Here’s How “Overnight” SEO Can Kill Your Rankings – And How to Avoid That
Let’s be honest: we are all a little bit impatient and lazy. We want to get results immediately, without spending too much time or making too much effort.
When it comes to search engine rankings, many businesses feel the same way. The promise of your SEO company to get your website to top positions in just a week or two sounds so tempting, that you don’t give enough thought to how exactly that goal will be reached.
The truth is these “overnight” ranking results can be achieved only with dubious techniques. Keyword stuffing and paid backlinks are the easy way and they give amazing short-term results. But the trouble is that paid links are usually low-quality ones and come from websites that are not always reputable or relevant to yours. Plus, Google is smart enough to know that these websites don’t link to yours naturally. That is why so many businesses found their web pages somewhere in the backwoods of search results when the Penguin update hit.
If you don’t want to kill your website’s rankings with your own hands, stock up on patience and start building quality backlinks. This will take some time and effort, but the rankings you get in the end are Google update-proof. Here’s how you can build links like that.
1. Connect with Newspaper Reporters
Getting a backlink from a quality news resource is possible if you get your story published. To reach that goal, start building relationships with journalists. Connect in social media and participate in discussions they initiate, comment on their stories (if you have something worthwhile to say, of course), and eventually try sending your story requests. Make sure your stories are newsworthy though: it’s difficult to get a reporter interested in something only your company cares about.
2. Use Guest Posts Actively
Guest posts are a great way to increase your rankings with the backlinks. When the link comes from a reputable resource that is relevant to your website’s topic and from a page with relevant content, there’s nothing Google likes more. This is a time-consuming method, but it doesn’t require huge investments. To use guest posts successfully, you should be attentive to the resources you are contacting: make sure you suggest content that will be of interest and value to their audience and doesn’t overlap with the topics they already covered.
3. Connect with Fellow Business Owners
Many business owners see other companies in their industry as competitors. But exchanging links with a company, whose interests are similar to yours, offers more advantages than risks. If the fellow business’s website has a good reputation, the impact on your rankings will be very positive. Especially if the backlink comes from a content page, like a guest post. So start connecting with other business owners (that is easy to do in Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn groups), exchange experience, and help each other out!
If you don’t want your website hit by another Google algorithm update, keep in mind one thing: SEO is not done overnight. Your fast-achieved results will vanish with the same head-spinning speed. So take your time and get to page one with the methods Google approves.
