Posted by Andy Beard

Link Building is a fundamental skill for SEO practitioners, but many go about it in ways that could hurt their long term ranking benefit.

Just over a year ago I wrote my first and only guest post, as an entry into Marketing Pilgrim’s annual competition. At the time when I published the article, I joked that “I had been robbed“, you wouldn’t believe the number of comments suggesting a way to get my revenge, file DMCA, report to Google or recover my “stolen” article.

Climbing The Heights Of Mount Google

When you set out to climb a mountain, or rank for a competitive keyword term, some methods are effective.

This is a simplistic look at climbing the heights of Mount Google.

Human Pyramid

A human pyramid might be suitable for those low hanging fruit, but this method is unlikely to help you scale great heights. Not only is it hard to gain great height, but the weak construction is easily eroded by competitors.

Photo credit: S@TS

Belay or Blogroll

Whilst exchanging blogroll links can help lift you up to a certain level, they can effectively anchor you to your peers. From an SEO point of view they are more about securing your position than lifting you higher. If you have achieved a certain height, there is nothing wrong with pulling up a few team mates. They can then aid in a push for the summit, which can be a very lonely solo trek.

Photo credit: dfinnecy

Grappling Hook

This is the “gizmo” mindset, that specific tools can blast your website or blog to prominence, maybe as a clown from a circus cannon, or to scale the walls of the Vatican in Mission Impossible.

Whilst I am a fan of some forms of automation, and it can achieve significant results, those results are often short-lived. Whether it is trackback and referrer spam, automated social bookmarking, directory submission software, or other quick fix, the writing is on the wall before you even start, only many are too blind to see it.

Not everyone gets a safety net, or is Ethan Hunt.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Teamwork

Teamwork is often the most effective method, especially if one member of the team is already at the top of the mountain, and can pull you up.

Photo credit: JasonRogers

V.I.P. Ticket

It might not convey the same bragging rights, or sense of achievement, but if you are a “big hitter” working for a major corporation, or have plenty of funds to grease the wheels, there are faster ways to the top.

Photo credit: Photo Monkey

Highest Mountain

Don’t try to climb the highest mountain from the start, it will always end in failure. Start on lower slopes, build experience, and if possible gather together a solid team to help you scale the higher slopes of Mount Google.

Then again, who wants to be top of the mountain, and why am I writing a guest post Pull me up Andy!

2009 Competition

The 2009 Competition has just reached the judging stages – batch 1 & batch 2 – there are some good articles to read on all kinds of online marketing

Followup

As a guest article, I was a little disappointed in the results. Not so much my results in the competition, but overall traffic, appeal to Stumbleupon visitors, etc.

I deliberately chose a different style of article, more images, light weight/broad appeal content, but with a deeper message that might have not quite sunk in for readers.

I am going to try another attempt at the same article using diagrams and more specific wording soon.

Originally published at andybeard.eu

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Linking, SEO. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Andy Beard - Niche Marketing - Blog search engine perfomance, Wordpress and general niche and affiliate marketing tips.