The Evolution Of Link Building For Internet Marketing In Philadelphia

By Author: supriyo banerjee
Total Articles: 739
Comment this article

The Panda update incorporated machine learning into its algorithm, allowing the search engine to emulate the responses of human readers. Marketers and SEOs who ignore these changes will face diminishing returns if they don't adapt. Many have already faced demotions in the rankings or even outright penalties and removal from the index.

If you want people to find your Philadelphia business in the future, these are the strategies to start incorporating now.

Quality

Quality has always been important, but this is becoming increasingly true. A high quality link from a legitimate site with real traffic is much more valuable than a link from a low quality article directory, a blog comment, or a sidebar. In fact, low quality links often count for nothing at all, and links obtained using spammy practices can even count against you.

When it comes to internet marketing in Philadelphia, pursuing other strategies is a waste of time. You may need to step up your quality threshold, get creative, and boost your outreach efforts, but the return on your investment ...
... will be immeasurably greater.

Anchor Text

Exact match anchor text is losing steam. In fact, correlative data suggests that sites with partial match anchor text links actually rank better than sites with exact match links. This is because exact links are easily replicated and scaled without adding real value to the web. The search engines hate this.

Partial match links are much more natural. Mix up the phrasing in your links. Change the order every once in a while. Use just a few of the words. Include words from the surrounding text in the link. Use synonyms and paraphrase your keyword phrase.

Don't be afraid to send a few links with no keyword data at all, instead optimizing the link for the maximum click through rate. This looks far more natural and it still does a great deal for your rankings if it's coming from the right site.

External Page Metrics

In the post-Panda world, it's clear that Google is far more adept at identifying low quality content. Many mistakenly believe that this only affects their on-site strategy, but this is simply untrue. If the search engine is capable of identifying low quality content on your pages, they can just as easily do it on pages that link to you.

If everybody who links to you seems to be providing low quality content, the search engines have cause for concern. Yes, lower quality sites naturally link to higher quality sites all the time. But top tier sites also get linked to by sites with comparable or even higher levels of authority.

For this reason, you should be paying more attention to the quality of the sites and pages linking to you than the PageRank, which by now is an almost obsolete indication of ranking potential.

Traffic

A great deal of evidence suggests that the amount of traffic a link sends is now a ranking signal. This may be true even for no-follow links, especially those that come from social sources. Some in the industry are even starting to believe that links with no referral potential offer little or no ranking potential.

Should every link send traffic? No, but it's a good idea to reallocate your resources and invest more in referral traffic. Not only does this ensure traffic if you ever lose your rankings, but it's likely to improve your rankings to begin with.

Conclusion

Internet marketing in Philadelphia is a constantly changing business. We must expect change and be prepared to adapt to it at all times. For that reason, creativity and innovative thinking will be crucial elements of any SEO strategy in the years to come.

Sue McCrossin is CEO of Boomtown internet group and its sister site PA Internet Marketing, which specializes in Pennsylvania SEO and other cities in Philadelphia. To learn more about PA SEO, visit us on the web today!