Whether it’s these little updates, our regular local MeetUps or our industry leading SearchLove conferences, #DistilledLive covers all our live and interactive content. Before Christmas, Will Critchlow talked you through some of the latest industry news to help keep you abreast of what’s been going on in the search world.
To kick off the New Year, Distilled London’s SEO consultants, Phil Nottingham, Hannah Smith and Craig Bradford talk us through where they think link building is heading in 2013?
In this next DistilledLive edition, we take a look at the following ideas:
- Improve your rankings; earn those links!
Thanks to the introduction of Google’s constantly updated algorithms, it’s certainly becoming harder and harder to rank well for poor links and content. How can we work to earn links rather than placed links and weak scaling strategies?
- How should companies, both big and small, treat link building?
Historically, marketers know that integrated campaigns are exponentially more powerful but does the link building process change depending on the size of your company?
- Will infographics become discounted?
Last year in an interview, Matt Cutts did suggest that Google may discount the value of links generated by infographic. So, are they still relevant?
Thanks to all of your feedback surrounding the first, we’re making these a bi-weekly thing here at Distilled. We’ll be joined by Distilled Seattle in two weeks time on what Inbound Marketing really means? Will it replace the title of SEO?
As always, we’d love any feedback you may have – leave your comments below or send a tweet along to @distilled and, in the meantime, we’ll get planning the next!
Quality content will be king. It is encouraging to hear predictions that point towards an increased valued on high quality content. Cheap and poorly produced content will hopefully go the same way as link farms. Thanks for the insights!
I have to agree on this one. You’ve heard Cutts say it many times that content is king and sites with good content get rewarded. The only problem with this is that if you’re not doing any “unnatural” link building and just relying solely on good content, it could still take forever to build some kind of a following to where you’re getting natural links.
Great video, i agree about relevant quality content is King, but it is really hard to convince big brands and even more small brands, that they should produce killer content to attract new back links…
Yes, it is hard.
Unfortunately, though, I think giving that education and pitching for the investment is a major part of the role of an agency SEO. At Distilled, we won’t take on link building clients unless they are open to investing in content, PR or something else to form the core of the value proposition.
Good video. I think the term link building is largely a construct of the SEO industry and is an overhang from gaming algo’s. I think its far healthier to know your audience, know what they like, find out where they are and find complementary useful information they find useful or informative. Content is subjective. Product is also content.
Do any of the team think local link-building is worth the effort or do they think this will go the same way as directory linking?
Info graphics aren’t they just for links?
If the whole link thing was knocked on the head by Google, what would the team think a better way of ranking a site in SERPs?
There’s definitely still a place for claiming “low-hanging fruit” in link building – so local directories, links from existing business partners etc… but all of that ultimately hits the point of diminishing returns pretty quickly.
There’s only so many relevant directories out there and only so many possible local link partners. Eventually, if you really need to increase the quantity of backlinks, you’re going to have to invest in something tangible – be that product, PR, content or whatever.
@David Thanks for your questions
I’m not 100% certain I understand what you mean about local link building… I guess I’d fall back on relevancy – i.e. does it make sense for a business to get a link from this site? Is it in a related field? How does the link appear – is it in content?
Regarding whether or not infographics are ‘just for links’: I don’t think that’s an issue really – creating content to attract links isn’t ‘bad’ or ‘manipulative’. I don’t have a problem with infographics (or any other type of content for that matter) per se – provided the content is relevant to the site’s audience and is valuable (whether that value comes from them being useful, fun, interesting etc).
A ranking factor other than links? Honestly I don’t have a great answer for you.
I still think that links are probably the best indication of authority and trustworthiness of a site – particularly since Google have devalued a lot of the types of links they deem to be manipulative. I think as and when the search engines are better able to understand the relative authority of social signals they’ll come into play a little more strongly too.
Hannah & Phil
Thank you for your answers.
I suppose what I meant by link-building was really stuff like: Thomson Local, 118, Yelp, Qype &c, because for starter sites that seems all they’re going to get, but I do agree with Phil that down the line it’s going to have to be “product, PR, content or whatever”.
David,
Sure – there’s definitely still a place for getting local directory listings and citations for local search. I think that’s a somewhat different discipline than link building, as it ultimately wont help rankings much for non-local terms.
Why do people keep bringing up infographics, I really don’t see what the big deal is. Yes people are using them inappropriately but really do you think Google is actually going to adjust its algorithm to target infographics? I’ve heard this 5 times in the last month on different blogs and think we are all putting too much stock into that thought.
I think that was our point really.
The reason why people keep talking about it is that Matt Cutt’s mentioned in an interview that “infographics” were a tactic they may look to devalue. What he meant was that there are a lot of bad infographics submissions sites, essentially directories, that you can just go to and get a link.
Our point was that Google may devalue these kind of “placed link” sites, but the actual tactic of creating some data visualisation as link bait is not in anyway devalued.
I just rewatched this video, after tweeting it out last week, and I still love it. I think creating content valuable content is the sign of a business that is listening to it’s consumers and is flexible. Analytics can be used to show resistant companies where long-term traffic is coming from and hopefully incite them to invest in the creation of more! Great video (and charming accents)!
Hi. I am an SEO Consultant working in a small company in India. I would like to ask you that how really does creating great content help? Because I am working on a site which has reasonably great content but still doesn’t matter with the rankings. Also as you said, that submitting links to various directories won’t work but we have to attract others to put our link with our high PR. But how can we increase PR when you have just started out? If we don’t carry out these activities, then what should be an ideal strategy? Please help
Content will be the king. At this point, I wish I was an awesome writer. The way SEO and marketing is going on copyrighting skills will be an awesome skill to have on the list.