1. Link building isn't a process or goal
Our goal is almost always direct or indirect profitability.
Where organic search marketing is concerned, profitability comes from
qualified traffic, and qualified traffic comes largely from favorable
search engine positions. Favorable search results are achieved to a
significant extent by acquiring links from diverse high-authority
domains.
Nothing above looks too controversial yet, but why then should
we not focus on links? If links lead to higher rankings and eventually
to profitability, we should build links, right? This makes sense until
we expand the diagram.
Direct link building is a process that only a spammer or link
buyer can do. I prefer "link earning" — a phrase I’ve borrowed from
Danny Sullivan’s legendary rant and
Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday —
but I see no reason why our efforts and successes should be constrained
by links. Some online marketing tactics may also contribute directly to
rankings, and some definitely contribute directly to traffic.
Even those who neither spam nor buy links have become so
focused on link acquisition that many de-emphasize or even ignore what
comes before or after. We heard some amazing forward-thinking talks at
Mozcon, almost all about real, legitimate, and sustainable marketing.
Even then, we heard far more about the number of links obtained than we
did about rankings, traffic, or profitability.
I am not suggesting that we stop caring about links. Link data can be used for many valuable tasks including the following:
- Find external pages that appear to have generated awareness and increased visibility. We can, for example, use Open Site Explorer to understand industry challenges and past successes.
- Provide valuable insights into campaigns that are still in progress.
- Find potential marketing targets (e.g. those who shared a similar piece of content).
- Explain current rankings.
There are plenty of additional reasons why link data is
fantastic. I am merely suggesting we stop leading people to death by
Penguin.
When we focus on links as a process and a goal, we're working
towards the measurement rather than the goal the measurement was
intended to measure. Profitability is the goal — events, guest posts, or
content pieces are the methods and tactics to get there. If we achieve
the goal through a combination of organic traffic, cross-coverage, and
direct traffic, I doubt anyone will complain. We might even be more
effective as marketers by considering more pieces in the puzzle.
2. Google wants to kill "link building" as a process
This isn't about being a "white hat" anything. I, for one,
cringe when referenced as a "white hat" marketer — it stings like a
label for someone adhering to dogma set forth by infallible Google. I’m
with
Dr. Pete on this hat nonsense.
If I thought buying links was a smart risk-free way to make money, I
would suggest we all buy links. I am simply a believer in sustainable
marketing tactics.
"The philosophy that we've always had is if you make something
that's compelling then it would be much easier to get people to write
about it and to link to it. And so a lot of people approach it from a
direction that’s backwards. They try to get the links first and then
they want to be grandfathered in or think they will be a successful
website as a result."
-Matt Cutts in an interview with Eric Enge
Matt says link building isn't inherently evil, but only when we
get it mixed up. We run afoul of search engines only when we look at
links with tunnel vision, as in the first diagram above, as an activity
rather than an outcome.
We should care what Google wants, if only because it’s
dangerous and difficult to fight against them in the long run. I once
warned
about what would eventually be called "Penguin" in March of 2012 — just
one month before the first Penguin update — and met some strong
resistance claiming Google would never penalize for links, but only
devalue them.
It’s a mistake to underestimate what Google can and will do.
Counter-spam might move slower than spam most of the time, but I suspect
Penguin won't be our last reality check for artificial links.
3. Modern Google is not a link-counting machine
Regardless of what Google will do in the future, we should also
consider what Google can already do today. What were links meant to
measure in the first place? Why did Google use them, and how did they
help? We know that links help to filter out the garbage on the web, and
they are still heavily used because link data helps to measure the
popularity and authority of a site and page.
We know Google understands more than followed links and anchor
text. Embeds have been called "links for videos." Citations are "links
for local." Google uses URL text for discovery, even if the text isn't
an explicit link. The search engine has long understood which words are
related to one another, and which brands relate to which words — as
anyone who has used the Google keyword tool can attest. We just heard a
presentation from Dr. Matt showing a correlation between social shares and brand mentions with rankings.
We don’t know everything about Google and the algorithm.
Perhaps Google is using co-occurrence as a ranking factor, but can we really doubt the search engine looks at good-old-fashioned
occurrence as
a measuring stick for site authority and popularity? It’s not unlikely
that Google is using a combination of data sources — mentions, links,
offline brand metrics, etc. — to measure or confirm popularity.
We also need to back up and consider the degree to which
popularity, awesome products, useful content and great web pages drive
all popularity signals, and to what extent they are used by Google.
Facebook likes correlate with site traffic whether Google ever looked at
them or not. Even with great statistics and a few tests, we can’t be
totally sure about how much Google uses which signal or under what
circumstances.
Why focus on simply building links when Google uses
more than links? Why obsess over a small HTML element when we have the
ability and skills to improve multiple metrics and build visibility with
or without Google?
4. Qualifying "good links" doesn't stick
Perhaps "building links" isn't a bad idea as long as the links
are good. Even though I agree, we still need to stop talking about
building links. Even if we could list every possible quality that
defines a "good link," we find that we have an overly-technical and
roundabout way of saying "market to your audience."
No matter how many caveats we add, or how precisely and
carefully we define "high-quality links," people still seem to come away
with their own version of what a good link is. The value of a link is
far less intuitive than the value of coverage and visibility.
Adria Saracino wrote
an enormous post
last year about nothing other than qualifying link prospects. More
could have been written, but I’m not sure more could have been retained
or recalled. To keep clients focused on the real goals rather than
links, Adria has begun pushing internally and externally for a stronger
focus on revenue rather than links alone.
Rankings and links are benchmarks, not processes — a way to
track progress on the way towards our real goals of qualified traffic
and sales.
5. Link obsession can hurt relationships
Asking people to add links, change the post, or edit their
existing links can appear selfish and demanding. I believe most people
who do so are not selfish people, but rather people whose success is
measured in terms of links above all else.
... And now I want to remove any mention of the source. This is a
ridiculous example, but illustrative of where "link building" has led
us.
Sometimes building awareness with an audience is better than
link building. Coverage and relationships with publishers leads to more
coverage, awareness, and — yes — even more links. But once again,
links are not the goal; they are merely one outcome and benefit of marketing with the goal of profitability.
If you do want to risk additional requests from those who have already been kind enough to cover your topic, take
Phil Nottingham’s advice and offer something of value (in his example, HD quality video) in the process.
6. Focusing on links leads to missed opportunities
I was recently reminded of a short-term consulting project I
worked on where a large client had dedicated as much as $20,000 per
month and a full-time employee's time to buying and renting links. They
hadn't been caught yet, and their rankings were relatively solid, but
improvement was minimal. The total traffic from paid links — mostly
footer links — was in the low thousands.
The company was so risk averse (
a pet peeve of mine)
that they were unwilling to stop because their competitors were also
buying links. To my knowledge, we never convinced the client to spend
half as much producing content or seeking real visibility.
Even giving the money away would be more effective marketing.
What blogger wouldn't participate in a contest for a chance to win a
free car? You could
literally drop $20k in cash from your rooftop in a press event and generate more publicity, and probably from more and better sources if done well.
It’s true that the case above is the second or third most
extreme example of link-centric myopia I’m aware of, but one need not
look far to see less dramatic examples.
For instance, the cost of a typical unbranded guest blog post
will also far exceed its value. From first contact to actual posting,
the submission will easily take a few hours. More importantly, marketers
focused on corresponding with blog owners
for links are not
focusing on building better businesses, products, content, or websites.
The opportunity cost for tactics where link building is the only goal
can be enormous — and why, when even guest posting
could bring both links and awareness?
7. Marketers should differentiate their services from spammers
The results of emphasizing link building are predictable:
marketers new to the industry hear so much about link building that they
become desperate for links and turn to spam and paid links. Similarly,
clients hear regularly that they need links, and set link goals for
their employee or agency. Then, Penguin unleashes its wrath almost
exclusively on those who focus on link-building as a process. And, we
wonder why it’s so hard to change the perception of SEO in the industry.
Consider this, if you are "link building," you’re either
spamming links or doing online marketing. Those who are practicing
sustainable marketing tactics may do well to distance themselves and
their activities from spammers using the same terms.
So, what should we do instead?
"Link building" is a phrase used by most industry experts, many
of whom I respect deeply. Unfortunately, their use of such terms grants
a sort of license, shelter, and reassurance to people doing a very
different kind of link building. The ambiguity can take new marketers
some time to figure out, and our industry and personal reputations
suffer at the hands of ineffective marketing.
Among those who agree with the philosophy presented above, the
required change is simple: it's just a matter of using new words. Many
others may find adjustment more difficult; I hope and believe they will
also find it more rewarding.
Use better words, track better metrics
When we talk about obtaining
visibility,
awareness,
traffic, or
coverage,
we immediately ensure we and our clients are talking about similar
goals. For processes, we can talk about the actual tactic, whether it's
outreaching for an infographic or hosting a webinar.
If, for some reason, we need to refer to these processes in
aggregate, terms like "inbound marketing," "online marketing," and
"content marketing" might be right, depending on the breadth and focus
of services offered.
Changing our choice of words admittedly has less impact than
changing what we do, but even altering the use of words can have a
surprising effect. "What can we do to get links?" sets an unnecessary
and artificial constraint on marketing activities, thereby limiting our
marketing to a few activities and making the goal of links explicit.
For the last several months, I've been trying to ask better
questions. "What can we do to increase visibility and generate
awareness? What can we do to drive more qualified traffic? What can we
do to increase profit per qualified visitor?" Followed links may be a
facet of the resulting strategy, but they are unlikely to be its entire purpose.
We ensure that we're building better businesses when we track
the results of our efforts and report on their impacts. To ensure we are
working effectively it's wise to continue tracking the places we have
requested and received online coverage, but we're more interested in
revenue first, traffic second, and rankings third. Coverage (sometimes
as standard links) and rankings matter, but only to show progress while
working towards traffic and revenue.
Do better marketing
I'm truly excited that we have the skills and knowledge to do
something better in a way that other marketers cannot. We have tools
that other marketers don't use in their research, giving us insights
into what works before we start building or emailing anyone. We
understand the Internet, search engines, and traffic generation. The
future looks bright if we can get our priorities straight.
Awareness over links
It is easier to slip links into posts about diverse topics than
it is to write a post about a product, service, or company. We all know
the kind of guest post I'm talking about: guest posts on mommy blogs
that suddenly include suspiciously-targeted anchor text. Posts on pet
blogs somehow slipping in a link to a web hosting company. They look
like this:
How many people out of a thousand would click on that link? One, maybe two? Compare that with a
guest post on the Wall Street Journal by the CEO of a relatively small company.
for more information visit this link: http://moz.com/blog/7-reasons-to-remove-link-building-from-vocabulary