We are constantly told "get quality links" to your site and Google, Bing, Yahoo and everyone else will rank your site accordingly.
Now what exactly do they mean by "quality links"? Do they have to have a high page rank themselves? If you only link to high page rank sites does Google penalise you for not having a more natural distribution of links i.e. from 1-9.
The big Google taboo is "no paid links" which is where you pay a suspect SEO company to link your site to hundreds of varying page rank sites covering a multitude of topics (not necessarily yours). The huge flaw with this Google directive is that the web has evolved to the point that money totally governs transactions, so sites no longer link to other sites without something changing hands, be it money or reciprocal links that have to appear on your homepage carrying advertising banners or reams of information about other sites.
There are a whole range of "free" directories that you can physically link to but even here you have the option of 24-48 hour express entry - for a fee - or join the free entry queue and wait up to 6 months to get listed! Either way you have to physically go out and find these links. No one will give you a reciprocal link unless it is of benefit to them. So you link to all the main search engines by creating your sitemap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCZdE5_bpnw and individually submitting it to all the major search engines.
The point I am making is that nothing on the web is free, particularly if you take your time into account, this can add up many, many hours and be totally exhausting both mentally and financially. So the idea of putting out a website, particularly an ecommerce site, and expecting the natural linking practices of the web to eventually place you on page one are as likely as landing on Mars and finding a cash point giving out free money, it's just not going to happen. You have to go and find links by paying for, writing articles, blogs, tweets, doing the whole social networking thing with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Bebo, Msn, getting listed on Dmoz and Joeant (even ranking on Alexa), not to mention the countless bookmarking and other micro blogging sites.
The whole process is absolutely artificial and therefore ridiculous. To make it to page one by spending inaudinate amounts of money on SEO companies, paid directories, advertising through things like "Pay per Click" (which is another incongruity of the highest order) or hundreds of man hours linking to here, there and everywhere, as per the Google Guidelines is proposterous because it completely by-passes the main criteria that a potential customer requires, "Quality Content".
Content must be number one above all other criteria.
You cannot pretend to have content you either have great content or you don't. You can mask it's absence with a multitude of things; sharp title, description, limited direct keywords, no spam, quality alt codes and great links but if the content is not there you really don't have anything of interest when your potential customers flood your site. Let's look at Jellycat soft toys as an example, you are selling a whole range of products at a really good price http://www.fleurtations.uk.com/jellycat_1.asp and along comes ebay or Amazon with an offer on just one item in this huge range, they are propelled to page one and ahead of you simply because they have better links and, because of their ubiquitous web presence, you have to assume Google rather likes them.
If Google does not put far more importance to content and far less to the superflous drivel that constitutes page rank the world's greatest search engine will certainly loose it's credibility but far more importantly.....it's audience.
Now what exactly do they mean by "quality links"? Do they have to have a high page rank themselves? If you only link to high page rank sites does Google penalise you for not having a more natural distribution of links i.e. from 1-9.
The big Google taboo is "no paid links" which is where you pay a suspect SEO company to link your site to hundreds of varying page rank sites covering a multitude of topics (not necessarily yours). The huge flaw with this Google directive is that the web has evolved to the point that money totally governs transactions, so sites no longer link to other sites without something changing hands, be it money or reciprocal links that have to appear on your homepage carrying advertising banners or reams of information about other sites.
There are a whole range of "free" directories that you can physically link to but even here you have the option of 24-48 hour express entry - for a fee - or join the free entry queue and wait up to 6 months to get listed! Either way you have to physically go out and find these links. No one will give you a reciprocal link unless it is of benefit to them. So you link to all the main search engines by creating your sitemap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCZdE5_bpnw and individually submitting it to all the major search engines.
The point I am making is that nothing on the web is free, particularly if you take your time into account, this can add up many, many hours and be totally exhausting both mentally and financially. So the idea of putting out a website, particularly an ecommerce site, and expecting the natural linking practices of the web to eventually place you on page one are as likely as landing on Mars and finding a cash point giving out free money, it's just not going to happen. You have to go and find links by paying for, writing articles, blogs, tweets, doing the whole social networking thing with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Bebo, Msn, getting listed on Dmoz and Joeant (even ranking on Alexa), not to mention the countless bookmarking and other micro blogging sites.
The whole process is absolutely artificial and therefore ridiculous. To make it to page one by spending inaudinate amounts of money on SEO companies, paid directories, advertising through things like "Pay per Click" (which is another incongruity of the highest order) or hundreds of man hours linking to here, there and everywhere, as per the Google Guidelines is proposterous because it completely by-passes the main criteria that a potential customer requires, "Quality Content".
Content must be number one above all other criteria.
You cannot pretend to have content you either have great content or you don't. You can mask it's absence with a multitude of things; sharp title, description, limited direct keywords, no spam, quality alt codes and great links but if the content is not there you really don't have anything of interest when your potential customers flood your site. Let's look at Jellycat soft toys as an example, you are selling a whole range of products at a really good price http://www.fleurtations.uk.com/jellycat_1.asp and along comes ebay or Amazon with an offer on just one item in this huge range, they are propelled to page one and ahead of you simply because they have better links and, because of their ubiquitous web presence, you have to assume Google rather likes them.
If Google does not put far more importance to content and far less to the superflous drivel that constitutes page rank the world's greatest search engine will certainly loose it's credibility but far more importantly.....it's audience.
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