For East Bay businesses that saw their website’s Google ranking plummet because of recent updates, they may be scrambling trying to regain lost search engine momentum. In the past, it was possible to use link building in an effort to boost rankings. Now the practice is called “inbound marketing.” Is this the same thing with a new name, or something else entirely and does it make a difference?
As stated above, anyone that knew about search engine optimization (or SEO) would turn to link building in an effort to increase ranking their website on Google for East Bay businesses. In fact, the more backlinks a website received the better Google ranking the website had. This is no longer the case. Google has even become almost antagonistic about link building and has begun penalizing websites that have backlinks not up to par.
What is a business to do if they were penalized and their link building efforts no longer count? Many webmasters have chosen to shift their effort from link building to providing quality content their readers will naturally want to share with others either through blogs, podcasts, videos or social media networking. This is called “inbound marketing” and it does make a difference.
Inbound marketing catches the attention of readers of a website, also known as potential customers. Because the content on the website offered value to the reader either by helping them solve a problem, teaching them something they didn’t know or entertaining them in some way, the reader is compelled to share this information with people they know through their personal blog, on Facebook or Twitter or through a video on YouTube or Vimeo. The point is the content itself is what causes readers to share. Each time they share, they will provide a link back to your business website which affects its website ranking on Google.
Link building, on the other hand, does not take content quality into consideration. The company would try other methods to make ranking the website on Google for East Bay businesses possible. They would make comments on leaders in their niche strictly for the purpose of getting a link back to their website from a known “expert.” These comments may or may not have added value to the conversation. They may also have chosen specific people to follow on Twitter or friend on Facebook hoping they would have an opportunity to respond to a tweet or status update and sneak in a link.
Of course, not all link building activities used prior to the new Google updates were done in an effort to artificially increase website ranking on Google. Many businesses and personal websites were penalized simply for not understanding how to build links properly. Many still don’t understand it. It is for this reason that businesses may want to learn more about inbound marketing and providing quality content readers will want to share, thus creating the links the website needs to gain back website ranking on Google for East Bay businesses.