Linkbuilding is a Dirty word – Don’t use it

Now that Google has cracked down hard with Penguin, paid link networks, and guest posts, Google’s message is loud and clear, any ‘manipulation’ of backlinks and how sites link to each other will be penalized. This all sounds good on the surface but it truly is problematic. Why? It seems impossible for Google to truly avoid link gaming and link manipulation because it is dependent, if not addicted, to links as ‘trust signals.’

Google’s Dilemma: It doesn’t know who to Trust

The biggest reason why the early wave of search engines like HotBot, Lycos, AltaVista, Excite, and others failed was because they did a lousy job of figuring out which website pages to trust when ranking for a search term. These earlier search engines used only the content or text placed on the pages themselves. All a search spammer needed to do was to copy the right words onto his or her pages and those pages will rank to the top. This is precisely why many of the search results for these earlier search engines where worthless. For example, you can be doing a search for shoes on AltaVista and you might be hit by porn site results. Google changed the search engine landscape when it was able to deliver accurate searches. It’s secret? Backlinks.

Google used the way websites linked to each other to solve the trust issue with online pages. Instead of trusting a website to ‘honor its word’ and actually be what its words claim it to be, Google counts how other websites link to a page to determine the actual content and context of that page. Just as your friends would point to you if someone asked for you by name, Google counts backlinks as ‘independent’ trustworthy signals to determine which pages contained which kind of information. Backlinks are crucial signals to how Google determines a page’s rank. Backlinks put Google on the map and made it the first search engine that truly delivered accurate results. Backlinks are also Google’s biggest weakness.

Backlink Building Games ‘Link Signals’

Since Google pays attention to how sites link to each other, people who try to get their sites or their clients’ sites to rank at the top of Google results for their target search words only need to manipulate backlinks. Back in the wild west days prior to Google Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird, this was very easy to do. You can rank very quickly for a keyword if you just create a huge number of backlinks all targeting a small set of keywords-keywords located on your pages. You can create links using links in press releases, articles submitted to articles directories, Web 2.0 profiles, links contained in the ‘guest blogger’ section of guest posts published on blogs you don’t control, guest books, forum profiles, forum links, and many others. For many years, Google was playing ‘whack a mole’ with all these link sources since spammers would use all sorts of software to create tons of backlinks in as short of a time as possible. This all changed with Google Panda and Penguin.

The Way Ahead: ‘Natural’ Links

Starting with Google Panda and Penguin, Google has made it harder and harder to use manipulative backlinks to get higher ranks on Google. Panda factored into your search terms and the actual content on the page. Penguin penalized target sites that used backlink anchor text that were too obvious. These two updates brought home the point that Google is serious about using system wide fixes to what would otherwise be an individualized, case by case, penalty by penalty approach to identifying and punishing link manipulation. Well, things got worse for people trying to manipulate Google after Google announced Hummingbird. This is a new software architecture that enables Google to update anti-spam and other features smoothly instead of having to tweak Google’s ranking component to punish some linkbuilding schemes. Hummingbird makes it easier for Google to penalize sites that don’t meet its quality link or content standards. Above everything else, Google wants to rank websites using ‘natural links.’

The problem with ‘natural links’ is that it can take forever for a website to rank if its natural audience would casually create links while talking about the site. Let’s face it-natural audiences don’t really have much incentive to build links and spread the word about their favorite brands. They can be excited temporarily but these might be few and far between. Still, this is what Google wants to see happen-natural links. In this context, linkbuilding is dead. Why? ‘Natural’ links obviously aren’t built. They aren’t created through artificial means. Real audiences create ‘natural’ links sporadically since they don’t have any fixed interest in making a website rank on Google. These natural audiences are just simply mentioning their favorite sites in areas where these audiences hang out online.

If you want to get more traffic from Google, the ‘natural’ way to go about backlinks simply isn’t going to work. You don’t have all the time in the world to wait for natural links. You have to be more proactive. Thankfully, there are certain things you can do on your own to attract natural links.

Building links is bad, attracting them is good. Understand? The key to remaining in Google’s good graces is to ‘draw’ links or attract links. How do you do this?

Follow the Steps Below:

Step 1: Create Content that Fills the Needs of your Audience

Research, write, revise, and tweak content that truly speaks to the needs of your target audience.

Step 2: Spread the Word Socially

Contact influential people on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and Google plus and work with them to spread the word about your content.

Step 3: Listen to your Audience

Your target audience is always sending feedback regarding your content. Make sure you pay attention. They might not leave the feedback on your blog post directly. They might have left feedback on Twitter, Google Plus, or Facebook. Pay attention to these.

Step 4: Create Responsive Content

Gather whatever feedback you got from your readers and fix your content. Besides revising your content, create new content that incorporates the feedback.

Step 5: Repeat the Process and Pay Attention to your Statistics

Repeat the process of spreading the word about your content. Keep revising and fixing until you see the right signals from your statistics. What signals are these? Your readers click through the rest of your site. Your readers stay on your pages for long periods of time. Your readers leave comments. Your readers tweet, Facebook like or Facebook share, or Google Plus one your content.

Step 6: Work your Community

Work with your blog’s community. Build a relationship with them. Hold contests. Do whatever it takes for them to become emotionally invested in the success of your blog. The more emotionally invested your audience is, the more natural links your site will attract.

Linkbuilding is a dirty word now. Stop using it. Instead, focus on attracting natural links from your reader community and influential people in your niche. The secret to all this? Quality content. The good news is that you get to build quality content by simply listening to and collaborating with your audience. Ignore them and you won’t build quality content. It really all boils down to that.

Infographic from Print Firm Here