Linkbuilding: separating the wheat from the chaff
"What goes around comes around".
(Russian proverb, smoothly turning into an Internet meme)
Attention to the venerable habrochitele, mainly, habraseer and habrawhebmaster, is a unique opportunity to compare the experience of Western SEO-specialists and SEO-specialists of domestic ones.
Not so long ago, the popular English-language SEO-resource Search Engine Watch (which can be translated approximately as “Search Watch”; hi Lukyanenko and Bekmambetov :)) an article by John Lynch “Analyzing the 9 most popular strategies for getting links” appeared. We became terribly interested, and whether foreign seeds will grow in our native SEO-soil?
')
We translated the article by John Lynch and supplied it with harsh Russian commentaries of seasoned SEO Stakhanovites.
John Lynch: Internal links are placed on the site itself and give webmasters two main advantages:
Risks of sanctions: Zero
Severe Russian comment: Internal links can not be neglected. It is necessary to understand that they help not only to take high positions, but also are convenient for visitors with proper implementation. Of particular importance is the use of reference ranking when promoting online stores with an extensive range of products. In this case, it is often impossible to promote each individual heading with links, so the high places are taken up mainly due to optimized texts and page credibility. Internal linking of the pages allows you to increase the weight of the pages. And in the absence of external links, internal links with text give a significant bonus to competitors.
John Lynch: Generally speaking, directories are Internet phone books. Neither urgency, nor ranking, nor human factor.
Cost / Benefit: With the exception of Yahoo and DMOZ, directories are a waste of time and resources. In essence, this is a paid link that broadcasts PR. But I did research SEO directories on a number of domains, and the results were somewhat unexpected. Of the three sites, none improved positions, and two fell on the third page.
Risks of sanctions: medium / high
Severe Russian commentary: Generally, there are big disputes in RuNet over the possibility of negative influence of external links to the site. Opponents of such influence base their point of view on the fact that if there is one, it would be possible to “fill up” the competitor site with ease by installing a large number of links to it.
In our opinion, a negative impact can be - this is a reduction in the long term of the credibility of the resource, but there can be no hard sanctions only due to external links.
SEO directories made solely for placing a large number of links are actively filtered by leading search engines. And because they only work until the filtering. Using the same simple directories with direct links to the site is useful. Maybe it will not raise the position on a specific request, but it increases the credibility of the site as a whole. A factor of credibility in recent times has become increasingly important in the ranking formula.
John Lynch: The idea is simple, right? Find a bunch of articles or blog posts on the subject and start sending comments with a link and your search query in the anchor.
Costs / Benefits: Well, in general, it no longer works. The bulk of blogs are a kind of variation on WordPress or Blogspot, and they default to links in comments with the rel = '' nofollow '' attribute, which means that your site will not get any cream from blogs. So there is no point in wasting time.
Sanctions risks: Medium. Depending on the size of your link “portfolio”, too many links may reduce the “link dispersion” of your site. In general, leaving the URL in the comment is a small sin, but sending a search query with an anchor is already a signal about spam.
Severe Russian comment: rel = '' nofollow '' is taken into account by Google. For Yandex, this attribute does not work, and therefore this attribute will have no value for promotion in Yandex. For the link not to work for Yandex, it must be closed in the noindex tags. A good experiment was conducted on this topic.
Using comment spam is a reputational risk for a company. In general, the competent placement of links in the forums is ready to bring visitors.
However, this process is time consuming, costly and therefore inefficient.
UPD: I just found out from the comments that Yandex started taking ref = '' nofollow '' into account 2 days ago. Thanks to habraouzer amxm for the link.
John Lynch: Paid links are the most popular strategy for getting links. You find a person who is ready to place your link with a certain text and hand him a cache. It's simple.
Costs / Benefits: I do not approve the purchase of links, it is generally contrary to the management of webmasters from Google, but, apparently, this is one of the most effective methods of obtaining links.
Risks of sanctions: Depends. Using the link exchange is for Google as a red rag for the bull. In addition, in addition to the fact that sanctions can be applied to your site, from time to time a “link network” of such exchanges is often found and their links seriously lose weight (or are simply ignored). In general, if you get caught up in this, time to blow the dust off the old resume.
Severe Russian comment: At the moment it is the cheapest way of mass linking on the Runet, and therefore the most common. Due to the appearance of this method, other methods have disappeared, such as directory placement and link exchange. However, search engines are better and better able to deal with such links, identifying them and understating the impact on the position. Therefore, the effectiveness of this method will fall and in the end we will return to the old methods - laborious, but more effective in the future.
John Lynch: Too simple, links from such domains are just manna from heaven for the site and they seriously help promote queries.
Costs / Benefits: I would not advise you to spend too much effort trying to get such links. This can be very profitable, but it is very long and expensive.
Risks of sanctions: Zero
Severe Russian commentary: Our specialists have not heard anything about this way of promotion in Russia.
John Lynch: Links are fairly easy to spread through channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. There is only one “but” - they are also with nofollow.
Costs / Benefits: Although these links do not directly help your PR, side benefits can be overwhelming. One competent tweet can encourage people to give a lot of links in the blogosphere, which can help PR. In addition, Google is becoming increasingly active in the field of social media, and using similar signals as a “plus” for sites that have unexpectedly increased their reference portfolio.
Risks of sanctions: Zero. Just do not turn your Twitter account into spam zombies.
Severe Russian commentary: media optimization (SMO), by and large, in Russia makes only the first timid steps. They still do not fully understand that pinning a website with buttons with links to their groups and accounts on Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter and other social networks, blogs and microblogs is just as important as traditional SEO methods. But the process has begun. By 2012, Russia will emerge from the crisis, hung with social media, like partisans - with machine gun belts.
John Lynch: The process of generating additional links by creating "catchy" content and tools.
Costs / Benefits: Generally speaking, this method is one of the most reliable long-term strategies for obtaining high positions in search results. The most famous examples of such "lures" include Burger King's Subservient Chicken , Radiohead remixes and Elf Yourself from Office Max. When you create such a bait, remember one simple rule: make your content such that the audience wants to share it with others.
Risks of sanctions: Zero. In fact, Matt Cutts from Google encourages her.
Severe Russian comment: The problem is only in how to make catchy content. We all heard about successful cases, but we must understand that there are 10 or even 20 unsuccessful cases per successful case. Creating the same unique and catching content is a laborious and expensive process, and therefore creating such content - like a roulette game - “lucky - no luck”. Therefore, the risks are present - not sanctions, but material losses. Only large portals can afford them.
John Lynch: Use press release distribution services such as PR Web or Newswire PR in the hope of getting links.
Costs / Benefits: A good strategy if a press release is useful. Well-made press releases will provide high-quality links from reputable news sites. Tip: if possible, link as deeply as possible into your site.
Risks of sanctions: Zero.
Severe Russian comment: If your company occupies any important place on the market, then they will write about it. And if not, then sue Google or Yandex - the industry media immediately spread this news.
John Lynch: My Inbox is constantly attacking webmasters who ask them to exchange links with them. To be clear: creating the page example.com/link.html will not do anything for your issuance. Google reduces the importance of these outgoing links and seriously reduces the weight of your inbox.
Costs / Benefits: Do not do this and do not try to quickly abandon the link, so that the link seems to be one-way - this is another bad signal. Instead, better build relationships with sophisticated webmasters and get links from pages with relevant text. New portals are often willing to go on this kind of partnership deals.
Risks of sanctions: Low.
Severe Russian commentary: We would describe the risks of sanctions as medium, and for illiterate work, high. If sanctions are unlikely for external factors, then there may be sanctions for posting bad content on your website. If you place a section with spam links on the site (not on the subject of the site, unorganized), then the risk of sanctions is high - from an understatement to the full ban.
If you post links on the topic, the risk of sanctions is still there, since it is easier for search engines to identify (by the presence of the “Links” section) that you are promoting the site and rating it.
Therefore, this method is more risky than the previous ones.
(Russian proverb, smoothly turning into an Internet meme)
Attention to the venerable habrochitele, mainly, habraseer and habrawhebmaster, is a unique opportunity to compare the experience of Western SEO-specialists and SEO-specialists of domestic ones.
Not so long ago, the popular English-language SEO-resource Search Engine Watch (which can be translated approximately as “Search Watch”; hi Lukyanenko and Bekmambetov :)) an article by John Lynch “Analyzing the 9 most popular strategies for getting links” appeared. We became terribly interested, and whether foreign seeds will grow in our native SEO-soil?
')
We translated the article by John Lynch and supplied it with harsh Russian commentaries of seasoned SEO Stakhanovites.
1. Internal links
John Lynch: Internal links are placed on the site itself and give webmasters two main advantages:
- help search engines find new content
- opportunity to increase PageRank and authoritativeness of the site.
Risks of sanctions: Zero
Severe Russian comment: Internal links can not be neglected. It is necessary to understand that they help not only to take high positions, but also are convenient for visitors with proper implementation. Of particular importance is the use of reference ranking when promoting online stores with an extensive range of products. In this case, it is often impossible to promote each individual heading with links, so the high places are taken up mainly due to optimized texts and page credibility. Internal linking of the pages allows you to increase the weight of the pages. And in the absence of external links, internal links with text give a significant bonus to competitors.
2. SEO directories
John Lynch: Generally speaking, directories are Internet phone books. Neither urgency, nor ranking, nor human factor.
Cost / Benefit: With the exception of Yahoo and DMOZ, directories are a waste of time and resources. In essence, this is a paid link that broadcasts PR. But I did research SEO directories on a number of domains, and the results were somewhat unexpected. Of the three sites, none improved positions, and two fell on the third page.
Risks of sanctions: medium / high
Severe Russian commentary: Generally, there are big disputes in RuNet over the possibility of negative influence of external links to the site. Opponents of such influence base their point of view on the fact that if there is one, it would be possible to “fill up” the competitor site with ease by installing a large number of links to it.
In our opinion, a negative impact can be - this is a reduction in the long term of the credibility of the resource, but there can be no hard sanctions only due to external links.
SEO directories made solely for placing a large number of links are actively filtered by leading search engines. And because they only work until the filtering. Using the same simple directories with direct links to the site is useful. Maybe it will not raise the position on a specific request, but it increases the credibility of the site as a whole. A factor of credibility in recent times has become increasingly important in the ranking formula.
3. Links from comments
John Lynch: The idea is simple, right? Find a bunch of articles or blog posts on the subject and start sending comments with a link and your search query in the anchor.
Costs / Benefits: Well, in general, it no longer works. The bulk of blogs are a kind of variation on WordPress or Blogspot, and they default to links in comments with the rel = '' nofollow '' attribute, which means that your site will not get any cream from blogs. So there is no point in wasting time.
Sanctions risks: Medium. Depending on the size of your link “portfolio”, too many links may reduce the “link dispersion” of your site. In general, leaving the URL in the comment is a small sin, but sending a search query with an anchor is already a signal about spam.
Severe Russian comment: rel = '' nofollow '' is taken into account by Google. For Yandex, this attribute does not work, and therefore this attribute will have no value for promotion in Yandex. For the link not to work for Yandex, it must be closed in the noindex tags. A good experiment was conducted on this topic.
Using comment spam is a reputational risk for a company. In general, the competent placement of links in the forums is ready to bring visitors.
However, this process is time consuming, costly and therefore inefficient.
UPD: I just found out from the comments that Yandex started taking ref = '' nofollow '' into account 2 days ago. Thanks to habraouzer amxm for the link.
4. Paid Links / Sponsored Posts
John Lynch: Paid links are the most popular strategy for getting links. You find a person who is ready to place your link with a certain text and hand him a cache. It's simple.
Costs / Benefits: I do not approve the purchase of links, it is generally contrary to the management of webmasters from Google, but, apparently, this is one of the most effective methods of obtaining links.
Risks of sanctions: Depends. Using the link exchange is for Google as a red rag for the bull. In addition, in addition to the fact that sanctions can be applied to your site, from time to time a “link network” of such exchanges is often found and their links seriously lose weight (or are simply ignored). In general, if you get caught up in this, time to blow the dust off the old resume.
Severe Russian comment: At the moment it is the cheapest way of mass linking on the Runet, and therefore the most common. Due to the appearance of this method, other methods have disappeared, such as directory placement and link exchange. However, search engines are better and better able to deal with such links, identifying them and understating the impact on the position. Therefore, the effectiveness of this method will fall and in the end we will return to the old methods - laborious, but more effective in the future.
5. .gov / .edu domains
John Lynch: Too simple, links from such domains are just manna from heaven for the site and they seriously help promote queries.
Costs / Benefits: I would not advise you to spend too much effort trying to get such links. This can be very profitable, but it is very long and expensive.
Risks of sanctions: Zero
Severe Russian commentary: Our specialists have not heard anything about this way of promotion in Russia.
6. Social media
John Lynch: Links are fairly easy to spread through channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. There is only one “but” - they are also with nofollow.
Costs / Benefits: Although these links do not directly help your PR, side benefits can be overwhelming. One competent tweet can encourage people to give a lot of links in the blogosphere, which can help PR. In addition, Google is becoming increasingly active in the field of social media, and using similar signals as a “plus” for sites that have unexpectedly increased their reference portfolio.
Risks of sanctions: Zero. Just do not turn your Twitter account into spam zombies.
Severe Russian commentary: media optimization (SMO), by and large, in Russia makes only the first timid steps. They still do not fully understand that pinning a website with buttons with links to their groups and accounts on Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter and other social networks, blogs and microblogs is just as important as traditional SEO methods. But the process has begun. By 2012, Russia will emerge from the crisis, hung with social media, like partisans - with machine gun belts.
7. Reference Bait
John Lynch: The process of generating additional links by creating "catchy" content and tools.
Costs / Benefits: Generally speaking, this method is one of the most reliable long-term strategies for obtaining high positions in search results. The most famous examples of such "lures" include Burger King's Subservient Chicken , Radiohead remixes and Elf Yourself from Office Max. When you create such a bait, remember one simple rule: make your content such that the audience wants to share it with others.
Risks of sanctions: Zero. In fact, Matt Cutts from Google encourages her.
Severe Russian comment: The problem is only in how to make catchy content. We all heard about successful cases, but we must understand that there are 10 or even 20 unsuccessful cases per successful case. Creating the same unique and catching content is a laborious and expensive process, and therefore creating such content - like a roulette game - “lucky - no luck”. Therefore, the risks are present - not sanctions, but material losses. Only large portals can afford them.
8. Links in press releases
John Lynch: Use press release distribution services such as PR Web or Newswire PR in the hope of getting links.
Costs / Benefits: A good strategy if a press release is useful. Well-made press releases will provide high-quality links from reputable news sites. Tip: if possible, link as deeply as possible into your site.
Risks of sanctions: Zero.
Severe Russian comment: If your company occupies any important place on the market, then they will write about it. And if not, then sue Google or Yandex - the industry media immediately spread this news.
9. Link Exchange
John Lynch: My Inbox is constantly attacking webmasters who ask them to exchange links with them. To be clear: creating the page example.com/link.html will not do anything for your issuance. Google reduces the importance of these outgoing links and seriously reduces the weight of your inbox.
Costs / Benefits: Do not do this and do not try to quickly abandon the link, so that the link seems to be one-way - this is another bad signal. Instead, better build relationships with sophisticated webmasters and get links from pages with relevant text. New portals are often willing to go on this kind of partnership deals.
Risks of sanctions: Low.
Severe Russian commentary: We would describe the risks of sanctions as medium, and for illiterate work, high. If sanctions are unlikely for external factors, then there may be sanctions for posting bad content on your website. If you place a section with spam links on the site (not on the subject of the site, unorganized), then the risk of sanctions is high - from an understatement to the full ban.
If you post links on the topic, the risk of sanctions is still there, since it is easier for search engines to identify (by the presence of the “Links” section) that you are promoting the site and rating it.
Therefore, this method is more risky than the previous ones.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/92916/
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