Online Reputation Management, SEO, Web Development
Don’t spam links to your company site!
By | Published: October 28, 2010
We signed on a client this week for a small engagement that will ultimately lead to a huge one once we prove this “web placement stuff works”. We’ve all heard that ranking a site in Google is possible, but many decision makers aren’t convinced until they see it. With all of the fly-by-night SEO companies out there, I can’t say I blame them. A good chunk of our business is replacing the SEO companies that charge a lot but never seem to deliver actual results.
In any event, I noticed something that is worth sharing while researching their keywords. A week prior to our meeting, someone affiliated with the company started link building on their own. Now normally this is a GREAT thing. We love it when clients are educated in the ways of web placement as it makes our conversations lively, fun, and ultimately more productive. Unfortunately they didn’t put in place a proper linking strategy before they began.
These links were of the obviously spammy type (fake profiles, posts, etc. on a major web site) and they linked directly to the client’s site. This is a big no-no because it can harm the TrustRank of the site and ultimately lead to a decrease in the search results. For the best and safest results, links directly to the target site should (almost) always be of high quality.
** Cue Godfather Music **
We can apply a couple of lessons gleaned from The Godfather.
1. Never poop where you eat. If you are going to do some grey/black hat stuff, it should be done far away from your company/money site. You don’t want to put your site at risk for a spam report, Google blacklist, or other bad thing.
2. Launder your links. Just like the gangsters launder any shady money they earn, you need to launder your shady links to clean them up before they hit your site. This can be done in any number of ways and we’ll cover some of them in future posts.
** End Music **
The good news for our client is that they haven’t had a chance to build enough links to make a difference but they have built enough to realize how time consuming to perform. We’ll get them ranked here in the next week or two and have another great success story.
Don’t spam links to your company site!
We signed on a client this week for a small engagement that will ultimately lead to a huge one once we prove this “web placement stuff works”. We’ve all heard that ranking a site in Google is possible, but many decision makers aren’t convinced until they see it. With all of the fly-by-night SEO companies out there, I can’t say I blame them. A good chunk of our business is replacing the SEO companies that charge a lot but never seem to deliver actual results.
In any event, I noticed something that is worth sharing while researching their keywords. A week prior to our meeting, someone affiliated with the company started link building on their own. Now normally this is a GREAT thing. We love it when clients are educated in the ways of web placement as it makes our conversations lively, fun, and ultimately more productive. Unfortunately they didn’t put in place a proper linking strategy before they began.
These links were of the obviously spammy type (fake profiles, posts, etc. on a major web site) and they linked directly to the client’s site. This is a big no-no because it can harm the TrustRank of the site and ultimately lead to a decrease in the search results. For the best and safest results, links directly to the target site should (almost) always be of high quality.
** Cue Godfather Music **
We can apply a couple of lessons gleaned from The Godfather.
1. Never poop where you eat. If you are going to do some grey/black hat stuff, it should be done far away from your company/money site. You don’t want to put your site at risk for a spam report, Google blacklist, or other bad thing.
2. Launder your links. Just like the gangsters launder any shady money they earn, you need to launder your shady links to clean them up before they hit your site. This can be done in any number of ways and we’ll cover some of them in future posts.
** End Music **
The good news for our client is that they haven’t had a chance to build enough links to make a difference but they have built enough to realize how time consuming to perform. We’ll get them ranked here in the next week or two and have another great success story.