There are so many people complaining about the death of SEO these days I have begun to think believe very few people ever tried to practice it in the first place. The complainers keep blaming Google for “changing the rules” (that rarely happens) and argue over and over again that “link building is dead” (nothing could be farther from the truth). And the Professional Complainers keep banging their drums about the failure of (their attempts at) “Build it and They Will Come” (still works like magic when you build something worth coming to).
The quality of SEO advice across the Web has always been very poor. Either you’re looking for help in spammer forums and blogs where they are constantly selling reams of cheap links and Website scraping tools or you’re looking for help in formulaic SEO forums and blogs where they are constantly selling or recommending reams of tools that “help you write”, “scale your content”, “organize your workflow”, etc.
People have made search engine optimization unnecessarily difficult and complex by creating a minefield of easily avoidable mistakes. And you rationalize those mistakes by pointing to your favorite SEO bloggers and exclaiming, “SEE? The SEO bloggers are complaining too!”
Here’s a hint: If your favorite SEO blogger is complaining he AIN’T doing search engine optimization.
And another hint: If your favorite SEO blogger is blaming Google he AIN’T doing search engine optimization.
Search Engine Rules Rarely Change
One of the most common excuses for avoidable failure in the search marketing industry today is that “Google keeps changing the rules”. Funny, but I haven’t seen anyone point to any rules that were actually changed.
Oh, let’s take a look at “guest blogging (for links)” because that is where a lot of this “Google keeps changing the rules” nonsense started. There are two kinds of guest blogging:
- You create valuable content for someone else’s blog
- You embed links to your (client’s) site on someone else’s blog
There is no in-between. There is no third option. Anyone who tries to explain why there IS a third option isn’t worth paying attention to.
You can still guest blog for links but, frankly, you were so bad at it to begin with all you did was incur search engine penalty after search engine penalty. If we assume for the sake of discussion that you can STILL use “guest posts for links”, why should anyone bother explaining how that can still work? You’ll just go out and screw it up again.
The reason your “guest blogging for links” failed was that you didn’t understand search engine optimization in the first place. You believed the lies that “it’s all about links” and “links are the most important factors in the algorithms”.
Those of you who are still reading at this point need to understand that links will always play an important role in search engine optimization but SEO has always been and will always be a “holistic process”. It’s NOT optimization if you’re just doing one thing.
And — damn it, Jim — REAL link building isn’t easy. With so many people trying to build links you have to understand that most of them were going to screw it up. You cannot scale up search-acceptable link building no matter how many people want to sell you that dream.
So when you build links for search, don’t even hope for scale. Scale doesn’t work anyway when you have reached the top.
The search engines have always forbidden the creation of self-promotional manipulative links. ALWAYS. That’s not a new rule.
ENFORCEMENT CHANGES, NOT RULES.
Enforcement isn’t easy but every time someone on a popular blog tells you how to build links in 3, 5, 7, or 10 “easy steps” it’s only a matter of time before enforcement adds another notch to its belt.
If you’re going to build links you cannot build them the way people are telling you to build them on the open Web. You might as well be arranging drug deals in front of the local police department’s narcotics team — and while you’re doing that, use a bullhorn to get their attention so that they can follow all the details of your drug dealing.
Build It Right and They Will ALWAYS Come
Most people can’t build it right — not the first time. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. But what you SHOULD be ashamed of is the fact that you believed you could build a Website using formulas you found on blogs and forums.
Formulaic Web marketing produces results for A FEW PEOPLE. Never has formulaic Web marketing worked for everyone. The offline sales world works exactly the same way. Every company with a big sales force is always holding “recognition” above your head, trotting out star performers to explain to you how they made Top Salesperson of the Year.
I have spoken with a LOT of these “star performers”. Their stories are never exactly the same as what you hear when they are being marched around the stage to inspire the troops. A lot of them get lucky. Pure dumb luck can bring a multi-million dollar deal into your lap and it’s only going to happen once for most “star performers”.
A small percentage of star performers really do tough it out, work the numbers, and knock on a lot of doors. But they have the looks and the personalities that win people over. I’ve watched them “train” people in these real-world marketing tactics and none of their proteges ever matched their success. On those rare occasions where a protege does exceed the mentor’s success there is something else going on — something inside the protege, a burning desire to succeed.
Real sales success comes from within. You believe in what you’re doing, what you’re selling, and that belief radiates from you toward every prospect. Those who buy enjoy your love. Those who don’t buy miss out. It’s their loss, not yours.
On the Web if you want “Built it and they will come” to work then you have to build a Website that truly is someone else’s loss if they don’t come. It’s never about what other people can do for you. It’s always about what you do for other people.
There is no formula in the Web marketing blogosphere that will teach you how to build what people will come to. All the great keyword discovery tools you love do NOT help with “build it and they will come”. You don’t need keywords for “build it and they will come”. That works in spite of keyword targeting.
So if you’re not building according to what someone else’s blueprint specifies so that people will come to your site, what ARE you supposed to build? A brand value proposition.
Link Building is Dead? No
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, a LOT of Websites have earned penalties because of the artificial links they created for themselves. And the truth is that people will continue to build those kinds of links regardless of what the search engines do.
Your first mistake in this endeavor was to believe that any link is “search engine friendly”. All links are search engine friendly, or none of them are. But what you should have been doing was looking for links that were “search engine acceptable”. Not too many of those kinds of links fall into the “build it yourself (or hire someone else to do it)” category.
You can still buy link acquisition help. You can still buy links.
In fact, there are many kinds of search engine acceptable links that you can buy. They all just use “rel=’nofollow'”. Of course, you’re more interested in rankings than you are in traffic so why throw good money at good traffic, right?
The various approaches that popular SEO blogs have mandated for link building have helped burn a bad reputation for search engine optimization into the minds of hundreds of thousands of Website owners anyway. All your constant outreach has convinced a large segment of the public that anyone associated with search engine optimization is a spammer.
So now everyone is talking about “relationships”. That’s the new buzzword. You don’t need to build links if you build relationships instead. But in all honesty you’re still building links because you only want those relationships for links, right?
And then there is “Content Marketing”. People continue to trot this ugly pig out and put lots of lipstick on it, pretending that it somehow is something other than “link building”. But if you’re measuring the success of your content marketing by looking at the number of links associated with it, you’re just building links, aren’t you?
Private blog networks are all the rage with Internet marketers these days. And there is some value in building a private blog network. But most of the private blog networks I see look really, really bad. They aren’t creating value for people, trying to attract visitors. They exist for links.
In short, because you’re trying to avoid the expression “link building” all your link building is just setting you up for more failure. Hence, some people are now convinced that link building is dead. And it’s not, but people need scapegoats and so link building is yet another scapegoat for people who don’t know how to market on the Web.
Why should a link exist on any Website? The only correct answer is “to get someone to another page”. Search engines coopted links for their algorithms and, frankly, that is THEIR problem, not mine.
I continue to build links to this day. I’m not about to stop just because other people are afraid of their own bad marketing experience.
Every Step-by-Step Guide Kills Another Website
Whenever I see a marketing blog post that explains in meticulous detail how someone brought in millions of visitors I know that at least one person will try to follow that blueprint and in the process destroy the value of their Website.
These great blueprints are born of experimentation, failure, and resilience. People tried something and made adjustments when necessary. It’s okay to borrow other people’s ideas but to follow in their footsteps is a formula for disaster. The SEO forums are packed with people who followed formulas, enjoyed great success, and then were taken down by powerful search engine updates.
The formula creates a footprint. You step in that footprint and you’re asking the search engine to slap you down (again).
It doesn’t matter what your Website is about. It doesn’t matter what your business is. If you don’t have a unique brand proposition you’re playing churn-and-burn SEO because you are chasing keywords and trying to duplicate someone else’s success.
You can buy traffic and you can build traffic but sooner or later your lack of distinction will be crushed and then you will blame Google for trying to destroy innovation, small business, SEO, and your grandmother’s retirement.
When you stop trying to replicate everyone else’s claimed success you’ll set yourself on the path to your own long-term success. And when you get there, whether you built links or not, whether you depended on search engines or not, you’ll know that it worked because you built something people value.
Search engine optimization always has been and always will be about creating useful, helpful, distinctive content and showing search engines how to get to it and how it is organized it. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else.
Read More about Search Engine Optimization
How Long Does It Take SEO To Work?
Outbound Links: Why Use Forward Links for SEO?
On-Page Optimization SEO Checklist
White Hat Link Earning Techniques
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