Link Building Campaigns: Should You Create One or Forget This SEO Technique For Good

Link Building Strategies are now Obsolete...Almost!

John Mueller, a Google AdWords webmaster trends analyst, was once asked if link building was worth doing anymore.  He replied that he would try to avoid it himself, saying link building for SEO wasn’t as desirable as it once was.

He went on to say that Google does consider links in its ranking algorithms but directly building links is not the way people should do this. Mueller said the goal anyone should have it so create content that can stand on its own merit and that people will want to share on their websites and blogs.

He made little mention to the importance of links, citing that Google’s ranking algorithm looks at various factors. Mueller said building links could result in more bad things for a website than good ones.

Is Link Building Detrimental To Your Website

Mueller’s answer was a bit surprising. After all, Google tended to see link building as some soft link manipulation. Google has a job to find the best, most relevant pages on the Internet for users searching for information, ranking them based on their authority and quality. Inorganic links could interfere with the rankings’ preciseness. It would appear that link building falls within that position.

Google handled this matter using its Penguin, which is an update to the ranking algorithm that determines what links are of bad quality or spam. When there are an excessive amount of links or the same link on low-quality sources, it can lead to website penalization.

Mueller’s thinking of link building being more harmful than good is right on the money.

Here’s where a BUT comes in.

Although link building can be bad, it doesn’t always need to be. If you carefully look at link building and its factors, you can use it to your success. You can avoid any unpleasantness that comes from a link building campaign.

Practical SEO professionals have some kind of thinking. They know that links are important to the ranking algorithm and not trying to attain them is bad, especially if the competition is using link building for their efforts.

How To Correctly Build Your Links

Mueller laid out the best way to create links, and it is indeed the best way to build them. However, the best way also means being patient, putting forth the effort and spending money to get it done. Google still links has valuable because they indicate three things:

  • Authority
  • Reliability
  • Trust

When a website links back to yours, it’s because the website administrators saw something on your website they felt was valuable.

While you can build your own links to attain this status – in some form or fashion – it doesn’t offer up any real credibility for your site. After all, you’re the one that’s building the links. Google doesn’t want you voting for yourself. They want you to create high-quality material that’s both valuable and shareable.

What kinds of content is often shared more often than others?  They include:

  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • In-depth blog posts

In order to have valuable material, you need to take time on it. Use the extra money you have on hand to ensure the job is done right the first time out. Remember, the higher the quality of your material, the more links you’ll naturally attain.

Organize and publish the material via your social media accounts, and see what happens. Remember, the best quality material will garner thousands of links without you ever doing the link building yourself – no chance for a penalty here.   It can be difficult to do this on a regular basis. After all, you have to spend your time to produce unique, engaging and educational material each time. However, the goal you have is to become a leader in your niche.

Guest blogging is another way to build quality links back to your site. What is guest blogging? It’s the method of establishing a relationship with editors, blog owners and journalists so that you can contribute to their own sites and publications. When you contribute material for publication, it must undergo the editorial process before it’s approved by the owner.


Guest blogging can be just as beneficial as SEO.

Understanding the Costs, The Hazards and The Advantages To Link Building

 

If you’re doing link building wrong, it can be detrimental to your website and your goals. Should you pursue it? Well, for you to determine whether or not it’s something that you should do, you’ll need to keep in mind three things:

  • Advantages
  • Hazards
  • Costs

There’s no doubt how much change link building has undergone in the last several years. Once thought to be the end all, be all for attaining keyword-rich links to website directories, article directories and more; today, these methods will penalize your website.

The best thing you can do is produce superior-quality content and publish it so that you can earn links through this way. Publish the material on your website and off of it – its adds more value and has no associated risk to it. Yes, it will cost you more than the yesteryears’ methods – in time, money and effort. The payoff though is far greater than before.

What Does It All Mean?

Regardless of what you may think, link building is still an important part of an SEO strategy. Google still sees values in the external links, but you may want to revise the strategy.  If you focus on the traditional methods of link building and put attention on attaining links using quality content, your website will see the benefits – no low-quality based links and stable, predictable low-cost traditional links.

By realizing this, you can easily stay in your budget range and boost your authority. And, if the traditional link building methods are used wisely, you don’t ever need to be concerned with being penalized.