The experts and software programs that helped clients shoot to the top of Google rankings by keyword stuffing and building phony links are being weeded out as the search engine algorithms are rewritten to uncover questionable SEO tactics.
Link Building Using Black Hat SEO
In a New York Times article, “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” written by David Segal on February 12, 2011, JCPenney is called to the carpet for using the “dark art of raising the profile of a Web site with methods that Google considers tantamount to cheating.” This “art” is called Black Hat SEO.
In a recent webinar conducted by Wordtracker, presenter Ken McGaffin acknowledged that it may be tempting to use this type of strategy, but in the end, it will backfire. It may take more time but “quality is harder work,” McGaffin said in his presentation.
In the book Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs, by HubSpot's Brian Halligan and Kharmesh Shah, the authors talked about Black Hat and White Hat SEO like the good guys and bad guys of the wild west. “Black Hat SEO involves exploiting current limitations in Google’s software to try and trick it into ranking a particular web page that would normally not have ranked,” Halligan and Shah wrote.
In the JCPenney example, the company was showing up at the top of the search engine page rankings for everything from dresses to area rugs by using Black Hat SEO. Google is investigating and taking corrective action.
Search Engine Priorities
Since the number and quality of inbound and outbound links in a website have become the primary indicators of a website’s importance, it is now a key focus for SEO experts for the time being.
“The links you have out on the web are a signpost to your website,” McGaffin said. “You want to be ready for the traffic that brings. Thirty-five percent of the business we do comes from links.”
Quality links position a company as a leader in an industry. Search engines like Google reward companies for relevant links that have been there a long time. There are software programs like Wordtracker’s Link-Builder or SEOBook (which has a free back link analyzer) or Web CEO that will analyze a company’s links and those of its competitors, showing the number of links coming into a particular URL, where they come from and the actual page on which they appear. Most will do a keyword analysis as well to help in selecting relevant websites to target for reciprocal links.
The Ultimate Goal in Successful Link-Building Is Threefold:
- Improve search engine rankings (legitimately)
- Increase traffic (but qualified leads) to your website
- Improve conversion rates from visitors to customers
As McGaffin says, link-building is not easy. It's very time consuming but well worth it in the long run. He also suggests that, in order to succeed in this endeavor, you need to "make link-building as routine as you can."
Anne O'Connell - Anne O’Connell has been a public relations professional since 1990 and has been working as a freelance writer and trainer since ...
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