In the months following the Penguin update, some consultants have despaired about link building. They have argued that link building strategies have to take second place to social media campaigns. It does seem that the death of links has been exaggerated, however. Only certain ways of getting links have been hit by the update and they were largely against Google’s ethical framework anyway. Social media can be used effectively as part of a link-attracting effort.
Matt Cutts speaks up for getting links
Google’s Matt Cutts is not always popular among all of the optimisation community because he criticises unethical behaviour. However, he also provides advice to consultants which can be valuable. Recently, he has said the argument that believes getting links via SEO is over, is simply incorrect. He has made a convincing case which implies that groupthink – a type of thinking that occurs when most people in a decision-making group want to agree and will so overlook a more accurate assessment of other solutions – is responsible for this misleading viewpoint.
Matt Cutts has reminded consultants that the net contains vast amounts of data and that attracting inbound links can still be really effective. He has said that no-follow links make up a small proportion of the total. While he has admitted that the importance of social media is set to increase, he has advised that it would be premature to write off conventional link gathering.
It isn’t over, but it isn’t easy
The game of getting links is therefore far from over, but it is still not easy to link gather. Link networks, for example, are definitely to be avoided. Other techniques simply are not as efficient as they once were. Examples include the use of directories. Irrelevant directories will not do a site any good at all.
Only links which are relevant and high quality are worth pursuing. Therefore, link gathering tactics must reflect this. Producing great content can be very fruitful in this area. Both patience and persistence are necessary if the approach is to work. If the content is consistently excellent then the users and the links will come.
The social and on-page combination
On-page work is not enough in the highly competitive search world. The likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+ cannot be ignored. Campaigns on these networking sites can get a lot of users to take an interest in a site and in the content featured on that site. If you use a little imagination here, it can make a big difference to your social media marketing campaign.
For example, hosting a competition, for a free sample for example, is a great way of engaging with potential consumers. It can get them really interested in the goods or services which you have to offer. Alternatively, you could give competition winners access to products at cheap rates.
An end to the overreaction
When Penguin first changed Google’s algorithm, some consultants were affected too much by the publicity which followed. Some time has passed and a better perspective on the topic of links can now be gained. Now that the overreaction is more or less over, it is time to improve SEO techniques and make progress.
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