Vox Fortis Communications

First, a shout out to a great email written by Caroline, who proves that sometimes “SEO Service” spammers mess with the wrong lady.

There is so much to-do around inbound links these days, it gets hard to decipher fact from fiction. Yes, inbound links are important, but they often get positioned as a silver bullet for getting your website ranked. In truth, they’re a valuable piece of the equation, but there is absolutely nothing that will help your site as much as a properly constructed one from the get go.

I hate to use a housing market example, especially given the state of the thing, but it’s a valid one. Putting a million links to your site is like sticking a bunch of “For Sale” signs all over the place. And with crappy providers, it’s like putting a “House For Sale” sign up in view of an unemployment line.

You can’t put your house up for sale with a bad foundation. I mean, you can, but good luck selling the sucker when the inspection takes place. Think of Google like your house inspector…it shows up and wants to see the goods. No meta information? It checks off the box for foundation defects. No keywords? No anchor links within the site? Lots of flash and images? It checks it off as faulty plumbing.

I see a lot of freelance listings for sites asking for a provider that will get them 100 inbound links. Then I’ll curiously check out their site, see that it’s not optimized at all, and feel bad for them. Obviously someone told them that inbound links are key, and they don’t even have a solid cement slab going on. Let’s set aside the fact that the type of site where the links come from, the words they use to get to you, etc are all important factors….these poor people are desperate to get their site ranked, and they think they’re buying a quick and easy way to do that.The best way is still a solid foundation with healthy text, and continually updated content. There’s just no way around that. With over 70% of people using search to find things, it’s obviously a very viable promotional vehicle for your website…but like any good tool to build a business, there’s no get rich quick scheme.