As we prepare for the introduction of The Bribery Act 2010, agencies and companies that pursue a paid linking strategy could end up in deep water.

Paid linking has always been a somewhat dubious technique and one that Google specifically singles out as being against their guidelines. The recent action taken by Google against major US retailer JC Penney is a good example of why the use of paid links isn’t a good idea. Following the discovery of a paid linking strategy, Google imposed a harsh penalty on the retailer, seeing their site drop significantly in the rankings.

The new Bribery Act could bring more than just a Google penalty. The bribery law states that an offence is committed by a company when:

• A person "associated" with the commercial organisation (i.e. performs services for it) bribes another person;

• The bribe is intended to obtain or retain business for the commercial organisation or retain an advantage in the conduct of the organisation's business.

In short, it will become an offense for a company to knowingly themselves, or through a third party agency, make payments to a company or individual in order to gain competitive advantage; which is exactly what paid linking is. You are paying someone to link to your site thereby gaining competitive advantage in the search results.

It is important to note that The Bribery Act 2010 was not created specifically to counter paid linking and therefore those using this strategy will no doubt find a way to skirt the wording of the law. Any links promoted as advertising are difficult to pin down as bribery, but greater consideration will now be placed on the wording of link requests. Those posing as expenses may slip through whereas blatant payments for links will stick out like a sore thumb.

Bottom line: if you want to avoid a Google penalty and avoid the long arm of the law then it’s best you stick to links that don’t require payment.

The New York Times has recently investigated the “black hat” SEO techniques employed by large US department store, JC Penney. In an article entitled "The Dirty Little Secrets of Search," the newspaper brought in an SEO consultant to find out how JC Penney had all of a sudden leapfrogged almost all other online retailers for some very competitive, very juicy terms.

You can read the full article here but the summary is along the lines of:

• The Times and their SEO consultant spot a tonne of link building, including a lot of paid-for links.
• The Times sent Google the evidence it had collected and the leader of their Web Spam team, Matt Cutts, responded by saying "I can confirm that this violates our guidelines” and that Google would take “corrective action”.
• Google did as they promised and started placing rankings penalties on the retailers’ website which promptly saw it fall down the search rankings for numerous search terms. For “living room furniture” it went from 1st position to 68th within a matter of hours and for “Samsonite carry on luggage” it fell from 1st to 71st.
• JC Penney claims no knowledge of these practices and fires its search engine marketing firm.

This isn’t the first example of a very large brand being slapped by Google. BMW and Go Compare have both previously been penalised for over-eager SEO tactics that fell foul of Google’s guidelines. If you have bought links or are thinking of doing so then consider the fact that if the search engine is willing to upset brands of this size, then they won’t have an issue doing the same to your site.

We often take on new SEO clients who have been penalised by Google for just such practices. Unfortunately, overcoming a penalty can take considerable work and a long time. Whilst it does take longer to rank at the top with more ethical SEO campaigns, the long-term positions and peace of mind are worth the wait.

In essence, SEO (search engine optimisation) is two areas: keywords and links. Whilst most people who have a website have thought about keywords and most website designers will help include these in the important parts of your web pages, links are often an afterthought, if considered at all.

This can be good news for your businesses as if you haven’t bothered seeking out links then your competitors probably haven’t either. If you start getting the type of in-bound links that the search engines like, then your site will soon start to rise to the top of the search results, bringing you much more traffic and enquiries.

Why are links so important?

The search engines need to be viewed as a popularity contest. Just because your website says that you sell cheap widgets doesn’t mean Google believes it. You need other websites to point Google towards yours, with each link acting as a vote of confidence. This means that Google finds your site more often and pays more attention as other sites it trusts are telling it about yours.

Where should you get links from?

There are many different types of link and it is important to build a diverse link profile, so seek links from a wide range of sites. Here are a few of the more common areas:

1. Directories. Directories list and link to other websites. It is a good idea to request links from popular general directories, such as DMOZ and Hot Frog, as well as niche ones that specialise in listing sites from within your industry. Quality is key with directories, so if it looks like a site full of spammy listings then move on and find another.

2. Blogs. Commenting on other blogs is popular in the link building world as you can choose the text displayed in the link and the page on your site that it links to. Blog comments can also bring high quality traffic but you need to leave a valuable comment and not spam them with some meaningless drivel.

3. Link requests. Send an email to other websites asking them to link to yours. If it is someone you know, such as a supplier or friend, then they will probably not hesitate to help. If it’s an unknown website then you may need to provide a reason why they should, e.g. an interesting article or special offer they can link to.

How do you find these links?

There are numerous ways of finding links but we only have a few hundred words here to try and describe what can be a full time job. Have a play around with these search strings and vary the words to find an array of sites that are easy link targets (substituting the word ‘keyword’ for your keyword or keyphrase):

If you are looking for directories then try typing this into Google:

keyword “add URL”
keyword “submit site”
keyword “suggest website”

Want to find relevant blogs? Try these and see what comes up:

keyword “add comment”
keyword “powered by Wordpress”

The entire ranking algorithm that Google uses is based on the concept of link popularity, so focusing on this area can bring in huge improvements to your search engine rankings. By doing nothing but building links, we have helped many businesses reach very high Google rankings for very competitive keywords. It really does work, so best of luck!

Oxford House Menswear is a clothing retailer based in South Wales and offers plus sized items under its OH Big Man brand. The business has used Pay Per Click advertising to generate sales for a number of years and recognised the potential and importance in improving natural search engine rankings.
 
OH Menswear engaged the services of other local SEO companies before speaking to us and was disappointed with the results. Undeterred, they were recommended our services and in mid 2009 asked us to help develop their SEO with the goal of significantly greater website traffic and sales.
 
How did we improve their online marketing?
 
Keyword research- We explored the keywords used by their target markets as well as the levels of competition for each one. We then made recommendations on where to concentrate efforts so that a large return could be made quickly.
 
SEO advice - Once keywords were decided upon we advised on ways the site should incorporate them, both in the makeup of the page (titles and meta data, etc.) and within areas of the body copy.
 
Inbound link building - A link building campaign took place where we sought in-bound links from sites related to clothing and e-commerce.

What did this do?
 
At the time of writing there were over 7 million web pages indexed on Google for "XXL Shirts" and OH Menswear have been sat in the first position for a number of months. They also appear on the first page for a number of other important keywords such as "large mens clothing" and "Ben Sherman XXL". Coming up high on the search engines for these keywords has brought in a lot of new, high quality traffic and has meant that the business could greatly reduce its Pay Per Click advertising spend.
 
How has this helped OH Menswear?
 
Online marketing is now a crucial part of OH Menswear. Sales have been growing month on month throughout 2009 and last month sales were up 82% when compared to the same period in 2008. This is remarkable when you look at the market they are in, one where most retailers are currently posting losses and the highest profile competitor, High & Mighty, recently went into administration. The business has actually had to take on additional premises to cope with the increase in orders from within the UK and, for the first time, from various countries around the world.

Freed & Co Solicitors approached us to help with their online marketing and SEO (search engine optimisation). They were having a new website developed and wanted to come up on the first page of the search engines for a mix of local and national keywords.  Their original site was built as a flash image, so had not been indexed by any search engines and didn’t contribute towards the marketing of the business.
 
How did we help improve their online marketing?
 
SEO copywriting – As the site was being developed, we advised them on the keywords to compete for. We then created new copy as well as amended existing copy, so that it held these keywords in the right places and presented the company well.
 
Inbound link building – A link building campaign took place for a number of months, to help give the site credibility within the search engines.
 
Pay Per Click advertising – A small but focused Google Adwords campaign was set up to bring in some quick traffic and new enquiries.
 
How has this helped the business?
 
Within a month of starting, website traffic was over 300% higher than it had ever been before and online enquiries had started to come in. Within a few months the website could be found on the first page of Google for national keywords like "property development solicitor" and local ones like "commercial conveyancing Cardiff" and "solicitor in Cardiff" and they had their first introductions as a result of this SEO work.

Gift House International, an importer and supplier of wholesale giftware and gadgets, asked Liberty Marketing to help increase the traffic to its site.

The company already had a very well optimised website, but it wasn’t showing within the first 20 pages of Google for any of its main keywords.

After looking at competitor websites and the keywords used in the market it was decided that they needed more in-bound links to strengthen their placement within the search results.

The process involved a lot of off-site work, including:

Inbound link building – An intensive link building campaign was started and back links were sought from all relevant sites from within the gift and gadget industry.

Social media marketing – Activity included placing product videos on video hosting sites and commenting on industry forums and blogs with links pointing back to the site.

How has this helped the business?

Within six months the website had risen from page 20+ in the Google results to page one for all of its main keywords, including “wholesale gadgets” and “wholesale giftware”. These changes could also be seen in the Yahoo! and Bing search engines.

“Liberty Marketing helped us with keyword research and advised us on an online marketing strategy. They then built in-bound links for us over a 6 month period. Before the work started you couldn’t find our site in the top 100 results but now we are coming up on the first page of all the search engines for all of our chosen keywords. Our website is now receiving its highest ever level of traffic” - Marc Mitchell, Gift House International Ltd

Kingswood Associates, the property finance and commercial mortgage specialist, asked Liberty Marketing to improve the ranking of its newly launched site at the beginning of 2009.

We already had a working relationship with Kingswood, managing their Pay Per Click advertising and email marketing, and now were responsible for greatly increasing traffic from the natural search listings.

The process involved a lot of on-site and off-site work, including:

SEO consultancy – We provided keyword research to find the phrases that could be competed for, would bring in traffic and would fit in with the business objectives. We then worked with Kingswood to build an online marketing strategy based on the main keywords chosen.

SEO copywriting – Amendments were made to many pages and entirely new ones were created to give the site more strength in the search engines. Keywords now feature more prominently where needed on each page and within the site structure.

Inbound link building – An intensive, on-going link building campaign has been in place where the site is connected to relevant directories and websites. The link building service generates direct traffic as well as helps push the site up the search results.

How has this benefited the business?

Within a few months the company has gone from barely being found on the search engines to coming up on the first page of Google for many local terms such as “mortgages Cardiff”, “mortgage brokers Cardiff”   and “buy to let mortgages Cardiff” as well as some competitive national phrases such as “residential mortgage broker” (coming in the top 5 listings out of over 3 million results).

Having such a large presence on the search engines has led to thousands of new visitors coming to the site over the past few months, and new mortgage enquiries every day of the week.

There is now enough traffic that the Pay Per Click advertising spend has be greatly reduced, meaning that Kingswood is now enjoying high levels of traffic and enquiries but is actually spending far less money on marketing.