Links: Hot Links, Cold Links, Old Links, And Links Galore

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

The Google Webmaster Blog is about to piss off a lot of people. They’re going to discuss links in a four-part series, starting with the overview, which was today. Tomorrow they’ll discuss internal links. The day after they’ll cover outbound links. On day 4 the topic will be inbound links.

The reason I think they’re going to piss people off is when they get to day 4 they’re going to tell people not to buy links and quit wasting all your time obsessing on inbound links.

I think links are important, but there’s no reason to obsess. Too many webmasters are scrambling from here to there looking for the right combination of links, buying into paid link schemes, and riding the next wave of stupidity to Crash and Burn City. If you’ve been there before then you know it’s not much of a sight and you’ll definitely not want to go back.

Inbound links are good. Some are better than others. But let Google tell you straight up as I think they will: They’re not gold.