Avoid Google SEO Penalties: Which Link Building Services Are Gold?

When focusing your online marketing efforts on link building, it’s quality, not quantity that provides the strong foundation from which other links can be built. Link building services are like panning for gold. The prospector must know gold when he sees it (sites with a high amount of traffic in a related industry are a great start). The prospector must know where to look (starting with the DMOZ and Yahoo directory) and what to do with the raw nuggets he finds (Submit the website, get listed in the directory or email the webmaster) in order to make or request a valuable one-link that will catch the eye of search engines.

There are 3 parts to the gold standard of link building.

1. 1. Link building services that deal in multiple reciprocal links are ‘fools’ gold. Most back links that you pay for have little or no value. There’s a myth among marketers that “more is better” but many back links can actually undermine your site’s ranking. Most people believe the following is true:

“Buying back links is an easy and quick way to the top. It is expensive, but you will get a high Page Rank. You will not spend the many hours of dull link building work” – This is entirely false.

Firstly, Page Rank is an unreliable indicator of a pages value. If you are a PR1 then, in theory, aiming to link with sites that have a higher PR is wise, but it isn’t a one way path to the top. Google openly admits they ‘play’ with the data and it is ‘inaccurate’. Secondly, buying links is a big No! Google is quite rightly rejecting the practice of buying links to enhance your website. Google engineers monitor the top ranking sites for competitive keywords and if they slightly suspect link buying has been involved in your position, you can be penalised, even banned.

This, however, does not mean that you cannot buy the services that help create the most valuable links of all; one-way theme links.

What is a one-way theme link?

Theme equals ‘content’ which includes written content, video, audio anything that adds considerable value to the search results. One-way = your link embedded within quality content/information, then publishing on the web for the general public to access.

The pitfall is that many website owners get swept along with buying link building packages at the lowest price and this puts your website into an inescapable trap. The easier the link is to create, the lower the cost, the lower the cost the lower the value. Google isn’t going to make it easy for you to get links. They want to see you offer ‘value’ along with your links. Your website will probably get blacklisted by Google if you follow the cheapest option. The ‘fools gold’ of link building services is having many thousands of links originating from the same place or from worthless reciprocal link farms or from links created with other website that have no value in Google’s eyes. Google frowns on the practice of multiple back links pointing to a site from just one source. Particularly if the originating site has poor content value, loads of links and a low Page Rank. This is a characteristic failing of ‘link exchanges’ aka ‘Link Farms’ and their link building packages. Google spots these a mile away and will penalise their ranking. Reciprocal links are worthless now as a strategic move, however, tactically they still have their value, it’s better to have a reciprocal link with a high traffic site, then to have nothing at all. So simply linking up to a link exchange script is not only ineffective but also is damaging to your site, particularly if you don’t take the time to assess the value of each site before offering your link to a webmaster or blog owner.

1. 2. Link building services that give you only ‘natural’ links are solid gold. What makes a good natural link may sounds obscure at first, but knowledge of your marketplace, in particular, your customer, helps identifying keywords to include on your website, also known as, on-page optimisation. They keywords provide considerable insight into this industry terminology and allow you to cater your content to the needs and desires of your market. To create the most valuable of links – theme link – involves using a combination of entertaining and informative copywriting (just like this) that solves and quenchers the target markets thirst for knowledge and integrating these keywords – this should be done for each page of your website. Only after that process is completed do you start building links to your website.

Sites that widely promote the trading of links should be avoided at all costs. Google looks for authentic, natural and organically developed back links. Sooner rather than later they will detect artificial links such as those that are openly traded. The obvious link trading networks are easy link partners for first-timers due to the structure of these networks they are wide open to discovery by Google engineers, once the engineers find these sites, they find you links as well, follow them and thus all parties involved are affected, even disqualified by Google.

1. 3. Link building services that give you permanent back links are worth their weight in gold. Back links are critical to SEO and traffic generation. If you are going to invest into a one-way link building campaign, you must get a return on that investment. Steer well clear of subscription back links that take a monthly or quarterly fee for maintaining your ranking. Only ever pay for permanent one-way links. There is only one thing worse than not having a low search engine standing and that is losing your previously good search engine standing.

If you think that getting a solid gold link building service is just a matter of getting out your cheque book, think again. You need to make sure your website is optimised with the correct keywords, and then you embark on a one-way theme-link building campaign. That’s it! The fools gold links, reciprocal links and buying links, can seriously damage your websites marketing efforts. As with all things in life, it is more about quality rather than quantity that customers appreciate and Google rewards you for focusing on.

Is Transparency The Backbone To Effective Link Building Services?

An entrepreneur would never consider opening a business without advertising or using word of mouth to promote the business.  Starting an SEO campaign without using link building services is very similar to the prior example.  The site may offer the perfect solution to a business need, yet may not be profitable if no one visits the site.

What is link building?

Before delving into the benefits of link building services, it is important to understand what link building services actually provider to the purchaser.  Link building is creating ties to a website, like a popularity contest, it’s about the number of votes, links, particularly one-way links you have compared to your competition, but more importantly, these votes or links must be coming from other valuable websites related to your topic and industry. Ultimately, a consistent approach to developing quality one-way links is going to plays a critical role in your websites ranking.  Google changed the rules in a big way back in 2003 and made one-way theme links, those links that are wrapped in valuable and relevant content, the most important links in determining a websites ranking for a particular keyword.

• If your link (web address) is on another website that is a leading authority website in your industry, then you must be doing something right and the search engines reward you for it but granting you attributing your link towards your ranking more = higher ranking.
• Each link delivers more traffic to your website, more visitors + good content = visitor into customer.
• It’s important that you use an anchor link format which looks like this:

Anchor Link Text Format

This anchor link provides the search engines with all information needed to determine the links value by highlighting the keyword(s) you want to be positioned for.

How to get these valuable links?

There are many different ways that this can be achieved such as through blogs, social media, virtual correspondence (newsletters), online articles and any other form of content that has a anchor link embedded in it and subsequently submitted to another valuable website.  This will require time and dedication to creating targeted, interesting and engaging content and then to submit it. This is where a link building company becomes quite valuable.

The whole purpose of using link building services is to firstly have each page of the website optimised for the best keyword(s), secondly it’s to outsource the laborious task of systemically creating the links, which can often be in the 000’s for the highly competitive terms.  The closer to the top of the search results you are for your keywords the better the return on investment, but that depends on the keywords of course eg. ‘Fast loan’ vs ‘free cat book’ which keyphrase would you prefer to be ranked number one for?  The phrases ‘fast loan’ would be more profitable and thus more competitive. More visitors will result in more business if the keywords are right.  It is that simple.  But it’s not…

You need to make sure that the page converts visitors into customers. But you need to get the visitors before you can focus on conversion. So focus on getting the links and traffic first then begin to start testing to maximize the conversion rates. Easy still, outsource the traffic and link building work and focus on getting the website perfect for when your visitors arrive.

Other link building methods, important to know, not to focus on

Reciprocal link building is a share system, where one web page displays the link to another website and vice versa.  There is normally an agreement between the two website owners, where each page shares the other’s link.  This once had a lot of value, but that changed in 2003. Yet, reciprocal links still have their place, particularly if you cannot get a one-way link for a top website, it can sometimes be a way of getting the process started by offering a reciprocal link exchange.

A one–way link is a link from one website to another without any reciprocation.  One-way link building can be considered more valuable than reciprocal, because there is no known reason for the link.  This leaves the search engine guessing why there is a source for another link on a different site.

There are many advantages to link building.  The process and strategy of an advertising campaign through quality link building services can be compared to the domino effect.  A quality link building campaign will have your indexed frequently by the search engines, which will improve the ranking of your pages for competitive keywords.  The higher the rank a website has in search engines, the more visitors it will attract.

SEO companies are springing up in mass numbers, as the need for a higher ranking and the effects of it can make or break a business.  It is important to research a link building company, before the decision is made to invest as little as £200, and as much as up to £2000 (or more) into SEO and/or link building services.  One sure sign that the link building company is reputable is through prior work.  Obtain samples that are currently on the web, for the proof is undeniable.
Be wary of a link building company that does not offer a phone number or a means to instant message.  The means of communication will be vital if there is a problem or if a correction needs to be made.  If a company does not communicate or respond instantly prior to the work, it may reflect the response time with the work.

There are many link building services, and it is important to find the one that is most suited for the needs of the business whether those needs are local, national or international.  More isn’t always better when it comes to a link building system; rather, higher is most important.

Has Google finally released the secret to improving your rankings?

It was never really a secret that good links to your website increase its ranking on Google and other search engines. In this article, we explain some of the major differences between the different link building services available, and go through some of the best strategies for building your website’s traffic.

It was far from a secret all along, but a few weeks ago Google formally admitted for the first time that “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages”. In the “Ranking” section of the “Webmasters/Site owners Help” section of Google.com, Google did what it rarely does and acknowledged that there are legitimate ways of deliberately increasing your website’s ranking. This means that if you own a website, one-way link building is the best, most highly acknowledged way to build your site’s traffic and corresponding revenue.

The science of effective link building is not just to place your link on websites with a high Page-Rank, but to persuade the owner’s of that site that they want your link to be there long-term. There are many link building services that artificially increase your Google Rank (Page Rank) for a short period of time by buying links on websites, or by spamming popular forums, blogs and sites with user-generated content such as Wikipedia, these are risky systems that could make the Google engineers quite upset and your ranking moves down accordingly.

A good link builder knows how to submit your content and links to the right directories, social bookmarks, article hubs and other high PR sites where it will be wanted, read and valued. This sometimes involves couching your link in desirable, keyword-rich content such as expert articles and blogs.  Ultimately, the best link building services will either find high PR websites that want to feature your content, thus your link, or will spend time and money creating content that will make your link look more desirable.

When creating desire around you link, it’s important that you use content. In other words, information that holds considerable value to the reader, if you do this then Google will be happy to count your links. Now, there are several levels of content out there from awful SEO content that is grammatically incorrect and to the point of being unreadable. Then at the other end of the spectrum is the best of the best content. This is the type of content you need, not only get the link but to create longevity and readability in an informative and compelling way so both the Search Engines and your readers are satisfied.

Aim to create yourself, or to outsource to writers that understand and appreciate language. Someone that takes the time to research then write in a conversational style that addresses current industry issues and topics. Most of all, the reader must feel that the content solves a persistent or urgent problem or enhances their life or business in some way, this is valuable content, this is your first priority, integrating SEO tactics are a close second.

How Google Treats Links

This is, perhaps, the key to all effective link building, and the major difference between White Hat and Black Hat link building services: the good guys make your link valuable and therefore welcome wherever it goes, the bad guys will propagate your link at the expense of readers and other websites that do play by the rules. This is why SEM “techniques” such as three-way linking, link-farming and FFA’s are bad: not because they don’t work (sometimes they do), not because Google might push your site down the rankings if it is involved with too many of these unsavoury tactics, but because it involves improving your Page-Rank at the expense of others. At the end of the day Google wants to deliver its customer extraordinary results every time someone makes a query, if those queries are rubbish because some webmasters have focused on underhand tactics and not on quality content, then Google loses face and they cannot let their search engine be ruined by people playing tricks, so they add in some many rules so of which we know about and others which we will never know, to keep everyone guessing and focusing on what is so important to any search engine – valuable – relevant to search queries – content. If you play by this rule, Google says okay you’re a good guy, you can have the link.

Page Rank Is Best Considered an Unreliable Metric

Three-way linking, for instance, is a form of reciprocal linking that involves linking Site A > Site B> Site C > Site A, so that people with three websites can mutually improve each others PageRank (PR) without having to convince anyone else of their websites’ worth. This way everyone suffers except the linkers: those searching for relevant sites will find it harder to find what they’re looking for because websites are not being ranked according to the quality of their content, but according to the amount of friends that the web-master has. This is why Google opposes it and penalises those sites which are involved… and why any effective link building services don’t use it.

On Page Rank it’s important to know that it is a tool for measuring value and doesn’t necessarily mean that because your website has a PR7 that other websites with a lower PR will not outrank you. This is simply not the case. PR is used to help Google more than consumers or marketers as an indicator rather than an algorithm that needs to be followed. Matt Cutts, Google’s chief engineer of web spam, confirmed in June 2008 that they do return random data on PR metrics which is often over 3 months old anyway, the point is don’t get fixated on your PR, while submitting links to those that do have a higher PR then yours is a reasonable strategy, it isn’t a reliable metric only a measure.

Overall, when choosing a provider for link building services, the key is to find out where they place your link and how they make it desirable. The art of link building is wrapped up in an SEM provider’s ability to make other people want your link, and by using a team of high-quality writers and bloggers, to wrap your link in content that catches peoples’ attention and wins their praise.

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