If you want links, Google says to make your site interesting
Google’s Maile Ohye presented at Google’s Link Week with a tutorial on inbound links. She talked about what SEO experts such as myself, have all been been saying for years and that is “Your content and inbound links are most important, and in that order”.
Just because it’s old news doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. Traditionally Google’s has a history for being silent about SEO, and many experts were often left to theorise and test. Last year Google sent a pretty loud signal hitting the PageRanks of paid directories, a move Somewhat confirming basic white-hat SEO tactics.
In her post, Ohye espouses the virtues of naturally gained, editorial inbound links and directly denounces links that might appear not “merit based” or appear as “spammy”.
Ohye offered four bullet points on how to earn merit-based links, paraphrased below:
* Provide useful products or services.
* Be interesting. Be a teacher.
* Start a site-related blog, writing or video, research or entertainment.
* Participate in the community surrounding your industry-social media, blog comments, user reviews.
The message is quite clear: content, content, content, a little participation, and the links will come; but go and get those links.
Filed under: optimising | Tagged: backlinks, off-page optimisation |
Internet Marketing Contributing to Real Business 
Thanks for the great post.
While Google is usually pretty tight-lipped about SEO, they have published a very helpful webmaster guide, that gives great insight into what they are looking for, when ranking a sight. The Google Webmaster Guidelines – Webmaster Help Center can be found at:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
It confirms what you have said. Content and Inbound Links are very important, and Google will penalize you for “spammy” techniques. It is best to play it safe, and build your PageRank score the right way. Follow the rules, write great content, participate in the community.
Keep up the good work