After the link development show with Todd Malicoat ended I emailed him some follow-up questions and here are his answers. Enjoy.
If you were Google how would you police link development?
I wouldn’t try so hard to condemn it. Link acquisition is part of a good internet strategy now. Why combat small business owners and SEO’s when the time could be better spent on improving algorithmically to combat the commercial exploitation issues that new algorithms sprout. I think the scales have tipped a little to far to one side with trying to discourage folks from buying links. I can understand wanting them to be on relevant sites (which is open to interpretation anyhow), but not buying links at all? Why not just outlaw all advertising? I’d work on relevance, user experience, and improving the technology and AI for a international business. Buying and selling of text links is a byproduct of something that they produced Buying links has become unacceptable only in a few instances – even in those instances you really have to question why. Everything on the web is a link, therefore there are multitudes of ways to BUY a link on the web. Some are valid for quality results and some are not. I would work on quality signals for link growth within a given sector or vertical, not non-scalable solutions to a temporary problem.
What are your words of wisdom on how to deal with link rot?
Keep good links as long as you possibly can. Sometimes link development for sites that link to yours is not a bad idea.
If you were in the hospital who would you want to take over your link building?
Andy Hagans, Jim Boykin, Aaron Wall, Lee Odden Patrick Gavin, Rand Fishkin, Mug5hot and any newer “hungry” SEO’s that are trying to get started that I could find
What tools do you recommend for analyzing links?
All of the above and a handful of other folks from WMW, SEW, TW and anyone who understands good link tools. linkharvester – cool-seo-tool - Mr Ploppy’s link development
What is the best and worst linkbait you have seen?
Best – There’s lots. New memes that breed links, bloggers are master link baiters. The best linkbait is often the stuff that “just comes to you” that you don’t really think will be anything all to special. Linkbaiting is all about coming up with something exceptionally creative that will get talked about and thus garner the value of a multitude of links.
Worst – Not using a url in a television commercial. I’ve had a couple that I THOUGHT were good that flopped entirely.
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Well, there’s a sound reason for Google to be against buying/selling links, isn’t there? I mean, beyond the search alogrithms. When we buy or sell links directly to other webmasters, we’re not buying and selling through Adwords and Adsense. By eliminating a competitive marketplace, they enhance their market position of their Adwords and Adsense services. Anti-competitive behavior, no?