Debunking Link Building

Jul 20, 2022
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Links as a ranking factor are integral to search engines, so much so that they were a major factor in the establishing of Google’s monopoly over search engines: in the late 90s one of the founders of Google created PageRank, a site dedicated to measuring the quality of a page on the basis of the number of links pointing to it. This incorporation into the Google algorithm allowed the search engine to produce more relevant search results. Today, search engines use links both to help determine the ranking of a page and to discover new web pages.

Since links are so pivotal in search engine ranking systems, we must incorporate a solid link building strategy into our SEO. What is link building? In layman’s terms, this simply refers to acquiring hyperlinks to your website. Links can either be internal or external. Building both internal and external links is important, however external backlinks are particularly vital to a successful SEO strategy. For obvious reasons, the latter are harder to acquire.

  Passive Link Acquisition

The most valuable links to acquire are organic, that is those that have not been purposefully acquired. So, what power do I have over gaining these prized links?

The key is to shift mindset: instead of focusing on link building itself, we must begin by supplying the correct content. What value can your content bring to other websites? Why choose my content over someone else’s? Establishing thought leadership entails genuine expertise in your field. Here, content will be your greatest investment. Becoming a reputable source of information will kickstart an increase in mentions on other websites, besides driving sales through increased reputability. As a rule of thumb, your content should be original, avoiding over-saturated topics, unless you have something new to add, and accurate, with verifiable sources. A tactic known as digital PR even suggests creating linkable assets or “bait” that will be of interest to a specific writer and promoting it to them. You might start to gain valuable editorial links or be asked to guest blog for another site’s audience; both these achievements will have a positive influence on your ranking. Some other white hat organic link building strategies exist, particularly based around networking. Engaging with other sites, whether through social media or real-life networking, and supporting their own content, often naturally leads to them sharing your content. A combination of networking and thought leadership content is ideal.

Link Building

Though asking relevant sites to link back to your content can be a legitimate form of link building, beware of black hat tactics, which are more likely to have a negative impact on your ranking. These include:

  • Purchasing backlinks
  • Spamming blog or forum comment sections
  • Article Directories
  • Fake online profiles

Instead, focus on reaching out to the correct websites with genuine content to offer: this should be a mutually beneficial relationship, without financial reward. Websites that link back to yours should be relevant: it goes without saying that a link from a veterinarian’s site to a solicitor’s work is of little use. In order to find relevant sites, try a page-level link intersect to find sites linking to your competitors. Several sites offer this technology for free, in order to identify sites that might be interested in your content.

Building internal links is appealing for its independence from external sources. By providing clear paths for spiders and tight inter-page networks, internal links add great value to a site’s search-optimisation. The pillar of a solid internal linking strategy is, once again, content. Lots of it. The more internal pages a website has, the more opportunity for internal links. This allows for deep links, pointing to pages deep within the site. A common mistake made by link building beginners is over saturating their sites with internal links pointing to the home page, or other top level pages. Links should, of course, remain relevant and logical: search engine rankings reward user-friendly websites, thus links should pave the way for a user to easily navigate your website.

Link Cleaning

Less links? It may seem like conflicting information, but toxic links will actually prove detrimental to your SEO efforts. What are toxic links?

  • Links found in directories and link farms
  • Links found in domains penalised by the search engine
  • Links found in “bad neighbourhoods” (think gambling, adult content etc.)
  • Links found in sites that primarily use another language
  • Links found in vast quantities on unrelated sites

Never use these.

You might sigh in relief here, safe in the knowledge your link building veered away from these sites. Think again. Placing toxic links to your site from any of these places is a common SEO “guerrilla” tactic carried out by competitors. Search engines are becoming increasingly fine tuned to recognise such tactics, nonetheless it pays to clean up any toxic links that may be hindering your efforts. Simply identify where these links are hosted and contact sites directly for them to be removed. In extreme cases, Google’s disavow tool can be used to ask for the content to be removed.

With links being one of the top two criteria for Google’s page ranking system[1], get yourself to those top rankings by following our tips and tricks for link building.

[1] https://searchengineland.com/now-know-googles-top-three-search-ranking-factors-245882