SEO - what not to do

onlineweb

There are many threads out there on SEO and what to do to improve SERP's.

98% of them are complete rubbish.

The number 1 thing not to do is link building of any kind.

Irish Grave Markers

Hi, do you mean building links on irrelevant and unrelated sites?

onlineweb

I mean do follow links.

blue4ever

I believe that whole 'link building' is really tired at this point. Links are important, but throwing them in every direction is simply foolish.

Basically, to start with, if you don't have a site with content and a certain amount of authority - give up.

onlineweb

blue4ever wrote: »

I believe that whole 'link building' is really tired at this point. Links are important, but throwing them in every direction is simply foolish.

Basically, to start with, if you don't have a site with content and a certain amount of authority - give up.

I agree, links where very important in relation to the google algorithm a few years ago but since the latest updates it has diminished in significance.

Atomico

onlineweb wrote: »

I agree, links where very important in relation to the google algorithm a few years ago but since the latest updates it has diminished in significance.

Wrong. Links are still very important, how could they not be if they are one of the key factors they use to rank sites?!

That is not going to change anytime soon. Certainly bad link-building has diminished in effectiveness, which is a good thing.

onlineweb

Atomico wrote: »

Wrong. Links are still very important, how could they not be if they are one of the key factors they use to rank sites?!

That is not going to change anytime soon. Certainly bad link-building has diminished in effectiveness, which is a good thing.

I'm not so sure, I have ranked sites with no links. I have also been able to rank sites with perhaps 10-20 links against authority sites with 1,000's of links.

tricky D

You really need to read up properly on Penguin. It penalises poor quality, especially spammy linking and promotes good quality linking. The notion that Google is throwing out the value of (quality) links is absurd - that's largely what made Google stand out from the other conventional indexing/ranking schemes and made it into a gazillion dollar corporation.

onlineweb

tricky D wrote: »

You really need to read up properly on Penguin. It penalises poor quality, especially spammy linking and promotes good quality linking. The notion that Google is throwing out the value of (quality) links is absurd - that's largely what made Google stand out from the other conventional indexing/ranking schemes and made it into a gazillion dollar corporation.

I suggest you Google this!

Tricky do you work in the digital marketing sector?

tricky D

onlineweb wrote: »

I suggest you Google this!

Tricky do you work in the digital marketing sector?

Google what?

I'm not quite in the digital marketing sector but it would part of my remit.

Atomico

onlineweb wrote: »

I'm not so sure, I have ranked sites with no links. I have also been able to rank sites with perhaps 10-20 links against authority sites with 1,000's of links.

You can rank a site without links, but there is a massive 'it depends' caveat attached to that. If you are talking about non-commercial queries in a not very competitive area in a small market, then sure - it's likely just a matter of adding quality content, optimising the site itself and doing some social / outreach around it here and there. Hey presto - you get ranked after a few months or so.

The same could apply for commercial queries / sectors, where the competition is still low-medium in a relatively small market.

However, if you are talking about a highly competitive sector with lots of other brands and sites competing for page 1, then you may have a hard time ranking without quality links. In fact, you will likely still have a hard time ranking with quality links. In short, it's a whole different ball game.

So, as is so often the case in SEO / digital marketing - 'it depends'.