The task of link building has changed considerably over the past few years. The old, traditional methods are now, by and large, seen as just simply being spammy and irrelevant. However, in light of this, new methods have come to the forefront and have been shown to be highly effective themselves.
Why is link building important
Link building is important for SEO but also for a number of other elements. Links to your site show that other people think your site is an authority. Potential customers will see that companies they frequently visit also do business with you, encouraging them to go to your site as well.
For these companies to take on your link in the first place, you need to ensure that your content is of a high quality. If it isn’t, it can impact negatively on both your business and that of the site that is hosting your link.
Once you have a few quality links, you can often find that more links are received, without you even asking for them. The whole point is to build up your profile and, once you become an industry leader, the links will start to take care of themselves.
What’s changed?
The world of link building has changed drastically over the past few years. Google has launched a major crackdown on bad links to ensure that only the quality ones are getting through. Spammers were hit hard by the Penguin update, after Google updated its algorithm to force out a lot of the spammy links. In the past, people would just fill pages with very low quality links in the hope of driving traffic on to their sites. However, Penguin put a stop to this as part of a major overhaul to improve the service for users.
The search engine also started applying manual penalties to sites that fell foul of poor link building. These penalties can often hit sites that have good quality links, but if they don’t fit with the algorithm or there are old links that could be deemed as spammy, Google may hit them.
What used to work?
Before the updates were released, there were a number of different methods that worked for link building. One of the most popular ones was comment spamming. Comments would be left on forums and would normally be irrelevant to the subject being discussed; it was simply a method of getting a link on the page. Widgets were another popular option. Companies would provide software which included a widget for your site but, in order to use the widget, you’d have to have a link from it to the company’s site.
Low quality link directories were another option frequently used by link builders. These directories are literally pages of links, without any real quality to the site at all. While there are companies that still use them, they are largely worthless to you and may see you hit with a penalty as a result. Other kinds of directory which were commonly used were link resource pages on websites, where pages of largely unrelated links were placed on a company’s site pointed at other locations.
Paid links are dangerous territory to enter. If you are paying a website to host a link to your site, you are on thin ice already. Paid links go against Google’s webmaster guidelines so you are almost guaranteed to get caught out if you do this.
Some companies use doorway pages which involve a site having one page specifically designed to link you. A similar method is a link circle whereby one site links to another, which then links to another, which then links back to the original site. Again, it’s risky to do this and Google is likely to find out what you are up to pretty quickly.
Exchanges can work to a certain point but if you have too many of them, you could find yourself being hit with a penalty. If there is a strong relationship between your site and one you are exchanging links with, you could be safe but if there isn’t a particularly relevant connection between you, then link exchange at your own risk, or preferably not at all.
Link wheels and pyramids are two other, rather underhand methods of link building. Wheels are similar to cloaking in that they involve you creating lots of sites just to link to your main site. Pyramids involve creating a link to your site, then creating links to that linking page and then creating more links to those linking pages. It’s a rather round-about way to link and is likely to see you get caught out eventually.
All of these methods are now, largely, considered to be spam. If you use them, you are highly likely to be hit with the Penguin algorithm and a penalty from Google so your best bet is to just steer clear of these rather underhand methods if you want quality link building.
What works now?
Obviously, with the crackdowns on spam, the face of link building had to undergo some rather drastic changes. For some companies, this was a non-issue because they were doing the right things already, but for the ones that became penalty victims or didn’t know the above methods were bad for them, current best practice is something completely new.
Earned links are one of the best types of links to have. These are the links that you get completely naturally, just from creating amazing content. Everyone simply wants to link to it because it’s just that good. If you have a strong content strategy for your site and are creating high quality videos, infographics and whitepapers, you are more likely to earn links. There is also link reclamation whereby someone mentions you and you actively ask them to link to you.
Citation building involves your business being given a reference on a website. These citations often include links back to your website, as well as your business address and contact details.
Guest blogging is another method that is proving to be quite successful. It involves blogs being written for certain websites and a link is contained naturally within the text or the biography of the writer. Care is needed when creating these kinds of links, with an emphasis being on creating high quality content. Blogs that are created just to be accepted as guest blog posts should be avoided.
Outreach is a hugely effective link building technique and it is about building up unique relationships. Rather than just sending a blanket email or an automated tool to achieve content placement, such as guest blog posts as mentioned above, it involves finding suitable places for content to be posted and forming a relationship with the site owner prior to posting. This relationship is often continued after the content is posted, maintaining a connection for the future. This method is similar to public relations, whereby relationships are built with the purpose of posting content, but the content tends to be less promotional and more informative.
Links remain an important part of your SEO and if you want to create a quality link building campaign, you could find yourself far better off using these methods, rather than the traditional, spammy techniques that were popular some time ago.
How link building has changed over the years originally appeared on Search Marketing Guides on October 1, 2013.
