You control your own destiny, Google doesn't
My post yesterday about Google's paid links smack down sparked quite a discussion and a bit of debate.
Good points were made all around on all sides of the debate.
When is a paid link not a paid link?
Google has a major problem relating the identification of paid links, but I believe it has an even bigger problem relating to the definition of 'paid links', and the very term itself.
Econsultancy’s Patricio Robles wrote about this earlier today so I don’t want to cover too much old ground, but I do want to comment on the difference – or similarity – between paid and commercial links.
Google lays the smack down on 'sponsored conversations'
I've discussed the nofollow attribute several times lately.
The bottom line: Google doesn't like paid links and regardless of whether or not one agrees with Google's stance, the use of nofollow with paid links is a best practice worth implementing.
Is nofollow dying?
In a recent post, I discussed the use of the nofollow attribute as an SEO best practice.
In a guest post on SEOmoz, Distilled.co.uk's Will Critchlow suggests the opposite: nofollow is dying.
The benefits of 'nofollow' as an SEO best practice
The PageRank Google assigns your pages is one of your most valuable assets as an online publisher. Your SEO success on Google is dependent upon earning and maintaining PageRank.
In every sense of the word, doing so is a balancing act. Hoarding your PageRank is not good; not providing any links to other websites can be viewed as an SEO sin and it's difficult to get other websites to link to yours when you don't link out, in turn making it more difficult to earn PageRank in the first place.
5 link building techniques
Last week I discussed the ongoing debate around the use of paid links for SEO. As I noted, there seems to be a growing consensus that the use of paid links is a risky proposition.
Most SEOs, even those who still utilize paid links, tend to agree -
building links the old-fashioned way (i.e. earning them) is the best
long-term approach.
Are paid links dead as an SEO strategy?
Instant results are always the most appealing. When it comes to SEO, climbing up the SERPs can take a lot of time, effort and money.
A popular technique amongst some marketers for acquiring the inbound links that search engines like Google love has been to pay for them.
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Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
