Google is steadily changing its ranking formula to include new social elements. With the strong launch of Google+ and its fast uptake, they will have their own social network to play with and work out how to integrate social aspects into standard search. In the mean time search engine optimization (SEO) still relies strongly on the three traditional pillars:
- onsite optimization
- link building creating back links
- onsite content update regularity
Over 70% Of Your SEO Comes From Link Building
Well over 70% of the ranking that you receive from Google is attributed from the back links to your site. A back link of course is just another website or web page having a HTML link to your site. The best form of back links of course are text based keywords. So if you’re a web design company based in Singapore, we would create text based HTML links and use keywords like: web design, web design Singapore, Singapore Web Design etc. The text used is called anchor text. Links can also come from images. Text based links using your web domain as the anchor text, are not as powerful as keyword based text links.
Considering the high SEO value of your link building activities to your internet marketing campaign, if you’re using a third party SEO company, it would be wise to check that they are creating solid back links and are not purchasing links or links in web rings.
Paying for Link Building – Buying Links
If your SEO company is buying links then the long-term stability of your SEO campaign is at risk. This threat is very real and we have heard first hand of a few SEO companies using this as a threat against their non paying clients in order to extract overdue payments from them.
If links are created organically and naturally then your SEO company will not be able to control the removal of them because they will be located on independent third party sites. However, purchased links are often controllable and if you stop being a client, the SEO company will stop the link service and the links will be gone overnight.
Web Rings Used For Link Building Activities
SEO companies can control your links when purchased from link vendors who have created what are called web rings. Web rings are networked websites, usually WordPress blogs, which are electronically controlled from a central server. From a single control panel a web ring master can create a thousand plus links in less than a minute.
This is powerful link creation and because of this, Google bans sites that use or sell links from their search index. They class these types of tactics as Black Hat SEO. This means that if you are caught being part of a link buying web ring, they may blacklist you. When you’re blacklisted your ranking will either plummet to the bottom of the search results beyond page 20 or your site may be removed from their index all together – instant Google death!
If you want to check if you’re still on the Google search results index the easiest way to do this is type info:www.yoursitename.com into the Google search box (no spaces). If nothing is returned in the search results panic!
Content Based Search Engine Optimization
Organic SEO is the best. It is steady but sure. Organic natural SEO does means that it takes time to create stable and solid ranking results just like the natural growth of a tree, but it is reliable and long lasting. If you cut down a tree and look at the rings you will see the innermost ring on weak trees are very thick. This means that in the first year they grew very fast. Strong trees have a thin inner core for their first year growth. SEO is the same. If in the first year you try to rush things and buy links or use SEO or web design companies that are buying links, you may get a sudden fast splurge of ranking results but be warned – Google sorts these sites out very fast. Your rise could be your fall!
Being in the SEO industry, of course we are watching our competitors. We see some companies fly up the ranking results coming out of nowhere. We call this the ‘Google wind’. Zoom they fly up, and zoom they fly down! We saw one company do this a few months ago, they use a website name that indicates they should be at top, well guess what, when I checked this morning they are at the bottom of page 2! They flew up to position 4 in Google.com.sg overnight, stayed there for a brief two weeks and then disappeared down to page 2.
One of our recent past clients was approached by a competitor offering fast results when their contract ended with us. In their desire for fast results they took the bait and left us for the promises of the other company, despite us recovering and building their ranking and traffic results significantly. Before they worked with us the owner of the company used an Indian based link building company who promised him fast guaranteed positions. Being a young and ambitious businessman he paid a small amount of money and got good ranking results, unaware that his decision would haunt him for months to come. He came to us after using the Indian based company who highly likely purchased links for him. We used our standard content based link SEO services (article based). When Google introduced Google Panda earlier this year, their ranking results plummeted. They first off blamed us for the drop until we showed them that Google Panda had invalidated most of the links the Indian company had created for them because they were low quality. And of course the interesting twist to this story is that two of our other clients in the same industry as theirs, who had only used our SEO services, saw their ranking rise when Google introduced Panda. Content is always King with Google!
So How Can You Tell If A SEO Company Is Buying Links?
Check out the chart below. The chart is from a ‘Google wind’ SEO competitor in Singapore. They recently flew up the Google ranking results for the keyword SEO.
The chart shows their recent link building activities. You can see by the huge spike in link creation activities that it’s unnatural. These spikes are sure signs that link purchasing has been used or black hat link creation tools.
There are many websites that offer you link analysis tools for free or subscription based. The chart above is from www.majesticseo.com – you can get a lot of good free information from their site if you register for free with your email address.
Leaning The Link Building Lessons The Easy Way
I hope you have found this article useful. There’s a lot of hype and super promises in the SEO industry, but our aim is to provide rock solid stable SEO results along with great web design with all the search engine optimization elements built in as standard, so that our clients reap the rewards of their internet marketing investment year in and year out, and stand like us, and watch their competitors fly hopelessly around on the ‘Google Wind’.
RECENT UPDATE!
WOW check this one out! This one is even better than the one shown above. Just came in today. Going from an average of 30 to 40 links a day to over 60,000 in one day ! I am sure we will see this site fly on the ‘Google Wind’ very soon and move off the 1st page of Google.com.sg.
David Anttony
