Dutch Cowboys (2012): link building trends 2012, eight experts have their say

On 11 March 2012 my second guest article appeared on Dutch Cowboys: Linkbuilding trends 2012, 8 linkbuilding experts vertellen u alles! (Link building trends 2012, 8 link building experts tell you everything). By then Linkbuilding-Specialist was a link building agency from Amsterdam.

The eight link builders

The agency interviewed seven Dutch link builders and one Belgian link builder about link building and social media in 2012:

• Peter van der Graaf (searchspecialist.nl)
• Roy Huiskes (chapter42.com)
• Jafar Kaboli (linkbuilding-specialist.nl)
• Martijn de Klerk (winstgevendewebsite.nl)
• Ton Heerze (webton.nl)
• Jeffrey Bleijendaal (ematters.nl)
• Sander Tamaëla (onetomarket.nl)
• Pieter-Jan Vanneste (seodvize.be)

What the list shows

The list includes independent specialists and people from agencies, each with their website alongside. Jafar Kaboli of Linkbuilding-Specialist itself is on it too. By naming everyone's site, the reader could check who was behind a piece of advice. I still apply that principle: every source on this page comes with a link to the original.

Why link building became harder in 2012

The article opens with the observation that link building had become more challenging than ever. As causes it names Google's Panda updates, the other changes to the algorithm and the growth of blogs and social media. So the question for the experts was what still worked after Panda, and what no longer did.

The difference from 2011 can also be seen in the set-up. Where the first article mainly featured international names, this piece was about Dutch and Belgian practice. That made it useful for companies and agencies working here.

From link building to entities

Looking back on it now, I see the start of a shift. Google was getting better and better at looking at who is behind a site and whether sources confirm each other. That is the basis of what I now do with schema and the knowledge graph and with Wikidata for companies and people. You can read the earlier piece in the link building trends 2011, and the later one on video in the 11 YouTube SEO tips.

Original and archive

This article is also no longer live on dutchcowboys.nl. The screenshot above comes from the Internet Archive. A summary is available on gijs-bodenstaff.nl.