Getting Passed By Link Builders

[kidder]

The more things change the more they stay the same, I've noticed our main website dropping down the organic results and the sites that are climbing are pretty obviously building a lot of links. I made a decision to back away from any manipulative forms of SEO and focus on the natural white as white path... After contacting a couple of my old SEO contacts and checking out a few forums it appears manipulative link based SEO is still big effective business.

[linkbuildr]

It's just as easy and nothing much has changed...they'll eventually get burned but they have more domains on the go.....just keep building a brand that includes your own audience and leave google behind...ie don't rely on it.

[goodroi]

Links never stopped being effective. If you are planning on only using "white hat" ways than you should probably brainstorm some "white hat" ways to get backlinks.

For example run a big sale and notify the bloggers in your industry. Without even asking the bloggers for a link, these bloggers will write about your sale and naturally link to your site. Also by running a sale you will naturally expose your business to new customers looking for a deal which is good to grow your business away outside of Google.

With a bit of creativity you can build links in a "white hat" way.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

You should be generating discussion in some way, otherwise your site is like the library book nobody ever checks out.

[palimadra]

Links are always going to be one of the factors for determining the rank of a website. It would be unfair if a website is not ranked based on the backlinks if they are genuine.

Weeding our non genuine backlinks will take time. Everyone will appreciate that a process cannot be put in place that weeds our blackhat backlinks but I think the search engines are getting there and perhaps in a few months they would be doing a better job.

Meanwhile spending time on building backlinks using whitehat techniques is the strategy to follow as it is bound to show results in the short run and long run. @goodroi's suggestion is a good one to use to create backlinks to start with.

[martinibuster]

For example run a big sale and notify the bloggers in your industry.

Google's webmaster tools used to advise to build a website then tell other webmasters about it. That advice was abused by SEO's who called themselves White Hat to justify their massive email spam campaigns on behalf of their reciprocal link clients. The advice has since been removed.

But the truth of it remains. It is the foundation of GoodROI's advice as well as of any link building campaign that seeks to stay within Google's guidelines. Think of all the many ways you can tell others about your site. There are big ways and there are small ways. Don't ignore the small ways. Every link counts.

[CainIV]

I don't even know what manipulative means. I know what natural and unnatural means.

Anyone who has ever studied 10 minutes of SEO understands some link value, and therefore the way in which they generally approach links will be biased. AKA manipulated. Ask any pr or brand / media company with little SEO experience how they build pieces and placements.

[kidder]

The problem I have is that today's white is possibly tomorrow's black... I've taken these comments on board, I've moved on and put plenty of distance between myself and SEO after a decade of fun and brain damage. I'm building my brand and not seeing the rewards yet but if they happen then I will take them as a bonus. No webmaster tools or analytics, I'm not feeding the beast anything I don't have too.