Google recently updated the way they crawl and index the web.  The update is called “Caffeine”.

One of the things I have noticed with the  websites I optimize, post-Caffeine, is that almost all of them are showing increased traffic, with increases ranging from 10% to 50%. I’m very proud of that. And I’m using it as an introduction to explain why we don’t offer “cheap link building,” and never will.

I guarantee you that SEO experts who offer cheap links (you’ve seen them — 500 directory links for $50, that kind of deal) haven’t seen any traffic increases post-Caffeine. In fact, anecdotally, I’ve seen SEO’s complaining on forums that their traffic has gone down.

What has Caffeine done? Caffeine has been one more step in the improvement of Google’s search results. They still have a long way to go, no question. I still see lots of garbage links pushing websites to the top of the rankings for some searches. But inexorably, Google is getting better and better at what they do, which is deliver the best quality results to people who are on the internet looking for something.

Google has a big, vested interest in continuing to battle spam in the search index and deliver good results. And who wants to go up against Google? Not me. I try to line my websites up with what Google wants and rewards, not what they are actively trying to find and dump from their index!

What does this all have to do with cheap link building?

Links are still the currency of the web, whether from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, bookmark sites, forums, or wherever. But good links, the kind that you build naturally, either with great content or great creativity, or both, are not cheap.

Bad links are cheap. Bad links, like those you get from 3 way reciprocal linking, or forum spam, or “hosted pre-sell pages” (geez, that looks a lot like a fancy term for “paid links” to me!) or 500 directory links written in barely intelligible English, are all relatively cheap. (Except for hosted pages, which are incredibly expensive).

The biggest problem with all these spammy links is that eventually, Google may well catch up with whatever scam your SEO company is running, and pull the plug on the game. The result? Your website could disappear from Google’s index in the blink of an eye. And there is no sicker feeling for an internet marketer than staring at page 1 of Google, where just yesterday your website site sat at # 3 or #6 or # 2, wherever — and now, to see no sign of your domain name at all. Gone. Frantically, you click through pages 2 – 10 of the Google results, and the awful truth sinks in — your site hasn’t just slipped, it’s gone, baby, gone. Oh, that feeling of panic. Followed, justifiably, by despair. Your business may have just gone belly up.

All because you thought you could get that website traffic the easy way. With cheap link building.

But enough of the dark side. What’s the alternative?

The alternative is best practices link-building — link building like it should  be done. It’s very much like P.R. — only it’s all done online. Your link building needs to combine knowledge of the online world with knowledge of old-fashioned P.R.

I charge $85 an hour for my link building work (and all my other SEO work). Link building is by far the most difficult, with its unpredictability, its high rate of rejection, and the constant need to come up with new campaign ideas, and new content that is worth linking to. But in the end, it’s worth it — both for me personally, and my clients. I sleep better at night, without having nightmares about Google’s next update, and my clients, over time, build a website with an organic backlink profile that will continue to grow, and attract links, indefinitely.

I figure it takes me about 2 hours — in research time, content creation, pitching stories, and follow up — for every good link that I build. That’s about $170 a link. Sure, it sounds expensive. It’s a lot more expensive than 500 links for $50. And it’s takes longer to achieve, and is less predictable, than slapping up some hosted pages somewhere. But in the long run, the links I build will give back far more — in traffic, in website growth, and in peace of mind — than the cheap links ever will.

So I’ll keep doing it the way I have for the past 6 years. And I’m looking forward to the next Google update.