Is Link Building Necessary?

March 17th, 2007

Is Link Building Really Necessary as Part of an SEO Program?
Laura Thieme

For ten years, I have worked on optimizing websites to show up in the search engines.  I’ve only once or twice engaged in a link building campaign.  However, with the emergence of blogs, I’m noticing the need to engage in link building as part of regular retainer and statement of work projects.  It’s not to say that you can’t get a top 10 or a top 20 or a top 30 ranking for something in a very competitive industry, without links.   You can.  However, the issue that always challenges us the most is whether or not top ranked competitors have link programs, which may be also known as affiliate marketing programs, or other forms of link building.

Link building experts, such as Greg Boser, or Mike Grehan, have told me that I must have link programs in place to support really competitive industries such as health insurance, or health insurance quotes.  If you look at the top five ranked competitors for "health insurance quotes", you’ll notice many companies who have lots of links.  Alternatively, if you look at a relative newcomer to the industry, you’ll note they have very few links to their site, www.healthplanone.com, which provides affordable health insurance quotes. 

www.healthplanone.com has just 9 links as of March 2007, linking back to their site.  So how does one go about building a link campaign, to increase the number of links?  Mike and Greg have talked at conferences for years about it’s not quantity that matters, it’s quality.  I’m not convinced size doesn’t matter when it comes to links, but regardless, Bizresearch has developed a four tier marketing program for its clients in terms of link building.  What we stress is the importance of relevancy.  I’m not a fan of building links for the shear number or quantity of links, although I hate to say in some cases that appears to work.  I’ve seen one client competitor link to something from Matt Cutt’s blog, with his name in the link, to the competitor website, with no relevancy to the link’s website content.  Ironically, it was Yahoo who pointed this link type out to us, and indicated it was acceptable. 

We believe in link building as a separate initiative from organic site optimization.  It deserves a separate retainer, or flat fee, or hourly project.  It needs close monitoring in terms of ensuring links are being requested, submitted, and added through ethical, relevant content site optimization.

Personally, I think one of the best ways to build links is through blogging and other forms of relevant, useful, newsworthy blogging.  I recently became a blogger in the past year, and have seen my own links jump recently.  I refuse to blog for the sake of blogging.  It has to be about an issue relevant to my business or a personal passion of mine.  I have to be "moved" by a topic.  And when you are moved by a topic, others find your blog interesting, and want to link to it.

For example, here is a new link to my blog, that Lycos News has picked up on:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtaz7_global-warming-cover-up

I wrote about Emporers of the Ice, and misspelled it by the way.  Lycos News picked up my environmental awareness blog entry and they wrote: "AN excellent review on "Emperors [stet] of the Ice" with research links on the subject found here:
http://www.bizresearch.com/searchmarketingblog/?p=96   They’re talking about global warming and whether or not they think Bush is covering up this topic.

I’ve seen other interesting blog entries that I’ve written, which have become ranked for unlikely terms, like Suddenly Slimmer.  I wrote about a woman in Las Vegas who has a spa in Arizona.  Turned out the blog entry became ranked for the Suddenly Slimmer body wrap product.  It’s one of the least favorite referrals I see in our web analytics reports on a monthly basis.  I even got a call for the product in our Worthington office the other day.

That’s the other catch.  Bloggers write about many topics, which could possibly increase the number of links coming into their site, that aren’t necessarily specific to one particular topic.  My next blog will be on what I see people typing in - yes, I’m staring at my Google Analytics data and finding it fascinating to see what people are typing in to find our site.

 

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One Response to “Is Link Building Necessary?”

  1. Wade Pittenger Says:
    March 27th, 2007 at 2:58 pm

    The phenomenon of “Google bombing” opened my eyes to the importance of link building. The easiest way to gain relevant backlinks to your site is employing a reciprocal link exchange. With a link exchange you control the anchor text. Okay so what does that have to do with Google bombs? Well as Danny Sullivan said in this article regarding the ‘Miserable Failure’ Google bomb, “Google Bombing was done by at most a few hundred links pointing at the biography (of President Bush), if that many”.

    So for example you want the top spot for a highly competitive keyword like “cheesecake”, you get relevant sites linking to your cheesecake page with “cheesecake” as your anchor text.

    The Google algorithm puts so much weight on anchor text that even a page with no textual relevance (title, meta, on page content) for a particular keyword can achieve the top spot. In theory a page that is actually relevant to the anchor text content would require far less backlinks.

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