Not so Natural Link Building

So my main focus for this week has been working on link building for GetMyHomesValue and the keyword real estate leads (yes that right there is a shameless linking plug).

After reading MANY SEO blogs and tutorials of the experts...I'm pretty sure I'm a bit of a black- hatter. Ok, no, I won't say that. I think I will call myself a gray hatter. I'm pretty sure that I am engaging in link building tactics that true SEO experts may frown upon. But you know what? Tough shit. I'm new at this, I'm still learning a lot, and I'm sorry, but I just don't have the expertise yet to do all the little intricate things to get natural links (plus I don't have ultimate power over our websites, so anything I may want to seriously change, I need to get an okay from the boss men.)

So what have I been doing to build up links for the keyword real estate leads? Two words: articles and blogs (I guess technically that's 3 words, but whatever.)

So far, the easiest and most interesting way for me to build links and gain traffic is article writing. Why? Because I love to write. At heart, that's what I am: a writer. So it's nothing for me to take a few days, come up with like 5 different articles utilizing real estate leads and than submit them to a bunch of free directories. And you know what? It works. We've gotten more traffic on another site I wrote articles for, and even made some money b/c they used our affiliates. Will Google perhaps catch on to this and penalize me? I sure as heck hope not, b/c to be honest, I think as long as I'm providing useful information, there's no reason why I can benefit a bit by getting a back link. Maybe expert SEOers out there are cringing reading this but hey, when it comes to link building a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

I'm also working on getting in the real estate blog community - possibly getting in on some forums, reading blogs all over the place, responding when I feel I have something interesting to contribute. And if I just happen to link to GetMyHomesValue.com in the process, well, so much the better than. I wouldn't call it spamming, b/c shoot, I've got more knowledge to lay than half the people commenting, but yes, I wind up getting a link out of it. (And truthfully, when it comes to blogs, it's not the links so much as possibly getting the authors of the blogs to check out my sites - word of mouth advertising rocks too and if they like what they see, they just might blog about it).

Are these tactics considered black hat SEO? I don't think so, but again, I'm not the expert. I would say at the most they are "Light Gray Hat" SEO. Will they help GMHV? Will they hurt it? Only time will tell. (Crap, I REALLY hope they don't hurt it!)

I can only assume that as I gain more knowledge and confidence in the subject, I may be able to leave more questionable link building tactics behind. But we'll see. I'm a good girl, but I've always had a bit of a naughty streak lurking!!

Oh! One more thing. While checking out my normal SEO blogs this morning, I came across a GREAT post by Stuntdubl entitled The SEO Playbook: Welcome to the Rabbit Hole Alice - an AWESOME resource that you can tell he put a lot of time into. Lots of GREAT info and resources on link building. THANKS TODD!

How Do Paid Links Impact Google Search Results

Well, that seems to be the question over at Google. Matt Cutts has posted a couple blogs about paid links and how Google will be working on detecting them and figuring out what kind of impact they have on Google's search results. I'm not going to go into the details, just my take on things, so for more info, you probably want to shoot over to Matt's posts about reporting paid linking and hidden links.

I am in no way an expert on these things, but I like to think I'm getting more SEO savvy as I go, so this is my basic understanding of the situation:

First, the number of sites linking to yours have a large effect on you ranking in Google search results (but it's not the only factor by a long shot). So, if you can afford to buy a ton of links, congratulations, you'll rank #1 for your keyword(s). Now obviously, that sucks, b/c all it means is the sites with the most money will fill in the top ranks in Google. Google wants to make sure that doesn't happen (good for them) hence them requesting that webmasters NOT use paid links as backlinks, since technically, they're not "natural" links (no matter how relevant the site you're paying to link to you is to the subject of your own site). They would like paid links to be reported or for the linkers to put the nofollow attribute in the link coding so the spiders won't count it as a backlink. (You still with me here? I know the terminology gets old).

So if a webmaster does THAT, it means the paid link is strictly to get traffic to your site, not to help your ranking in Google search results. My honest opinion? That's bullshit (excuse my language). If I'm going to pay for a link, I want the best of both worlds. I want it to help my ranking AND get me more traffic and I don't care who knows it. There is nothing wrong with that tactic - when used in moderation.

It really always comes down to moderation. Should you purchase 1000 links to get ranking on Google? Probably not. Should you purchase several well researched, relevant links to both drive traffic and help out your rankings? Why not? You have every right to do it, and I don't see that as being "black hat" SEO tactics. Maybe a bit on the grayer side of white, but what of it?

Personally, I think Google is getting a little high handed - which doesn't surprise me, given the fact that the online community are the ones that gave them all the power. People - Google is not a monopoly - there are plenty of other search engines out there - not all are as good as Google, but they all have their features.

Don't get it twisted - I still love Google - it's the first SE I go to when I'm searching - I just don't want them to get too much of a God complex going on when it comes to the rules of determining what should and shouldn't be done when it comes to SEO and getting your website ranked on search engines.

Rather than try and do away with most paid links by getting them reported - why not figure out a way to separate those who use paid linking responsibly, from those who are just taking advantage. Granted, might be tougher than I make it sound, but Google's got a ton of great minds - I'm sure they can come up with something fair.

5 Important Tips on Link Building

I've learned some things about link-building the past few weeks. Most are probably fairly obvious, but it took a whole heap of research for me to come to these conclusions (there is a RIDICULOUS amount of SEO/linking tutorials/blogs/information out there).

Here's the top 5 tips that are in MY head when I'm thinking about building backlinks for my company websites.

1. Relevance, relevance, relevance.
If you're looking for pages to link to your site (case in point, I'm working on backlinks for GetMyHomesValue.com), look for websites that have to do with the topic of YOUR website. GMHV deals with nationwide real estate and homeowners needs. I'm not going to try and get us linked on some page about the Amazon rain forest. There's no connection between those 2 subjects. I would however, try and get on any site about real estate (that's not a competitor of ours) and even spread out into homeowner related sites, like home improvement, furnishing sites, etc. Also, since we're nationwide and deal with real estate, it might be a good idea to look into sites about individual areas, like a county's website or something - the type of site a homeowner who's thinking about moving may want to look at. It's important to have relevant pages linking to you, but don't be too narrow in your focus on what constitutes a "relevant" site.

2. Trustworthy pages.
This is just common sense. If a site it looks spammy and really low-budget, chances are Google isn't going to hold it in high esteem, and therefore a site like that linking to yours isn't going to do much to improve your rank (and might wind up hurting it). Search engines are smart now: they know not to put too much stock in big ol' link farms. Your best bet is to look for quality pages, with good content and preferably, the longer they've been around the better.

3. Education is power and the Government rocks!
Okay, by that I mean if you can get any .edu or .gov sites linking to you, you're going places! These sites are very trustworthy and many have been around for quite a while, so SEs like them. If .edu or .gov sites are linking to you, than that raises your importance in the eyes of the search engines.

4. Reciprocal linking...*shrug* eh
Sure, it's good to have a links/resources page on your site, and yes, doing the whole "I'll link you if you link me" thing is okay in some instances, but don't rely on this as your only key to getting links. The best kind of links come from not even having to ASK for them - if someone finds your site so useful that they just link there on your own, THAT is a great link for you. Reciprocal linking has it's uses, but should be used moderately. (I'm trying to overcome this one myself). Your site should be so useful people want to link for the sake of content, not just to get a link in return.

Which leads nicely into #5:

5. Content is key
If you don't have anything useful on your site, then really, what's the point? But if you've got unique or extremely useful content, that goes a long way towards just naturally acquiring links. Whether it's video, audio, a useful widget, great research, etc, your site HAS to have SOMETHING to offer it's visitors. Really. Or else the whole thing is just pointless.

Hope anyone reading this finds it useful - it helped for me to sum up up some key things I want to keep in mind when I'm trying to build up backlinks. There TONS of other things to think about and look into as well, but I think these 5 tips are a great baseline for where your head should be when thinking about getting links.

If anyone has anything to add, by all means, go for it!

Links, Links, Links

Well, I certainly hope this blog does not go the way of my diaries as I grew up - all dedicated to writing in it at first and then I just taper off. Nope, that won't happen, b/c I like to write just too much.

This week's big focus has been on link development. I've been looking through a whole lot of real estate and related websites trying to find good sites to link to GetMyHomesValue.com. I also plan on going over our resources page and totally overhauling it (if it's cool with the bossmen) b/c quite frankly, it's EXTREMELY eclectic.

Finding real estate links isn't as easy as I thought it was - first off, b/c there are a lot of crappy sites out there to go through and secondly because a whole lot of the good sites have partnerships going with competitors and have no interest in linking to GMHV. Which is a shame really, b/c besides providing agents with real estate leads and homeowners with home values, we've got tons of articles and advice for homeowners thinking of buying or selling a home.

There's only so much time I want to spend doing this - when it comes down to it, all the backlinks and articles in the world can only do so much to get us up there in the SERPs. It really just boils down to getting people talking about us - the blogosphere, the news entities, just anyone. And to do that we need to shake things up a bit. We need a fresh and innovative idea - or at least something wildly entertaining while being useful at the same time. We need...well, we need link bait is what it comes down to. (I use that term way too much now.)

I just want GMHV to come up with something totally remarkable that our competitors have yet to even consider. I don't know what that something is, but we've got some VERY creative minds over here, so I know if get the troops in on it, we could come up with something cool.

For some reason the term "widget" is resonating in my skull. Maybe that's a way to go...
I'll have to think on this one some more.

For now, I think I'll get back to looking at some potential link partners....