How you rank with search engines is an important part of building a successful business. But the active tasks of search engine optimization (SEO) are very different in 2014 than they used to be even just a year ago.
Certainly, with WordPress, SEO is more automatic and simplified, but there are still precautions to take to ensure that you don’t violate any of the search engines’ terms of service or recommended practices — there’s reason to be cautious and stay informed. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, “Google is taking a hardline approach. Shady link-building tactics, poor quality content and bad design are just a few factors causing websites to get penalized.”
The Rap Genius Example
In early January, 2014, lyric-annotation website Rap Genius made headlines for sending spammy emails, asking bloggers to insert Rap Genius links into their sites, with the hope of ranking higher on Google, and exchanging those links for promotion in the Rap Genius site. It was essentially, link exchanging—but on a large scale—a practice many companies use. But it’s against Google’s terms of service. Google detected the spike in links, which was more than double, with more than 20,000 new links in a few months, and downgraded its ranking below where it was before the spike.
Did they do it on purpose, trying to trick Google’s algorithm? Or were they just being creative in how they solicited back-links? They admitted they deliberately used tactics to pursue large-scale link building results. But they did not realize it would have such repercussions.
Doing It Right
Entrepreneur explains the importance of links this way. “On the internet, links are like votes: Every link to your web site tells search engines that you are important. The more links you have, the greater the importance — helping your competitive advantage. Links continue to be one of the most important ranking factors in Google and Bing’s search rankings.”
But there are rules about how you acquire those links. You can’t buy them or acquire them through an exchange. Entrepreneur advises:
- Never pay for links to your website.
- Don’t barter anything, including promotion or in-kind services for links. To Google, that’s the same as paying.
- Don’t frequently publish press releases to build links. Weekly press releases with highly optimized links will trigger Google’s detection tools.
- Don’t acquire links from other sites by asking for them. You should acquire links by publishing good content, capturing the interest of your audience, and having them voluntarily link to you because your content enhances theirs.
The Three Pillars of SEO
Good SEO for a website has three components: links, content and social media. Content should be laser focused to your audience’s needs and you should use social media to help your site visitors share the content with their audiences. This signals to search engines that users find your content valuable and relevant. Links to your site from other closely related, high quality sites shows that you are trustworthy. But only if they are highly relevant and directly beneficial to your common audience. That’s what Rap Genius did wrong. They solicited links directly and to anyone who would comply, whether or not the content of that site was relevant to of benefit to its audience.
In a nutshell, the best way to optimize your site for search is to write quality, original content, telling your own story with posts and pages that resonate and speak to the needs of your specific audience. Google will then rely on human signals, in the form of shares and mentions on social media, to rank your site.
Try it. Share this post with people on your list who you think might benefit from it. Click on the share bar buttons in the top left of this post. THAT’s how link building should be done.
— Chris Quinn, principal and brand strategist
