spamThere is no doubt in my mind that Google is well aware of the authors contributing to sites like Forbes, HuffPost, Engadget and all the others solely to obtain a link.

I believe that is what they were hinting at today when they put out an article called “A reminder about links in large-scale article campaigns“.

While Google cautions on the intent of getting content onto a high authority site, they do state that:

Google does not discourage these types of articles in the cases when they inform users, educate another site’s audience or bring awareness to your cause or company.

They do hint at things to watch out for, which I can completely agree with:

  • Keyword rich links
  • Using many different sites
  • Using poorly written content
  • (poorly) Syndicated posts

Most business owners are thrilled to get one or two links from a powerful site and have no desire to blast out 100 crummy articles.

There is also no doubt that google has by now identified certain authors which manipulate links.

However, in moderation, most people obtaining links this way are perfectly ok and will continue to fly under the radar. Not that I advise that to everyone. But it happens in every industry. Pet bloggers do it, heck even “SEO Experts” post on certain blogs for links back to their own site and get away with it.

Is Google wrong about links?

In the article Google states that links will follow for good content:

Our best advice in relation to link building is to focus on improving your site’s content and everything–including links–will follow

This isn’t always true.

I need to sit down and dedicate an entire article to this topic, but in a nutshell, people HATE linking to certain topics. Additionally, people link less and less as they’re ignorant to Google’s guidelines and just think “link bad”. I’ve seen it over the years. A company I used to own had a very informative page which was linked to 107 times, 100% organically! These days, people do not like linking to business which make money. They don’t like linking to dog breeders. They don’t like linking to attorneys. An orthodontist can have epic content and get no links.

Just this month I had an article go up and within 48hrs it received links from 47 domains! Content DOES get links, it just happens a LOT less than it used to. I may put out 200 articles before one gets a lot of links.

I am contacted daily by people who just invested a year or their life into their blog and have very few links and they wonder why. It’s because “good content always gets links” isn’t true. Trust me, it pains me to say that as a content creator.

If you’re having trouble determining which links may or may not get you in trouble or what type of content does or does not obtain natural links fee free to contact me today.

Len

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