Many of those who pursue link building have had a tough year.
Google's verbal and physical assault on link building practices has been
unrelenting.
You may be wondering if link building is illegal now. The answer is
yes and
no.
Why? Let's explore the "yes" and "no" of link building to try and help
make some sense of what it is that you can and can't do.
Recounting the Body Blows
1. The latest major hit took place January 20 when Google's Matt Cutts wrote a blog post titled
The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO. In it he wrote:
Okay, I'm calling it: if you're using guest blogging as a
way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over
time it's become a more and more spammy practice, and if you're doing a
lot of guest blogging then you're hanging out with really bad company.
He also wrote:
So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it's just
gotten too spammy. In general I wouldn't recommend accepting a guest
blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally
or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn't recommend relying on guest
posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding
strategy.
2. On August 12, 2013 Matt Cutts recorded a video
where he talked about widgets and infographics. Here's what he said:
I would not rely on widgets and infographics as your primary
way to gather links. I would recommend putting a nofollow, especially
on widgets because most people when they copy and paste a segment of
code, they don't realize what all is going with that, and it is usually not as much of an editorial choice because they may not see the links that are embedded within that widget.
Depending on the scale of the stuff you are doing with
infographics you might consider putting a rel=nofollow on infographics
links as well. The value of those things might be branding, they might
be to drive traffic, they might be to let people know that your site or
service exists but I wouldn't expect the link from a widget to carry the
same weight as an editorial link freely given where someone is
recommending something and talking about it in a blog post
3. On July 26th, 2013 Google updated the Link Schemes section of their Webmaster Guidelines to talk about
Press Releases.
You can see this listed in the following image in the 2nd red rectangle
in this image (the first and third red rectangles relate to guest
posting and widget):
4. Going further back, I published an interview on July 9, 2012 called
Matt Cutts and Eric Talk About What Makes a Quality Site. In a moment of inspiration, I asked him the following question:
It dawned on me recently that link building is an
interesting phrase that has misled people. It's a bit of a cart before
the horse thing. It has led people to think about links as something
they get from the "dark corners of the web". Places where no one ever
goes, so it does not matter what you do there. So by thinking of it this
way, as link building, you are off on the wrong foot even before you
get started.
Here is what he said in reply to my question:
That's right. It segments you into a mindset, and
people get focused on the wrong things. It leads them to think about
links as the end goal. It's important to think about producing
something excellent first. If you have an outstanding product, world
class content, or something else that sets you apart, then you can step
back and start thinking about how to promote it.
I remember the response to this interview very well. It currently has 168 comments.
There was a raging discussion about the discussion on content. There
was a lot made about the comments on infographics (he also said this in
the interview: "I would not be surprised if at some point in the future
we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a
degree.").
But, no one talked about his comment on link building being a
fundamental problem in their write-ups of the interview. I knew right
then and there that it was
the most important comment in the entire interview. The future was already laid bare.
Dangers of Link Building
There is certainly a type of approach to link building that Google is
trying to kill off, but there are hints in Cutts' language as to what
they still think of as OK. So let's make some sense of this.
First, let's talk about how to get hurt by link building:
- Algorithmic Detection: There are many things Google
can't easily algorithmically detect. Unless you're far out there, this
isn't a main source of exposure, but you can't discount it.
- You Get Reported to Google: Someone might report
you to Google, and they might take a look at it. Once they do, any and
all of these areas will rapidly get revealed. In short, cross any of
these lines and a manual review will torch you.
- Someone Public: A blogger somewhere might figure
out what you have done and write about it. Google's hand gets forced and
they take a look at you. This is the worst. You will be publicly
exposed and you will get hit by Google to boot.
There is a very important secondary algorithmic danger.
Imagine that you do a lot of work to get links using one particular
method. Let's say that Google tests a new algorithm, and they see that
devaluing
all sites that use this method improves their search
results without causing any significant false positives (i.e., no major
brand gets torched) – they are going to release that algorithm.
My point is that if you aren't a major brand, even if you're
"unjustified collateral damage", Google will push the algorithm out. For
Google, it isn't about you, it's about the average satisfaction of
their users. They measure this on a massive scale, and your site is less
than a decimal point in the grand scheme of things.
This is exactly how Panda and Penguin work. They are large-scale
algorithms that improved Google's search results, but that also caused
lots of innocent businesses to suffer (and others prospered too). This
isn't because the Google engineers are bad people, they are just trying
to make their product better.
This is the reality of small to medium businesses and SEO. As a long
time friend of mine used to say, "if you don't like it, you should have
become a dentist."
So let's start with a statement of what your objective should be:
Don't just obey the letter of the law, but learn how avoid the net.
In other words, you need to learn how to stay away from the types of
practices that may cause you to get lumped together with the great mass
of truly bad actors. So let's talk about how.
Building Links the Right Way
Fear not, there is a right way to go about things, but it may require a mental mindset change.
If you're focused on link building for link building's sake, then you
need to see these words again from Cutts on link building in my 2012
interview: "It segments you into a mindset, and people get focused on
the wrong things". OK, let's get to the work on the task of getting our
heads in the right spot.
First, let's clear something up. Cutts isn't saying you can't promote
your website. He knows that you need to do marketing. We talked about
ways to approach link building in detail in my July 10, 2013 interview,
Link Building is Not Illegal.
If you read the interview carefully, you'll see that it's a blueprint
for content marketing. Basically, it lays out the components of how you
can create great content on and off your site, promote it with strong
social media presences, press releases, and other tactics to build a
great brand online.
And there it is – the b-word:
Brand. This is what your link building efforts should all be about.
Everywhere you go online
building your brand and reputation should be the goal. If you strictly abide by this one principle, you should be in good shape, and you will probably be getting links that Google
wants to value.
However, making the mental shift can be hard, so let's review some
additional guidelines that can help you keep the right focus. I
published some guidelines on April 7, 2013 in an article which I boldly
titled
Penguin 2.0 Forewarning: The Google Perspective on Links, and Matt Cutts tweeted the following in response to the article:
Here are the four guidelines from that article:
- Would you build the link if Google and Bing did not exist?
- If you have 2 minutes with a customer, and the law required that you
show a random sampling of your links to customer prospects, would you
happily show the link to a target customer? Or would it embarrass you?
- Did the person giving you the link intend it as a genuine endorsement? This is where widget and infographic links fail.
- Do you have to make an argument to justify that it's a good link? Still my favorite – truly good links require no justification.
I have a fifth one to add to that list. When you get a link back to
your site, be it the result of a guest post, a direct link request, or
any direct activity, you should also ask yourself this question: "Would
someone seeing your link on that page have a decent chance of wanting to
click through an attribution link to learn more about your company and
perhaps become a customer"?
Now that's a acid test if there ever was one. Think about it.
Summary
Get branding front and center in your online marketing, stay SEO
smart, play the game the way Google wants you to play it, and your risk
of being whipsawed in some future Google algorithm update, or hit by a
manual action, go way down. Not to zero, as any SEO plan has inherent
risk because of the way that Google manages its business, but lowering
your risk as much as possible seems like a great idea to me!
