It never ceases to amaze me that jewelers are either paying for, or directly engaging in link building schemes that are bad for them. With all the talk of Google Penguin since April 2012, I'm surprised that some businesses still don't understand the difference between good and bad link building.
Here are some basics of potentially good ways to build links to your website:
1. Get a link from a well-written blog on someone's website, even your own.
2. Share your own pages to social media websites.
3. Get mentioned in a local newspaper and make sure the article links to your website.
Here are some basics of potentially bad ways to build links to your website:
A. Pay for a press release which includes a link back to your website.
B. Post a link in blog comments around the internet.
C. Ask someone to put a link on their website in exchange for a similar link to them that you place on your website.
Although a retail jewelry store owner might not know the 6 points outlined above, they should be common knowledge for any SEO professional that you hire. Even if you are attempting jewelry website SEO on your own, it should be easy enough to discover these 6 points while you are learning basic SEO practices.
Let me illustrate the bad blog comment link building method with a real example that was recently posted as a comment to the jWAG.biz website.
The following is exactly what someone recently attempted to post as a comment:
Name: Engagement Ring
Website:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K8C5Z1O
Comment: Choosing a diamond engagement or wedding ring can be an important process, and with all the choices and facilities available, it can be an easy one
It seems a bit unusual that someone would enter their name as "Engagement Ring" until you think about how a typical blog comment will appear. With every blog commenting system the person's name will appear as the anchor text using the URL of the website.
In the above example, this person was hoping to gain a good link with the anchor text "engagement ring" (because they used those words as their name) from the jWAG site to a ring in their Amazon.com store. I didn't link to their website, but you can copy/paste the above website address to see the item.
Blog writers like it when people leave comments on a post (take it from me, we really love it) but the comment shown above is rather clunky in how it's written: "Choosing a diamond engagement or wedding ring can be an important process, and with all the choices and facilities available can be an easy one." I think there is at least one word and comma missing from it. It's a good idea to approve comments left on your own store's blog before allowing them to appear. The grammar issues alone should not pass human review.
More importantly, there have been reports that Google's Panda filter has a grammar checker built in. Poorly written comments like this could get your website penalized.
Google also recommends that you approve your comments before allowing them to appear. This is a simple safeguard against the potential for unmonitored comments that eventually run amok with spam.
H&H Diamonds is the online jeweler responsible for the above comment spam. This is their Amazon store:
http://www.amazon.com/shops/A1ZXYXHW8MQFE
I can't tell if H&H is a legitimate jeweler because they do not have an address or phone number listed on their Amazon store at the time I looked at it. Whatever the case may be, their attempted method of link building is bad.
Watch out for similar types of comments on your own blog and only allow the comments that honestly contribute to, and initiate an engaging conversation that enhances your blog post.
