So this week Jim Boykin annouced that his company ‘We Build Pages’ would be moving away from the whole buying links thing. So what does this mean for Jim and his crew and what does it mean for the rest of us? Here are my thoughts…
Jim Boykin is clearly trying to take his company in a new direction. Whether this is 100% because he is scared of getting busted by Google is unclear. This was not something that bothered him in the past and I refuse to believe that it has only struck him now that competitors can ‘turn him in’. He clearly has other motives…
He has just hired 3 or 4 top notch people in the world of search marketing and they all love content but hate paid links. Seems to me that Jim does not see a future in being labled just a good link builder and that the only way he can escape being that is by denouncing it completely. He is clearly moving more into the world of general seo and even more so CONTENT. This is not a bad thing, well played Jim - a clever long term strategy in my opinion.
So what does this mean for all you guys?
Ok, so whilst buying links is a risky business I doubt it is anymore risky than it was before Jim made this annoucement. I believe that if you do it well, and in moderation alongside a bigger link building strategy you can still get away with it and see some good results. But hey… I am not telling you to buy links, but be careful if you do!
Jon T said on November 27th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Does anyone think Jim potentially got given a rather large under the table payment in order to assist Google in there war against paid links?
He pulls a lot of weight in the SEO/Link Building world and this could have been a smart and well thought out plan by Google. What you think?
Marc said on November 28th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Jon T: Thanks for joining us!
I actually never thought of that. You’re right, Jim is an authority figure in the link building world and I doubt there is anyone better to promote Google’s way of thinking on this.
Interesting thought…hmm
Richard Hearne said on December 25th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I think this likely has more to do with the fact that Google are slowly moving away from their former link-based algo. Links were always a very noisy signal, and with things like searchwiki we’ll likely see far more non-link signals being used to generate SERPs.
I also think you can safely dispense with the Google-pays-off-Jim-Boykin theory
Rgds
Richard
Marc said on December 25th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Hi Richard, thanks for stopping by.
I agree Jim is very unlikely to have received any sort of pay off
Links are to an extent ‘noisy signals’ but I still see them playing a large part in the algo for quite a while yet. Searchwiki brings some interesting things into play, but I have my doubts about it. We will see I guess.
Cheers again!
Marc