The Shark Tank

One of the more confusing elements of scaling a business is, by far, creating a visible online presence. Discovering how to use links and how links impact Google rankings is somewhat of a mystery with so much conflicting information available from a variety of sources. On a recent episode of SEO Insider, Seth Price sat down for a conversation with Joy Hawkins, the owner and founder of Sterling Sky, in an attempt to answer some of these exact questions.

Rankings and Link Building

One of the more misunderstood SEO concepts is that of rankings and link building. While you may be inclined to believe that there is some sort of magical formula that must be mastered to create the perfect link, Joy Hawkins suggests that the truth is, that a link is a link. There are no specific types of links that create a stronger local pack ranking than another. Simply put, it is the quality of the link more than anything else. This being said, Hawkins states that the most impactful organic links are guest posting and citations. Guest posting, as the name suggests, is writing an article for another site and then subsequently linking your site to that article and vice versa. Citations are also fairly important to link building as it creates credibility for your site and can be done at a larger scale by a local business. It is important to note though, that links have a shelf-life, meaning that it is especially important for local businesses to continue building links to continue to perform well with rankings.

Misunderstood Dynamics of Google’s Filtering

While it may be tempting to simply mass duplicate pages, it just doesn’t work. Hawkins points out that it is crucial to avoid this strategy, especially when you are creating localized content, as they are unlikely to get indexed, and as a result, won’t be ranked. In the end, even with creating all these new pages, there will be no new traffic to your site. Similarly, while we know that Google does not favor these mass duplicated pages that are largely AI-driven, the issue is not simply that they are AI-driven, it is that no one is seeking out that content. At the end of the day, there is no end user that is seeking out that content, meaning there is no natural viewership. The average person is seeking to connect with some sort of story, personal experience, or resolution to a problem they are experiencing. These are not easily replicated by AI, which is the crux of the issue.

Navigating Reviews

As years go on, it has become more and more common for local businesses to buy reviews to improve their rankings. While Google is working to remove those false reviews and block businesses that use this strategy, Joy Hawkins states that the heart of the matter is that this does not prevent those businesses from doing it again. In turn, Hawkins states that if a business is really committed to confronting these issues, they may resort to going beyond reporting these businesses to Google and to organizations such as the Better Business ​​Bureau, especially if they have a considerable amount of evidence.

While SEO and the best practices surrounding some link building or rankings may be confusing, they don’t have to be. Contact BluShark Digital today to begin making your business stand out online.