Using Plain Or Raw Links In Search Engine Optimization
Autor: The Real Signs of Time | Publicado: 2011-11-21T12:51:00-08:00

 BREAKING NEWS: Looking For Better Search Engine Rankings And More FREE Organic Search Engine Traffic? Download My New 204 Page Book – “The Ultimate Link Building Dossier”. Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Adding THOUSANDS of Incoming Links To Your Website To Drive It To The Top Of The Search Engines – CLICK HERE NOW.I received an email from a customer of “The Ultimate Link Building Dossier” early this week and he brought up an interesting SEO question. I know many people might wonder about the same thing so I thought I’d share my view on this with all readers. I’ve certainly seen it being discussed in discussion forums.I think it’s pretty important as it’s one of those “factors” that can cause people to become confused or unfocused by really over overcomplicating things.Here’s what he said…“Just bought your dossier, it is simply great. I have so little time so the automated options discussed is great information. One thing, I think a site is supposed to have useless links too (just the URL as a link, or just Click Here as the link etc.) or Google will figure out it is over optimization = “synthetic links”. Am I right here?” ~ Gert Strand, Sweden…if you haven’t read the “The Ultimate Link Building Dossier” yet, I talk a lot about the importance of “theming”, staying focused, and structuring your incoming link campaigns around strategic anchor text for the majority of your incoming links.Basically Gert is asking if it’s also important to focus on links that are just plain old links – i.e. using “click here” as the anchor text, or simply linking back as a raw domain name / URL.He has used the term “useless links” but I think the correct phrase should be “plain links” which is what I’ll refer to from this point. In my opinion there is no such thing as a “useless link”.My answer to this interesting question is no.I wouldn’t (and I don’t personally) worry about putting any concerted effort into obtaining “plain links” and there are several reasons why…1) You will inevitably receive many “plain links” over time as a natural progression of steadily improving search engine rankings. As your rankings improve, more webmasters in your niche will start to find your website and link back to it as a valuable resource / reference.You’ll find in most cases that a lot of those incoming links are going to be “plain old links” anyway. A webmaster linking back to you under their own initiative is going to be more concerned about keeping the consistency of their external linking structures in place, rather then throwing you some more link love and relevancy by using targeted anchor text for the link.2) If you’re going to invest ANY money or time into a link building campaign then you should invest it in techniques that are known to produce results. That of course would be using our targeted anchor text for the link wherever possible. You want to get maximum return on your investment.It certainly applies to buying text link advertising directly (I prefer to call this “strategic advertising” where the primary focus is related to SEO improvement). I don’t see any point in investing money to obtain a lesser benefit than could otherwise be achieved with the correct linking structure & methods.This also applies to any other techniques that require time and/or money to generate links directly or indirectly (the vast majority of link building techniques we can manipulate) – i.e. article marketing and so forth.3) Many of the different linking methods one can (and should) explore are only going to generate plain links anyway.For example, if you use “Authority Site Profiles” to generate links (a technique discussed in the Dossier) – 99% of the time these will only ever give you a plain link back. Here you rely on the volume of links generated and the amount of theme relevancy you can craft on the specific “profile pages”. We do this using keyword relevant surrounding text in fields such as your “occupation”, “interests”, or the “about you” sections.As another example if you’re distributing press releases to build backlinks, often you’re not able to define the exact method of linking back anyway (unless you use a few of the distribution sources I mention in the dossier).Most press release distribution services will only append your URL to the bottom of your release as a plain link / raw domain. And beyond the initial distribution sources, any other webmasters or bloggers that pick up your release are going to link back to you as they see fit. Generally with plain links.4) Furthermore, the most powerful incoming links we can ever hope to achieve – those that are going to have the most positive impact on our search engine rankings, often present limitations in how we can link back to our website.It is not always possible to use appropriate anchor text. In such cases and we have to be satisfied with “plain links” or linking methods of “lesser value”.However because these are the most powerful incoming links from an SEO perspective, that’s fine. We just don’t want to pass up any opportunity to use keyword relevant anchor text on such websites if we’re able to – because inevitably some of these links will be plain links out of necessity. This is discussed in-depth during the first 50 or so pages of the Dossier.5) Finally, we’ve got websites in our portfolio that we’ve just never generated a single “plain” link for that do amazingly well. We’ve thrown several thousand incoming links at some of these websites (generally with “strategic advertising” techniques), with ALL links using targeted anchor text, and nothing but positive ranking improvements were achieved.The only exception to this being if another webmaster has decided to link to that particular website naturally using a plain link – but I’m sure you see what I mean here.The reason I wanted to write about this specific topic today (other than because it’s also helping a valued customer at the same time) is because this is one of those micro management SEO aspects that tends to drive me up the wall.People start to wonder should they be doing this, or that, because they’ve seen people talk about it in discussion forums or wherever. It’s very easy to become confused, unfocused and overwhelmed to the point of being totally unproductive.At the end of the day, if you just focus, and I mean really focus on the basic link building principals that are going to have the biggest impact on positive ranking improvements – instead of worrying about what anyone else might have said, you will see results.The moment you start seconding guessing yourself based on someone else’s (usually unqualified) opinion you’re going to get yourself side tracked and that’s why I sat down to produce “The Ultimate Link Building Dossier” to help guide and really focus you towards your goals.Here’s what one of the earlier customers to purchase the dossier had to say…“Thanks Duncan. The information in the first part of the book was astonishing as far as I’m concerned. You were talking about XXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXXX being the key to a link’s value… which is a new idea to me… and how this can be taken advantage of deliberately in a number of ways… including, astonishingly directory links. To be honest, to me that alone is worth the price of the book.This changes my understanding of SEO, which hasn’t happened in a long time.I’ve *seen* this concept in action but never understood what was happening: things like an inner page of a client’s site being picked to rank over the home page I’m actually linking to (using the inner page’s keyword in anchor text pointing to the home page). Multiple pages of the same site being picked to rank top 3… I’ve used it in my link building to a limited extent with good success.I’ll have re-read it several times to embed and grasp the implications. The book is well written and clear. You give lots of examples which is how I understand information practically. I’m a happy buyer.” ~ Luke I, UK…I can’t include Luke’s last name as he’s in the SEO business and serves clients in the UK and I respect all my customers privacy concerns. However, feedback like that really makes my day as you might imagine. If you haven’t got your own copy of “The Ultimate Link Building Dossier” yet you can download it here now.If you’ve struggled with SEO it really does take out all of the crap and clutter to help your focus your efforts to get results. All specific link building techniques aside, once the basic principals and mindset (outlined in the first part of the book) resonates with you, you’ll be miles ahead of those still trying to “demystify” things.Anyway, I hope this little tid bit of information has helped if you’ve ever wondered about it yourself. (No Ratings Yet) Loading ... View the original article here