Links and the #EEAT issues

Within the interwebs links do so many strange things, and the impacts of links, both external and internal, as well as in bound and out bound impact your SEO in such powerful ways. 

#EEAT is a vastly complex search engine optimisation Value indicator.

 Most folks forget that every link has two sides... yes that is correct, two sides. first is the origin and the other is the destination

These links do many strange things in a host of unthought of places.

 Search engines use these kinks in so many different places, but most SEO PRACTITIONERS that I speak to are very ignorant and refuse to think past the end of their noses

Once your online content has been indexed, that is when the fun and games starts. all search engines use the links within your online content to start mapping out many different issues like

•  trust maps, 
• entity graphs
•  link maps, 
• expertise maps, 
• expert connectivity status graphs,
• subject matter connectivity  graphs
• Subject matter connectivity maps 
•  and so many more. 

 There are actually thousands of data bases at play here, where search engines take a very fine tooth comb and evaluate your content in very serious and devious ways.  This is where the #HummingBird algorithm shows its value 

 They need to establish the purpose, aims, objectives intent and so many other issues about your online content. It is vital that you remember that Search has evolved, and search engines match your page intent to the intent of the search query. So keywords are not used during the initial search process. 

 This does not mean that #KeyWords are obsolete, coz they are not.. Keywords are actually vital, and they are used in so many other areas besides to match to query words. Many of the data bases that we are talking about here, use both ends of the link and compare both sides to each other and to a third area that holds the imagined contextual issues of your page. 

This imagined contextual map changes and grows, as issues within your page unfolds and gets exposed to the many different algorithms that are processed during the vigorous indepth evaluations of your content. Lots of strange and very sneaky things happen coz so  many things are happening at the same time in different areas of the page identity and categorising process. 

Semantic connectedness issues are also evaluated during this time. The semantic intentions of your content is first processed at this stage, but this is a very fluid issue, coz this changes as the search engine evaluates more and more issues, which are all integrated into these many different data bases that are growing, as the search engine's interpretation of your content evolves with each iteration of the algorithms that evaluate and transcribe your content into machine understandable contextual content within many different data bases 

 This is a very confusing time, coz so many things are being processed by a vast number of different algorithms, all at the same time. all SEO factors are evaluated and processed at the same time, but by different algorithms. So this is a very busy time.....

This repeats each time your content is revisited to include new backlinks or any updates that may or perhaps may not be re-evaluated. lots of issues are processed, and most require links to have any positive impacts on your SEOVI  (Search engine optimisation value indicators) these links nay be internal or external. 

The two ends of the link are compared in a very large number of different ways,  where context and contextual linkages are the key to better understanding your online content, along with the semantic connectedness issues. 

On line search is a vastly complex issue where many different Search engine optimisation value indicators are evaluated and taken into account, to give your online content a set of scores that will be used to match your online content to future search queries. These scores are stored in a wide variety of databases, leaving them ready to be used instantly. This is important, and can be seen if you look at how long your online search took to resolve. this is usually shorter than half a second for most searches, and the number of search results is scary, often being more than one hundred thousand matches.

The amount of preparations that are done to ensure short search times are achieved is incredible, and one thus needs to understand these issues when copy writing is undertaken. things like link attributes and related issues also need to be included here.   All links are valuable, and each link in your content gets the same basic treatment, then some will get extra issues added if the search engine deems it necessary to expand the conversation. 

 Trust and authority are some of the extended evaluations that need to be properly interpreted. Contributor Expertise and contributor experience is slso an extended evaluation zone. EEAT or Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust are all rather strange SEOVI ( Search engine optimisation value indicators) that rely on links to be mapped to the correct issues within your online content. 

It thus follows that links and link attributes need very careful deep planning to get the most  powerful SEO  impacts. 

EEAT or Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust are all special use search engine optimisation issues that search engines use to evaluate the purpose, aims, objectives and intent of your online content. 

There are many issues and different entities involved. Each contributor is evaluated for their personal EEAT, and then the page itself also gets an EEAT SCORE according to the Aims, objectives, purpose  and intent of the page in question, as well as the EEAT SCORE of all identifiable contributors to the content in question.

So EEAT is much more complex than you think. New techniques and tactics are constantly being added and this helps to ensure the success of the search engine in question. 

Do you use the social media as a link building tool within your SEO strategies?

Link building as an SEO tool

Well I advise everybody to document everything they do, but *UNFORTUNATELY* I do not practice what I preach...

I do need to start doing this myself, as when the smelly stuff collides with the wind making machine, and your rankings go south at a great rate of knots, and you have not been keeping good records of what is done, what is not done, and who is responsible for the different pieces of your SEO then you have *REALLY BIG PROBLEMS*

Keeping checklists for tasks, and who is responsible to ensure that the task is integrated into your total marketing plan can be a real pain in the wrong spot, but it sure helps when problems decide to show their true colours and your online rankings take a tumble.

Most marketing managers, and especially those within the *SOCIAL MEDIA ARENA* do not fully comprehend the needs to integrate all your marketing both online and off line into a single marketing plan, where SEO and related\matters take the steering wheel and control many of the marketing issues in a well managed and efficient manner, that pushes your online content closer to the top of the SERP's  (Search engine Results ages) in many strange and devious ways.

Social media is the biggest and (currently) most powerful link building platform that we have ever experienced.  How you use the social media to create powerful link building opportunities for your online work is not well understood, and then there are them folks that tell you *LINK BUILDING IS DEAD* who confuse many, and cause a vast array of different problems within the SEO Industry.

Links are still one of the most  vital parts of your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) efforts and their value must not be underestimated.

That being said, one must also not underestimate the damage that can be caused by link farms and other bad link building tactics.  How you conduct your link-building practices does need to be  clearly defined  and documented as part of your SEO policy.  Then you also need to keep records of all social media posts that are part and parcel of your  link building activities.

Your company link building policy document, which is a sub-document in your SEO policy  must be shared across all marketing platforms, both online and off line, as every marketing effort has some impact on your SEO.  This could be in the way that you influence your target market audience to use specific key words in their search queries or how you influence your copy writer to frame certain issues, or any number of other seemingly UN-important issues.

Social media managers need to be on top of the issues that impact on your SEO, and use these intelligently when passing  instructions to  others  like, but not limited to the list below. :

• what to promote, 
• how to promote specific issues,
• where and when to promote your other online efforts.
• what links to use within specific social media posts
• how to frame social media posts that link to other social media profiles
• how to ensure that the author of specific articles gets credits for their online works

 If you are not using the social media as a link building tool for your bog and your web site, then you are loosing out an a great opportunity.  From a #FUFISM based\perspective the social media is the powerhouse of you link building strategy, and this needs great care and lots of *SPECIAL ATTENTION* to details as supplied by your SEO team.

Those who tell you that link building is dead, need to be viewed as suspect, and their intentions need to be evaluated carefully.  You need to have an honest discussion with them about the value of social media in general, and what impacts the social media has on your SERP's. (Search Engine Results Pages)  If they tell you that the use of SOCIAL MEDIA improves your SERP's, then you need to ask them to explain exactly how this is done, and if this can be achieved without linking to your online content from your social media posts at all.

listen carefully to their explanations, and ask questions!!!!

Evaluate and then decide which way, because many have been ill advised that link building is dead, and these people may be acting on that advice, which is very dangerous.

Remember that there is plenty of bad advice online, so take your time and evaluate all advice carefully,  before accepting or rejecting any advice.

See these links to expand the conversation on the value of link building...

http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/2014/04/social-media-issues-and-serps.html (Social media and SERP's)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/2012/09/is-seo-dead.html  (Is SEO DEAD?)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4.html    (Issues with Link building)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/2014/07/what-is-value-of-link-in-2014.html  (what is the value of a link)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-link-building-tactics-do-you-use.html (what link building tactics do you use)
http://4ubrand.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html  (what is SEO)

Just in case you need to know more specifics about any component of your SEO policy,  remember that you can use our internal search tool to search for specific subjects within the SEO field.   Look in the top right of the screen when using a laptop or PC...  If you do not find what you are looking for when using our search tool, then leave a comment and our team will try and help you out as best we can.  If we can not help you directly we will refer you to and expert who can.

What link building tactics do you use?

Is link building  dead?

in short link building is not dead, and will not die any time soon!

That being said we do need to understand the many issues that surround link building, and the implications of your personal link building strategies.  In the past when things in search first started out links were the primary SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicator) and links were gamed to the extent that Google and other search engines started showing very distorted and poor SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

see previous post discussing the value of a link in 2014

The search engines thus introduced algorithms that started to look for patterns that these so called BLACK HAT search engine optimisation practitioners were using, and started penalizing those who they thought were cheating or gaming the system.  Google now has a number of NAMED ALGORITHMS , as well as many un-named algorithms,  that look into these matters and related matters where Search Engine Optimisation Technical staff and online marketing practitioners SPAM the search engines in a variety of different ways using many different techniques.

Some of these named algorithms include :

>>  PANDA

>>  PENGUIN

>>  HUMMING BIRD

>>  PIGEON

These algorithms help to improve the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and some are punitive, while others add value to the work of those who apply recommended tactics that are rather technical and difficult to implement, such as Google's author and publisher programs that are connected to Google plus.

This short video below will help you understand why I say that link building will not die any time soon, but link building has changed and it is now necessary to selectively screen out bad links and focus exclusively on high quality links from reputable sources when ever possible.  The question asked was does Google have a version of search where back links are excluded.  listen to what  +Matt Cutts had to say then evaluate your own situation.

The question thus becomes  What is link building and why is it important?

In short links, some times called HYPERLINKS are the tools that you use to allow  the end user, or your audience to move from one place on the internet to another, and are the only tool that search engines have of locating your online content.  If there are no links pointing to your page, then a search engine has no means of locating your page, and it will thus never be found in search.  In the past the more inbound links a page had the better it did in search results.

Link building is the process that you follow to ensure that your web pages or blog posts acquire in bound links, be they internally from   pages within your own web site /  blog or externally from some other online resource.

Today, due to the amount of SPAM generated by so called BLACK HAT SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION this is no longer true, and Google as well as all other search engines now use the quality of links more than the quantity of links.  Then  within Google search there is the issue of PANDA and PENGUIN  which both have negative or punitive tools that tackle SPAM and bad quality web pages

It is thus important that you understand the  need to have a link building policy in place, and that this link building policy needs to be well documented and shared with every person who has anything to do with your total marketing plan.  Bad links can come from a number of sources, and those who do not know about these issues can very inadvertently make use of a link building farm or some other bad tactic, thinking that they are helping your marketing efforts.   New employees or  junior marketers who have not been exposed to the impacts of bad links may not understand what a link farm is, and believe they are being helpful in getting traffic to your pages.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF BAD LINKS TO SINK YOUR ONLINE MARKETING EFFORTS,  BE CAREFUL WHEN DEVELOPING YOUR LINK BUILDING POLICY

The social media is currently a very big source of links to your online content, and as such you do need to have a social media policy in place to deal with these issues. Once again Your social media policy needs to be well documented and shared with everybody who has anything to do with your marketing, be it online or not.  You need to remember that all your offline marketing has a very big impact on your online marketing in many ways, especially when it comes to issues around search. You will need to include your link building policy within your social media marketing policy,as they are very interconnected.

Off line marketing has strange impacts on your intended target audience, and this is where you should use terminology and language that is specific to your business interests.  Your target audience will be induced to use the words and language in your off line marketing to search online to discover more about your company, your products or your services, and you need to be aware of this in your online marketing, especially in your social media marketing, as this is where you will have direct one on one conversations with your target audience as well as many others who may or may not have a direct interest in your product, service or business proposition.

The people who you have conversations with online within the social media space, may or may not decide to place links within their posts to your web pages or blogs, and as such you need to influence these OUT SIDERS in a positive manner so that any links that they may place within their social media posts are positive and  relevant to pages within your web site or blog.

These issues are also confounded and confused when marketers say that you should not be doing any link building at all.  Link building as a term is also a very difficult term to come to grips with in the current scenario where past link building practices have destroyed web sites through their spam attacks and the use of link farms.  Link building has definitely changed a great deal over the last few years, and is now a very delicate art that is not properly understood.  On the one hand an online resource must have inbound links, these links need to be of high quality and carry some authority to have any success in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and on the other hand excessive links as well as links of low quality can cause a web site or blog some serious damage within the SERP's.

The guys at +Moz recently published an article called The beginners guide to link building   which I have found very helpful, and shared with my audience in other places.  The G+ post embedded below is actually what inspired this post, as I commented there  and had an interesting conversation with both  +Mike Gracia and +William Rock   Take some time and read the comments as I believe they will help you to understand the great difficulties that we as online marketers have in dealing with the changes in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) issues as well as how different people interpret the terminology within the  search engine optimisation world.  Please remember that these are sensitive issues, and need great care, so ask for second and third opinions, then apply your own mind and be aware of those who are willing to game the system.
  

THERE IS LOTS OF BAD ADVICE OUT THERE