ARTICLES FOR WEBMASTERS 
 Link Building Woes: Buying Links may get you into trouble, says Google
Nearly every webmaster on the planet has heard of Google. Whether
they like Google or not; the majority of webmasters start to drool over
the mere thought of gaining top rankings for the most coveted search
terms in their industry because of the huge influx of traffic, and
hopefully paying customers, that top placement in Google can
bring. Now it seems that Google is changing the search engine
optimization (SEO) game for the widely used link building practice of
purchasing links. The question is though, how will this change
your link building strategy?
Artificial link building: an unethical attempt at search engine rankings manipulation?
For quite a while Google has frowned upon link building strategies that
rely on paying for links from high ranking websites; though it seems
that Google has done little to nothing in the form of degrading the
value of links obtained through this artificial link building method in
their ranking algorithm, at least as of yet. From Google's
point of view, buying links for search engine optimization purposes is
likely seen as unethical; in essence trying to buy your way to better
search engine rankings. For a search engine that aspires to
return the most relevant results for their search queries, manipulation
of their indexes can be seen as a problem that must be overcome if they
want to continually improve the relevancy of their search results.
Some link building strategies are already less effective
With other link building methods, such as directory submissions;
essentially a free form of rankings manipulation if done for search
engine optimization purposes, already beginning to feel the effects of
degraded performance in terms of a search engine rankings boost; it was
inevitable that Google would also take action against the link building
method that requires payment for a biased "stamp of approval" from the
websites that offer paid link placement.
In addition to directory submissions, other types of link building
strategies are also feeling the effects of degraded performance, and it
seems that the types of links that are receiving the diminished SEO
effects are from websites that offer outbound links on a variety of
topics, though directory submissions and certain types of article
marketing, or a link building strategy that requires submission of an
article to article directories, seem to be suffering the most at the
moment.
News about the action taken against paid link building is not well received by the webmaster community
Some webmasters are already grumbling about this news, though really,
any webmaster relying on an artificial link building strategy to
increase their search engine rankings is going about search engine
optimization in the wrong way anyway. While it's true that Google
seems to weigh off page elements, such as the value of a website that a
link comes from and the anchor text used to describe your website, than
they do on page elements, such as keyword density and meta tag usage
(which is essentially ineffective anyway); the correct approach to
effective link building starts with your website. If you create a
website that is worth linking to, your link building will occur
naturally; creating a website that people love is the most effective
link building strategy that exists. This is probably what Google is
trying to reinforce with their decision to take "action" against links
that were paid for, not earned.
As Matt Cutts of Google stated in a recent interview posted on Youtube:
"We do still consider buying links to be outside of our
guidelines… We [Google] may take stronger action on that in the
future. So, if people want to ignore that, that's their right…
but we, as a search engine, can do what we think is best to return a
high-quality index."
Webmasters might not like this decision by Google, but ultimately it is
Google's decision what they do with their website and how they decide
to manage their ranking algorithm. Plus, returning the most
relevant results in their search queries where placement is dictated by
natural linking building, not paid link placement, will ultimately
benefit the website owners who achieve top search engine rankings by
natural means. This is because the internet community as a whole
believes that your website is relevant for whatever search terms you
rank highly for; thus creating an atmosphere for your website visitors
where when they click through from the search engine results pages
(SERPs), they are visiting a website that other people believe is
relevant for these search terms.
Artificial link building works against the purpose of a search engine
In reality, any artificial link building strategy really works against
the whole purpose of a search engine when the search engine heavily
considers the value of incoming links in their ranking algorithm.
When people search for something, they expect to find the most relevant
and accurate results at the top of the SERPs. In order for a search
engine to return the most relevant search results, links from unbiased
parties should certainly weigh more heavily than links obtained from a
link building strategy that relies on paying for link placement.
While having a solid link building strategy will undoubtedly help for
search engine optimization, careful consideration should be made for
the link building strategies that you utilize; taking the time to
create a website that is worth linking to is undoubtedly the best link
building strategy of all.
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