn the do's and don't
1. Build your links through blog and forum.
2. Don't Spam
3. Don't Buy Links
4. Keep your website be posted in Social Bookmarking like twitter, facebook and many other that has a good value.
Ah Google will stay on top of it, we're all asking for something to be done in the algo to stop the spammers, etc... and gradually it will... gradually it has been happening for ages. Adaptions happen by Google and by spammers, but considering the people making the algo's are probably a huge team of PhD's and geniuses, my money is on them... it just takes time.
I come across a lot of requests for linkbuilding only to find out the website is not optimized in a technical sense (and sometimes is not even providing good content. In those cases it does not pay to do linkbuilding, it is a waste of time and efford.
Good article Kaspar! It's important to set some guidelines for new (and old!) webmasters
There has been some controversy regarding duplicate content; on the one hand, people try to promote unique and discourage duplicate content, on the other hand everywhere you look there are sharing options, where someone can post just about anybody's article, video, pictures and even audio on their own blog. I'm confused as to whether it is good or not to republish some of this material. Worse, nobody seems to have a straightforward answer.
Great post. However! Can we put this into perspective one more time so people finally get it.
It's OK to exchange links! As long as they are not excessive and they are on topic and relevant. Exchanging links can also bring targeted traffic!
It's ok to buy text ads as long as they don't pass page rank meaning, they use the no follow tag.
Sheesh lol. I wish people would get this already.
very general post nothing is new.
its easy to get allot of links from variety sources... the problem you need to work hard to make them.
There is a comment tab in blogger, so do we have to hide backlinks?
Is google buzz link works as backlink for a site????? Pls pls reply this......
thanks for the tips.
Can you please tell me is paul and angels links is blocked by google?
Paul and Angela links is banned as far as I know, a North East England company were advertising them as a way to increase rankings but they are banned!
It's interesting that forum posting is o.k. according to the post. Rather, natural contribution to forums, that is. 22% of the experts say that forum link building is a "negative seo factor" in the once every 2 years SEOMoz SEO factors survey.
I guess natural posting with signatures is o.k. to google vs. joining every forum possible and posting random thoughts and creating signatures after the minimum posting requirements are met. I wonder how google determines that you've made natural/high quality contributions to the forums though vs. people who spam them. I know I've spent dozens of hours to write meaningful replies vs. spam. I wonder if google will be able to recognize that though...
I see a lot of responses that give kudos to this post. "Great post", "Good article" etc. Is it? I've been involved with SEO for quite some time by now. Let me tell you. There is no way to compete with amazon, eBay, ask dot com etc. by simply generating ”good quality" content. I mean of course you can try, but I just want to see where this is going to take you. How can you compete with giants that are 10 – 20 years ahead of you following these guidelines? Well the answer is, you can’t. What’s next? Well you start doing “white hat” SEO, publishing spaned, humanly readable articles, that do have some value in it, to many article directories and blogs. Once you realize that this is not going to take you very far, you start using SEO tools. Ok you may increase your standings for some of the keywords, but this is not where you want to be and you still pretty far from your competitors, in terms of organic search position. What’s next? We’ll you guessed it. “Black hat” SEO tactics. Yes this will get you somewhere if you won’t get delisted. Have you noticed, if you search for a keyword of a phrase on Google, the chances are that you get a page full of affiliates and resellers and not what you were looking for? So unless you are in business of selling sombreros to Eskimo, and trying to create content for “eskimo sombrero” keyword, good luck following guidelines from this post!
This is so true, yet SO many people do not know it. Sometimes it is SO hard to get this through to people. You can have a million people coming to your site every day, but if you do not have relevant content, then it doesn't matter!
Developing a direct response marketing approach, paired with a rapport building concept, you have a great result.
Just getting traffic, or links to your site, does not work. Just like the traffic, you can have a million links to your site, but if they are not relevant to your site, then they are useless.
It is so nice to see that there are others who actually know what they are talking about!!
:) Great Article. I hope tons see it AND believe it! Believe it or not- but those who choose to ignore this, will be left behind online ;)
no doubt, success is not a short term course, it really needs a lot of work and patience to actually get what you were always dreaming about.
link building is so vast to explain in a few words but again its simply a process of leaving your links on different respectable pages in a positive way not through spamming because that's again gonna be a short link process and the results will vary as the time passes by
I am new in this business, but there is something I would like to share:
Is it possible for Google to have, in my opinion, more direct support to webmasters by providing kind of The Official G SEO Document with a strict SEO rules. In this way specially new webmasters can make difference between G rules and general advices on how to become more relevant in your field.
I apologize if there is such doc already :)
Co-incidentally, linking is what I am trying to get to grips with at the moment!
I am keen to use the right linking techniques but there is so much info on the net, much of it conflicting, its sometimes difficult to know what is white hat!
This article has helped me a lot. Thanks Google webmasters, its great to hear this from the "horses mouth"! ;-)
Wow.....how can you not be impressed with Google. I'm a newbie (3-1/2 month old website) and have been through many ups and downs but when I read the "helps" that Google has laid out for us to take advantage of, I'm in awe of their business model. Their sincerity to help and provide a level playing field for the ethical webmasters while, at the same time ferret out the unethical operations is rare these days. I can only wonder how much better off this country would be if the INGs, Tykos, Enrons, etc. etc. etc. had management with the integrety and intelligence of Google's.
Getting a site in the top 5 for your term is easy following those rules.
Keeping it there above competition and staying no#1 involves at least a years work building links and tweaking your wording.
Dont pay anyone to do this for you, they will not have the determination and ideas to nurture your site to the top.
Thanks for the post. I really like how you say real link building is a long-term practice. One of the hardest things about SEO is being patient. We all want to see results immediately, but it just takes time.
How do you make a website that retains traffic on its own.
Although the principles of good quality content are not going to change much over time, this article is now over a year old and would be useful if it were refreshed. Google now has the +1 button, and social sites and sharing buttons and bookmarks continue their prominence. Some blog networks have increased their page rank in google's eyes, and conversely article directories seem to be slightly less favored in some instances. A lot happens in a year!
Why are the # links to your site different in google web masters tools console than when you http://www.google.com/search?q=link:www.vabulous.com ?
very nice article ,good content is the main thing for more back links and bloging.
I recently started a new project on the web and really lack content since this is my first go around. As ideas come to mind I check if Im in compliance of Google. Thanks for the article it gives me that much further information in growing and marketing my network.
I have a quality SEO provider assisting with my site, but we're struggling for google backlinks. Does anyone know how long it takes for google to recognize your back links created naturally? Our site is www.hubplan.com.au and we're keen to learn how to do this right.
Thanks
I am new to this and I am pretty confused. Panda. buying links vs not buying them when everyone is buying them......puzzled
Really nice stuff. I like SEO alot.. And i m thankful to google for this.With this SEO everybody is continuously marketing there product,So its easy for the user to find them..I m new at SEO. i dont know much about SEO, but i m eager to now more. so, Thx google for sharing this with us..
When i was a kid everyone told me that everything is available on google, then i replied "Is God is available on Google ????"..:-)
It was a mystery for me that what is this google and how is it possible that we found everything on just single click......
And know when i studied about google search engine, web crawler etc..then i came to know the logic behind this..
But still google is mystery for me...
I would like, if you all help me to solve the mystery about google and SEO.. I m new at SEO..
Thx to google..
Does this really work?
Yes, on forums when you try not to be spammy, my mind is constantly asking me whether I am or not. After responding to forum questions for a few hours, it's hard not to say, "Buy Venice for Rookies"! ;)I am now working on the directory submission which is a lot safer if you hit the right ones. Thanks for the SEO tips!
Nice presentaion.I new at SEO,I thankful to google for this.With this SEO everybody is continuously marketing there product,So its easy for the user to find them. Thanks to google for sharing this with us.
I have been working with SEO for about 4 years, I have read similar posts on many forums, I am glad Google posted this but I find that trying to find relevant link partners which could be your competitors, or now many blogs automatically set the no follow option on the website, that getting quality links is even harder today than 4 years ago, and then it can take 3 to 6 months to see if the effort is working.
We work for many small business and they as said earlier they just don't have the resources to hire expensive SEO firms, the depend on us to do their SEO, and its an ever changing topic
thanks, very nice article
After all a great post ever, but I am confused about SEO definition. Is seo only mean link-building ? So, why all SEO guy will be under estimated. Some other can build spammy link, So, it should not curse all seo guys for doing spamming. Thanks giving us an well direction to the way of optimizing a site, not building spammy link. I think SEO is the way of quality optimization for better relevancy, not doing overnight link building for getting #1.
Thanks for the post. I am always looking for legitimate ways of building links.
Too late to reply this post, as I've been just referred this by a blog. Anyway, it's almost an end of 2011, and we already have seen after too much update of panda that what works and what's not. When it comes to SEO, most people are talking about directories first, that is clear for me that it worth to submit to lots of directories rather we need to focus on topical based directories that have good value in terms of content, structure etc.
This is a great article,thanks for sharing
very effective information.Thanks a lot.
That was good, with the possible exception of the Google Buzz reference, which is effectively dead? Sorry no disrespect.
Sounds great in theory. From my own personal experience I run a small business specialising in website design. We've worked very hard on our site for quite a while, totally restructured it, adding to the site with a new 60% worth of built in forums, our own social network & tutorials, leaving only 30-40% of the site dedicated to advertising our own business in an effort to generate much more fresh, relevant user based content and traffic.
Despite rising the rankings slowly we still cant get close to the top 3 spots for our chosen keywords. What makes a mockery of things is that I personally know the guy that runs a business that consistently ranks #2. He too offers website design and SEO services but his business cannot even code a website themselves - its all subbed out. They still use dubious link building practices on a large scale, cant code a website yet still rank #2 for "..... website design". Content has never changed on their index page, nothing is updated on their site but their seo skills keep their site ahead of genuine website design companies. Panda & Penguin are meant to address this but still some way to go.
This is helpful. We recently received notification of unnatural links to our site. However, we have no way of finding them and eliminating them. We have ended our contract with an 'seo' firm as a result. Hopefully our rankings will bounce back.
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