LBi Netrank: Paid links and Netrank

RSS 2.0 Feed

Paid links and Netrank

Posted on 10th December 2007 at 10:34 pm by Manley

As the whole industry is abound with talk about Matt and Maile's recent Google Webmaster Central post, the old adage that "Content Is King" once again rears it's magnificent head.

I have spent a goodly portion of the last week dealing with concerned clients, industry colleagues (all from other companies, I am pleased to report!) and even my local independent bike shop owner on the subject of how I think they should deal with the 'death of paid linking'.

Well, it's certainly a tough one. There can be no denying that buying text links works; one only has to do a SiteExplorer back-link query on a few sites near the top for any major competitive query to see it in action. Regardless of the recent posturing by the search engines, whether a link is organic or paid for is very, very hard to detect algorithmically and, even for a hard cost, text links are as cheap as the proverbial chips.

Thankfully this posturing isn't a sudden act. I have never bought links outright, although I have dabbled with paid reviewing and sponsored blogging in the past but, in an industry as changeable as ours, it never pays to put all your eggs in one egg box (particularly if it is one that Rachel Owen's pupils are firing across the room).

Search PR is about conversions at the end of the day and there is no better way to get the right visitors to your site than to have good, relevant content which catches people's attention. If you have that and you market yourself effectively then organic search results will come.

Sure, it's a lot faster to buy links and yes, it's going to be a touch harder for those of us who stay the right side of the Webmaster Guidelines, but in the end purchasing links does degrade the relevancy of the search results which we all use. I do not think that many people would disagree with me when I say that the best situation is one where a site is performing well because it deserves to, rather than because it is pulling a fast one.

Search optimisation for me is about best practice, extensive keyword research and cracking targeted content that people will want to link to. Links as a by-product of delivering value-adding content, rather than content as a by-product of link building.

So, buying text links is going the way of meta keywords and hidden text, eh? I for one am glad to see the back of it.

Comments

No-one has commented so far, or all comments are awaiting moderation.

Post Your Comment

If you would like to be alerted when there are new comments to read please enter your email address below.

RSS 2.0 Feed

Search

Archive

Tag Cloud

Subscribe

RSS 2.0 Feed

Paid links and Netrank

Comments

Post Your Comment

Subscribe

RSS 2.0 Feed