Link building is a critical subject for SEOs these days, everyone somehow knows that links are still important for every SEO campaign, but since Google is constantly updating the algorithm to improve search results for users, link building is a task which is getting more and more difficult for SEOs around the world.
according to Moz links are still one of the most, if not the most important ranking factor in the search engines.links are the references of every website and therefore a very important indicator for each algorithm on how important a website is and whether it is worth ranking for certain search term.
So, should we keep on building links? Well, this is not an easy question.it is very important to make sure that the link building you are doing for the project or the company you’re working for are according to the Google guidelines.
One important point here are link schemes. Google states that large-scale guest posting campaigns with keyword rich anchor text links are seen as manipulative behavior.
Article marketing and optimized press releases were a common tactic for SEOs in order to increase the amount of links from different domains and rank better for the targeted search terms. Some time ago it worked very well to use anchor text including the keywords you’re targeting in order to boost rankings for a certain search term.Google has now specifically defined in its webmaster guidelines that these types of links are now seen as an intent to manipulate a sites ranking.
A second important point that Google mentions in its webmaster guidelines is
– links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites.
Example: an article about wedding rings that links out to a “best cheap SEO backlinks” page with keyword-rich anchor text is a mismatch. The link does not fit the content, so it reads as manipulative rather than a genuine editorial reference.
Well, the example is quite obvious and I don’t really understand why people still thought that this tactics are working especially if you’re running SEO campaigns on a long-term basis anchor text linking was always something critical to keep in mind when building links for websites.
So now, that Google officially says that these specific tactics are against Google’s guidelines, many people ask me about link building and how to tackle this task on a day to day. Many companies think that link building is worthless now, which in my eyes, is nonsense. We still need to build links, there is no other way to increase the amount of websites linking to your own website without doing link building. Now, the way you do this is very important:
What you shouldn’t do when gathering links
- You should not use heavy keyword rich anchor text links to increase rankings
- You should not do heavy low-quality article marketing including anchor text links
- You should not do heavy low quality press release marketing including anchor text links
- You should not do heavy low quality guest posting with anchor text links you should not link from websites that are related to porn, poker, casinos
- You should not link from other websites footer with an keyword anchor text link
- You should not massively link from low-quality websites with keyword anchor text links
The very important question for me here is: Does that mean we should not build any links anymore?
No! Absolutely not! You must build links in order to increase visibility for your website.
You have to take care when doing link building because there are some dangers that you should be aware off
Link Building Risks
- You can get detected by the Google algorithm
- You can get a manual penalty
- You can get reported by someone else
- Someone writes about you because you’re doing something not according to the Google Webmaster guidelines
So, knowing the dangerous it is very easy to define some rules in order to do link building in the future and in 2014.
As Eric Enge states in an article on search engine land just ask yourself the following questions when you’re doing a link building and you should be on the safe side
– would you build the link if Google and Bing did not exist
– If you have two minutes with the customer and the law require that you show a random sampling of your links to customer prospects, would you happily show the link to a target customer? Or would it embarrass you?
– Did the person giving you the link intended as a genuine endorsement? This is an issue for info graphic and widget links.
– Do you have to make an argument to justify that it is a good link?
So, finally, in order to resume the link building tactics for 2014 it is very important to keep in mind that Google does not say that guest blogging is prohibited or that you should not do press releases anymore. It is very important to focus on brand, quality work and to really create links that are useful for the uses when reading a content piece. Links are and will be necessary in order to determine if the website is relevant or not, so be creative keep on creating good content and link or get links with sense.
COSEOM Team
COSEOM is a multilingual B2B growth agency. Since 2008 the COSEOM team has run international SEO, generative engine optimization, paid media and demand generation programs for B2B software and technology companies across their target markets. We publish our research, playbooks and product guides here. More about COSEOM
