Most webmasters have heard about link building, the SEO strategy where you build links back to your website from other high page rank sites in order to get your own site to rank on the first page of Google for your best keyword.
If your keyword phrase had low or no competition, this would practically guarantee you at least a top #3 position in the search results on Google and other search engines.This would get you relevant traffic and sales.
Google has made a lot of algorithm changes lately, the 2012 Panda and Penguin updates for instance, and link building does not seem to work anymore as it used to, now it is all about link earning.
You need to earn your links and this is possible only if you write great and helpful content that people naturally want to share with their friends on social sites and link back to from their own sites.
Rand Fishkin from SEOMOZ.org made an excellent video about link earning.Check it out here below.
More helpful information about link earning on the web:
Link Building Means Earning “Hard Links” Not “Easy Links”
For ages, Google has encouraged people to build links in order to rank well. But in the wake of the Google Penguin Update, it’s become painfully clear to me how many people have failed to understand the inherent quality links part of that link building message.
Link Earning is the “New” Link Building
Forget Link Building. It always has been “Link Earning“.As Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz mentioned in SERoundtable and Searchengineland:
Link earning means acquiring links that are hard to get, and not just easy links.You want the links the most of your competitors will not be able to get.
Have you switched to link earning instead of link building? Leave a comment!
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: lisapatb
January 9, 2013 at 8:03 am
Thanks Tom for sharing, I missed this past Friday’s whiteboard Friday, very informative. So much has changed with link building over the years.
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Twitter: tlmarketing_net
January 9, 2013 at 8:08 am
Hi Lisa, thanks for stopping by! I agree, a lot has changed and nowadays it is all about creating helpful content that readers want to share. You are basically earning links by writing great content and your readers do the link building from now on
People always look for good content and it is another way of saying that you’re convincing or encouraging your viewers/customers to try your products. thanks for this valuable post. They are very useful in my opinion.
Thanks a lot for this article, I always try to produce unique & good content, I think I’m not using Social Media thoroughly, plan to take some advantage of Pinterest & Twitter. You have provided some valuable tips, thanks for sharing.
Twitter: getlinkspro
January 10, 2013 at 10:16 am
@Tom: A great reminder from you. Truth is that ‘earned’ links or editorial links are what Google wants to consider in their algorithm (they fail miserably, but that’s another matter altogether)
Twitter: tlmarketing_net
January 10, 2013 at 10:24 am
Hi Jeet! Thanks for commenting.Google does not really know what it wants.For instance, there were discussions about “exact match domains” some time ago but still there are some really low quality EMD:s on #1 position for competitive keywords.All we can do as bloggers is to write excellent content and hope that readers will share it on social sites and link back to it from their own sites.Becoming less dependent on Google would be a great idea as well
Twitter: getlinkspro
January 10, 2013 at 10:32 am
Lol, I think they know ‘what they want’. They just don’t know ‘how to achieve that’. EMDs – I totally agree with you on that one. I see plenty of them everyday in my searches.
Twitter, Reddit and Facebook could be big traffic drivers for sure but I don’t think it’s easy for bloggers to get to a level where people are searching for their names
Nowadays, only good content cannot prove successful in building or say earning excessive links. The right S.E.O skills are the need of the hour. People who write extremely great posts or articles but have no idea how to get that content visible to readers cannot build or earn a single links.
It’s now 2013 and with the passage of time tips and tactics of link earning are changing. It’s now must to understand these new ways in order to get quality link backs to your website.
Thanks a lot for the wounderful post,its help me lot to increase my traffic as i new in blogging.
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Twitter: gel23
January 14, 2013 at 4:38 am
Hi Tom,
What a very informative post
And i find it more helpful because I’ve been doing link building all my life and i thought that its the most effective strategy that was ever made for online marketing. This is just the only time i know that link building has losing its track slowly and been replaced by “link earning”..
this post really help me.. thanks for posting tom.
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