Matt, I am starting to believe that the entire Google Webspam Team lives in some kind of unicorn land. Why? Because you keep saying that quality content is the only thing I need to get natural links to my sites.
Sure, that might be true for some niche markets but not for the more competitive search terms or commercial verticals.
First of all, let me tell you that I like your videos on Youtube. They provide some good insights and value, but a lot of that stuff is extremely hard to apply in the real world (in some cases impossible).
People that own successful websites are well aware of how valuable their links are. They don’t want to link to you just because you got good content.
In fact, chances are that if you have better content than them they would like to see you disappear and buried in the serps so that they don’t have to compete with you. This leads to another very disturbing trend I recently talked about (Matt, you should read that post) which is the “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” bullshit.
In my opinion, it prevents good content from being seen.
Webmasters want to know “what’s in it for them?” before they link to you. The Adwords team is already aware of that concept but the search team seems to be running a little behind.
Matt, please explain how someone with limited resources or budget can get natural links from already established sites in a highly competitive market?
Nobody will link to it if they can’t find it. So how do you get it seen? Maybe if it ranked for key phrases that get traffic someone would link to it naturally, but wait…that’s a catch 22! Not to mention that they would also want something in return.
So I went to your Youtube channel and found one of your videos on how to get backlinks.
Let’s analyze it, shall we?
Tip #1 – Controversial Posts
I actually decided to try it out and it sort of worked, but it wouldn’t have worked if I didn’t pull some strings. It wouldn’t have worked if I didn’t already have some traffic, or if I didn’t post it on a forum, or if I didn’t do a press release about it. Also, I don’t think it would have worked if Aaron Wall didn’t tweet it to his followers.
So, I needed to get it seen first. I needed to get links from sites that picked up my press release, right?
By the way, it felt really good to uncork a good rant on Google since I got your penalty message in GWT.
Tip #2 – Participate in the community
You say that people will appreciate if you answer their question. Well, they might appreciate it by saying “thanks” and that’s about it.
I don’t see someone linking all of a sudden to my site about credit cards because I gave them a few useful tips. Plus in many niche markets people do not have websites that they could link to you from.
Tips #3 – Original Research
From my experience a good research requires money. I don’t know how a stay-at-home mom could provide credible research on something without investing money.
Maybe if you are blogging about technical topics and you can do it yourself, but in other markets it’s really not possible for a newbie blogger.
And even if I was able to get a research done how would I get it seen first so people can naturally link to me?
Tip #4 – Newsletter
I am not sure how running a newsletter can get you backlinks unless you talk about building websites and most of your subscribers are webmasters who also talk about building websites :O
Tip #5 – Social Media
To be honest, I am not a big fan of social media. Why should we create content for all the social networks? I think we should concentrate on creating content on our platforms instead. All this time we put into networking on social media platforms could be spent on creating quality content on our blogs. I think that would be much more productive.
Google tries hard to enter the social media scene and basically forces us to use it because of the SEO benefits that come with it. Pretty soon we won’t have time to create content for our sites if this social madness continues.
Tip #6 – List Posts
Those are pretty good for links, but I agree with you that they start to look cheesy after a while because everyone and their dog is doing it.
Again though, how are you going to get it seen so people link to it?
Tip #7 – Get a blog
Sorry Matt, but that’s not a really good tip. Just getting a blog doesn’t mean I am going to get links. Not a chance.
Tip #8 – “How To” tutorials
I think people like them, but once again you need to get them seen first before someone links to it.
By the way, if an established blogger sees your great tutorial, instead of linking to it, he might just hire someone to write a better one for his blog. I mean, why link to a competing site when I can have the content on mine?
Tip #9 – Service or product
That’s a pretty good tip if not the best one you gave in that video. WordPress plugins can generate a lot of backlinks, but only if you talk about marketing, blogging, SEO, and technical topics.
I don’t see some weight loss site releasing a WordPress plugin, do you? What could it be? Calorie counter for my WP dashboard? Maybe…
Tip #10 – Good site architecture
Most bloggers already have good site architecture, besides I don’t know how that’s going to influence growth of my natural links. People should link to great content not because the site looks pretty.
Ehow has good site architecture. I am not so sure about the quality of their content, but yet they seem to get a lot of links and rank well all over.
Tip #11 – Make videos
Video is good but if you don’t have existing traffic how other webmasters are going to find it? Just posting it on your blog doesn’t guarantee any backlinks. You need to get traffic to it.
Seriously though Matt, those tips are pretty good but they will work for already established authority blogs and sites. It’s easy for an authority site to post some content and get instant rankings on the front page of Google for their targeted keywords. When other webmasters find it they will most likely link to it even though the content might not be very good.
You know why? Because it feels safer (no, IT IS safer) to link to an authority site instead of some newbie blogger who might even have better content.
Matt, I have an idea! Why not participate in the community even more and start a website outside of SEO and technical topics to show us how you would build a really nice website that people share and link to?
But here is the catch…you can’t put your name on it. You could reveal the url on your blog after the site is already performing well, so that we can check your backlinks and analyze how you did it.
If you did that I would probably become your biggest fan!
There are no unicorns when it comes to serps, all I see are “knifes and guns” so to speak. You should come visit our side of town sometime to see for yourself.
Anyway, not sure what else there is to say. By the way, I’ve discovered that we actually have 2 things in common believe it or not. I read your post here on your blog and I got to tell you that my first computer was also Timex Sinclair (but the 2048 model)…I still remember calibrating my cassette recorder for 2 hours trying to load up my favorite Bruce Lee game. My second computer was also Commodore 64 with a good old floppy drive ;) What a coincidence huh?
Peace
Pawel Reszka is the founder of Affhelper.com. He writes about SEO, affiliate marketing, and anything related to making money online. You can find him on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
I would like to see him do a case study. That would be very interesting.
What value does my name have? :P
fake Matt Cutts? If I were you I wouldn’t be doing stuff like that. Not cool at all.
Well said, there’s a whole lot of SEO advice that wouldn’t wash in the real world.
But then we have to remember that Google isn’t looking to encourage people like us.
You say, “I don’t know how a stay-at-home mom could provide credible research on something without investing money.
Maybe if you are blogging about technical topics and you can do it yourself, but in other markets it’s really not possible for a newbie blogger.”
But in a purely natural internet all the content would be written by enthusiasts and experts, why would somebody want to blog about a subject they know nothing about?
We can hardly expect the search engines to make it easy for marketers to rank sites! :-)
“But in a purely natural internet all the content would be written by enthusiasts and experts, why would somebody want to blog about a subject they know nothing about?”
But marketers keep creating business blogs on a subject they have almost zero knowledge with article written by others or rewritten PLR content monetizing with affiliate links or AdSense ads. So the idea of a purely natural internet is kind of impractical. No disrespect.
Lol, none taken! That was sort of my point.
I have many sites in niches that I have no experience and little interest in, but I don’t expect to get automatic love from search engines.
Their job is to try to filter out sites like those, our job is to stay one step ahead :-)
Small sound of applause…
The social stuff is the worst. OK, now you need Facebook, G+, LinkedIn, oh and lets not forget Flickr photos, twitter and of course Pinterest.
Its hard enough for the average webmaster to keep a site going, now you have to post to all this and “participate” in the communities. Sure, right…. I have 35 hours a day to do that.
That was exactly one of the main points. We are becoming social media slaves.
Wonder why’s he sporting the bald look these days ? Did he lose a bet ?
I think most affiliate marketers are in a bit of a funk at the moment…nobody really knows what to do. I think having fewer sites and becoming an authority on certain topics seems to be the best way forward. Even if you don’t get the credit for your content all the time you will have a commitment to the niche and will probably win through in the end. It makes it hard to pick a niche if you are new and also I guess it limits the type of niches you can go into. How can you become an authority on pet insurance for instance unless you work in the industry ? And how can you produce heaps of content to prove that you are an authority ?
Great post! This should go viral haha!
Maybe what the fake Matt Cutts is saying in a roundabout way is that you are doing what he says in the video by creating a controversial or linkbait post. You are calling him out or at least trying to get him involved in your debate. If many people search for his name or hang on his words then they might be attracted to this post.
The original concept behind the Google search algorithm was that links were like voting. The more votes your page gets, the higher it ranks. Once webmasters realized the value in links, they became commodities. As the article points out, webmasters don’t wish to give out links unless there is something in for them and, also, will never give out a link to a competitor no matter how awesome its content is. Google can’t get beyond the value of link in serps, no matter what Matt and other googlers say.
Morning Pawel, again another great straight talking article, It’s good to see you sit and think about these things. that in itself is very helpful to guys like us.
I agree about social media, I find a lot of my day is lost trawling for or creating post for friends, fans and followers which leaves me little time to create quality blog posts.
Yes I will share peoples work (people like you, you are 1 of a small number I share fully as I believe you don’t give out the typical ‘yes man’ style bulls**t and you are prepared to speak out. I value that.) but if I find another site who I don’t know with good tutorials or articles I am more likely to do our own for our fans/friends and followers in order to preserve the brand. Sharing too much competition can dilute us and have people migrating to other blogs.
This comment like many others will, as you say, get a ‘thanks’ and that’s about it, often I find they go ignored. And to be honest, why shouldn’t they? when writing blog posts, articles, doing social media, writing newsletters etc etc, what time does a person have to answer every comment he gets on every post. You can’t so I accept that.
People like Google tell you to do this and that but as you pointed out with the ‘plugin link method’, it can only work for certain things. Imagine being told to fit radiators and a boiler to your house so that you are warm all year round, no matter how much money or time you spend, you will not be warm unless you were told it had to be hooked up to the gas. (obviously we all know that but if you didn’t well you know what I am saying)
We are spending a lot of time fitting boilers and radiators and still finding that our sites are cold. Or maybe it’s just me, maybe I am not yet that good lol.
Again a great article, I shall be Tweeting it on my friend.
Cheers speak soon.
Andi
“We are spending a lot of time fitting boilers and radiators and still finding that our sites are cold” I like that analogy. It’s like trying to heat up the moon with an electric heater from Walmart.
you have some great points and you said what ever people thought and said
Bu there are some points that i’m not with you
Such as Linking to other sites are not impossible and google with all their force are pushing us to do that because we are known as webmasters and if we want to be a great webmaster we have to share and use other’s opinion and show to our visitors they can trust us i think easiest way is that to link some GREAT sources
tnx sina for great notice . but i had said to you some days ago . linking to other blogs will be die with this project. you know the unnatural links will kill some blogs . we can generate fake links to other blogs to fall them down.
All these are theories.
i think Google understand differences between links.when Google understand grammatical mistakes i think links are easier too solve
when you are using black hat on link building ,you can say to google my competitor made this links ?
i’m not going to tell Google anything but Google will understand the differences
i’m sure when Google spam team were working on this project they knew sth like this might happen
no one did not do that
there is no evidence to prove that this things are possible
so they are all theory
After Matt is done making his non-seo or google-related incognito site, he’s going to hope that his content is not then harvested by the Big G in their latest attempt to provide ‘better answers’. http://www.google.com/competition/betteranswers.html
Hi Pawel,
I completely agree with you over the fact that many small businesses don’t have the clout nor the budget to actually compete for exceptionally competitive keywords on the SERPs. I am in the process of helping out a friend optimise her eCommerce website that she set up recently. She sells niche, vintage jewellery; and I know for a fact that she isn’t going to rank at the top of the SERPs, UNLESS she allocates some sort of budget for PR, for hiring someone to write quality content and engage on social media, someone to design a decent website, someone to design an infographic, to do research in order to come up with an infographic concept, and many more! As you rightly say, the level playing field that was offered by the introduction of the internet is now slowly eroding.
I wrote some posts recently regarding Google’s latest and greatest seo over optimization Algorithm.
My take on it is that, if it continues at this rate, soon even simple page edits(Whereby we go back and clean up old posts) may be deemed as over optimized seo practices, resulting in a ranking penalty.
I have heard all the verbal diarrhea about, ” Creating a level playing Field for Mum & Dad Bloggers” or prioritizing quality content.
Not to mention(Okay, I an about to) the unnatural links messages turning up in people’s WMT’S. Yet, sites not engaged in Black hat(link farm ,etc) style activities are also receiving these messages.
I read a great article that said that, this is just another way for Google to control the rankings according to their(Google’s) whims.
So then they(Google) can push sites out of the ranking, if for whatever reasons, it does not benefit them.
So even if you are following the rules, you then get the dreaded ” We have detected unnatural links” message. You may panic, and then, by trying to make changes, ruining a perfectly legit(and successful ) link building method.
Nice post! Yep…I am DONE relying on Big G for website traffic.
In the long run, it really is not STABLE at all. You can go to sleep one night and then wake up with nothing, not worth it in my own opinion.
Great article, thanks for sharing.
-Omar
Try to apply Matts “effective techniques” to a yeast infection or loan website. No matter how good your content is, people don’t link to a site saying “Hey, it itches a bit and I’m out of money, but have a look here”. There are basically loads of niches that will barely get a single really natural and unincentived link.
Next problem: The definition of webspam. The big guys buy thousands of links calling it “guest posting” or “presell pages” and get away with it. The small guys use spun crap in blog networks and get shot down. Nothing bad with fighting webspam, but it’s hard to understand why it is ok as long as it has a high enough price tag and a nicer name. Golden poop is still poop and not gold.
A convenient misconception by Mr. Cutts is that all niches are similar to tech-talk (301 redirects etc)….where someone may link to a another site in their niche because it will be helpful to their readers.
In my niche people just don’t fling out “oh hey btw check out this blog post by joe schmoe on such and such” type links…it just doesn’t work like that…no one is going to help someone else rank (by linking to their site) because they put up good content…because in doing so, they make it harder for themselves to get seen in the SERPS.
Sorry Matt, but the whole hippified notion of “free-love” backlinks is a falsehood, you just need to admit it.
Ok if you was google what you would do ? You would give a list of the best blog network and spam services ?
Google does their job,everyone knows that link building works but obviously they wont say “Spending 50$ on content is useless,better is to spend 5$ on content and 45$ on link building”. That is what already happens with black hat abuse,the link building market atract people that is not worried about the content,they just want to rank and earn money.
It is very easy to judge and critize based on your on opinion and perception,but is hard to try to understand the vision of other people.
I would love it if Matt agreed to this challenge! Everything you said is true. Though it is possible to get some traffic, it stalls after some time and only backlinking , clever social strategy or Adwords can help. Google of course wishes that we buy Adwords…
I am sure people who work there don’t find much fun in seeing results of their algo changes. It’s a big business. You do what business requires, and you get your salary and go home.
Not always you like what you do.
Just my 2c
Olga