Is Link Building Still Key to Rankings?

Link Building Facts You Need To Know

With Penguin update in 2011, Google turned the existing practice of link building upside down. This first algorithm update was actually intended to tame the link building malpractices. The update hits the websites that managed to gain inflated rankings by manipulating links. The first ever Google penalty update in 2011 knocked down the rankings and killed traffic.

6 Clinching Link Building Facts

Post-Penguin era, link building got a fresh makeover, but with myths remained brewing around the existing practices of link building. What’s really disappointing is that these myths are followed in the form of rules.
With this article, I am lining up as many as 6 points that will help you differentiate between the facts and the myths in your link building process.

1. Links are still the key ranking factor:

Unless Google drops the concept of organic search, links would remain be an incremental search ranking factor. We have heard thousands of times that link building is dead, especially after Penguin’s attack on link spammers who manipulated site rankings. Don’t give ears to rumors. Link building is as persistent as it was. Trust ethical link building methods for obtaining quality links.

2. No-follow Links Can Offer Value:

The biggest rumor that most webmasters believe is that No-follow links deliver no value in terms of search rankings and link juice. Believe it or not, that’s not the case. Ask pro link builders in the neighborhood, they would tell you the fact. A no-follow link generated from a genuine and high quality website can actually boost up your website's SERP ranking.

3. Internal Links Do Matter:

Webmasters kick start your SEO campaigns by procuring quality and genuine links from authority websites. That’s indeed a good way to go. What they miss or undermine all this while is the internal links within the website that could boost rankings too. Even Google considers internal link structure very significant. Therefore, its spiders don’t do any bias while crawling. They treat internal links and external links equally.

If you haven’t yet started doing, keep your posts and pages interconnected. When you publish a new post, go back to the post inventory to find a post (s) that is relevant to this one. Link the new content with the older one and vice versa.

This is how you can revitalize your stale / older content without adding much effort. Moreover, post interlinking shares the authority and relevance of the older content with the newer content and it eventually results in an instant SEO boost.

4. Outbound Links Can Help You in Ranking Boost:

Another misconception that most webmasters believe is about the use of outbound links in the website. The myth could be taken as an extension to one that considers reciprocal links as a threat to your website rankings. It’s not true at all that too many outbound links to your blog post can hurt your search rankings. It’s, though, a fact that search engines are very much critical to the outbound links and if your website is found to be in the possession of irrelevant outbound links, you're going to be penalized.

Google is straight forward to its outbound link policy. The search engine is focused on offering relevant, useful results to their users. Therefore, Google prefers those websites and blogs that users consider to be useful and valuable. If the outbound links you place on your website are beneficial to your website visitors, they will help improve your rankings.

5. Links from 30+ DA Websites aren't Any Norm

Most webmasters run after grabbing backlinks from websites with 30+ DA (Domain authority). Well, that’s important, but not at all a standard to follow. If you naïve to the domain, you must know that DA is a third party term coined and used by Moz for categorizing websites.

But despite the fact, you can’t discard a low DA website if it manages to deliver excellent user value in terms of content and user experience. Use high domain authority websites, but don’t undermine quality website either.

6. Links from Websites Like Wikepedia Don't Get Preference:

‘Preference’ term doesn’t fit here for Google is not a Wiki biased. And to be very serious, Google is not biased for any damn website. Even Google has clarified a number of times that they do not treat Wikipedia as special but like another website.

The trivia with Wiki frenzy is that even Wikipedia works hard on link building to get good ranking over Google SERPs. So, don’t fall for having links from the likes of Wikipedia or other websites.