SEO Blog

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Google generally have a soft spot for the big brands in their listings. Whether it is for product searches or terms related to the businesses themselves, more often than not a corporate big hitter will be at the top.

Now we can’t discredit SEO work entirely on these sites. If they’re a multi-national corporation then there’s a fair chance that they’ve got the marketing budget to employ a pretty decent team of search engine optimisation services. But what happens if they start buying up paid links, are involved in huge link farms, what then?
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The phrase ‘content is king’ often gets bandied around in SEO circles. Not without good reason either. It is pivotal in ensuring that search engines understand what you’re all about, it is a unique identifier and is a link enabler.

However, not all that far away from content is its close neighbour context.

Whilst content provides the bulk, context delivers the value. It is what will get search engines to take your site seriously and help deliver the rankings you deserve for the terms you are going after.
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You’re probably tired about reading how evil paid links are by now. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that they continue to work; however, criticisms against them rarely come with any explicit examples of the negative impact they can have.

Well, how about this one? Econsultancy yesterday highlighted the case of gourmetgiftbaskets.com, who offer exactly what their name suggests [see: The $4m Google penalty]. They were making huge profits and sitting comfortably in the top couple of places on Google for all of their primary terms. Unfortunately though one day all the rankings disappeared. No word of warning, no apparent reason why, the site just wasn’t visible any more.

The culprit? Paid links of course.
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Before starting out on this post, I would like to acknowledge that there are exceptions to this rule. Google’s algorithm isn’t perfect and sometimes bad sites do rank above those that offer value; not sure why but hey, it happens.

Anyway, if you want to rank higher for your selected keywords then you had better have a site that is better than your competitors. Search engines reward those sites that people enjoy using. They analyse content and visitor reaction (i.e. bounce rate, time on site etc.) and make informed decisions based on that data.

Of course you can attempt to manipulate that through excessive (blackhat?) SEO practices, like spamming comment boards, getting involved in link farms or exchanging cash for a few inbound gems, but ultimately you can’t blind Google to a bad site.
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It’s often said that the rich get richer whilst the poor, well you know the rest. The same though can be true online. Not necessarily in terms of finances, but the SEO work required to succeed.

When you’re down at the bottom you need to work hard to try and get to the top. However, if you have developed a strong brand identity, are sat at the top of search engines for your primary keywords, others might do the work for you.

You see, when you’re at the top you have instant visibility. People know who you are and are more likely to discuss your brand on their blogs and social media profiles, thus helping to promote your brand further. In amongst all of these mentions you may even find the occasional link too.
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A criticism levelled at SEO is that it is largely a simple activity that anybody can do. People don’t see the value in hiring a professional to do a job that can easily be done by any site owner. Of course, that isn’t entirely untrue.

Anybody can do SEO, I’ve certainly never knowingly suggested otherwise. Theoretically though most of us could, if we put our mind to it, play football, master nuclear physics or build a home from scratch. Unfortunately we wouldn’t be much good, certainly not at first.

Getting to grips with the basics might be easy. Learning to control a football, you might be able to work out what an atomic nuclei is and understand how to mix cement, but that won’t make an expert at any of these pursuits. The information to become an expert is out there, but you’re not going to learn it over night.
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In the SEO business we often go on about the importance of building your inbound links. Not without good reason admittedly. This is where you’ll get your PageRank, your site strength and help your website get ranked. But what’s the point in linking to a half-cocked website?

It is a difficult one though. There’s always a temptation to get your site on Google’s radar and get those first links set up; nothing wrong with that at all. But before you embark on a full blown link building odyssey, you need to get your house in order.
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So often you hear people saying that they’ve got some content, links and a reasonable site structure but still aren’t getting any decent rankings. You look a little deeper into their site and often you’ll find that their content comprises of a couple of sentences, they have a few generic links and the site is barely optimised.

Now that’s fine if you have no aspirations to get a ranking on Google. If you are happy to promote your site elsewhere and get dribs and drabs through search, then the bare minimum is probably alright. However, if you want to get to the first page of any search engine, you’re going to have to be a little more concerted in your efforts.
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It’s all well and good going out there and sourcing links, but you can’t then chase them all up to see which ones have fallen flat and which are going along nicely. It would take too long. So how can you quicken this process up?

Well, this is where your good friend Webmaster Tools comes in. As well as offering a way to submit your sitemap and troubleshooting issues with your internal links, it is a useful resource for measuring links coming. But why is this important?
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Unfortunately, building links for a site was never intended to be easy. Yes, you can sign up for directories, submit articles, press releases and hubs, but the glean any value from them takes time. There’s no avoiding that.

This isn’t entirely accidental. It is a product of links being ascribed a value, not only in SEO terms but financial ones too (although you could argue these two are permanently interlinked anyway). The pay off often comes by way of content, which invariably takes a fair amount of time to generate, regardless of the quality levels you employ.

If link building could be done in minutes, we’d all have sites with millions of links. This would slowly undermine the algorithms and force tighter scrutiny from search engines. Essentially, it’s probably best that those who are clever with their link building strategies are rewarded more than those who treat them as quick, disposable commodities.
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