The More SEO Tactics Change, The More They Stay The Same
I’ve been playing the search results game for a while now, and I’ve seen the world of SEO go through a lot of changes over the last 5 years. Well, last week I was at SES (Search Engine Strategies) Chicago and I got to chat with some of the best and the brightest in SEO, as well as some of the sleaziest. And over those few days in Chi-Town, I got to reflect on how, in some ways, SEO has changed a lot, and in other ways, it’s still the same old game.
Targeted Anchor Text Isn’t Enough
Back in the day, if you wanted a page to rank well on a targeted keyword, what you had to do was build a lot of links to the page that featured that keyword as the anchor text. But Google has gotten a lot smarter, and that’s not enough anymore.
You see, if you have too many targeted links, Google knows that you’re link building, and they don’t take kindly to third-parties trying to game their search results, so they’ll penalize you. So it’s important to shake it up a bit, and build links with a variety of anchor text, ranging from your brand name to much longer tail variants of the keyword you’re targeting.
For example, if I went out and got 1,000 links with the anchor text “marketing blog” pointing to Revenews.com, Google would get suspicious, and start penalizing the domain. Rather, I should be getting links that include “blog about marketing”, “new media marketing blog”, and even “Revenews”. This creates a more organic linkscape, one that looks like it occurred naturally, by really human beings/users, and not some SEO douche bag such as myself.
Target Anchor Text Is Still Important
At the end of the day, though, you’ll never rank on a competitive search term unless you have a decent amount of links with targeted anchor text. So as much as you shake up your link building, you still have to make sure that you get a certain amount of links with that targeted anchor text.
But you have to be careful not to raise any flags with Google, so this is where the long-tail keyword link building comes in. What this means is building links that include your targeted keyword, but other words, as well. For example, if you’re trying to rank for “marketing blog,” instead of just building all “marketing blog” links, you should also consider anchor texts such as “check out this marketing blog” or “marketing blog by so-and-so”, etc…
Social Links Are Key
Social media has become such a big part of the web it’s nearly impossible to rank well on competitive terms if you don’t have any social presence. Basically, social media is an important part of SEO because Google trusts links created by actual users/human beings, and social links are integral to creating an organic linkscape.
The strongest social links come from social news sites, such as Digg and Reddit, and you build them by developing engaging content and pushing it viral. Of course, these links feature anchor text that is completely untargeted (e.g. the page’s or post’s title), and are sometimes nofollow or redirects instead of direct links. But when one of your pages amasses hundreds of them by going viral, Google takes that as a strong indication that the page in question is, indeed, popular and relevant.
So while these virally popular pages won’t be your product pages, they’ll amass PageRank which will boost the overall trust and authority of your domain, and help all of your pages rank better.
People Are Still Buying Links
For years now, Google has warned against buying links. Well guess what: a lot of SEOs still rely on purchasing links.
I’ve always known SEOs who buy links to pad their linkscape or quickly amass targeted anchor text links. But working the rooms and parties at SES Chicago, it was hard to ignore that link buying seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
In fact, the more I talked tactics with people, the question wasn’t whether or not they buy links, but rather, how they go about it in a way so that they don’t get caught by Google.
People Are Still Selling Links
And, of course, wherever there’s demand, someone is willing to step in and fill it with supply. The reality in the SEO world is that there seems to be no shortage of paid link networks.
On the one hand, you have the publicly open networks such as Linkworth, Blogvertise, Sponsored Reviews, and Text Link Ads. These are all networks you can sign up for online and start buying links right away.
On the other hand, you have the more savvy SEOs operating completely private networks. These are networks of sites that are controlled by or have partnership arrangements with SEO shops, and sell targeted anchor text links on both new and old pages.
While the public networks tend to be cheaper, most of their sites get flagged by Google pretty quickly. With the private networks, you’ll pay through your nose, but they’re more tactfully managed, meaning that their sites are much less likely to get flagged.
The point is that a lot of folks are still selling links, and making some big money off of it.
SEO and Snake Oil
SEO still gets a lot of flack in some circles. Say what you will, though, without SEO, you’ll never rank well on competitive terms. And while, in some respects, SEO’s gotten more sophisticated, in other respects, it’s just as black hat as it was 5 years ago.
On the one hand, social media has become a big part of SEO and Google has gotten very efficient at sniffing out those who game their SERPs. On the other hand, there’s still no shortage of people that sell and buy links.
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