What if a Human Reviewer Looked at your Backlinks?

So last night I gave my “Quiz” asking you to find the “unnatural” link.

I’ll admit it….those pages don’t link to any of our clients, nor to any sites we own 😉
It was really a rhetorical question.

The point is…you really couldn’t see what link that might, or might not, have been influenced by a link ninja. You just didn’t know.

I actually found those url’s doing some searches looking for a page with a list of links on them that appeared totally natural, (with no regard for SEO). I just re-looked at the urls now, and the value of those pages really isn’t much (if we had got a link on there for a client it wouldn’t help much….but they worked for my example).

One of the points I was trying to make is that even though so many of us know “tricks” on how we can “beat” algorithms on links that may or may not be paid, registration info, c-class IP blocks, images, etc…but we really should be taking the approach of “if a human looked at this, would they know….would Matt know??”…many seo links I see (and I’ve certainly been guilty in the past) I know can’t pass a human review…even links of relevance, that can be mapped, are not going to pass a human review….but the better you get, and the higher you rank…and the more you dominate…the higher your chances are of having to pass the scrutiny of a human review.

As always, I see so many that want the short cut…where can I order ’em and be done with it people…and some days that may work, and some days that may not…in most of these cases, most of this can be filtered algorithmically (via position on page (in body?), flagged words near them, or mapped to a network, etc).

The links you need you can’t buy from any broker, you can’t buy them from a blog reviewer, there’s no store you can find where you can order them (because by nature, all that’s been mapped and marked already, as well as often clearly paid if a human saw these).

Anything that looks like a short-cut to getting links is dead anyways (some today, some tomorrow) and shortcuts just shouldn’t be an option for a company that’s thinking long term and serious.

The links you need you have to find on your own. You have to identify, analyze, make contact, influence, and move on.

Keep in mind that I am talking about influencing, and not linkbait. I say this because I still totally believe that you need the right link text, linking to the right pages in order to rank in the top 10 for highly competitive phrases, almost all the time.

And I don’t believe that Linkbait alone can do that (99% of the time). I highly believe that in order to rank high you need focused link text linking to specific pages.

If you too believe that you need focused link text linking to specific pages of your site, then you might have to be a ninja influencer in order to get that, …whatever your methods may be…if you are, then the biggest question you should be asking yourself is “Can I survive tomorrow” – or what may be the ultimate question…. “Can it pass a human review?”.

If your time is spent today getting links that might not pass the scrutiny of tomorrow, why do it? Why not do today what can survive long haul, and the most stringent reviews there could ever be? ….for, if you’re going for the top, it might not be enough that you can pass a robots algorthym today, if tomorrow you can’t pass a physical look by a human.

Mind you, I’m not perfect, and there have been times that I did what worked the best for that time….and I’ve had to re-look at some past moves, and reevaluate, and remove those that might not be as beneficial today as it once may have been…..Like I said, I’m not perfect, but I am always getting better at what I do.

Today our goals are to pass the human review with our ninja influencing moves.

Sorry for the fake quiz, it was just the point I was making.

Do you think about human reviews like I do? …or do you think I’m too paranoid?