The importance of link building

The Bing engineers know that link building is important and they describe link building as follows:

“Link building is a very important form of self-promotion on the Web. You contact webmasters of other, related websites and let them know your site exists. If the value that you have worked so hard to instill in your site is evident to them, they will assist their own customers by linking back to your site. That, my friend, is the essence of link building.”

In other words, reciprocal linking is fine. They also remind webmasters that link building is an ongoing process:

“Think of link building as your chance to build your reputation on the Web. As your website is likely one of your business’ most valuable assets, consider link building to be a primary business-building exercise. Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution. You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time. Good things come to those who wait (and work smartly!).”

Things that you can do to get good links to your website

Here are the things that Bing recommends:

• You should develop your website as a brand and brand it consistently. People like to link to high quality websites.
• You should find relevant bloggers, industry websites and product reviewers and make them aware of your website.
• You can publish concise and informative press releases online.
• You can publish expert articles in article directories.
• You can participate in relevant conversations on blogs and forums and add a link to your website when applicable.
• You can use social networks to connect to industry influencers. Your profiles should contain links to your website.
• You can use email newsletters to notify people about new content on your website.
• You can launch a blog or a forum on your website.
• You can participate in relevant industry associations and their online forums.
• You should strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry while promoting your website.

Warning: the following things will get your website in trouble

Just like Google and other major search engines, Bing doesn’t like to be cheated. If they detect unnatural linking patterns, your website might be penalized. The following things can trigger search engine filters:

• Your website get a lot of additional inbound links a very short time.
• Many links that point to your website are from unrelated websites or blog comments.
• Your web pages contain hidden links.
• You get links from links farms or automated link exchange systems.
• Paid links point to your website.
• Known spammers link to your website.
• Your website links to known spammers.

Here’s what Bing does when they find suspicious data that is related to your website:

“When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction. If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.”

Getting inbound links requires some work. The Bing engineers are very clear about this fact: “Make no mistake: getting legitimate and highly valuable, inbound links is not a couch-potato task.”

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My first thought on the merger was that the sale of Yahoo would be a great monetary boost to Microsoft. This would be done through the consolidation of their competing PPC services and unique searches as well as other operational areas. That being said…..the biggest obstacle would be the integration of cultures and how to continue to manage competing websites.

Yahoo’s user culture and corporate culture are very different from MSN, and more importantly, anything Yahoo would do in the future would be second to Microsoft’s primary business. This can’t be good for Yahoo users, the Yahoo corporate culture and the search engine industry.

Having said all that, how could this merger affect the marketing of websites on the internet. Well, I think that overall, it has the potential to attack Google right where it hurts, their bread and butter of search engine traffic. The biggest obstacle SEM and SEO experts have had in the past in regard to putting effort forward to rank well in either Yahoo or Google or to focus efforts on their PPC programs has been traffic. Without the traffic, the efforts don’t justify the returns. By combining the search results and PPC programs, there can be a justification of putting forward the effort.

I have always felt and many people would disagree with me, that MSN has the best search engine of the big three. The reason is very simple. It is the newest engine and as a result integrates many of the additional models that exist on the internet. For example, Google heavily favors websites with backlinks. This has been the basis of their model from the beginning and this focus has allowed them to flourish.

Yahoo on the other hand launched their own search engine in 2004 and were able to build a better search engine by not only focusing on backlinks, but also by giving credit to well designed websites. A year later, MSN launched their own search which not only integrated the value of backlinks and the value of properly built websites, but also gave credit to web activity through blogs and other forms of online activity. This is not to say that over time Google has not continued to improve their search results, but because the core of their search is based on backlinks, this continues to drive search results today and has hurt their overall search results in my opinion.

So, if this merger happens and I think that is still a big IF, and Microsoft is able to integrate Yahoo in a way where they can consolidate some areas while at the same time keeping Yahoo independent, this can be a big win and they can create a better platform to compete against Google. Otherwise, Google will continue to be the dominant player in the search industry, and SEO and SEM professionals will continue to focus their efforts on Google with Yahoo and MSN being an after thought.

Clearly this is a bold play by Steve Balmer, but he and Bill Gates have done it before with Explorer. The question remains whether Steve can accomplish this without Bill now that he has partially retired.

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