Some Link building “services” may do far more harm than good.
Link building for SEO (search engine optimization) has become one of the most critical elements for ranking high in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Many offshore companies are offering cheap link building services for the purpose of boosting web site rankings. Here is an excerpt from one SPAM promotion for offshore link building:
“We are working in India. Would you be interested in using our Link Building Services? We will be happy to deliver one way links for any theme and numbers. We can deliver over 40,000 links to your website.”
First off, offshore companies are not bad resources to use. Many great talents work around the globe, but this offer may lead one to believe that effective link building may be as simple as building them in mass for cheap. Many offshore link building firms will build links and do it in the thousands at what appears to be a very low cost, however, all links are not equal and these mass linking strategies are dangerous.
Google imposes severe penalties for “link spamming” and provides better ranking to websites that create links that contain valuable information for users. Not surprisingly, Google wants quality content for its users and quality content comes from well written and interesting articles that attract links and traffic as opposed to automated link quantity boosting methods. Offshore companies offering large quantities of links (in the thousands or hundreds)are selling links that are not useful, and thus will either have little positive impact on your SERP’s (search engine ranking position), More importantly, mass link building strategies, if implemented, put your web site in danger of being listed in Google’s infamous supplemental index (blacklisted).
It can be difficult for someone new to web site optimization to discern good link building strategy from bad at first glance. Here is a three step example of an effective content promotion strategy that may attract quality inbound links to your site:
Step 1: Write an article about a subject. Here is an example:
It is important to make this article useful and interesting as possible so that your links will attract traffic to it to also make it valuable in Google’s eyes. In this case, the article discusses a new Google service that is currently being test marketed.
Step 2: Promote it in the social media portals like Digg for example. I just took the article above and put it in Digg as follows:
Now, it is found in Digg’s engine and there is a nice link that will possibly be used and shared because it is current news about Google’s new paid local map placement service that was released in 2 test markets. Then, distribute this article to other social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Squidoo.
That is one genuine link building strategy. Note the Digg link above. A counter of views appears in the Digg strip at the top of the page in a gray boxed area on the left. Note the number of views. What does that mean? It means that the article was promoted properly with links that are useful to the community and the content was interesting enough to attract traffic. If it is interesting enough, it may even be good enough to attract links from people who find the article to be interesting.
Google measures traffic to your website and links and other sources. That element is one of the biggest factors in ranking a page in its index. In fact, traffic is the most commonly ignored factor in gaining SERP’s and it is likely one of the most critical. Be advised; a link is no longer a link. Good linking strategies are the best way to promote your website and bad linking strategies are the quickest way to bury your web site. Buyer Beware.
