Comments on: Making A Case for Contentless Link Building

By: Allen

Allen — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:38:45 +0000

Building a link and Building a Quality link that has value are two different things, and i think that the Google understand and differentiates very well. Its good of us and to our customer also if we place our link into the sites that relates to our business rather than post to other non sense sites that divert the client intentions and motives.

By: SmarterSubmit Guy

SmarterSubmit Guy — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 19:07:58 +0000

Content itself can be broken down into –

(1) – on-site content (needs to be of highest quality, like at this site).

Because Google’s in-house or contracted manual review teams can pop in anytime to your site – they can easily check to see what kind of content you have (Panda). They can see real community engagement and social signals, in addition to the value you are providing. This is basic stuff and so anyone serious – needs to build stellar sites… unless you are going on the dark-side and purchasing throwaway EMDs and purely using them to rank via quick blackhat methods that are still working in some niches despite the birth of the Penguin baby (yes, low value links still works in many niches and i have seen this a lot). And Google cannot do a thing about it. They just have to tweak their algo to function differently across different niches as well as toss in an element of randomness to make the reverse engineering harder. OK. Got a bit carried off there. So, here is the other content type…

(2) – off-site content (which can be of 2 types itself, depending on what it is being used for)

(a) decent content for Guest Blog Posts
(b) low grade content only written for the sole purpose of creating ultraspins (see vita vee’s stuff).

The Guest Blog posts can drive contextual links from the same niche and content clusters, thereby giving some strong signals to Google. The ultraspins will general go onto Web2.0 properties that allow you to post contextual articles with links and each will pump down certain amounts of link juice. The problem with Google is that even with a manual review (or algorithmic) they cannot catch or easily detect the multiple areas you post the ultrapsins out to… and neither can they detect that you are engaiging in low quality gibberish thats spun to eternity. The algo infact, cannot figure out its spun content. So, right now you win and big blue loses. Not sure when the tables will turn!

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:39:49 +0000

I still think guest posts are the best way to build links – you’re getting 1 way, dofollow, only-one-on-the-webpage links.

By: Vince Lin

Vince Lin — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:40:15 +0000

In many industries there’s still the process of content migration onto the web – until we reach a saturation point for this, spam content will work.

Google’s efforts in evaluating ranking based on user data will eventually curtail this, but until then…. a few more years of spam!

By: Matthew Woodward

Matthew Woodward — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 11:37:28 +0000

As someone that is constantly testing variables in SEO I can without any doubt state that spam still works. In fact if you check out my link building tutorial you can see it in action for yourself http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/the-ultimate-guide-to-tiered-link-building-part-1/

Where content does have value though is for your site visitors. If the content you offer is poor then you are not going to capture the audience and inspire them to take action whether thats clicking an affiliate link or joining an email list.

An effective SEO campaign will convert visitors into buyers/subscribers and you need high quality content to do that with.

The actual link building/ranking side of things though, well do what you want =D

By: Joe S.

Joe S. — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 07:34:52 +0000

Thanks for the great post Jon. I guess I can kill the notion that content is king. I am new to blogging and running my own website so all the research I have read suggest that I need to focus on content and content alone, and even more so after the Panda, Penguins and bears…. oh my! Updates. Very refreshing to read another point of view.

Thanks!

By: Jason Nelson

Jason Nelson — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:01:39 +0000

Some good points Jon. There are a variety of ways to create linkable assets. I think building tools are an area of link building that doesn't receive enough attention. I blogged about it recently in this post - http://www.ascentinternet.com/blog/seo/a-better-way-to-create-scalable-links/

By: Matthew Proctor

Matthew Proctor — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:29:56 +0000

Those alternative value-proposition forms of link building don’t seem like link building to me. If you’re an SEO trying to get links for a client, you can’t put your hands directly on the design of a site, you can’t control the quality of your client’s product, and in most cases you can’t start running their community either. You can recommend all of those things but you won’t be able to provide metrics of success that tie back to what you did with your office hours like traditional link building will.

Everyone jumps on the content bandwagon because it is relatively easy to implement and it is easy to measure the success of a campaign. There’s also minimal risk involved, unlike some of the pre-Penguin stuff and “no value prop” link building methods.

As a link builder tasked with showing my work and convincing the higher ups to give me an adequate budget for content/value prop link building I can say things like:

“I orchestrated the production of page X, I promoted it to sites A,B,C, we got Y links back, which lead to our site moving from rank 25 to rank 9 on the SERP for target keywords. We should build more pages like X so that we’ll see the same results and bring in revenue.”

You can’t bring it all back to the link builder’s recommendation if you’re basing your strategies on the strength of your product or the community management skills. Sure, you’ll get a bunch of natural links out of that stuff but you can’t prove YOU built them. They might have just happened anyway because of how good every other part of the machine is, regardless of your recommendation.

That’s the challenge.

By: seoteky

seoteky — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 13:41:52 +0000

Great post Jon, pure and simple. Lets take another sample, the trust value towards a brand. Just like SEOmoz, they were able to build links without really asking, begging or buying it. That is because people trust them, trust Rand Fish, trust the community behind it. And when you get the trust and respect from other people, they will become your brand advocate and win links from them. Just like pointblankseo

By: Anthony Pensabene

Anthony Pensabene — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 16:06:30 +0000

Yo Jon, good luck this fall.. don’t use too much time on the webz..

Yeah.. I like the way you broke down the pursuit in the beginning of the post.. right link building exists due to something.. because there are particular elements on the web.. people covet (for a number of reasons)..

Your conclusions get more to the heart of providing quality..

product quality makes me think of Wil’s preso at Mozcon
http://www.slideshare.net/wilreynolds/do-real-company-stuff-mozcon-2012-version

Community, Jen’s
http://www.slideshare.net/jennifersablelopez/jen-lopezmozcon12communityinbound

And design, Jenny Lam’s (just a summary here)
http://www.stateofsearch.com/the-mozcon-chronicles-day-2-afternoon-sessions/

keep on link thinkin, Cooper. Be good.