Link building is not dead but has changed

Link building is not dead but has changed

Google’s “Penguin” update has changed the basics of search engine marketing for small businesses. Links still count, but the quality of them is more important than ever. Some sources of link building are even now irrelevant.

Does that mean link building as a marketing technique for your business is dead? No, it doesn’t mean that at all. Links will always be important, but the quality of those links will count. As well as the overall quality of your website. Success will come down to your ability to market your products: through social networks, multiple sales channels, and quality links. Build a brand to succeed.

Link Building Post Penguin

Google’s update has effectively eliminated the following methods of building links for your shopping cart website:

  • Creating “Forum” Profiles with your signature on them – these links are not being counted, so you’re wasting your time creating them
  • Creating low quality articles in article directories for the sole purpose of getting links back to your site
  • Creating a multitude of “one page” sites with low quality or duplicate content and then linking them all back to your site. Then getting social bookmarking links using social bookmarking tools to build links to those sites. This technique was always in the grey area before the update and is known as a “link pyramid”.
  • Link exchanges with non relevant sites.
  • Blog comments on non relevant sites, with identical and non-relevant comments that don’t even show that the person has read the blog (e.g. “thank you for your interesting post”)
  • Using automated link tools like “Scrapebox”.

Authority matters

The quality of your links will matter in the long run, so what will be important is building links from high quality websites with strong reputations – just like recommendations from high quality businesses or authorities in a particular area are particularly important in the offline world. It’s better to have

So where can you build links? Here are just a few examples:

  • Quality Directories – the ones where people actually go
  • Social bookmarks – if your customers will recommend you/bookmark your site and share them with their own networks
  • Related industries and websites – it’s no longer the “PageRank” of the link that matters, it’s the relevancy and the quality. Don’t worry whether your links are “follow” or “nofollow” – in fact, a mix of them can help you
  • Guest posts on blogs (for relevant or related sites). The higher the reputation of the blog the better for you
  • Interviews with journalists in online newspapers (the more reputable they are the better).

When you do build links, don’t have them all on the same word in the same sentence – you need them to be natural and varied. Experts seem to agree that no more than 2/3 of your links should be on one key phrase as it’s very unnatural that everyone who links to you would do so on exactly the same phrase.

What else could you be doing to get exposure?

  • Posting on YouTube – videos relevant to your business (not duplicates of other’s videos, however)
  • Participating in forums and social networks – not just reading or being silent
  • Offline advertising – forums, event sponsorships
  • Using Twitter – add hash tags to your tweets for example to build visibility to particular groups
  • Facebook and Google+ profile pages
  • Create content relevant to your online shop that people will want to link to.

Overall, you have to forget about having search engines as your only marketing strategy. It’s still important to rank in the search engines, but you won’t rank without reputation in the long run, and you won’t gain reputation with a “paint by numbers” link building strategy.

Rethink your whole marketing strategy for your shop and create a cohesive strategy that includes quality link building and a number of sources for generating traffic to your site.

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Ozcart has been in business since 2006 and is an online, hosted shopping cart that you can use for your current or new online store. We offer so many features for the same low price. In fact, we are addicted to adding new ones to ensure that we remain one of the best choices for a shopping cart. https://ozcart.com

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