| Feb 29 |
 Stumble it! |  Digg it! |
Today I watched this fascinating video from SEOmoz guru Rand Fishkin and thought I’d pass on my evolutionary thoughts on his concept. Keep reading for some useful tips.
Linkjuice river
As this video suggests, Google aims to pass link juice up the river to its apparent source. If Google is therefore seeing past our link hungry nature and identifying the true source of information, then surely it also makes sense that we, as publicists, need to be at this sweet spot.
So what if, as is usually the case, someone else is in that sweetspot? Well, you could try an innumerable number of tactics. You could spam links, leverage social media, you could black-hat that particular page, you could try to grow links organically. Most of the time you’ll fail at this. Why? Because the other site is older and, most likely, has done exactly the same as you with the above and possibly better.
So how do I take over then when someone else is so strongly positioned? Read on to discover how.
Being washed down the river
Most people are trying to go as far upriver as they can in Google’s eyes. We’re trying to be the first to spot a great article and link to it. Hopefully people will see our site instead of the original source and link to us right? Well, no.
At most this will place us slightly down river from the source. Pretty soon some big player will post their link and push you even further downriver. Everyone will link to him, if not the original source and you’ll, quite literally, get washed out.
Find the mountain source
So, how do you end this effect and stop getting your pages pushed downriver? Take a closer look at the ‘original source’. What’s special about this page, other than the fact everyone is linking to it? What if it had its own ‘original source‘? What if you were that original source of the ‘original source’? Now THAT would be something beautiful.
We all know Google loves links from similar content. The reason Google loves this content is because it’s trying to sniff out the source of the river; any scent is worth following up. So, what if we gave Google exactly what it wants - a really strong scent?
Practicalities
For those of you who don’t like reading long explanations I’ve made it very simple. Essentially what we’re doing here is transferring the ‘original source’ status from another site onto our own. As an original source we’re immune to the usual downriver complications.
1. Identify a highly popular article that could be improved upon.
2. Create an almost identical article, but in your own words.
3. Add to it, improve it, make it your own.
4. Find a way to post a valid link on the ‘original source’ page that has the original popular article. There’s many ways to do this. Check through the page source to see which links have no rel=nofollow. You will be surprised at the places where you can find these.
5. Carry out standard link building on your new page. Give Google the trust it needs to recognise you as the true ‘original source’.
I’d love to hear your feedback on this strategy. Is it a moral one? What other implications do you think this strategy has? I’d love to hear your views.
Popularity: 8% [?]
