All of us in the SEO industry read every word that comes out of Google very carefully. After all, they are the people who decide what site goes where in natural listings. However, anyone who reads such material can end up getting a bit frustrated as Google’s advice on SEO is “create great, compelling content and people will link to you!” That is great if you have just invented the next Facebook or Twitter or Groupon. Such sites never spent a £ on SEO – their sites are so great that people do indeed link to them and they organically acquire literally millions of links. But what if you’re a butcher in Birmingham or a locksmith in Manchester or a hairdresser in Cork? You run a professional business, always work hard to do a good job for your clients and want to get to the top of Google for your chosen key-phrases. No, you are not the best butcher in the world that is going to have a valuation of $6bn less than 2 years after commencing trading (Groupon has achieved this) but you sell great meat at reasonable prices and want some traffic. What to do? Whether Google likes it or not, it is very difficult for the vast majority of businesses to come up with such compelling content that they end up swimming in naturally acquired links. I guess Google could argue that if you have nothing unique to offer, then you don’t deserve links or a good rank but that seems quite harsh on the vast majority of hard working, high quality businesses out there who want to promote their businesses on Google. Such businesses have no alternative but to engage in “artificial link building.” A fellow SEO who commented recently on an SEO blog summed up the real world of SEO better than I ever could as follows:

“Write good content and people will link to you”

*sigh*

Cause if I do that, If I write good content, whilst my 100+ competitors link build, article market, forum comment, social bookmark, release viral videos, buy links, I’ll end up the very bottom of the pile, great content or not and really I am just as well taking my chances pulling off every sneaky trick in the book to get my site top because, everyone does it anyway and if I don’t what do have to lose?

So I don’t care if the magical Mr Cutts is telling me page rank sculpting don’t work no more. I’m gonna bloody do it anyway.

Know why? Natural organic link building only happens for those with million buck advertising campaigns.

It has been confirmed by Google and Bing as of yesterday (see a great article here) that they do now take links from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter into account when ranking websites. This has long been suspected by those of us in the SEO business as it makes total sense. The world of SEO is constantly developing but there is one constant that is as relevant today as it was a decade ago and that is that search engines’ profitability depend on being able to show the most relevant, “best” sites at the top of their results pages. If they fail to do this, people will stop using them in favour of some other information gathering tool – (social bookmarking websites for example).

But how does Google, which is after all a non human application, know what sites are good and what are bad? One of the main factors, as we all know, is links. The logic is simple: if someone sees fit to place a link on their site to your site, then your site must be somehow good. If a lot of people link to it, then Google pushes it further up the rankings as clearly this is a site that people like; if they didn’t, why would they link to it! So search engines want to put the sites that people like the most at the top and they rely heavily on links to establish what people like – it’s not a perfect metric but the best they have for now. With the prevalence of social media sites, it is a logical follow on that search engines will rely on links from such sites as if someone links to a site from their Facebook wall or their Twitter account, they again are giving Google a clear signal: I like this site. If enough people do this, then rankings improve.

The obvious question is the one that I get asked daily “well how do I get another site to link to me or get people to Tweet about my site???” The answer, so the theory goes, is create great and compelling content. If your site is brilliant, provides some really great information or sells a fantastic product then your site will attract links from people who like it. In theory, this is great and no doubt works for some sites. However, in reality, it’s not so simple. Take an example of a carpet cleaning company website. To do things “by the book” you might set up a section “how to clean any carpet stain” in which you provide practical advice on how to clean stains. Even better, you could have a live chat function whereby people could ask a query and have it answered in real time. Finally, you could even record your staff tackling nasty stains and upload these on a video log. The above would certainly constitute the best effort of a carpet cleaning company website to create “compelling content” and so once done. they could just sit back and watch their links and so their rank grow. Again, this is where theory diverges from reality. There is no doubt that having compelling content is great and will obviously help but it is not enough. Search engines rely on links and if people don’t link to your compelling content, your ranks won’t improve. So, even sites with compelling content need links to signal to search engines that this is a good site. Where the links come from will undoubtedly evolve to mirror how people use the net. More people use social media now so obviously search engines will check links from there. There will now be the usual rush to this form of linkbuilding which in turn will be met by search engines trying to determine what are genuine and what are “fake” links as goes on already. One thing is for sure and it’s that we’ll be in the thick of this new development staying right up to speed for our clients and delivering the results they need!

Should I  Outsource SEO / Linkbuilding to India?

Those who research the field of online marketing generally come across an offering from a low cost economy such as India, China and latterly the Philippines. The economics of outsourcing an activity as inherently time consuming as SEO are frankly undeniable. Companies offering SEO services from €5/£4/hr seem irresistible when compared with high cost competitors who, at that rate, would at best cover 30-40% of the salary of the person doing the work, not to mention adding a margin to include absorbed overhead and profit. So the question is “why would anyone do SEO in a high cost economy?”

Perhaps the main reason that companies choose to pay high cost SEO providers is a fear of the unknown or a perceived lack of accountability / expertise from low cost providers. Sure €5/£4/hr seems great but how do you know if they tell the truth about how many hours they spend on a campaign? How do you know if they are any good at what they do? If something goes wrong, will they simply disappear? The above fears can outweigh the cost advantages and outsourcing is avoided. To be honest, having dealt with many of our competitors on an anonymous basis to see how they do things when compared to us, the above fears are justified. Some providers in low cost economies are frankly bewilderingly incompetent. One Adwords “expert” was flummoxed when I asked him what an “Adgroup” was. This would be like a baker staring blank-faced back at you after asking him “so, how do you bake bread anway?”

I feel there are two things that make DPFOC stand out above our competitors. Firstly, our on the ground presence ensures we meet all clients in person and are here on the ground if any issues arise. Secondly, our commitment to lifelong learning. We are genuinely obsessed with research and ongoing learning to ensure we stay right up to speed. So, those who deal with us get developed economy business standards but emerging market pricing models.

If you are considering offshoring your SEO function but are wary of snake oil salesmen who promise the earth but deliver nothing, give me a call and I will be happy to talk to you and explain how we do things and show some results we are currently getting for competitive key-phrases.

Apologies if the above sounds like DPFOC’s equivalent of a party political broadcast – I know blog posts are supposed to be impartial!

My Rank in natural listings is now good – can I stop link building?

An interesting way to think about link building is that is like going to the gym. In January, the gym is full with new members all going to get fit for the New Year. By March, the majority are gone. Going to the gym, unfortunately, is not something that can be done for a couple of months, get great results and then stopped. Any results achieved by March will have disappeared by May if you stop going. Link building is quite similar – why? It is important to remember that you are not operating in a vacuum. Many people think, we will build links for a few months, get a good rank and then stop. However, your competitors are not sitting on their hands; they are link building as well. So if you build 100 good links and each of your competitors builds 200 good links over the same period, your position will actually deteriorate. Achieving good ranks for competitive key-phrases is hard won through a lot of time spent link building. If link building is stopped, those around you will continue and new sites will launch targeting the same key-phrases. Over time, existing sites as well as new ones will move past your website and traffic flows will dry up. In the world of health and fitness, there are no shortage of fly-by-night operators pedalling dodgy products “lose a stone in 2 weeks” “get ripped in 3 weeks” “five minute ab’s!”etc. The SEO industry is no different.  “Top of Google in 1 Week” “Dominate first page of Google in 3 weeks” etc etc. We make no such claims and don’t sell one off link building packages. If we were a gym, our slogan would be “the gym is for life, not just for January!” Our approach is to continually and steadily build a strong body of links that, over time, will achieve great results. Those who form long term partnerships with us enjoy great ranks across a large range of key-phrases, steady traffic flows to their websites and enjoy the fantastic return on investment that can be achieved online.

For more on link building please contact me or any of the team here and we will be delighted to help.