How to get links - and bad reverse-engineering.
I was reading an old post about getting links on Matt Cutts blog. In March (2008) he posted an article that he’d written in 2005 to show that some techniques are timeless and still work. The article is good, though I’m sure a lot of people won’t *get* it. The real gold was in this comment, posted by a reader… (note the part I highlighted.)
As long as the focus is getting links, you’ll fail miserably. It’s like Guy Kawasaki says: “If the focus of a startup is to make money, it will fail.”
The idea that getting links is the objective is the result of bad reverse-engineering. The common idea is: “All successful, high ranking, website have many backlinks,…. therefore if my website has many backlinks, It will be successful and rank high.”
That’s like thinking: “All rich people have lots of money,.. therefore if I have lots of money, I’ll be rich.” (if you don’t understand why this is not correct, you’ll never be rich.)
Money is the result of some form of success, it is never the cause of the success. The same applies to links. Links are the result of some form of success, they never are the cause of the success.
To most this feels like a chicken and the egg problem (what’s there first? The success or the links?) If you really want to know what was there first, the chicken or the egg, then you’ll study evolution and find that neither one was there first. They evolved!
The same applies to success and links. They evolve from something else, something more basic. Trying to take evolutionairy shorts cuts by link building just doesn’t work. It may help a bit, but it hardly ever works.
Links do come by them selves, first from your friends and family, then from colleagues, then from customers, then from some newspapers, then from communities, and eventually, if you´re really good, from already recognized authorities in your field.
Most sites however, hardly get passed the colleagues and customer links. There’s a reason for that,.. But it is also necessary to recognize that in many cases, that’s all people want. Success is a very relative concept.
Posted by Peter (IMC)
http://www.brane.com.br/
July 14th, 2008 at 4:29 am
Too bad i didnt come across this blog before. Great stuff you got here. Thanks.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Good information, thanks.
August 28th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Apropos of nothing, I’ve been tagged by Book Calendar with a Meme. That apparently means I tag 6 blogs I like and it continues. So here is the link to my site which links to your site which links to my site and now I confused, bemused and somewhat entertained.
http://bookrevues.blogspot.com/2008/08/book-calendar-has-tagged-me-with-meme.html
September 25th, 2008 at 10:18 am
that is a interesting way to look at things. I like it. Now to have something good that people want to link.
Sean
September 25th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
well said. i like what you wrote. for some time i tought that way as well. eventually i got aware of my mistake and started diging the internet to find things people where really interested in. I hope my site will teach something useful to my readers…the success will come eventually!