The self-defeating pursuit of dofollow blogs

SEO digest

There is a growing trend in the SEO industry of seeking out blogs that don’t use “rel=’nofollow’” in their comments — or blogs that lift “rel=’nofollow’” for regular or frequent commenters. I realize people in our industry will not give up their love (and quests) for links. So much misinformation about search engine optimization has been published that the majority of SEOs don’t have any clue as to why they are constantly looking for links. They seem to do it because “everyone says you should”.

Nonetheless, singling out bloggers who observe the DOFOLLOW philosophy just recreates the problem we had a few years ago before “rel=’nofollow’”. Every time you publish a list of dofollow bloggers you’re putting “kick me” signs on their backs. Eventually, the horde of comment spammers who take the time to get past the CAPTCHAs will reveal their true, link-greedy nature and bloggers will start asking themselves why they are supporting DOFOLLOW.

Every link-building trick that is openly shared by the SEO community is a cheap, sleazy scheme to abuse other people’s Web sites. These tricks are not cheap and sleazy because the SEO community is cheap and sleazy (of course we’re not). These tricks are cheap and sleazy because they perpetuate the myth that you have to obtain links in order to obtain good rankings in competitive queries.

The SEO community is its own worst enemy, pummeling every half-way decent Web site into self-defensive filtering, monitoring, and member-banning. The SEO community’s inability to rid itself of naive ideas like “it’s all about links” and “I only need to get links to rank” is holding back a lot of hard-working people. If it were really as simple as getting links, we’d all be ranking well in competitive queries. There really are enough to go around for a community as small as ours.

Search engine optimization needs to focus on FOUR fundamental principles:

1. Visibility
2. Content organization
3. Keyword Research
4. Links

If we were to judge how much our community adheres to fundamental principles just by looking at blog and forum posts, we would find that the majority of people talk about links and leave the other three principles alone. At most, links should only account for one quarter of your SEO campaign. At best, links should account for less than one quarter of your SEO campaign.

You cannot abuse other people’s Web sites through content optimization and keyword research. Hence, you cannot create a self-correcting problem through content optimization and keyword research. When you tell people to go hammer a small number of blogs for their link value, you create a problem that will eventually correct itself — and then you’ll be on to the next self-correcting problem.

When I’m in a competitive situation with another SEO firm I don’t tell my clients and prospects I’m going to help them get all the links they need. I talk to them about building the traffic they’re looking for. Sure, every site needs links, but if all you’re doing is pursuing links, you’re not really optimizing for search.

You have to know where people are looking for the content you’re promoting (that’s search visibility), you have to make sure your content is relevant to those queries (that’s content organization), and you have to make sure you know what else people are looking for (that’s keyword research).

Although most people would argue that keyword research should come first in SEO, that’s not really true. Almost any content will rank for something. You can refine a Web site’s strengths by honing its content for the queries it is most relevant to before you start adding content that is relevant to more popular queries.

Anyone who puts links first in their SEO priority list is practicing weak and ineffective SEO. One link can only send you so much PageRank and anchor text. One well-written page can rank for 100 queries (give or take).

It is really THAT simple. You can spend weeks dropping links to boost a site’s relevance with subtle variations on one expression. In that amount of time, you could instead be writing dozens of articles that each rank for many different expressions.

Links just don’t pack that kind of power. They never have, they never will.

And given that most links don’t pass value, and that you cannot be sure of which links WILL pass value (until you see their effects in special queries), you’re not using your time and resources efficiently. Helping the herd stampede over blogs that offer dofollow comment linking isn’t helping anyone in the long run.

Either you want the search traffic or you don’t. If you don’t want the search traffic, then keep building links. If you do want the search traffic, then get off the link treadmill and start practicing the fundamental principles of search engine optimization. You’ll eventually build some links, but if you do it right you won’t have to spend the rest of your year chasing hard-to-find value-passing links.

www.seo-theory.com

published @ October 3, 2008