Every day! Every day I do my best to teach people to drop the idea that they need thousands of links in order to make considerable income online. There are days when this is just driving me nuts.
Links are necessary, yes. However, not a gazillion of them and not any kind of links.
The reason I’m talking about this, and this is merely a beginning of this topic, is the observation I made about vast majority of “link pushers”.
Their sites suck!
Let me elaborate on this…
When dealing with internet marketing one of the most important aspects of making money is clearly the ability to bring traffic to your web site. The “you need traffic” story immediately prompts the paid and non paid traffic topics. Of course, doing paid traffic is good but only if you know how to spend money in such way that you at least cover your cost of advertising. Since vast majority of people neither has significant resources to advertise nor expertise to do it well, this vast majority plus those that do both options, resort to SEO.
Because SEO in large comprises of link building, and link building is often looked upon as the most difficult part of SEO, over the past few years a literal craze begun with link building automation tools. Somehow, for this vast majority, SEO BECAME link building and this became regarded as “the most important” element of SEO.
Am I the only one that observes at least 3 things that are not right in this picture???!!!
1. Link Building is not SEO, or SEO is not Link Building.
2. Link Building is not the most important aspect of SEO. It is the most tedious aspect of it.
3. Focusing solely on link building will not necessarily produce any more if any sales at all in IM
Therefore, if you have any clue as to what I’m talking about, Link Building is ok. It needs to be done. BUT NOT for the sake of just adding more incoming links to your site.
SEO stands for Search Engines Optimization. I don’t see words “link” and “building” in there.
Search Engines Optimization consists of
- Building a web site…
- Optimizing the web site…
- Optimizing the content on the web site…
- Promoting the site…
Only 1 out of 4 aspects contains the actions of link building. Now notice that I didn’t say “link building”. I said PROMOTING a web site.
Whenever you promote something the actual goal is to create materials that would be interesting and informative of what you are promoting.
This literally means that if your promotional material sucks, so will the results of your promotion suck.
Links are only the “connecting tissue” between your promotional material (articles, blog posts, bookmarks, exchanges, press releases, joint ventures…) and tour site. And guess what. This is exactly how Search Engines see it too.
So let me ask you something…
Why would you create shitty promotional material for your site? Do you not want your promotional material to work well for you?
If you create good stuff and post it somewhere,, and it’s really good stuff… and you insert a logical and intelligent link to your site,,, even if only 20 people sees your good promotional material you stand a very good chance to get some of those 20 people to your site.
What if out of a 100 visitors 10 came to your site because your promotional material was good? And what if you made a sale and because your promotional material was good the actual person that bought from you is one of those 10?
Would you like that??
Sure you would. Who wouldn’t.
So… Why link building for the sake of link building. It doesn’t work. Google most certainly doesn’t care that you have thousands of links. Google cares that your site is great enough for other people to want to recommend it and that your promotional stuff is good. When you get those links in line and when you understand this, you can call yourself somewhat of a good SEOer.
Don’t build links by blasting them around like an automaton. It only does damage to your site.
If your site is done well and it is made to be good and informative and to convert well your link building will actually be much easier and your sales much higher.
Think about this. Don’t follow trends because someone is pumping you ideas that you need millions of links. You don’t.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m an LD member and just came across a link to your blog and couldn’t resist leaving a comment (as there seem to be no others yet?).
I have also learnt that masses of links is not the answer. However, one thing that has taken me by surprise recently is the results that can be achieved by buying links. I had previously not considered this as an option as it is going against anything natural and the Google rules. But it seems that it is possible to find highly relevant sites with plenty of on topic content and simply buy a link on their site. These are sites with domain age and page rank and the results show that this works. Of course this costs money, but if you are making money from your site, better rankings will generally allow you to make more.
Colin.
Buying links can be a viable option for increase in rank. Yes. The only issue that could arise is the fact that even publicly Google states that if it is determined that the link is purchased they discount it’s value. If you ask me however, the really valuable link on a really good site could be purchased for sure. It does work. You do have to consider however that links will cost from a few dollars for a link up to a hundred dollars a month for a link. It can be an expensive game.
But hey, the attitude that a link may be worth a lot because it is located in the right place and on pages with good quality is a good attitude.
My focus of the post is geared more towards creating good quality promotional content. THAT can be worth a lot more then a link itself. Again, links for the sake of links alone are not a sensible way to build a business online.
Thanks for commenting Colin. Your insight is appreciated.