As 2010 progresses it is increasingly apparent that the biggest challenge in SEO is the creation of a viable and sustainable link strategy, in the increasingly spam led world of linking it seems that the bonafide approach of naturally encouraging links through good content is now surpassed by artificial link building strategies, in the short term this is a worry but in the long term it may not really matter at all…..
That Google is no longer very resilient to this is somewhat perplexing, I have been involved in SEO for 12 years and after Florida it looked as though spam linking techniques were over for all but the black hat brigade. Even the Affiliate Marketers were being culled in droves as their once lucrative web rings fell foul of the new improved Google ‘Link Police System’ .
Now it seems all is reversed, my guess is that Google now is pre-occupied with generating revenue and purchasing enough social media clout to continually drive their ad revenue model, natural search is on the wane as a steady and sure move towards artificially selected results enables Google to monetize their system to ever greater levels.
Twitter, Facebook, Blogger all will deliver revenues to the Goliath, natural search results are now polluted with YouTube by default as well as localisation and business results again to drive ad revenue, the advent of the Nexus 1 will also drive localisation to the point of determining where you are exactly and then delivering search accordingly but with the emphasis on ads pre selected for you as ‘results’.
None of this is now driven by what the searcher wants or is looking for, but it is driven by what Google can monetize, in this world relevence is a thing of the past for anything beyond what advert Google thinks it can make money from and so is the all conquering Algorithm, the algorithm and linking will be obselete one day because your search results will be pre-selected in the way of the ‘Old Days’.
Linking strategies for the short term… make them spammy, make them automated and watch them work – that is the current SEO philosophy behind the scenes.
Linking strategies for the long term…. quite possible superflous to your needs!
