Danny Sullivan ranted a bit at a session at SMX Advanced in Seattle this week. It is a fantastically beautiful rant of truth. If you offer link building as a service or if you think you are great at link building you need to listen to this and then listen again.
Danny also published Link Building Means Earning “Hard Links” Not “Easy Links” today. A good read.
Melissa Fach
SEJ Editor - Melissa is the owner of SEO Aware, LLC. She is a consultant and trainer helping companies make the most of their content marketing and SEO. She specializes is the Psychology behind blogging and content marketing. Melissa is also an associate at SEOmoz.org, an associate and writer at CopyPress an editor at Authority Labs and a columnist at SmallBizTrends.com She is a self-proclaimed Star Wars and Internet geek and volunteers with big cats at BigCatHabitat.org.
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Great rant andvery well put. Problem I have with this thing now is that there are still some sites such as moneysupermarket.com who were the kings of spam back in the day and have built up thousands upon thousands of spammy links in the early years they then became accepted as a quality site based on a history of bad link building that pushed them too the top of google.
Once at the top they then attracted lots of good links (and got lots of goog links themselves via hard work) so when panda came along and discounted all the crap links they retained their position at the top.
So my point is will there be a future update that actually penalises for historical bad link building or will it only be current bad link building that will be the trigger if you get me? Will sites be punished for doing stuff in the past even though they are now well established good sites?
Great stuff. Too bad he wasn’t mic’ed better.
An audience member recorded it.
Thanks. This is a goldmine! :)
One of the more enjoyable rants I’ve heard.
Goldmine? Hardly, seems more a “state of the nation” rant with essentially the same mantra “not just links but good links”. Nothing wrong with that, if it were easy I suppose everyone would do it. Oh wait, they are: crappy spammy BS still seems to carry weight and getting people to link to your site, which should happen naturally because of your “linkable, high-quality content” still requires human pursuit. It’s like link begging never left and is only getting sadder and more desperate. Am I wrong?
This was hilarious! Thanks so much for sharing this Jeremy! Wish I could have gone.
Very funny. Some sites may still be able to get away. is very important, in my opinion, not risk. The quality content will always be rewarded.