LINK CONSTRUCTING Strategies - Without Link NetworksPosted by Bennedsen Demir on April 21st, 2021 Google's mass de-indexing of blogs within networks used for paid links shook the SEO world to its core during April 2012.. Sites which offered high PR contextual backlinks for a monthly fee had their power taken away overnigh. Is Google right to do this? Are website owners right to pay for links? more info don't care! If you need futile moral pontification you've come to the wrong place. I'm thinking about what happens now... more info marketing "gurus" advocated link networks (some of which had a fairly good affiliate scheme going) as part of a wider link building strategy. Some online marketing "gooroos" actually advocated link networks and nothing else, we haven't heard much from them recently! So how does this change our wider link building and SEO strategy? Pat Flynn, the cherubic-faced ex-architect that gets better results than hard-nosed SEOers wrote recently about what happened and what now. Pat figured his diversified link strategy still works without the link networks. As you can see above in Pat's revised link constructing strategy, he runs on the first tier of Web 2 2.0 sites, top article directories and new blogs, supported by a second tier of mass article submissions and social bookmark creating. Pat continues on to recommend blog commenting, guest posting, forum profiles, relationship nurturing and social media to broaden the kind of the incoming links. The key word here is diversification. In the event that you had link networks as part of a diverse link constructing strategy then you will undoubtedly be less affected by the recent changes. You may even be doing better as maybe your competitors relied on link networks alone! AdSense Flippers Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti offer some great advice as always - they suggest a means forward in their revised SEO and link constructing strategy but stress that this hasn't been tested thoroughly. This is the follow-on from their original link constructing strategy. The guys will be experimenting with article submission sites going forward. They are also likely to be less "unnatural" making use of their anchor text. It is because of a separate development where Matt Cutts recently announced that Google will penalize "over-optimization"which may mean too many links to arrive with the very same anchor text. So less anchor text with "buy cheap flowers" for a florist website and more anchor text with "click here" and the website domain. Again, variety and diversity is key. Others Spencer Haws from Niche Pursuits concludes in his article that private blog networks aren't dead however, many of them are in a serious condition in intensive care. He'll be urging diversity in link constructing although he will still be using blog networks but less so. Joseph Archibald from Life and Times of an Internet Marketer is taking a long run view of his SEO business, concluding that fast and furious rankings don't appear to work in Google any longer. So slowly, slowly, catchee, monkey, think longterm and build more authoritative niche (if that isn't an oxymoron!) sites. Michelle MacPhearson has an interesting interview with two link networks where they state, amongst other things, that the de-indexing of blog networks is nothing new. Trent Dyrsmid believes that with every change comes an opportunity, suggesting that competitors that lazily only used link networks will fall away and that other linking methods will become available. Ralph Kooi of Niche Websites advocates a good strategy of social media, article submission, guest posting, Web 2 2.0, document sharing, press releases, etc. Ralph in addition has mentioned Triberr and SEOclerks (an SEO Fiverr, only more costly) to help you out.Like it? Share it! More by this author |