SEO Blues Part 2. Links, links, links…
Now it is time to dig a bit dipper and see what the SEO companies do offer you. First and utmost service and “improvement” they offer to a desperate Webmaster is to increase number of links to the website and therefore boost your pegerank. I wouldn’t argue that links are important but… (it should always be a “but”, isn’t it?). The problem is, where your new links are coming from? In most cases you would get zillions of links from so called “link pools”, places designed especially to store links. And don’t be fooled that search engines don’t know about “pools” or pay any attention to links coming from them. On a contrary, many of such websites are considered a “bad neighbourhood” so incoming links would simply damage your reputation and transfer their bad website “karma” to your own site. If you are lucky, then it will simply do … nothing to your site, just plain nothing. Now other type of links – directory submissions. Well, they are thousands of directories on the Net, if you really want your site to appear there – it’s absolutely fine. Meanwhile you should take into account that 99% of them are as useless for your website as any of the links above. There are important directories, DMOZ being probably the most important of them, but to get your website into DMOZ is not a simple matter of submission. It is not an automated directory service but something edited and checked by human editors. Therefore if your content is a simple sales pitch or is nothing interesting for general Internet population, then your website will most probably be rejected and no SEO company could help you with it.
What are the lessons we should learn from this short essay? First of all not all links and directories are good for your pagerank, some of them are even harmful. Second, one genuine link from a trusty site worth thousands of links from “link pools”. Try to develop links but do not overdo with it and do not make it an absolute priority in your website promotion strategy. If you have useful and interesting content, then many Webmasters would link to you voluntarily, which is much more important than any automated link building scheme.
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