Google working on Prime Real Estate

It is no secret that the search engines are trying to overcome the best efforts of SEO's and webmasters who attempt to influence their rankings. As part of an optimisation project there is an element known as the link building strategy. There are many ways to gather links but when it comes to Google there is one technique that has and continues to generate results, GoogleBombing. Many organisations have exploited the practice and whilst not a particularly attractive name to describe the process, it does reflect the nature of how the industry views the action. Simply put, it is nothing more than gathering inbound links with a certain text or phrase as the link.

Whilst Google has “sabre rattled” several times that the process does not work, to be honest it does – the point is you have to be more natural about it. But if Google are saying they have devised a filter against the practice it begs the question, how would the search engine identify if you are Bombing them?

Think about it, they are looking for natural link patterns. These would be from a variety of servers, from multiple domains with assorted text links and more importantly in prime page real estate. After all why does one site link to another? …should it be because they are endorsing the content on another site and willing to send their traffic to it?

How many times have you seen unrelated links in the footer of the page, out on the right hand side or perhaps just a page full of links with virtually no ordinary text? Isn’t a link more influential if it is embedded into 200 -1000 words of content rich text, in the middle of the page.

Obviously overuse of a single term as a proportion of the total number of links isn’t such a good idea. So it follows if a search engine can identify the location of the link on the page, combine it with the amount of accompanying themed copy, it can be used to gauge how influential a link is.

Google is known to be working on a technology to do this. It then follows that if Google is working on this kind of technology, it is prudent to future proof your internet marketing campaign, you must seek out links of this type.

Ways to do this are to become a reporter/author for a non connected website, post to related blogs and comment in forums. Other ways are to sit down, put pen to paper and write a good quality news article based on related experiences, case studies, market trends, advice documents or even write a whitepaper.

Content syndication  is a must, circulate the article out to other web sites. In doing so not only do you increase the circulation and readership of your document but (with luck) the locations that republish content will link back to your site.

Normally Google has a habit of sabre rattling well before it introduces a new technology. Part of the idea, I’m sure, is to encourage webmasters to clean up their act before the big switch on – but it has been noted before that whether it be 6 months or 18 months they generally do perfect the technology and do switch it on.

Written by Matt Paines.

Back 25.07.2007.