If you are into digital marketing, how many times over the last couple of months did you come across an article or blog post stating that SEO is dead? It seems to me that topic is trending ever year, and the reality is that if you don’t understand the science of SEO, it’s easy to believe that it’s dead.
With all the updates Google has done to their algorithm over the past year, it’s very easy to dismiss old school search engine optimization methods as invalid, but when it comes to the heart and soul of SEO which is link building, that would definitely be a huge mistake. Links from authoritive sites online are still good and can add quite a lot of value to the pages you are linking to. Google is focusing more on quality content (old saying of content is king), and removing all the spam and irrelevant content from their index.
Bad links to avoid
Even though link building can still add value to your SEO campaign, it doesn’t mean all links are good. Find below a couple of links that you should always avoid in your campaign.
- Paid links
- Focusing only on one main keyword anchor text
- Links from spammy neighborhoods
- Multiple links from the same web pages
- Splog (spam blog) links
- Links that focuses on redirects
- Javascript links
There are more links to avoid, but the ones above are the most common. Anything with SEO and digital marketing that are “too many” and “excessive” is never good. That simply means that if you overdo your link building campaign, you will most likely get penalized by the search engine gods.
How to get valuable links
Most of the search engines still analyzes all the inbound links to determine the value of those links. What makes a good link?
A valuable link is one that is derived organically (naturally) and that is relevant to a domain or website page topic. This doesn’t mean that you should build all your links with keywords in the anchor text. Non keyword links can also pass value, but at the end of the day you should focus on creating magnetic content that has the natural ability to attract readers, links, and engagement. Always stay away from bad neighborhoods, spammy campaigns, and bad websites for link building. You will do your campaign more harm than good in the long run.
Good advice. The thing is most of the true old school “white hat” SEO, if i may call it that hasn’t changed. Good compelling relevant content, Correct keyword density (don’t over stuff), relevant theme through out the entire website and good relevant authoritative back links are the key. I follow these principles and have never had a webpage spanked by Google no mater what changes they make. Good Luck.
Indeed. The only problem is that there is a fine line between white hat and black hat these days. If you think about it… all “link building” campaigns are practically black hat because you are manipulating the search engines.
Thank you for sharing these tips with with us. Having valuable links pointing to your website is one of main priorities and important factors to a website owner. However for them to have the intended impact they must be natural because these days it’s no longer the way it used to be where some websites used to build spam links from every website they could come across. And it is for this very reason that google introduced this norm to curb these practices.
Hello Anton. I’m looking at some more traffic getting tutorials and
they’re suggesting link directories. What is your take on them and are
they wise to do?
Directories used to be very good, but many were hit hard with the recent Google updates. It all depends on your goals and the niche of the business you would like to promote. Article directories, blog aggregation channels, and some pure business directories still holds value, but not like it used to. If you are interested in targeted traffic, focus on “magnetic content” and the links will follow naturally.
Amazing tips right there. I also tend to agree that there is a very slim line between black hat seo and white seo. However, my advise still remains that for effective seo campaigns, one must strive to invest in white hat seo campaigs to avoid being punished by Google. Thanks for sharing.
Regards
Dickens