Previously if you had been buying links from link networks and content farms you’re rankings are in jeopardy. Google made several swift changes to their algorithm in Feb 2011 which were dubbed the Farmer updates. After major retail giants like Jc Penney and Overstock got caught out gaming Google’s system their spam department deranked them and made an update to their algorithm that devalues links from content farms and websites that do not have original content.
So although this goes a long way to demonstrate that what you do in terms of link building and search engine optimization strategies can rarely get your site banned or slapped as it is affectionately known in the industry. Rather these links you have built will at most get deindexed. They won’t count basically. So if you’ve spent a ton of time and effort using link building schemes that will be money and time spent down the drain.
Not all link building schemes use content farms of course, but many times if you have subscriptions coming out for link networks you aren’t specifically sure where the links come from. In most cases the cheaper link networks use link and content farms that basically are pages of reused content from loads of other websites, or just as bad links from pages full of nothing else but links.
The difference between working with seo companies is that the majority of them use long term link building strategies. Old fashioned techniques like article marketing still work and in fact any links gained from article marketing usually stick around on the internet and as the years go by these links usually get stronger as more and more browsers tweet or link back to the article page.
The links from the article directories aren’t the goal, but rather to get links from other webmasters who request your article from the article directories. The better your articles are the more they will get picked up.
Apparently seo experts believe that Google is looking into how popular web pages are on social media platforms. Matt Cutts one of the chief Google engineers has even alluded to this fact when being interviewed. Personally I don’t think it will be too long until they had the popularity of a webpage across social media platforms into their algorithm.
So if you thought social media was just about getting your presence known in such circles think gain. Social media is also a great way to increase your exposure, there are besides Google more ways to gather an online audience for your business.
