Partner Article

Don?t let your SEO Linkbuilding undermine your online success

Google adores relevance. So do web users. It?s Google?s skill in matching search results to searches and delivering relevant returns that has driven its popularity. Sure, Google doesn?t get it right all the time. There are countless exceptions that prove the Google relevance rule, largely as a consequence of countless SEO and web marketing companies doing their utmost to elevate clients? sites above other more relevant sites in a bid to win traffic.

One of the best ways of showing Google your page has relevance and justifies top returns is through attracting a handsome collection of inbound links. The more popular and the more authoritative the donor sites are, the better positioning your pages enjoy. Of course, this is also one of the SEO signals targeted in attempts to game the system and promote undeservedly high placements.

Whilst link farms and automated link systems have for a long time been regarded as beyond the pale, when it comes to ethical white hat SEO manual link-building efforts have now started to come under the microscope.

In the States leading retail chain JC Penney have recently been outed by the New York Times for buying their way to the top of Google for dozens of terms ? for example dresses, ?skinny jeans,? ?home decor? and ?furniture?. They did it by harvesting thousands of inbound links from all manner of totally unrelated sites and blogs. Banking sites, casino sites, property sites, you name it, they linked it. According to The NY Times: ?There are links to JCPenney.com?s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminium sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists ? and the list goes on.? Clearly this gaming of the system flies in the face of Google?s pursuit of relevant returns.

Google?s response to such a high profile undermining of their credibility? An instant investigation following by rapid relegation of JC Penny?s offending pages.

JC Penny?s reaction? They claimed no knowledge of the practice and fired their SEO company.

What?s your SEO company up to? Hand on heart; how clean are your links? Are you risking similar censure?

The message is clear. If you?re serious about a sustainable online profile then don?t take risks with your business by trying to buy search positioning with dodgy links. The good news is that there are plenty of legitimate ways you can build a healthy network of links. We?ll look at some of the more effective tactics next time.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jon Celeste .