3 min read

Quick Win SEO Ranking Tricks You Shouldn’t Build Your Business On

Picture of Honcho Honcho : Oct 18, 2012 3:00:44 PM

Following 4 recent Google algorithm updates, I thought I’d talk about 3 common quick win SEO tricks that can really help your rankings in the short term, but shouldn’t be used as the basis of a long term link building strategy. In many ways, a website is like a building. If you don’t lay the foundations right, you may not have a problem right away, but you’re going to have a serious problem in a few years time. So here are three simple things you can do to get some quick rankings, but only in moderation. Because if you do nothing but quick win ranking tricks, bad things can happen to your online business. Allow me to explain… 1) Keyword Domains Setting up a business on a Keyword Domain is still a great approach and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise! However, if you’re planning on just having a Keyword Domain and throwing some spammy links at it, you’re just asking for trouble. Yes, it will rank well in the short term, simply because it’s an exact match or partial match for a popular search term. But without good quality links and a strategy to turn your domain name into a real brand, your rankings won’t last long due to Google’s exact match domain algorithm update . 2) Spammy Links Links are like pillars, helping to hold your website up. So if your pillars are poorly made or not likely to last, it’s likely that they will degrade and eventually crumble away. So if you lose lots of your links, your site loses its rankings. So what constitutes a spammy link? Well, one which might get devalued by Google for not being relevant to your niche, because it comes from a very generic or unrelated website which is blatantly selling links to anyone and everyone. And because poor quality sites are often left to expire and are not renewed by the site owner, any links you’ve purchased from these sites will become Dead Links and pass no value as a result. 3) Satellite Sites I love satellite sites, because they’re often Keyword Domains and they’re often held up by spammy links. But what you’ve actually created is a website which is incredibly relevant to your niche and provides the perfect place to get relevant links from to help improve the rankings of your main site. Hence, why these types of websites are often referred to as Satellite Sites, because they orbit your main website, like a satellite. Plus, you can have as many of them as you like. So why bother going out to get links from other sites when you can just build your own? Unfortunately, because business owners simply don’t have the time, money or staff to look after their 10 to 20 (or even 100+) Satellite Sites, they’re usually held up in the rankings with spammy links. So let’s say you’ve got spammy links holding up 10 Satellite Sites. And you’ve got 10 Satellite Sites holding up your main website for its top search terms. Suddenly those spammy links to your Satellites get devalued by a new Google algorithm update or simply disappear and become Dead Links because the site owners let their domains expire and don’t renew them. That causes your Satellite Sites to lose their domain authority. And as a result, any links from them become equally worthless. Oh wait, those links were the only things holding up the best pages on your main website. Well, you’re going to lose all of these rankings really quickly. Conclusion Don’t get me wrong, this quick win stuff is great – in moderation! So while it may be incredibly tempting to smash your targets in the short term and get all these great rankings, if your links aren’t going to sustain themselves in the long term, your successful business could all come crashing down further down the line because someone let their domain expire or Google had another algorithm update. Google has talked about cleaning up the web and devaluing spammy sites and spammy links for years. But now that they’re actually doing it, Future Proofing your website has become more important than ever. And on a final note: if you do create Keyword Domains and Satellite Sites with great links and look after them properly, they can be a great way to get rankings, drive traffic and integrate with social very successfully.