Link Building, Do It Right or Don’t Do It At All
Link building is that dreaded phrase that still to this day confuses the heck out of many people trying to figure out how to proactively market themselves online in the search engines. They hear from one source how they need thousands of links to start ranking and from another source they hear just quality links gets the job done. So what is the right answer? In a perfect world you would have an abundance of good quality links pointing from only a variety of targeted authority industry websites.
Just building links for the sake of building links is not going to benefit you or the search engines. Links that sit on irrelevant websites can actually hurt you a great deal over time. A link sitting a website that is part of a blog farm is not going to benefit you in any possible way. If you are not sure what a blog farm is, it is a farm of blogs that a company will use to place links for clients or other websites in order to increase rankings. These blog farms usually have absolutely no strength or power in the search engines but appear to do so. Don’t assume that spending more money is going to get you more quality links. It is not about how much you spend but more so about how good your marketing message is. A promotion that gets your audience talking and bloggers writing will get you much farther than just purchasing a link on a website. Many different businesses take a variety of different approaches in the search engine marketing industry but purchasing links is very frowned upon. Buying a service that generates thousands of links for you is only going to create a mess of your online marketing approach and hurt you in the long run. How good do you really think those thousand links are going to be? Do you think they generate any value to your business?
Link building should always be done with a quality approach. A blog post on an industry related blog that is an authority in your industry is an example of a great link. A major business publication doing a write up on you for their online division is a great link. A “directory blaster” is a horrible way to generate links and should be avoided at all costs. Link building should be conducted using a strategy and a schedule and not with a number goal. A combination of a variety of monthly efforts is an approach that will help you climb in the search results over time.
12 Responses to “Link Building, Do It Right or Don’t Do It At All”
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Well,wouldn’t go that far as to say do it right or don’t do it at all. But you do have a point as well, link building is not that easy..
Good points! I definitely agree with taking a quality approach to link building projects. To take your conversation a step forward, I would suggest that companies/brands/entrepreneurs utilize their existing relationships and try to solicit inbound links from related, qualified and (ideally) authoritative sites. The value of these links is exponentially higher than any paid-per-link service, and is a secure long term strategy. Often times the only barrier is the online team’s ability to communicate the strategies value to C-Level management. blog.makebuzz.com
Quality has always had it all over quantity – every time, the plus is also the authenticity of your approach, not trying to scam the search engines which is becoming harder and harder, and at the same time offering good value to your readers.
Hi Annie,
Offering value (content) and with your link building efforts is certainly the name of the game. Thanks for reading and your comment!
I have been writing blogs on WordPress and Blogspot for about two months now. Using BacklinkWatch, I am still not getting any inbound links from those blogs to my site even though I created Anchor Text with my keywords pointing back to my site. These should be two well respected blogs. Any idea why these links are not being picked up by the search engines? I am getting inbound links from Yahoo local and other sites but not from any of the blog sites.
Hi Ed,
Thanks for reading and your question.
I am not familiar with BacklinkWatch, I typically use Google Webmaster tools for link analysis, but some times the free blogging platforms such as Blogspot and WordPress (non-hosting version) tend to not have followed or provide good authority links that show up in reporting. That said, I would recommend trying to look at the data in Google webmaster tools to see if you find any additional accurate data.
Hi Nick!
I agree with you that quality is better than quantity holds true with backlinks. (Not only do I enjoy reading your helpful, interesting articles, but when I comment on one of your articles, I get a quality, industry-related link!)
I have also read several posts about clients who have paid for link building and then regretted it when their website ranking went down instead of up!
Appreciate that you share your insights and experiences. Take care.
Hi Ken,
It is always amazing to me, how people tend to sometimes think that quantity is king, but the reality is that quality will always win!
Thanks for reading and your comment, I do appreciate it!
Thanks for your encouraging article! Speaking from personal experience, when I first started trying to get links I had no idea that there were “good links” and “not so good links”. And I was swamped with offers from many companies wanting to get me all those links! When you don’t know any better, you are vulnerable and gullible. So I appreciate your teaching approach in all of your articles!! You/they are invaluable!
Hi Barbara,
Thanks for your kind words and sharing your thoughts…SEO and link building is a continuous learning process for businesses and people at all levels…thanks again for reading!
Hi Nick,
It is nice to see that the world has yet to figure out the ever moving target that is “Google”! It is equally nice to see that opinions vary from night to day.
I, myself, do not agree 100% with what you say, but your perspective is no less valuable. Our collective experience is at one time or another spot on… but again, the mechanism is constantly changing… and the game continues!
Thank you for the great read!
HI Freelance,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Take Care,
Nick