So this week’s big news has been Matt Cutt’s reposting of his ‘link bait‘ ideas, which have seen many contrasting and controversial views being aired in his comment section. In a recent comment on this site, the question was posed - ‘what do we think is a good method of gaining links?’ Well I guess now is as good a time as any to attempt to relay our opinion on the great link debate.
We at Not So Natural are professional SEO bods. Rankings are our bread and butter and, in some of our cases, our lives!! Since the dawn of the most famous search engine, links have been king; and as a result, links are our main method of gaining an advantage for our clients. If all were born equal, our link strategy would be - ‘do as Matt Cutt’s says - create something mega useful and watch your link pop explode like you were the new facebook. But let’s face it. All are not equal, and neither is Google.
While Matt writes posts subsuming the best way of gaining links without purchasing or reciprocating, Matt fails to really embrace the key discussion of what links are really about.
So perhaps thats where we’ll start. The how of gaining links?
This site has attempted to show over the last few months how all are not born equal! The top 10 for all our key high traffic-driving phrases are full of sites buying or artificially manipulating links. Matt suggests; ‘place a pdf writer, an email spam filter or tool which makes nice ANSI Compliant warning signs to gain you links’. We couldn’t agree with you more Matt! Being useful is the ultimate way to gain popularity. If I were trying to rank for ‘pdf writer’ - great idea. I’d place a free, easy to use pdf writer on my site.
But what if i want to rank for ‘cheap flights’? Would you suggest a pdf writer for that? Could I rank better for ‘car insurance’ if people looking for car insurance found they could download a useful spam filter? One thinks not. Take a real life example; to rank for cheap flights, should I sell a cheaper, better flight than everyone else? Of course not. Build a fun cheap flight game or risque flight attendant strip show! Yeah - cos like that’s why they are number 1…!
We couldn’t agree more Matt - This is exactly the kind of sites Search Engines should be placing at the top - sites which have useful content. Sites which sell the best product or put the most effort into providing the user with a useful service.
OK, so let’s look take it from a slightly different angle Matt. Why gain links?
Let’s say the top 100 for ‘car insurance’ stop buying links and all make a really cool application or two which people find useful. All sell car insurance at the same price (or just compare each other’s!). All have the same keyword density, same Titles, similar content and lovely Meta Descriptions. All really are equal. Who do you choose? Who should be in the top 3? Well Google…
You use their link popularity to differentiate of course. But how many better ways are there to differentiate? Perhaps your toolbar or Google analytics data? Yahoo’s latest ’semantic innovation’? Could this be the answer? How about you get a bit more proactive and use some of your vast profits to put some human intervention into your highest traffic driving areas?
I guess what we are saying is; Google’s very method of differentiating between sites is flawed. Using Links to determine rankings is old and blatantly open to abuse. Why continue to use such a method so open to fraud?
Google - listen to Matt. He is on to something. He is correct, not because these ideas make for good Link Juice - but because these ideas make for great sites. Matt’s ideas are the fundamentals upon which Google’s power was born. Useful sites had more links than useless sites; hence sites with more links should rank higher than sites with less. Now, there is a multi-million £/$/€ trade in buying and selling the very method on which you based this usefulness. Links.
Perhaps now Google, links are not very useful at all!
So in this long winded way, we have reached a conclusion. What do we recommend you do – practically – to increase your link equity, while Google continues to use this method to judge whether you are good or not?
Always build a site which is useful. Always try to be the best site out there at what you do. Build that USP and rise above your competitors. Think outside the box to generate new ideas and listen to your networks - what they want and what they say about you. But above all BE REALISTIC. While there are people cheating the system, don’t ignore this. While links gain rankings and rankings are achieved through acquisition; keep up with your competition and buy the b***ards! Compliment your site with paid as well as natural links. Be inventive with your tactics and always adopt more than one; but don’t overuse any.
Until Google changes, we’re all in with the same chance of a penalty. Keep in your mind that Google kicks out the likes of Go Compare and Kwik Fit, but look at the reasons. Abuse one method and you’ll go down. Equally, fail to participate, fail to rank – and you may as well have suffered a penalty for abuse. Better to try and fail than never try at all…
