Linking what it is and where it can take your business

Welcome to my first post for the BBO Insight Blog and where better place to start than at the beginning. Let me take you through the world of SEO and show you how you can improve your business power on the web.

Search engine optimization from the beginning…

Ever since the Web began there have been search engines like Alta Vista, Hotbot and Yahoo. These search engines have always been the most effective way to navigate through the huge amount of information available online . These search engines lead the web surfer to web pages via tips from users and through links. The content of the pages was judged by the relevance and quality of content and this affected were the website was placed or ‘ranked’ in the search results. At this time if you were using SEO you would have to redesign Web pages so that they were valued as high as possible for the relevant keywords. There were less knowledgeable SEO technicians around and as a result bad practises such as keyword stuffing, cloaking and hidden text were used to achieve better placement in the organic result listings. As more and more people got interested in search engine optimization and revenue opportunities deteriorated XXXXXXXXXXXXX

… And then came Google!

Google offered great results and quickly gained a large user base. What differentiated Google from the other search engines at the time was that Google used the links between Web pages in order to assess the popularity and credibility of websites. To oversimplify, Google graded each site by attaching points to each sites outgoing links; the more points each site had, the higher up the ranking they would go. Google’s reasoning was that the more outgoing links a site has, the more popular and trusted they are. Google’s algorithm for this was called PageRank (after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google).

The total value of the incoming links to a site had a major impact on how the site ranks for the relevant keywords. What’s more these trusted sites provided value to their forward links. It did not mean that it was no longer important to work with the content of the pages, but the value of a site now included the linking as well. Google has existed for 10 years and has provided web users with ever-improving search results, where the big difference between a low and a high ranking site is link power.

The last 10 years

Links are still incredibly important for search engine ranking and in my opinion very little has changed since Google began. Search engines need to use a ranking parameter that indicates what real users think about content so that you end up with high-quality search results. Manipulating the search result placements through links is an effective solution and over the years, many methods have emerged and become obsolete until Google came along.

Google strives to maintain the high standards and offer results that accurately reflect the quality of the sites it lists.  Google has been known to punish websites if they violate the terms of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, this is Google’s way of protecting their interest. Google can’t allow site owners to affect their investments in any other way than by improving the quality of the content. Ultimately all that site owners’ care about is being the most visible that they can. This ongoing struggle between Google and website owners will continue and we will watch eagerly to see how it is played out.

How does it work today?

One should definitely not overlook the importance of excellence and quality, and above all what your users think about this. Once you have a good website up and running, it is still ultimately the link power that determines how you will be positioned in the search results in relation to your competitors. This is determined by the number, quality, distribution and anchor texts of incoming links. At Be Better Online we strongly believe in the idea of ​​an “optimal link profile” which is unique to each site; for example when Google determines how popular a site is and weighs up all parameters and tolerance levels it should determine the differences and know whether it is ‘Bob’ bicycle shop “or” Olle’s bike shop. The basic principle is the same, the more links from relevant websites, the better. What distinguishes a website is how much link power it has (as determined by competition), where the links come from (types of sites and geography), how the tolerance level for links with keywords as anchor text (the more such counterproductive links with brand / company name / URL as the anchor text, the higher the risk, I would say that it takes). The type of action required depends entirely on how high the competition is on “your” keywords. In certain industries, like cycling for example, it requires perhaps no more than to be on the local area listings. On the other hand there are industries that require million dollar investments each month to fight with competitors and protect their ranking. In between these extremes are all the other website businesses, probably even yours. In this blog post i purposely haven’t addressed the various techniques needed to create stronger linking prowess as it is so dependent on each specific situation but get in touch if you want to know more.

What’s next?

Search engines of today depend on what users like sites to generate qualitative results. The views expressed on social media like Facebook and Twitter have started to impact on results, both in terms of that sometimes it appears such content and there is evidence that a mention of a social channel can have an impact on rankings. If search engines are looking to find out what real users think about content on the internet I find it hard to see a better source of signals than recently said social media – why I think this is something that will have greater impact in the future. One of the drawbacks of relying a lot on the links is that there are very few regular users that affect this, there is little the same as if it had been confined to politicians who had been allowed to vote in parliamentary elections. Links are still the melody that works to take first place, and I think it will remain important over the coming 10 years – though I find it hard to back it up with something other than habit, in the light of the discussion around social media.

… What do you think?

Let us know your thoughts below. How do you think the future will value linking?

Vänliga hälsningar,

Carl-Gustav Öberg
Direct tel: +46 (0)31 - 788 02 50
www.bebetteronline.se
Be Better Online Sweden AB
Stigbergsliden 7
414 63 Göteborg