It’s Not About Buying You’re Way to The Top
June 14th, 2007 by Michael Gray in Link DevelopmentIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
When I try to combat the Google paid linking FUD one of the retorts I quite often get is “people shouldn’t be able to buy their way to the top”. I find this naive belief that business is egalitarian really very quaint.
Now I fully agree with Matt Cutts (bet you never thought I’d say that) that link baiting and viral marketing, are probably the best ways that you can get the most bang for your buck, or links for your work. However I know most of the people who are offering linkbaiting and viral marketing services right now, and almost every one of them is really busy. I also know that none of them are dirt cheap. So if you want to hire someone who’s experienced it’s still going to cost you.
So, what about the little guy? Do you think the local bike shop, skate store, yoga studio or karate school can afford to hire any of those linkbaiting consultants? Watch their face when you tell them the price. Well running a small business is always about bootstrapping and leveraging your own elbow grease, so maybe they can learn to do it for themselves.
Understanding how to write great copy that everyone will enjoy and that the linkerati will link to is a skill. It’s not something you can learn to do overnight. I can tell you in my experience getting local business owners to write plain boring information articles is about as easy herding cats on an ice skating rink while you are blindfolded. Telling them they now have to learn how to write link bait style articles and then figure out how to promote them, is like telling them they have to hop on one foot to the ice rink in China first. Let’s be honest many of these small business really can’t and don’t want to write, they opened a dance school because they liked to teach others how to dance, not run an editorial desk.
Having access to a bigger budget always has and always will be an advantage. It lets you buy things like print, TV or radio ads. A bigger budget means you get a better publicist with more connections who gets you more “free” publicity. A bigger budget lets you hire more experienced employees who will help you do better work and grow your business. Cutting off paid links isn’t about leveling the playing field for the little guy, in fact quite the opposite. Cutting off paid links is all about consolidating power, specifically at a company who’s headquarters are located in Mountain View California, and taking one more variable they can’t control out of the equation.
Sphere It
June 14th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Absolutely true! It’s nothing more that a way of getting you to spend your budget buying from Google.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:09 am
What probably hurts more is that small businesses are required to get more specific in their selection of keywords. While this may be fine in the short term, once any sort of monetizable keyword volume can be realized, a bigger player can just come in, leveraging existing strengths to optimize for the more long tail phrases.
And I’ve seen the look of pain when even making recommendations on existing content, let alone developing new material. Great metaphor - it brings to mind the “herding cats” Superbowl commercial (could I get a client to come up with something like that?)
June 14th, 2007 at 10:32 am
You can set the “little” guy up with an optimized blog and if he/she has the skill to write about his/her passions he/she will outrank any SEO in future algorithms. People link to what is real but that is just one part of the equation.
I set average folks up who have hobbies for free (when they ask) and I am amazed at how well they do with good copy, passion and few links. They get better traffic than my sorry SEO arse in most cases.
That is if we are talking about ranking in Google.
Business isn’t egalitarian correct Michael, Google algorithms are becoming more so every day.
Painting people as “naive” when they challenge is an Aaron Wall tactic, you are better than this Michael.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:44 am
>Business isn’t egalitarian correct Michael, Google algorithms are becoming more so every day.
Sorry I completely disagree with you there. Google is taking steps to promote many of their own lisitngs in the top ten with the things like google music, google maps, google news, you tube and so on. I’m also really tired of the wikipedia listings for what feels like 9 out of 10 searches I do per day
http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-love-affair-with-wikipedia/
Great writing will help but great writing without promotion is like writing novels and locking them in your dark basement. Finding the time to write, promote and run your shop is hard nut to swallow sometimes.
June 14th, 2007 at 11:16 am
I agree with you on the flood of universal search media (video, pdf files, “how to” spam) and wikipedia but the (google) algorithms are now generous to those who write good copy. Good copy brings in natural links, in most cases that is all the promo. you need.
I also agree that the link baiting/viral marketing thing can put new sites on the map just as a good copy that is tagged brings recognition from bloggers in the form of links.
Friggin links! ;-(
June 14th, 2007 at 11:49 am
I couldn’t agree more. Trying to get content out of some clients is like pulling teeth.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Hey Michael…this is a little off topic but I just submitted my lyrics to an SEO contest and it has your name in it….
It’s called “Dave Naylor Went Down to Google” and it’s sung to the tune of “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” by The Charlie Daniels Band.
you can view it here: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/contest/dave-naylor-went-down-to-google-sung-to-the-devil-went-down-to-georgia-by-the-charlie-daniels-band.html
June 14th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I enjoyed your cat simile.
June 14th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Wait, wait, wait… am I blindfolded or are the cats? Because… well, I could herd blindfolded cats!
June 14th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Can somebody tell me where i can get a „realtime“ backlink check for free for the SEO Results?
I have the problem that every backlink checker in the Search Engines gives a different result – sometimes more than 500 + or -.
Do you also know which is the best backlinck checker in web for an SEO beginner?
Thank you for your answer and greetings.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Excellent article! I totally agree with the writing skills and other stuff you’ve mentioned. Writing a good article for link baiting is a difficult task itself and requires a lot of industry experience. Then, even if you’ve written a first class article, it has to get some kind of promotion in the start to get it rolling to spread the word around. For this you might have to submit a few Press Releases, or promote on another site, or simply write a few related articles and promote them. All this takes more time and effort.
Even promoting Press Releases or Articles can be highly expensive if you want to get REAL exposure.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Suchmaschinenoptimierung, to answer your question, I don’t think there is any Real Time back link checker. No backlink checker can check ALL Back Links of a website. However, a few good back link checker tools are:
http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/
http://www.backlinkwatch.com/
June 15th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
No, it’s not about buying your way to the top, but you have to figure that it really IS about buying your way to the top.
Guess what, folks, I’ve got news for you: there will always be ways to buy your way to the top. That’s business. Companies buy other companies all the time. Why? They want to buy their way to to the top.
Companies buy out their competitors. I’ve seen plenty of times when some guy buys out all the gas stations on all four corners of the busiest intersection in town. Sure, there’s a Shell, a Texaco, an Exxon and a Fina gas station at the busiest intersection–but the same guy owns all of them.
When it comes to the internet, if you have enough money you can buy your way to the top–just buy your competitor’s sites, pay someone to build the best content in your industry, and start advertising. If that advertising includes buying links then sobeit.
June 20th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Well put.
I always wished I could put my thoughts down into an argument like this.
buying paid links is like any other advertising. The local bike shop would not take out a national TV ad, so in the same way they only buy text links from bike sites and focus on a few ‘easier’ local keywords.
Pure market forces are funny like that, they just seem to work. Kinda like the pure market of free links.
June 24th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Yes I agree, however if one can pay cash for ranking and not have to pay an seo person or link bate person, we all lose.
As long as it is difficult and time consuming to get to the top of the search engines we all have a chance. I can go toe to toe with a much larger company currently because they must do the same things I have to do.
June 24th, 2007 at 10:31 am
I agree with PHP MYsql above. If big companies can pay a lump sum and swipe all top positions that would really stick it to the smaller business. Allowing the smaller companies to compete is better for the consumer.