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When link faking fails, there is always search engine optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 17, 2008 in Link Theory

Greed, laziness, and ignorance are an SEO’s worst enemies. Sometimes I throw “panic” into the list as well. In this business, there are a lot of people who think they have the ideal trick for topping out the search results. How do I know that? I read their claims every day on the Internet.

If you control a network of hundreds or thousands of Web sites, where you can easily add content and point links to new Web sites in a casual but persistent way, you can propel any site to the top of most queries pretty quickly. But some people have concluded that creating such networks is either too time-consuming or too close to the Dark Side of SEO. Hence, many people struggle to “build” links through other means: reciprocation, buying links, and link faking.

Link faking is the practice of creating a site and using one or more personas to submit the site to social media hubs like DIGG, SPHINN, etc. You see link faking on Sphinn every day. DIGG is trying to dig its way out from under the onslought of SEO link fakery. Link faking took off after SEO bloggers fell in love with link baiting. The difference between link faking (or bait faking) and link baiting is that you can link fake any kind of content but true link bait has to be content that attracts other people’s interest and attention.

Some of the best link fakers in the business have come straight out of the link baiting movement. Seeing the success of their early efforts with real link bait (or something approximating real link bait) they concluded that they could improve their performance by helping everyone find their stuff more easily. We subsequently saw a sharp increase in sock puppetry, social media link dropping, and SEO conference panels on how to manipulate search results through social media.

Social media deserves better than to be the next burned out tool of the SEO community but that is neither here nor there. Social media technologies were created in a very naive spirit and many of those services have either folded, are about to fold, or have learned the difficult lesson that if someone thinks they can use a social media resource for personal gain they will. The SEO community has once again urinated in a pond from which it chose to slake its unquenchable thirst for links.

I expect no better from a community that has in general been short-sighted, undisciplined, and incapable of performing basic optimization tasks without being herded into a corral and lectured by 50 bloggers every month. There will be no better from a community that lacks professional standards and a true scientific foundation for the principles upon which it operates.

But link faking isn’t limited to gaming social media profiles and story submission pages. After all, any idiot can write up a list of 100 free hosting services, tell you to create link farms on those services, and go drop a link on Sphinn. That doesn’t make him a competent SEO but he can pretend to be a competent SEO for people who don’t know any better.

Other forms of link fakery include widget spamming, one of the oldest tricks in the book. People used to do that with hit counters, Web site awards, and testimonials (”Hey, I’ve tried your product/service/whatever and I love it. I use it all the time on my SEO Theory Web site”). Widget spamming filters were developed long before most of you got involved in search engine optimization, so you should be surprised to see anyone expressing frustration over having been caught not once but twice with such a stupid idea.

But wait! That’s not all. We can link fake in other ways, too: we can drop links in forum signatures (that mostly are not read by robots because the forum operators disable signatures for people who are not logged in), blog comments (that are mostly nofollowed), and niche directories.

Now, a lot of people (including me) have touted the value of niche directories through the years. I think there will always be a place for topic specialists who take the time to compile and editorially review links devoted to a very small subset of ideas out of the entire human experience. But there are already spammy link submission services galore (many based in India) that offer submission to hundreds of directories. These directories are for all intents and purposes free-for-all pages, guest books, and blog comment pages. Do you really think the search engines are not looking for that kind of spam?

There are two rules that every SEO needs to master and adhere to before advancing to the role of Journeyman SEO (also called Intermediate SEO). Rule Number 1: If you figure out a clever way to boost your link value, DO NOT SHARE IT WITH OTHER PEOPLE. Rule Number 2: If you’re stupid enough to resort to a gaming tactic that was abandoned by professional spammers years ago, don’t double your stupidity by sharing the experience with everyone else.

Learn from your experience, learn from other people’s experience. Keep your mouth shut. No matter how badly you want to impress other people with your obtained wisdom, the best wisdom you can show is restraint.

People cannot help but be short-sighted every now and then. None of us is perfect. None of us sees all possible consequences. But when you realize you’ve burned your fingers, sharing your misery doesn’t make you look like a wise, sage SEO guru. It makes you look like an idiot who should have known better.

If you’re in the business of building links in volume the last thing you want to do is draw attention to yourself. Don’t lie to yourself and say, “But I’m link baiting.” REAL link bait doesn’t require you to stand on the rooftops and moon everyone. You might get a few laughs for looking like a fool but the odds of your building a sustainable business model are slim to none. People eventually get tired of linking to the guy who is always doing something stupid.

If you don’t control a network of Web sites and don’t have the option or desire to create such a network you can still leverage other Web sites into your promotional strategies but you should do it in a way that makes sense. There are not many rules for common sense link building. Here is an example list:

1. If you place content on someone else’s site, make sure the content is relevant to THEIR site rather than yours
2. If you place content on someone else’s site, make sure the content is itself interesting and useful to THEIR visitors
3. Take full credit for the content you create by just using your name (or business name) as the link anchor text
4. If you do anything else, don’t tell anyone and don’t complain if you get caught

There are a hundred ways to put content on other people’s sites. Most if not all of them have been abused by the SEO community: press release distribution, article distribution, free widgets and gadgets, RSS feed syndication, blah blah blah. In the never-ending chase for (mostly worthless non-value passing) links the SEO community has fostered the belief that all you need is links. After all, those guys did it with links.

Right.

Those guys did it with links. They didn’t tell you everything about their linking campaigns, however. That’s why they are on top and you are not. They kept their mouths shut about some of the details. They didn’t share everything they know.

Some people get lucky, rush over to the forums, and say, “Hey! I did this trick and it worked! I’m number 1!” I can’t mention any of their screen names because, oddly, they don’t hang around the SEO forums long enough for those names to stick in my memory. Such people are a dime a dozen. So are the people who appear in SEO forums and say, “I tried this trick and now my site is penalized. What can I do?”

Spammers burn through domain names pretty quickly. They don’t ask for reinclusion. Why should they? They don’t need the brand value of the domain name, they just want the income for as long as it lasts. So when people who place value in their domains’ brands get greedy, lazy, and overlook the fact that they don’t know everything (they are ignorant of at least some of the facts), they put themselves and their Web sites at great risk.

And in many cases those people end up in a panic because they thought all they had to do was follow the advice they found on a blog or forum.

Your link building efforts should be tempered by the estimated cost of rebuilding your brand value. The less you care about the value of your brand the less you have to lose by doing something stupid. The more you care about your brand the more you have to lose by doing something stupid.

If we assume for the sake of discussion that someone wants to build value in their Web site (i.e., accrue a lot of links) without risking a search engine penalty (i.e., they want the links to count for a very long time) then here are a few things that someone can do:

1. Build a lot of content on the Web site in question
2. Embed a lot of promotional links in the content being built
3. Link out liberally and without tricks or gimmicks to other sites that are relatively new but active
4. Be helpful and non-promotional in relevant forums and blogs where their market is likely to gather
5. Be accessible through their profile pages (provide links to the Web site in question)

Do just that and nothing else and you’ll create a popular, link-wealthy Web site. You don’t have to run over to DIGG and Sphinn and tell people you just posted another list of stupid ideas or another rant against a tired SEO craze.

It doesn’t matter how poor a writer you are to begin with. You’ll get better over time. It’s like learning to exercise. Most people see where they need improvement and they work on it. But mostly it becomes easier to write in a more relaxed and thoughtful style as you practice writing, and that is what draws people in. They like reading copy that flows.

This method works for every industry, every vertical: pornography, real estate, travel, shoes, purses, retail mall leasing, cars, sports memorabilia, medicine, huckleberries. Whatever your business is about, providing people with useful information and links to helpful NEW resources (all the major resources have already been covered in abundance) makes your site worth linking to. You’re doing something different. You’re creating value instead of replicating other people’s spammy models.

Search engine optimization is not all about links, it’s not even mostly about links. It takes a great deal of ignorance for anyone to say “it’s all about links” unless they are truly sneaky and deceptive. There may indeed be a few bald-faced liars among the SEO thought leaders but they don’t have to be liars to say the stupid things some of them have said.

Real search engine optimization looks at the big picture. You have to ask yourself, “What do I do when I have enough links?” In fact, every link building strategy should assume that it will one day cross the threshold of obtaining enough links. Anyone who says you can never have enough links is a damn fool (which is not to say you should start turning down links once you reach your goal — you’d be a damn fool to do that too).

If you assume you’ve got the links, then what? What else can you do to optimize for search? You have a lot of potential queries to work for. You cannot possibly hit them all with links. It’s humanly impossible.

Links provide traffic in themselves. Traffic-passing links are more valuable than PageRank- and anchor text-passing links because you don’t need search engines if you have traffic-passing links. There was a time when all Web sites depended on each other for traffic. It was a harsh, brutal climate for some sites but a fun, fantastic time for others. But you know what? Those days are still here.

If you’re going to play with links, learn not to get burned, learn not to make a fuss when you do get burned, and learn how to assess their value without obsessing over potential search engine benefits.