Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Law Firm SEO - Linkation

By Michael Carabash
Links to your website have a significant impact on how your website ends up in search engines rankings for certain keywords. The more high quality links you have, the better. There are a number of ways you can build links to your website, include:

1. Reciprocal linking with other (hopefully relevant) websites;

2. Directory Submissions;

3. Article Submissions;

4. Press Releases; and

5. Social Media.

These techniques take a lot of time and effort.

Also worth mentioning are blogs. Blogs allow for easy linking (e.g. through comments and trackbacks). A trackback is an automatic system that notifies Blog Owner A that Blog Owner B has referenced one of Blog Owner A's blog post. The end result is that a link will be created in Blog Owner A's blog to Blog Owner B's blog.

Now, in the underground world of SEO, there are automated programs that build up links as quickly as possible. These programs work to build links on unsophisticated blogs where owners are not checking 'cloaked' trackbacks that are essentially spam. Doing so - particularly if you have a new domain name - could lead to search engines punishing you. I've read about something called the Google sandbox (although no one is really sure if it exists), which allegedly punishes your website for many many months if you build up too many links too quickly in an unnatural manner. It could also piss off a whole bunch of people if you are spamming their blogs with your trackbacks.

I actually came across an automated software (called Trackback Spider) for purchase which essentially creates links to your website by spamming other people's blogs through trackback. This method of increasing the number of links to your website is called "Blackhat" (which means bad, malicious, unethical, etc. means by which search engine optimizers try to improve their website's search engine rankings). This kind of software doesn't really help you in the long run because bloggers might complain to Google about your website, bloggers review the trackbacks before approving them, and old and abandoned blogs - with low quality content and traffic - may be all that's left for spammers wanting to build tracback links to their website. At the end of the day, tools like this are being more and more obsolete - and for good reason.

So what's recommended? Build your links naturally over time. Don't try to fool search engines. Create good quality content that has something relevant to offer when people are searching for your keywords. At the end of the day, patience and a good strategy are key. Continuing to tweak your website with high hopes that it will be thrust on p. 1 of Google in no time is not the reality; you need to accept the fact that if you have a new website, it will take quite a while before it ranks well in Google.

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