The Relevance of Link Building 2013

 Link building is a term that has gotten a bad reputation in the SEO world recently with Google's latest algorithm changes and updates. It is a term that takes many to a vision of spam, pop-ups, and all things harmful and annoying in the online world.

 But what exactly is the role of link building in modern SEO? Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting recently sat down for an interview with Matt Cutts, the head engineer, creator, and gatekeeper for Google's latest anti-webspam SEO campaign, in which, Cutts had this to say about the topic:

"not all link building is bad. The philosophy that we’ve always had is if you make something that’s compelling then it would be much easier to get people to write about it and to link to it. And so a lot of people approach it from a direction that’s backwards. They try to get the links first and then they want to be grandfathered in or think they will be a successful website as a result.

Their goal should really be to make a fantastic website that people love and tell their friends about and link to and want to experience. As a result, your website starts to become stronger and stronger in the rankings."

Not a bad sentiment, but it is a far cry for the automated ease of link farming and banner havoc that many old-school SEO specialists grew up utilizing. So, link building is still a very viable aspect of modern SEO and content marketing, but specialists need to make sure that they are achieving high-quality, reputable links. 

Online businesses must keep their campaigns focused, intriguing, and easy to discuss. It is only through this that businesses will achieve the results that Cutts alludes to. Many companies are now experimenting with video and photo/infographic based marketing schemes with much success.

 It is certainly a visual, short-attention span world out there, and marketers are starting to see that short compelling bursts of information can be far more effective than long drawn-out articles. It is all about capturing interest and generating momentum, and quality over quantity has certainly become the name of the game in this realm.

Signs of a Great Keyword

Signs of a Great Keyword

One of the most important aspects of SEO is keywords. Keywords is the soul of SEO because it is what you want to be found for. So it’s obvious that if you have bad keywords, you will have bad SEO. Therefore, how do you choose the best keyword for your website? What you should be looking for is the Commercabiliy of the keyword. Commercabiliy probably isn’t a word you are familiar with, but it will soon become a word used to describe the best choice of a keyword in the SEO world.

The Commercabiliy of a keyword focuses on two main factors when doing a keyword research: Searches per Month, and CPC.

First let’s look at searches per month. When doing keyword research you will come across two different types of searches per month, local and global. Local just means in the United States. So if your business strictly works in the US you would look at the local monthly searches. Then there is the global monthly searches, which you would look at if your business services the entire world.

The second is the CPC, which is another extremely important part of Commercabiliy. CPC is an acronym for Cost Per Click, which is a dollar value that is put to a keyword.  The Return on Investment is what gives the keyword its value, be it large or small. Companies associated with that keyword bid on how much they think it’s worth and that’s what determines the CPC for a keyword. The larger the CPC for the keyword, the better the ROI of it will be, making it an important keyword to be optimized for.

So, why do you need to look at both of these factors when deciding what keyword will be the best for you? Let us say that you have a keyword that has 10,000 searches per month with a CPC of $2. Well, the search volume is great, but the value of the keyword is only $2, which means that the companies associated with the keyword do not see the value of it and therefore the ROI on the keyword will be very small. That keyword does not show good Commericability and will not be a good keyword to be optimized for because it will not have much or any ROI.

Now you look at a keyword that has about 5,000 searches per month, but it has a $20 CPC. This is a great example of a keyword with good commericiability. This means that the keyword is valued very high and is one that businesses want to be optimized for and it is important to have for your business. The searches per month might not be as high as the last example, but the ROI will in turn be higher. A keyword with these stats will be a good keyword to start your SEO for, because it has great Commericability.

In conclusion, Commericability is very important to your SEO needs, you will want to look at these factors along with others when choosing a keyword to be optimized for. If you want to know more information on Commericability go here.