Google’s Growing Aversion to Paid Links: Three Ways to Overcome and Achieve Higher Search Engine Rankings

May 13, 2005 -- In its ongoing drive towards more honest, accurate search engine results, Google is now making it harder than ever to gain high search engine rankings by using linking strategies that it considers manipulative. And its definition of "manipulative" is getting wider, too.

Remember when link farms, link-sharing schemes and free-for-all programs used to be en vogue? But Google wised-up, and SEO companies and webmasters had to scramble to find another way to fool the engines into dishing out high search engine placement.

Remember being advised to buy paid link ads all over the place, just to trick the engines into giving you higher PageRank? That one fell into disfavor, too.

Now Google is telling errant website owners that, “certain actions such as buying links to increase a site's PageRank can result in penalization.”

Google Crawls inside Your Head
In other words, Google is now telling us that, with the help of its clever algorithms, it can deduce our motivations and determine whether we purchased an ad solely for PageRank purposes or if we bought the ad seeking to attract legitimate, targeted traffic to our web page.

How does it know the difference? Dead giveaways are site-wide (or run-of-site) ad placements. If your text ad appears on every page of a linking site, and if the content of your ad does not relate to the content of the page on which it appears, the relevance factor is nil and that ad loses big points in the new-and-improved Google PageRank sweepstakes.

The direction of this trend is becoming very clear. What Google really wants to see is incoming links from relevant sites that are linking to you of their own free will, not via paid site-wide ad placements or any other SEO tricks.

So, how to compete in this new climate of distaste for paid links?

According to Michael Pedone, founder of search engine optimization company. Here are three effective and legal ways to increase your incoming links. The bonus is that they will also attract the right kind of traffic to your site, which just happens to tap into Google's growing appetite for customer-centric search engine marketing.

1. Optimized press releases
A perfect example of Google-friendly self-promotion. A well-written press release that appeals to the media's hunger for a good story and that is properly optimized with your best-performing keyword phrases can earn you not only valuable media attention and new prospects, but also increase your legitimate incoming links. Ergo, better search placement and a triple source of new traffic – traffic coming from the search engines, traffic coming from the press release itself, and traffic from the publicity generated by the press release.

2. Industry-specific articles
Website owners have been using article distribution to promote their businesses online for ages. It's only in the last few years that they've really begun to take advantage of the fact that articles are also a safe and effective way to:
- Attract higher search rankings with keyword-optimized article content.
- Amass more natural link votes for greater PageRank.
- Direct targeted traffic to their site.

But remember, the content of the articles must be relevant to your industry and valuable to your readers – not just a glorified ad – in order to deliver those benefits.

3. Blogs and RSS Feeds
The search engine value of blogs and RSS feeds is that you can update them both with fresh content on a regular basis... and the more you post, the more frequently your pages will be visited by search engine spiders, and the faster the updates will appear in search results. Blogs and RSS feeds provide relevant information about the “goings-on” in your industry and are a great way to build relevant link popularity by including keyword-rich copy and links in your entries.

Adjusting to a Slower Pace
You may be moaning, "It will take forever to get those strategies in place. I want results now!" But just look where the obsession with speed has gotten us so far: many sites being banned or penalized by search engines for using quick and dirty tactics, and site owners wasting money on SEO schemes that have no staying power.

This time, take the time to do it right. Yes, it may take five or six months to get the kind of rankings you hope for. But consider it a sound investment in a long and fruitful relationship with some very important business partners: the search engines and your customers-to-be.

To find out more about how to achieve a higher search engine ranking and a better Google PageRank, please contact Pedone by calling toll free 877-785-9977. His search engine optimization company will also conduct a free search engine optimization analysis of any website, as well as a free SEO proposal of your site.