Back to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO experts often agree to disagree on how to implement various strategies to earn higher search engine visibility for a client’s website. However, there is one tactic which is unanimously endorsed: the more high quality inbound links pointing to a website, the more likely the site will have a strong search ranking profile. Every so often, even the engineers at major search engines will go on the record to confirm this.

For the search engines to be confident in a domain, however, it is essential to have a link building strategy focused on quality, not quantity. Google, for example, uses its patented PageRank technology to automate the process of determining quality for every single page in its index. When a high-quality page links out to another page, the search engines consider this to be a vote of confidence for the receiving page — and thus the link passes authority from one page to the next. (Here’s Google’s explanation.)  With this knowledge in hand, a few outdated approaches to building links for SEO become apparent, including:

• Directory submission – As search engine optimization has become more competitive, the quality of directories has become an important consideration. A large majority of directory submissions are worth less than the time taken to submit… and some are insidious link farms. If a site shows up on one of these, it may actually harm its SEO potential.

• Reciprocal links – There was a time when webmasters would exchange links, to help each other’s search engine placement. Then the search engines realized that websites with unrelated content were linking to each other — degrading the relevancy profile they’d worked so hard to create.  Thus the reciprocal link exchange hasn’t really helped the web in its mission to be the information medium of the future.  When search engine crawlers detect Link A pointing to Link B and vice versa, it will often dilute the potential benefits in inbound links (also called backlinks). One way links are a much better long-term solution.

The Web Liquid way.

Any website with sound business objectives is, first and foremost, about its content.  We believe that good content creates its own links, especially if its development mirrors the insights from the Keyword Research phase. Rather than spam a thousand webmasters asking for links, or commenting on blogs en masse, we prefer to allocate SEO resources toward the development of a sound content development process, with an editorial calendar which supports the brand’s strategy while keeping SEO objectives close at hand. Each new page generates added traction for search engine spiders. Once the content is indexed, if it is truly relevant and unique, people will find it and link to it.

Back to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Keyword Research
• HTML Markup Analysis
• Server & Domain Configuration
• Content & Link Strategy

About Paul Burani

Paul Burani - Partner, Web Liquid Group. Connect with me on Google+

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