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SearchReturn Discussion List
"Understanding Internet Search Technology"
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Moderator: Published by:
Disa Johnson SearchReturn
http://www.searchreturn.com
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October 30, 2007 SearchReturn Issue #135
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.....IN THIS DIGEST.....
// -- SEARCHRETURN INTERVIEW -- //
"Eric Ward Answers Your Questions"
~ SearchReturn
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// -- SEARCHRETURN / ERIC WARD LINK BUILDING Q&A -- //
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From: Leslie Carruthers
Hey Disa,
Perfect timing - we've been talking about link building
internally and how we can streamline / provide real value to our
clients. Here are our questions. Looking forward to the
interview; thanks for doing it and for the opportunity to submit
questions!
Here are our questions:
What do you think about Pay Per Post(either that specific company
or the pay per blog post concept in general)?
How do you see the value of link building evolving in the near
future? in a couple of years?
What are the biggest errors to avoid when building links?
We use Google PageRank as a key factor for evaluating prospective
link partners in our link building efforts. Is too much
importance placed on PageRank? Are there other, equally important
factors to consider?
We have found link building to be extremely time consuming. Can
you offer any tips for streamlining the process?
Thanks much!
Leslie
Leslie Carruthers
President
TheSearchGuru.com
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ERIC'S ANSWERS
Leslie: What do you think about Pay Per Post(either that specific
company or the pay per blog post concept in general)?
Eric: Services that offer to write about or review your product
or Web site can serve a very useful marketing purpose, however,
if that purpose is to insert a link into a blog post with the
intent of improving search rank, then the bottom line is and must
be that this type of link cannot be trusted.
Anyone with the money and a product/site to hawk can hire a
service like Pay Per Post, ReviewMe, etc., and that means a
search engine cannot trust such links with 100% confidence. This
is not to say that such links do not help search rank, because
several people have given me evidence that they have improved
their rank as a result of such services.
However, let's be really honest with ourselves. Any rankings
boost that comes about as a result of a link you paid someone to
insert, whether it's in a blog or anywhere else, is not
trustworthy because the link is not earned as a result of
quality, it was paid for. That makes it a form of advertorial at
best.
So if the search engines are giving credit for such links, the
wise marketer will see this as a temporary boost at best, and not
consider this tactic as a core long term approach. These links
are like product placements in a movie. That can of Coke on the
dinner table in a movie scene might have some branding value, but
it does not mean the movie is good.
Leslie: How do you see the value of link building evolving in the
near future? in a couple of years?
Eric: I think the best engines will forever factor in some type
of link analysis for their results. Links are simply too
valuable and useful to ignore, even as marketers try to ruin
them. What will probably happen is the engines will get much
more judicious as to which sites they trust, and which sites they
don't. Links from sites the engines have decided they trust will
become like gold.
The engines already know how to count links. What they are
working on is knowing which 1% of the billions of links can truly
be trusted. Thus I can envision a day where a smaller subset of
trusted site links will carry even greater search ranking weight.
I call this phenomena the Revenge of the Librarians, and if you
understand why, you know what you need to be doing right now.
Leslie: What are the biggest errors to avoid when building links?
Ironically, the single biggest mistake I see is people ignoring
the power of their on-site links to improve their own rank. If
you have a site that has shown some degree of success in the
rankings, then you have obviously reached a certain degree of
trust by those engines. So look at your own site and how you are
linking to your own content.
Eric: Many sites have absolutely terrible on site link
architecture that, with a few modifications, will enable them to
improve their rank without seeking any new links whatsoever.
Another mistake I see is a refusal to accept that certain link
building strategies are simply never going to work, and a close
cousin of this mistake is the belief that an automated link
acquisition tool will work. If it's automated, and it's used to
contact people, then it is crap, plain and simple, and it will
not work.
Leslie: We use Google PageRank as a key factor for evaluating
prospective link partners in our link building efforts. Is too
much importance placed on PageRank? Are there other, equally
important factors to consider?
Eric: In 14+ years of link building I have never used Pagerank as
a core or key factor in my decision making process for link
target evaluation. My advice is turn the toolbar off, evaluate
the sites yourself, give them your own internal/gut feeling
score, and then turn the Pagerank toolbar back on, and see how
your internally assigned score compares.
Leslie: We have found link building to be extremely time
consuming. Can you offer any tips for streamlining the process?
Eric: Yes, many, but not for free. :) OK, here are a couple.
First, read SearchReturn. [Nice one, Eric! -d] Second, use
Google Alerts for target site identification by setting up very
specific and targeted searches.
For example, when I was trying to build links for
stormwaterauthority.org, I created a Google Alert for the phrase:
[Stormwater "other sites" site:.us]
Then, any time google found another match, I got an email, and
usually it was a solid target site.
Eric Ward
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