As I have said before SEO is not that difficult. I think that the trouble with many affiliates is that they are looking for shortcuts or in many ways the easy option. We all known that Google is doing its upmost to clamp down on link sellers plus of course trying at the very least to discount purchased links. Let me relate back to only a year ago with my experience with building links on articles.
Last year I had great success submitting articles on article directory sites. I worked on 5 or 6 key phrases, managing to get 1st page rankings for all key phrases, with very little effort. All I did to obtain these rankings was create a few articles, spin them, and auto post them on the top 100 article sites. I will be honest and say I used a program called Article Post Robot. Article Post Robot automates the posting process plus gives you the ability to change many aspects of every article posted. I would simply spend an hour or two preparing the articles then let the script submit them whilst I slept.
I even told a friend exactly what I was doing and at I point we both were fighting for a well known UK sports book key phrases both ranking on the 1st page of Google’s search results. During late October last year, virtually overnight, all ranking were lost. It was clear that Google had changed its algorithm to give less weight to links on articles. Google now is really getting to grips with affiliates so now more than ever you need to think like Google.
So what are the best links to build?
What is the best placement for links?
Firstly any links that are easy to obtain are in most cases complete waste of time. Links such as forum signatures, article resource box links and most social network links are virtually worthless. Please note though that I said most! You may get some short terms results, but long term these types of links are of no value so any rankings gained will be lost. You will also run the risk of receiving a penalty from Google. Trust me I know all about Google penalties as I have experienced many over the years.
In regards to link placement, just take a moment to think for a minute. What type of links do you see in sidebars? What type of links do you see in footers? Let’s be honest and say that perhaps 99% of the time these types of links are paid links. Don’t you think Google realises this? Links in the actual body text are in most cases genuine resource links. These are the type of links you should be putting your energy into acquiring.
I believe Google is devaluing more types of links than ever before. Over the past few months many affiliates have had sites dropped out of the Google index. Many complain that their sites have had strong back links but on closer inspection it is clear that many of their links were paid links. In my opinion, in content links surrounded by a paragraph or two of relevant content have never been more powerful!
