Artificial link building is the shabbiest side of SEO, but is fortunately all but dead and buried with the latest Google Panda algorithm updates.

Understandably, people still approach us with the notion that ”making” lots of links is what you need to do in SEO – theres enough companies peddling thier link building wares to give the impression that this is still the case.

So, I thought the following would help clarify our position at least.
Goldladder do not recommend, or offer services in:

• • – Paid Links
  • -Link Farms
  • -Almost all Directory Links*
  • -Reciprocal Links
  • -Low quality content links
  • -Non-unique content links
  • -Almost all Article Sites*
  • -Choosing link sites based on Page Rank.
  • -Links per month schemes
  • -All-you-can-link buffets

*there are some good examples of directory/ article sites, but they are few and far between, and rarely offer anything for SEO purposes.

So, do we even acknowledge the existence of links!? Yes we do, and here is how we help:

• • -Assisting the SEO of unique & engaging blog articles
  • -Checking and watching for naturally occurring links & web activity
  • -Measuring referall traffic in analytics from links
  • -Looking for conversion-based traffic from external links
  • -Suggesting to client good engaging article themes for maximum natural link potential
  • -Suggesting to client good sites for comments or articles of client-generated unique content
  • -Advising on link anchor text/formats for your own posts/ content
  • -Ad-hoc reports on competitor’s external web presences.

And so on – you get the picture.

Our approach has not changed in the 10 years we have been going, and it’s good that modern SEO agrees – forced actions towards gaining non-natural links is one of the most dangerous activities for your brand online, and any idea of placing a link purely for search algorithm manipulation (i.e non-traffic producing links) is out of the question with us.
As you can imagine, producing unique, engaging content for placement across the web that holds genuine appeal to potential customers is a demanding activity, and these resources have to come from somewhere. Goldladder’s approach is to work closely with content managers to suggest and facilitate these actions.

Now of course with social media, the likes / retweets / +1′s are all looked upon as the real indication of quality content (how long this impression will last I dare not say!). It’s not hard to see that looking for ranking positions in the shifting seas of social media, personalised search and realtime search is fruitless.

So, the takeaway for this post are two rules:

1. Publishing engaging, unique content that people like/republish/link to naturally is your best bet.

2. Judge links not on perceived ability to ”get good rankings”, but rather the quality traffic that comes onto your site.