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Can we stop calling it Linking Building? It leads many to the wrong behaviorMarch 17th, 2010 by George Aspland |
We’ve starting working with yet another client who had prior SEO’s wasting time on link building activities meant solely to influence search engine rankings,
Their last SEO was having low quality articles written for them and submitting them to article submission sites. Checking their analytics we see that no traffic ever came from these sites, ever! It’s very unlikely that these articles helped their search engine rankings at all. We found none of these articles in any of the tools we use to identity strong links, those that may be helping improve search positions. Finally none of the articles were ever picked up and run by any other site (they’re not very good or useful).
Link Building often leads to the wrong behavior, wasting time and resources
Calling this process Link Building and of course explaining that link building is a task performed to improve search engine rankings leads many web marketers to employ link building techniques solely to influence their rankings.
Most of these techniques work, at best, only for a while before the search engines devalue their effect, resulting in wasted time . We’ve all seen these techniques rise and fall over the years – submitting to low quality directories, link farms & exchanges, reciprocal linking with off target sites, low quality article submissions etc.
In addition, some marketers buy link building services that promise XX number of links a month. And that’s exactly what they get – XX low quality links each month that never result in meaningful referral traffic and almost certainly will do nothing to help improve search positions.
All of these practices take time and resources that could have been expended on efforts with long lasting benefits.
We’ve changed the name of our service to
Referral Site Development (RSD) & Online Promotion
The primarily goals of our link building services, which we’ve offered for about 10 years, have never changed -
To build targeted traffic from referral sites – Traffic that may convert into inquiries, leads, subscriptions, memberships, sales, etc.
Brand awareness – You can only hope to build awareness by being mentioned on sites that people actually look at!
We go on to explain that a secondary benefit is that some, often a small percentage of the links we acquire will likely help improve search engine rankings and that some of these mentions (citations) will help confirm local business addresses etc which should help local search positions (Google Maps etc).
So we are changing the name of our service to Referral Site Development (RSD) & Online Promotion to more accurately reflect the more important purpose of building targeted traffic and awareness. Yes we are showing “AKA Link Building” for awhile but we hope that in time we won’t have to mention this anymore.
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Great idea – the number of times I have people talk to be about limnk building and saying that they can get 100’s of links for a few pounds that will help their positions. Trying to explain that on target links from relevant sites are better because human visitors will follow them almost always causes blank looks on their faces.
I do not agree! Is it just me or is anybody else think it is just “intellectual masturbation”.
Don’t get me wrong… the intention is good! And somewhere it is true that seeing some guys just submitting links all over the place just to increase numbers just pisses me off… worse it’s hurting the profession.
Now calling “Referral Site Development (RSD) & Online Promotion” if you want! what does it change?? I tell you what changes, the perception non SEO savvy people have from you and your services… because you put some “technical words” to impress the crowd. “Link building” is just a word and it is as good as another one to describe this activity of SEO.
The solution is not to change the word that describe the activity … the solution is to educate the clients so they know that crappy links aren’t going to help their websites and they don’t go for this type of services.
What you do is not EDUCATION, what you do in this article is just telling people that your way is better because it is more complicated to describe. It is ADVERTISING.
“BEST SEO CLIENT ARE NOT THE ONE WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT SEO IS. BEST SEO CLIENT ARE THE ONE WHO DON’T HAVE THE TIME TO DO IT THEMSELVES!”
I think you’re missing the point. The very name Link Building leads you to have to explain what it is and why it’s done because most people outside of the SEO community have either not heard of Link Building.
By calling it something else, whether Referral Site Development of Online Promotion or something like that it conveys a broader meaning
And yes “BEST SEO CLIENT ARE NOT THE ONE WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT SEO IS. BEST SEO CLIENT ARE THE ONE WHO DON’T HAVE THE TIME TO DO IT THEMSELVES!” but we and I think most SEO’s have clients that don’t know much about SEO or have clients with at least some key people who don’t
George,
I don’t think i am missing any point here. The use of “link building” is way more common than you think and introducing another term is going to confuse even more the “non members” of the SEO community.
Most of the people already have difficulties with our profession as there is a lot of unscrupulous people and because many agencies do not try to simplify their language in order to be understood properly. If we all start to rename our tasks it is going to confuse prospects even more and in the end everybody is going to lose just because our job is based on TRUST.
In my opinion, you are just trying to spread the usage of this word for pure promotional reasons (nice 1st positions by the way), not to educate people on what is good practice in “Link building”
On LinkedIn we are having a very civil dialog about this topic such as -
I call it “Promotion”. Links should only exist where they create a benefit for the user. Otherwise they are just cyberclutter.
Yes, Promotion or Online Promotion conveys a broader meaning.
Good points. Phrases involving “website promotion” and “online promotion” seem to be quite popular, although with “online promotion” you share the spotlight with the coupon and incentive market. There are still a significant chunk of searches for “link building services” and the like and those are the people who would really have to change their ways. Maybe you can reach them with a white paper and Adwords campaign around the theme “why we don’t call in link building.”
If you make more unfounded accusations and can’t have a civil dialog you’ll be blocked from this forum
I do not see where I am not civil in the lines of my comments. (maybe a little bit on the first one)
“Links should only exist where they create a benefit for the user.” – I Agree and I do not want to debate about your “link building” service.
My all point is “the use of new vocabulary for an already existing service is not helping the profession because confusing the prospects open doors to abuse” and yes indirectly accuse you to use the “white hat / I educate people strategy” just to promote yourself.
And Want I want to tell is: “Show people what is good practice in link building, show them your work, teach them how to do it without personal promotion in mind! And you’ll see you won’t need to invent new words to acquire new clients”
You are correct that we need to show people what a good practice in online promotion is and steer them away from bad practices
But names do convey meaning, Search Engine Optimization, What’s that? “We optimize web sites to improve your results from search engines. Pay per Click search advertising, What’s that? “When someone clicks on a search engine the advertiser pays a certain amount per click”.
I’m not advocating for our phrase, just that knowledgeable seo’s call it something else, online promotion for example, and focus on good practices.
“I’m not advocating for our phrase, just that “knowledgeable seo’s” call it something else” – Oh … Now you are uncivil.
And online promotion is different than link building as it can involve many other aspect or web marketing such as banners and affiliate marketing for example.
you see confusing eh?