Link Building and SEO from Kolbrener, Inc.’s Brandon Fritz
October 5, 2007 by Susan Gunelius
Filed under Marketing
Last month, I published a post called The Elements of Branding Defined which showcased a creative, visual depiction of branding by Kolbrener, Inc. I’m happy to announce that Brandon Fritz of Kolbrener, Inc. graciously agreed to write a guest post for Brandcurve to share more of his company’s marketing wisdom with Brandcurve readers. So without further ado, here is Brandon’s guest post:
Why Lie? I need links. There I said it.
A link coming from a topically relevant website? You bet! Your website was registered 10 years ago? Skip the $12 birthday check Grandpa, more links please! NASA.gov is one of your backlinks?! Are you taking applications? But the truth is, beggars can’t be choosers, so any ol’ link will do, so give ‘em pretty please!
Ok, so now we’ve established what everyone who is involved in link building is thinking. How we solve this linking problem defines what type of SEO we are. How do you get links? Ask for them, pay for them, reciprocate them, take advantage of opportunities for them, or develop content that attracts them. I’ll show two examples of how link builders attack this link dilemma.
First, we have what I call the Used Car Salesmen link builder, and there are a lot of these. These are the SEOs who peddle Neons but want Search Engines to believe they are BMWs. These people can’t seem to get any “natural” links to their website. Obsessed with PageRank, they’ll pay bloggers, blast mediocre (at best) articles to 100 article warehouses, think they can personally Digg and Stumble their website the way to the top, or buy countless, monthly renewing, expensive text links via a link brokerage. To the marketing handicapped, SEO is as easy as 2 minutes with Keyword Assistant and typing in a client’s AMEX digits.
Problem is, their rankings are only as strong as their line of credit. That’s the complete opposite of the idea of SEO. Learned in the early years of SEO, these are the same people who pollute their title tags and web-pages claiming keyword density, and spam their own web-pages with links pointing to their own website. Ask them about the programming language AJAX, they might say “No thanks, I had Frosted Flakes this morning.” Preaching ranking magic, they desire to be black hats, but they don’t understand enough about SEO. But they do understand the power of plastic. Pretty expensive to game Google right? I somehow think Google will get the last laugh.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have what I call the Go-Getters. So if links are votes, how can we get more? Is my fraternity website hooked off an EDU domain? I’m going to make a donation and get a link there with any anchor text I want. I golf with Bill, he owns ABC business, he has a partners page, he’ll list me. Actually, who all do I partner with, and where are my links? The Press wrote a story about our company, did we get a link? No? Call that reporter right now! Hey if we sponsor that highway will we get a link on a .gov site? My boss’s wife’s sister has a blog, can I get a link… and her number? Actually, I read many blogs, what would they think is cool? What would my industry websites find linkable? Do I have the content to support a link request? No? How can I make my product better?
These profiles are extremes, and some SEOs will fall into these categories and some into neither. Because I don’t think SEO is black or white, it’s shades of gray. Everyone practices differently, and to each his own.
But those following the Used Car Salesman approach model should stop to consider, maybe instead of spending $1,000s on buying links, they might do better to take that money and develop something unique. Paid links are great, and you need some, and even I do it, I know some people who do it… but I think Sage Lewis, of SageRock web marketing, said it best:
This is the new world of links: Build good content first. Your link building will make a world of sense. Building links with no relation to content is backward, short-sighted, and not in the best interest of our clients or ourselves. (Knock It Out of the Linkin’ Park! )
Is my agency’s website or blog where it needs to be content wise? Not yet, but it’s on the way. Will anyone who practices a content first strategy now help themselves tremendously in the future? You bet. One thing to remember–SEO is not a one night stand, it is a dedicated effort. There is no magic, there is only work. But why lie? I do need links.
Brandon Fritz is the Interactive Services Manager for Kolbrener. Prior to joining Kolbrener, Brandon co-founded and operated Dreamscope Technologies, Inc.
I agree that links are very important but I strongly disagree with your “used car” stigma about purchasing links.
Being a branding agency as you claim to be you should know that purchsing links not only helps your SEO effort but it also builds your corporate branding efforts. So buying blog links gets you exposure and builds your brand.
You are only looking at it from an SEO perspective which is shortsighted. See the big picture and stop putting yourself above everyone.
You wrote an article on SEO and then throw in 3 branding keywords, if that isn’t spam I don’t know what is.
To clarify, Brandon Fritz was not paid for posting at Brandcurve, therefore the links in his post are not paid links. I liked the work I saw coming from his agency and asked him to guest post. He was kind enough to do so.
Yes, Susan, I believe that. But Brandon is preaching about the “proper” way to obtain links in his article. He’s even comparing buying links from blog reviews to being a used car salesman.
The article has nothing to do with branding. For him to throw 3 branding links in just to pass PageRank juice is hypocritical don’t you think?
If the anchor text was relevant to his article it would be one thing but 3 ambigious links for branding, corporate branding and branding agency are spamming in my humble opinion.
Don’t you think he was just throwing those 3 phrases in there just to pass PageRank juice? Be honest, what did those 3 phrases have to do with his article?
I think that with any guest post or blog comment, the authors try to leverage the conversation to promote their own brand, website or product regardless of the topic and build links. You did so yourself in your comment by including various links with the “no follow” tag, so those links would not be picked up by Google in a negative way thereby hurting your page ranking.
I think Brandon’s point was to state that “paying” for links is not always the best choice, however, he does admit in his post that he is guilty of doing it sometimes.
I don’t think guest posts would be as popular if the guest writer didn’t have an opportunity to promote their brand/website through links, and it doesn’t bother me. In fact, I expect it.
Could there have been a better way to incorporate those phrases into his post to make them look less obvious? Probably, but I think Brandon’s approach was kind of funny. He says at the end of his post, “Why lie? I need links,” then followed that sentence with his three branding links. I actually laughed when I first saw how he incorporated the links. It seemed to me like he was poking fun at himself and linking in general more so than trying to covertly add unrelated links.
Susan – I was definitely poking fun at myself and link building in general. I am not at all concerned with passing PageRank ‘juice’.
Originally, the links weren’t going to be actual links, but instead the HTML code to add links, as I did here: http://www.kolbrenerusa.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/05/why-lie-i-need-links/ . But if you remember Susan, Wordpress converted the code when you posted it.
Susan thank you again for the opportunity, I’d love to do it again.
Sure but as an SEO expert you know better than most that Googlebot is not human and doesn’t read humor. So to Google you are spamming and or trying to pass along PR. And with Google’s rat out your competitor campaign it could be reported or assumed you’re doing something you may or may not be doing. That’s all I’m saying.
Googlebot is not human, but anti-spam engineers like this cat, Matt Cutts are. A human reviews the spam reports, not a ‘bot’.
Google actually considers paid links spam, like the one you have here: http://www.smallbusinessbranding.com , top left, under featured sites, anchor text ‘branding’. That link is $1,200 a year, and took me 2 minutes to find it. They ask that you use no-follow on paid links so that the engine won’t count it as an editorial link, because it isn’t. Just like every link you posted in your 3 comments, including using ‘Branding Agency’ as your name.
You keep talking about passing PageRank, and I don’t think you actually know what it means. First, Page doesn’t mean webpage, it was named after Larry Page. PageRank is a lot more complex than what is shown on your browser toolbar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank . I believe you are trying to accuse me of manipulating page rank, so I will quote directly from this Wikipedia article, as I don’t think I could say it clearer myself:
“As links from higher-PR pages are believed to be more valuable, they tend to be more expensive. It can be an effective and viable marketing strategy to buy link advertisements on content pages of quality and relevant sites to drive traffic and increase a webmaster’s link popularity. However, Google has publicly warned webmasters that if they are or were discovered to be selling links for the purpose of conferring PageRank and reputation, their links will be devalued (ignored in the calculation of other pages’ PageRanks). The practice of buying and selling links is intensely debated across the Webmastering community. Google advises webmasters to use the nofollow HTML attribute value on sponsored links. According to Matt Cutts, Google is concerned about webmasters who try to game the system, and thereby reduce the quality of Google search results.[7]”
So…
The editor of this website asked me to write an article. Allowed me to include branding related links on a branding related website. You choose to use those same phrases I used as links. Difference is you used the links within the comments of the blog post because it is an easy way to get your website linked. And blog comments 95% of the time employ no-follow on all links due to previous history of SEO spamming.
So, who is really spamming Scott?
I’m sticking with you.
But we buy advertising not links. Building our brand through links on web sites builds brand awareness. It’s up to the individual site owners to use the no follow (buyer’s have no control of that), not the purchaser of advertising. Once again the big picture is branding not linking. The more visibility we have on sites that are relevant the greater the chances of building our brand.
Small Business is a well respected branding website and certainly very relevant to us for advertising/brand building as I would think it would be for you as well. It makes perfect sense that we advertise there.
You call it branding, Google calls it spamming. I think I’ve made myself clear on all points.
Google doesn’t call links bought for advertising spamming. We both know that.
You call it spamming because you can’t think outside of your SEO world. If people who sell links don’t put the no follow code on who can? Only they can.
“I don’t think SEO is black or white, it’s shades of gray. Everyone practices differently, and to each his own.” – definitely! To me black hat is stuff Google would definitely ban you for, either now or in the near future. I try to use link building techniques that are acceptable in the long run.