“Google’s war on link spam is like America’s “war” on drugs” – Ryan Clark, CEO of Linkbuildr Marketing.
I couldn’t have put it better, although anyone lobbying for link builders to pay “taxes” to Google would clearly be missing the point.
Image courtesy of Searchnewscentral.com
While we at Red Mud Media have no immediate concerns about this, it once again opens the debate about what is natural vs. unnatural and “is there a magic ratio that sets off the flagging systems?”.
We have no concerns about this because any “link building” we do is focused entirely on user experience, quality content and most importantly, relevance.
Where this does raise concern comes down to money. Every company serious about SEO is doing link building. In some way or another, this link building is being paid for, whether through direct payments for links or through indirect means such as handing out Nexus phones to journalists and bloggers… ahem…Google I’m looking at you.
A recent post by Kevin Gibbons provides convincing evidence of what we all know to be true which showed that 74% of SEOs Buy (or Would Consider Buying) Links!
It would be interesting to see where Google draws the line between ranking a site based on brand authority and penalizing a site based on unnatural links… For the small companies who can’t afford to have broad sets of keywords in their link building strategies and who can’t afford to spend money on making sure their footprint is natural, this presents a big concern.
I am 100% in support of focusing on a great user experience, quality content and building links naturally, but most small companies can’t compete with the bigger guys who have the resources and so the pendulum once again gets nudged further in favour of the big brand, big budget sites.
We will continue to urge clients to develop their content and social media strategies, but the reality is many or most of the small companies simply don’t have the manpower or budgets to do so effectively and as such, risk being left behind if they don’t channel what resources they do have into what works today.