There are many who trust, believe, and would go so far as to say buy your way to the top. You know that old advice that rings in your ear “nothing worth keeping comes without hard work” this is one of those times to listen to your inner “Norris”.
Content Distribution = Chuck Norris. Paid Links fear Norris!
Not that we are saying that good, solid, link acquisition through financial exchange can’t get you remarkable results in a short period of time – believe me it can and does. Where the debate really comes from are several key things to remember. This week we address both sides of the aisle and in the end you will find out what we learn is short term thinking can lead to long term failure, while great planning and mixture of near, mid, and long term strategies will always provide the best results and top ranking.
Now, before we can start the debate it is important to know the lay of the land. Here are a few things to know…
Buying Links: The Buy Argument
The practice of purchasing advertising links on another website that point back to your website. The smarter link buyers will tell you that they only buy links from webpages that have a certain PR and keyword density, or from websites that already rank for the terms that they are trying to go after. Then there are those who say buy from any site that ranks well and your links will automatically pass great link popularity back to your site, which in turn will push your site up in the search engine rankings.
There is truth to both of those statements. However, unless you want to model yourself after a very large retailer who a few Christmases ago decided that they would trick Google by buying links for black dresses on a highly ranked government site in the energy rating industry. Almost over night they ranked first page first link for well over 100 terms only to fall out off to page 100. The last thing you want to do is try and game the engines. Remember the release of “Panda” right around that time? We can thank this retailer and a few others for that… actually that’s exactly what us SEOers should do, thank them.
Panda set the tone for best practices and Penguin only reiterated what doesn’t work. If according to the engines great Off-page SEO is about surrounding and linking yourself to like-minded highly relevant sites, creating link wheels that all provide the end user with access to highly relevant, digestible content, then relevant link buying can be great shot in the arm. Think of it a lot like an energy drink, 5 hours of good energy only to burn out later in the day. Link buying, within the rules or not is a near term strategy that works for a short period of time and can prove to be harmfully expensive to both your budget and your brand equity if not done with care and caution.
Growing Links: The Grow Argument
This is the practice of creating real, relevant, time sensitive content and distributing it across the web to sites that have similar goals and content. This can be blog posting, article syndication, providing answers on question and answer sites, the syndication of keyword and topic-centric content to research sites or ratings and review sites, and social media content distribution networks to name a few.
This can be a daunting task and if not done correctly can cause similar short term gains like buying links. However, many superior SEOers will attest that if you can efficiently distribute and post relevant content through submitting instead of buying you will achieve long last results. The complaint is that it will take you a longer time to achieve the desired results; especially if you are targeting highly competitive, broad terms. If you target a mix of branded, geo modified, and long tail terms often times you can see the same near term results you see with link buying strategies.
What you invariably get with growing links is sustainability, and longevity. It happens time and time again, companies that subscribe to this school of thought seem to take forever to get first page results but they stay there forever also. This is where you must consider having patience and build your linking campaigns with the end game in mind.
And The Winner Is?
Both! That’s right both. Not that I am a huge fan of every kid gets a trophy, but in all actuality like every great plan there needs to be a good mix of near, mid, and long term strategies. We recommend a solid link buying plan out of the gates while you plant and harvest the link growing practices. What you get is short-term spotty success with a truly engines endorsed long-term growth plan.
Chuck Norris Kicked Paid Link Ass
Think of this a lot like you would if you had the opportunity to be both the tortoise and the hare! Winning the race sometimes takes long even strides, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t experience the sprint in the front out of the blocks. Just make sure that you buy from relevant, content appropriate sites that have the same categorical content strategy as you. Same goes for growing your links.
Lastly, if you follow this line of thinking and you watch the results of Google’s Penguin you will be glad that you spent the majority of your time creating real, relevant content that supports then end goal of your web presence. Build Link strategies that will help your rankings stand the test of time.
